Postpositivist Political Theory

Abstract

There is no such thing as a coherent, unified postpositivist political theory. Postpositivist political theory is rather an umbrella description, which is loosely used to group together a variety of different theories and approaches that critically engage with different forms of essentialism in the political and social sciences – assumptions reflected in conventional, traditional, and especially positivist thoughts. Among other paradigms, the term postpositivism encompasses poststructuralism, most feminist theories, critical theory (in the sense imposed by the Frankfurt School), critical realism, the interpretative tradition, and neo-Gramscian approaches, notwithstanding the tendency, on the part of many scholars representing these currents of thought, to reject the label of postpositivism.