Machine generated contents note: 1 Analytical Perspectives, Analytical Controversies -- The scope and limits of political analysis -- Analytical perspectives, analytical choices, analytical controversies -- Mapping the political science mainstream -- Mapping the mainstream in international relations -- Analytical strategies in contemporary political science and international relations -- The parsimony versus complexity trade-off -- The role for and the nature of theory in political analysis -- Context and conduct: dealing with the 'problem' of agency -- The structure of the book --2 What's 'Political' About Political Science? -- Ontology and epistemology: the 'political question' and the 'science' question -- Specifying and respecifying the political -- The nature of politics, the nature of the political -- Science, politics and ethics -- The retreat from positivism -- Conclusion the limits of political science and the ethics of political analysis --3 Beyond Structure versus Agency, Context versus Conduct -- What is - and what is not - at stake in the structure- agency debate? -- Conceptualising structure and agency -- Operationalising structure and agency: the rise of fascism in Germany in the 1930s -- Positions in the structure-agency debate -- The centrality of structure and agency to political explanation -- Beyond structure versus agency --4 Continuity and Discontinuity in the Analysis of Political Change -- Time for change? -- Analytical strategies for conceptualising change -- Time, timing and temporality -- Conclusion: structural, agential and ideational factors in the analysis of political change --5 Divided by a Common Language? -- Conceptualising Power -- The 'faces of power' controversy -- Power: analytical and critical perspectives -- Foucault and the 'microphysics of power' --6 The Discursive and the Ideational in Contemporary -- Political Analysis: Beyond Materialism and Idealism -- The space for ideas in political analysis -- Constructivism in and beyond international relations theory -- The difference that ideas (can) make -- Structure, agency and ideas -- Conclusion: paradigms and paradigm shifts --7 The Challenge of Postmodernism -- Modernism and postmodernism as aesthetic sensibilities -- Postmodernism as an intellectual sensibility -- The contribution of postmodernism to political analysis -- The postmodernist challenge to (critical) political analysis -- In defence of critical political analysis: resisting postmodernism's vow of silence -- Conclusion: Critical-Political-Analytical -- Empirical but not empiricist -- Structure and agency -- An inclusive and post-disciplinary conception of political analysis -- The causal and constitutive role of ideas -- The contingency of political processes.