What is interpretivism? As is common with broad methodological debates, much hinges on matters of definition. Interpretivism might be defined residually — as non-positivism. However, this scarcely clarifies the matter, as noted by Robert Adcock and David Dessler in their contributions to this symposium. We might start with David Laitin’s suggestion that interpretivism refers to interpretation or clarification— rendering the ambiguous into a clearer form. This is true enough, so far as it goes. However, in current usage the term seems to carry a good deal more freight
