The "New Political History": A Methodological Critique

Abstract

In a recent review article, one of the leading figures of the "new political history," Samuel P. Hays, argued that "a preoccupation with technique" on the part of both critics and defenders of the genre has obscured the more important advances it had brought to the discipline the reformulation of historical concepts and the substitution of "systematic" for "intuitive" tests of hypotheses. "The social research movement," he concluded, "critically needs to take stock of itself, seriously debate where it is going, and move from its initial enthusiasm with techniques to a concern for methods and theory."

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