Relationalism in Political Theory and Research: The Challenge of Networked Politics and Policy-Making

Abstract

Political theory and research approaches are in most cases not explicit in all respects, but areusually shaped by implicit background theories and scientific worldviews, e.g. presuppositions and par-adigms. Examples are idealism, materialism or institutionalism. A fairly new perspective in this regardisrelationalism. This way of thinking, in its ontological orientation, conceives the world only in terms ofrelations. Research programmes with a relationalist orientation put this idea into practice with methodsof social network analysis which are more and more used also in political science. Several variants ofthis new -ism and type of network thinking are presented in this paper in a critical perspective.Relationalism is ultimately seen as fruitful perspective, but is seen as limited in its explanatory power,though. It should therefore always be combined with other approaches and perspectives.