Description as art and (social) science

Everyone studying the social and political world engages in description, at some level, as a central part of the social scientific process. Whether in conceptualization, data collection, or the curation of cases of interest, the task of understanding who, what, when, where, and how politics moves and operates is central to political science inquiry. Of course, the use of description by scholars of different epistemological persuasions leaves it ripe for disagreement on how the exercise can best be done. In this special issue, we do not ignore those differences but rather draw attention to the many commitments and motivations that are shared by descriptive scholars across diverse epistemological commitments. Ultimately, we find the current descriptive renaissance remarkable in its ability to bring together scholars across varied subfields, epistemological, methodological, and ontological priors and preferences.