How is a concept constructed in social sciences

LUIS ALEJANDRO MORENO HERNÁNDEZ

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 27th World Congress of Political Science; 2023

International Political Science Association

The purpose of this paper is to show two main ways of constructing concepts. The first comes from natural sciences. Its objective is to be taxonomic and binary. Sartori (1984) describes it as a denotative definition. Its goal is to clearly define its boundaries, in other words, what is excluded and what is included. The second is the ideal type (Weber, 1958), defined as an approximation of the phenomena we want to study. Ideal types are neither normative nor taxonomic, but they attempt to show how reality differs from the concept. Thus, an ideal type is not binary but gradual. For the purposes of this presentation, we illustrate this distinction using the definition of “populism” by Mudde and Rovira (2017) – which paradoxically attempts to be an “ideal type” but distinguishes between exclusionary and inclusionary and therefore builds a taxonomic classification– and Ernesto Laclau’s definition (2005). How do they differ? Is it possible to say that Mudde and Rovira (2017) created a taxonomic definition, while Laclau (2005) developed an ideal type? What are the implications of using one definition or the other to hierarchize political regimes? Finally, we aim to show these two ways to build a concept and its consequences for political analysis using as an example this discussion about populism.