Theory Reconstruction: An Approach to Conceptual Innovation in Political Science

Concepts are the building blocks of social science. Yet, like all aspects of the discipline, they are subject to biases and unexamined assumptions. Rethinking how we use concepts is important for creating useful concepts and theories, as well as for broadening the perspectives that are recognized in the discipline. Nonetheless, today, there is insufficient guidance for scholars looking to challenge existing concepts. Despite this, numerous social science scholars, particularly qualitative scholars, have long used different solutions for reconstructing existing concepts to make sense of their immediate observations. In this article, we bring together these similar strategies under the banner of a single approach, which we call theory reconstruction . Distinct from both theory building and theory testing, theory reconstruction is an abductive, or “puzzle-based,” approach to research that uses discrepancies between one’s empirical observations and the literature to challenge key concepts. Using examples of existing scholarship, we propose four strategies of theory reconstruction (revising, narrowing, extending, and disrupting), each of which serves as an accessible way to unsettle entrenched assumptions in the discipline, invite new perspectives, and encourage more theory-based research.