Our interpretive approach explains actions by reference to the beliefs and desires of actors, and it explains these beliefs by traditions and dilemmas. Political scientists explain many features of political life in this way already (and for several examples see Bevir and Rhodes 2006). Although the relevant beliefs and desires are many, complex, and hard to disentangle, political scientists still turn to them to explain human life. The term ‘narrative’ refers to this form of explanation; it describes the form theories take in the human sciences (Bevir 1999a, 252-62 and 298-306).

This approach has one major advantage for political biographers; they are off the hook of mainstream criticism. Mainstream political science’s preference for a modernist-empiricist epistemology, with its core beliefs of comparison, measurement, law-like generalisation and neutral evidence, no longer provides the relevant yardsticks for judging the value of the political biographer’s work. Bevir’s interpretive approach with its focus on individual beliefs, actions and practices and use of the narrative form of explanation is consistent with the existing working methods of biographers.^[1]