Empirical political theory

pp. 31-40

in: , Klaus von Beyme, Berlin, Springer, 2014

Abstract

Empirical political science divides into two main-streams. The Weberian tradition is interested primarily in a reconstruction of social reality in a historical perspective and works ex post facto with typologies and ideal types. The Durkheimian tradition, deeply affected by French positivism after the fashion of Comte, takes as its motto savoir pour prévoir and is interested primarily in modeling reality by isolating dependent and independent variables.