Karl Popper and Situational Analysis: Theory and Method for Contemporary Economics and Sociology (Routledge INEM Advances in Economic Methodology)

‘Situational Analysis’ represents Karl Popper’s methodological proposal for the social sciences.Although it has been widely studied and interpreted, this book argues that Situational Analysis remains underestimated and undeveloped and, if properly reformulated, could yet become a broad methodological framework that encompasses both the ‘historical’ social sciences and a large section of the ‘theoretical’ social sciences. The first part of this book develops this idea by returning to Popper’s texts.This book calls for both a reformulation of Situational Analysis and a clarification of the status and role of Popper’s ‘Rationality Principle’.This book also develops Situational Analysis by addressing two aspects of the Problem-Situation facing individual actors that are only sketched out in Popper’s work: institutions and expectations.The second part of this book utilizes the reformulated version of Situational Analysis to shed light on the core methodological differences across some of th