|
|
abide strictly by known and familiar tools in the subject area. The tools employed in the study of political science are diverse and, depending on the subject, vary in complexity. These may include approaches from a range of disciplines such as economics, symbolic logic, psychology, and communication studies, among others, and not all such tools may be familiar to scholars outside these disciplines. As alien concepts, application of such tools might prompt questions about stretching a particular discipline beyond their central concerns. To preempt such questions, the test for an inclusive and perhaps unconventional approach in any discipline would be to show whether employing foreign concepts might necessarily bring the inquiry closer to the compound solution envisaged in the subject area. Furthermore, exploiting tools from other disciplines provides a number of opportunities to explore the depth and complexity of specific issues as well as to examine the problem from many different perspectives. For example, concepts developed in welfare economics are indeed central to the problems of collective action and in essence provide useful starting points in the study of similar issues in political science.
While an inclusive approach of this kind may be desirable, it is perhaps important to emphasise that adopting such an approach wholeheartedly as a template can be more futile than productive. This is because certain tools could be more restrictive and counterproductive when transplanted from their original environments. An example is the general application of game theory in many social and political interactions. While this could be useful in the analysis of certain aspects of human interaction, the kind of conclusions drawn from a game set in mathematical analysis could have very limited applicability to settings in political and social situations involving actual human behaviour. Similarly, cases in economics could provide useful tools for the analysis and forecasting of transactions in market situations, but it would be implausible to apply the results as templates for the analysis of all forms of social exchange. Hence, while this inquiry aspires to be multidisciplinary, the range of tools adapted from other disciplines is applied with some modifications that aim to adequately describe or explain the problem.