This is a second post on concepts and how to use them in both our everyday lives and in academic analysis. The first post was about concepts in general, the present one is about “good” concepts. A third post follows about “bad” concepts, and a fourth one about more bad concepts in the form of “cat-dogs.” All posts owe to the work of the great Giovanni Sartori on concepts and methodology in social and political sciences.
How do we conceptualize, AND what is a ‘good’ concept?
To conceptualize is far from easy. It requires three moves at once: (a) decide on a simple term with (b) unambiguous meaning that (c) points clearly to specific comparable referent units. We have a good concept when it expresses clear meaning and helps to seize the object.
A concept is good when it expresses clear meaning and helps to seize the object. Only good concepts may establish boundaries that separate the object that we want explained from other objects that may look similar but are not the same.
EXAMPLE: POPULISM QUA DEMOCRATIC ILLIBERALISM
It can be said that we have a good concept of the term “populism” when we are able to distinguish populism from non-populism. How do we achieve that?
Beginning from our term (“populism”), we must first proceed through defining so as to give the term specific meaning. A definition is the establishment of correspondence between the term (i.e., what is to be defined) and the characteristics of the object(s) we want analyzed and explained (i.e., what serves to define).
Definitions may be broad, but the best (and more challenging ones) are the so-called minimal definitions. A definition is “minimal” when, parsimoniously, includes only the core characteristics of the object under investigation and excludes any secondary ones.
So, when defining populism as “democratic illiberalism” we achieve a minimal definition of the term with clear and unambiguous meaning: It points to objects (be they individual leaders, political parties, entire party systems, or even polities) that combine two, and only two, characteristics: democratic conviction and illiberal ethos.
Now that we have given our term clear meaning, we need clearly observable indicators that will tell us when a referent unit is democratic or not and when it is illiberal or liberal. Once we have decided about such indicators, we can then easily “operationalize” on our concept, which is to say, locate the concept referents (i.e., the extension of the concept) in the real world. Without such an operation, the concept remains fuzzy, and therefore useless.
Now, our understanding of populism as “democratic illiberalism” is a good concept because (1) its term-to-meaning relation is unambiguous and (2) the meaning-to-referents relation is clear and uncontested.
REFERENCES
Gerring, John. “What Makes a Good Concept? A critical Framework for Understanding Concept Formation in the Social Sciences,” Polity 31:3 (1999), 357-393
Sartori, Giovanni. “Guidelines for Concept Analysis,” in Social Science Concepts: A Systematic Analysis, ed. Giovanni Sartori (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1984)
Sartori, Giovanni. “Concept Misinformation in Comparative Politics,” American Political Science Review 64:4 (1970), 1033-46
