Reinterpreting interpretive social science: Mark Bevir on Democratic Governance

Mark Bevir's Democratic Governance is radical in its attack on governance as theory and as administrative practice. It is ambitious in its historical tracing of the roots of governance back through modernism in philosophy, democratic theory and the social sciences. And it has a purpose: to reveal the historical contingency of modernist theories of governance and their deleterious effects on current democratic practice while demonstrating the value of his more 'interpretive' social science. He does all of this masterfully, although we are nonetheless left wanting more of an account of interpretivism, more critical engagement with modernist theories, and more developed interpretive solutions to the problems that governance theory has caused for democracy. Comparative European Politics (2012) 10, 625-633. doi:10.1057/cep.2011.33; published online 23 January 2012