Oxford University Press Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research

Writing about ideas, John Maynard Keynes noted that they are "more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else." Ideas have returned as a major focus of political inquiry, and scholars dissatisfied with rationalist and materialist approaches are now exploring the power of ideas to shape the political landscape. This book gathers leading scholars from a variety of subdisciplines in political science and sociology to provide a state-of-the-art work on the theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues raised by social science research on ideas and politics.