Political Contingency: Studying the Unexpected, the Accidental, and the Unforeseen

306 Pages·2007·1.71 MB·English

by  Ian Shapiro

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Political Contingency
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Political Contingency
Studying the Unexpected, the Accidental,
and the Unforeseen
edited by
Ian Shapiro and Sonu Bedi
a
New York University Press
new york and london
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new york university press
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2007by New York University
All rights reserved
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Political contingency :studying the unexpected,the accidental,and the
unforeseen / edited by Ian Shapiro and Sonu Bedi.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13:978-0-8147-4044-6(cloth :alk.paper)
ISBN-10:0-8147-4044-8(cloth :alk.paper)
1.Political science—Methodology. 2.Causation—Political aspects.
3.World politics—1989– 4.Imaginary histories. I.Shapiro,Ian.
II.Bedi,Sonu.
JA71.P6123 2007
320.01—dc22 2007020644
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
Manufactured in the United States ofAmerica
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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For Bob Dahl
Whose idea it was
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Contents
Introduction:Contingency’s Challenge to
Political Science 1
Ian Shapiro and Sonu Bedi
part i Roots of Contingency
1 From Fortune to Feedback:Contingency and the
Birth ofModern Political Science 21
David Wootton
2 Mapping Contingency 54
Andreas Schedler
3 Resilience as the Explanandum ofSocial Theory 79
Philip Pettit
part ii Contingency’s Challenge
4 Events as Causes:The Case ofAmerican Politics 99
David R.Mayhew
5 Contingent Public Policies and Racial Hierarchy:
Lessons from Immigration and Census Policies 138
Jennifer Hochschild and Traci Burch
6 Region,Contingency,and Democratization 171
Susan Stokes
part iii What Is to Be Done?
7 Contingency,Politics,and the Nature ofInquiry:
Why Non-Events Matter 205
Gregory A.Huber
vii
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viii Contents
8 Modeling Contingency 222
Elisabeth Jean Wood
9 When Democracy Complicates Peace:How Democratic
Contingencies Affect Negotiated Settlements 246
Courtney Jung
10 Contingency in Biophysical Research 266
Robert G.Shulman and Mark R.Shulman
Contributors 279
Index 283
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Introduction
Contingency’s Challenge to Political Science
Ian Shapiro and Sonu Bedi
At its starkest, contingency challenges the very possibility of science. By
calling something contingent,at a minimum we are saying that it did not
have to be as it is.Things could have been otherwise,and they would have
been otherwise if something had happened differently. Science is usually
seen as geared to uncovering laws that account for what mustbe the case.
If the universe is law-governed, how can there be genuinely contingent
events? Perhaps they seem contingent to us,but for the committed scien-
tist this perception must mark our incomplete understanding. Either
things are necessary and science is possible,or they are contingent and it is
not. Contingency’s challenge is thus about the nature of reality, not just
about the limits to our grasp of that reality.In the lingo:it is about ontol-
ogy,not just epistemology.
Suppose that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had not been assassi-
nated by Yigal Amir in November of 1995,or that South African President
F.W.De Klerk had been killed by a disgruntled white right-winger in Jan-
uary of 1992. Because no other National Party leader was willing to face
down the Afrikaner hard right, as De Klerk did in March of that year by
calling an unprecedented referendum on whether to conclude an agree-
ment with the African National Congress, his death would almost cer-
tainly have derailed the negotiations between his National Party govern-
ment and the ANC.This would have greatly strengthened NP reactionar-
ies and ANC radicals,quite likely sending the country spiraling into chaos
if not civil war.1 By contrast,had Rabin escaped Amir’s bullet in 1995,he
might well have concluded the agreement to which he was then close with
Yassir Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization and which his
1