Conflicting Imperatives and Concept Formation

“Conflicting imperatives” lie at the heart of many important social science concepts. This label was introduced by Reinhard Bendix to characterize concepts that entail a dynamic tension among contradictory goals, priorities, or motivations. Notwithstanding the attention scholars give to conflicting imperatives, the importance to social science research of concepts based on conflicting imperatives has not adequately been recognized and the issues of concept formation that arise with these concepts have not been explored. This article seeks to address these shortcomings and to give the consideration of conflicting imperatives a more central place in conceptual and methodological discussions.