ABSTRACT

In our critique of existing logics of explanation in the social sciences, and in the development of our alternative approach, we stress the ontological rather than just the epistemological and methodological aspects of interpretation, analysis, and critique. While Elster’s theory of causal mechanisms responds to certain limitations of the causal law paradigm, he nevertheless accepts the search for laws as an ideal. And one of the reasons for this is the atomistic ontological grounding of his account, in which the world consists of discrete events, facts, and mechanisms. But while Elster eschews the task of ontological reflection, Bhaskar’s account of causal mechanisms explicitly locates his concept of causal mechanisms within a clearly elaborated ontological framework. Nevertheless, his approach falters because his aim to furnish a positive ontology of objects and processes pushes him to make very abstract theoretical claims whose relevance for conducting empirical enquiry is unclear. Finally, while hermeneuticists are also often explicitly concerned with ontological questions – more so in the case of Taylor, less so in the case of Bevir and Rhodes – the analytical frameworks emerging from their ontological reflections do not produce robust or convincing enough critical explanations, and we think this is partly because of their presupposed ontology.