“…The differences between rational choice approaches, based on a positivist epistemology, and dialectical approaches, based on a critical realist epistemology, therefore remain and are probably irreconcilable, but, as mentioned earlier, it would appear that this has not dissuaded scholars from continuing to use the heuristics developed by the PNA school. This includes recent contributions by: Colin Hay and David Richards (2000), who develop a ‘strategic relational theory of networks’ based on the dialectical approach outlined above; Jeremy Richardson (2000) and Ben Kisby (2007), who have examined the role of ideas and policy agendas; Andrew Hindmoor (2009), who has examined the role of priming; and Daugbjerg (1998; see also Daugbjerg and Pedersen, 2004), who has studied how policy capacity varies between different network configurations. In addition, the interpretivist school has presented a more fundamental challenge based on similar arguments to those presented above, emphasising the need to: decentre networks; focus on their social construction from the ‘bottom up’; and use ethnographic methods as a way of capturing these realities (Bevir and Richards, 2009).…”