The Paradigmatic Approach in Political Historiography – Nature and Solutions

The present essay aims to contribute to the contemporary debate on what the most appropriate approach for political historiography is. In it, three approaches are outlined as the most influential and widespread today: philosophico-methodological historicism, contextualism, and the paradigmatic approach. The paradigmatic approach is investigated with respect to its nature, contents and heuristic parameters, and the legitimacy of its application is explained. The defining feature of this approach is that it presents the development of political thought as a progressive three-stage dialectical and logical process of “overcoming” the “outdated” and establishing new paradigms. The implementation of the paradigmatic approach in political historiography allows the coming of new political doctrines to be seen as the expression of the requirements set by the existing political paradigm in a given historical period and not as the effect of chance or divine inspiration.