In this concise but wide-ranging text, Alan Zuckerman introduces the reader to the various approaches to political explanation. He shows how researchers espousing different theoretical assumptions, levels of explanation, variables, and data come to offer conflicting accounts of the phenomena to be studied.

Alan S. Zuckerman is professor of political science and Judaic studies and director of the social science data center at Brown University. He has also served as Fulbright professor of political science at Tel-Aviv University and the University of Pisa and visiting research fellow at the University of Essex. Among his publications are The Politics of Faction: Christian Democratic Rule in Italy and The Transformation of the Jews as well as numerous articles on Jewish communities, the Holocaust of European Jewry, political cleavages, political parties, and electoral behavior.

The Point of Departure -- Explaining Political Phenomena: The Case of Turnout in National Elections -- Research Schools in Political Science -- How Research Schools Structure Analysis and Produce Conflicting Visions of Politics -- How We Know When We Know: Testing Claims to Knowledge in Political Science -- What We Mean When We Call Political Science a Science: Ambiguity and Certainty in the Pursuit of Knowledge