Interpretation for Positivists

Interpretivism and positivism are generally believed to be at odds, and combining them is discouraged. Our goal in this article is to show what political scientists trained in the positivist tradition might gain from an interpretive approach. We make the case for interpretation in positivist political science, and show how interpretivism can be used to complement positivist inquiry. We focus, in particular, on how interpretivism can answer the questions of human meaning-making that arise in the course of positivist research. We argue that the adoption of an interpretive orientation by positivist researchers can (1) reveal new variation and topics for positivist inquiry; (2) demystify the role of researcher interpretation in the production of theory and research; and (3) create more opportunities for the genre and form of our writing. To develop our argument, we propose three “ideal type” approaches to the adoption of interpretivism within positivist research. For each approach, we delineate the specific contribution of interpretivism; the research problem(s) the approach promises to solve; and the evaluative criteria that should be applied to research of this kind.