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What Are Analytic Narratives?

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  • Mongin, Philippe

Abstract

The recently born expression "analytic narratives" refers to studies that have appeared at the boundaries of history, political science, and economics. These studies purport to explain specific historical events by combining the usual narrative way of historians with the analytic tools that economists and political scientists find in rational choice theory. Game theory is prominent among these tools. The paper explains what analytic narratives are by sampling from the eponymous book Analytic Narratives by Bates, Greif, Levi, Rosenthal, and Weingast (1998) and covering one outside study by Mongin (2008). It first evaluates the explanatory performance of the new genre, using some philosophy of historical explanation and then checks its discursive consistency, using some narratology. The paper concludes that analytic narratives can usefully complement standard narratives in historical explanation, provided they specialize in the gaps that these narratives reveal and that they are discursively consistent, despite the tension that combining a formal model with a narration creates. Two expository modes, called alternation and local supplementation, emerge from the discussion as the most appropriate ones to resolve this tension

Suggested Citation

  • Mongin, Philippe, 2016. "What Are Analytic Narratives?," HEC Research Papers Series 1155, HEC Paris.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebg:heccah:1155
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    Cited by:

    1. Philippe Mongin, 2018. "A game-theoretic analysis of the Waterloo campaign and some comments on the analytic narrative project," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 12(3), pages 451-480, September.
    2. Laurent Gauthier, 2022. "Sophocles's Play: Greek Theater and Psychological Game Theory," Working Papers hal-03754913, HAL.
    3. Bertrand Crettez & Régis Deloche, 2018. "An analytic narrative of Caesar’s death: Suicide or not? That is the question," Rationality and Society, , vol. 30(3), pages 332-349, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Analytic narratives; Rational choice theory; Game theory; Historical explanation; Text; Form of discourse; Narratology.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C79 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Other
    • D89 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Other
    • N01 - Economic History - - General - - - Development of the Discipline: Historiographical; Sources and Methods
    • N43 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: Pre-1913

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