Bevir and Rhodes have offered a useful addition to the tools of political scientists by developing an interpretivist approach to political science. Interpretation is a crucial mechanism for understanding the social world but one that has been underused in political analysis. This article welcomes Bevir and Rhodes’ emphasis on interpretivism but suggests that there are a number of problems in the way they use the approach. In particular: they use a narrow definition of interpretivism; they caricature the nature of existing work in political science; the concept of tradition does too much work; and they pay insufficient attention to power and power relations.
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