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For Jessop, his infléchissement of regulation theory at best is part of his foray into a
broad enough social science heuristic for the analysis of capitalist societalistion.
However Jessop often considers all ‘prior theorizing and conceptualization’(cf. Offe
1983) as pieces of ‘underdetermined model’ yet still critically rearrangeable for
empirical as well as theoretical research. Although his method of articulation is not
exactly a method of ‘critical rearrangement’, and that conceptual systems cannot be
totalistic for all levels of abstraction and sectors of analysis; Jessop’s method of
articulation itself cannot formalistically circumscribe the extent to which the critically
rearranged elements as well can be an ‘underdetermined model’. Thus although for
Jessop all conceptual systems are mostly ‘underdetermined models’, he does not
particularly rescind their critical rearrangement. In fact, he often ardently argues for
such a critical rearrangement, however then forgets that this critical rearrangement
itself is merely another conceptual system, and hence ‘an underdetermined model’. In
other words, a tacit method of critical rearrangement is the counterpart to the
Jessopian method of articulation. Former always already rebuffs the theoretical
contingency in conceptual systems even though the esoteric and exoteric contingency
are never extinguishable for critical realism, i.e., the methodological basis for this
critical rearrangement. Alas, in these terms the substantial explananda for any further
theoretical research is none other than all ‘prior theorizing and conceptualization’ than
the ontological levels of the real; this perhaps contrasts with the Bhaskarian proviso
that explanans are always the next congeries of explananda, but only slightly so. The
antithetical consequences of this polemic for Jessop’s efforts toward a broad enough
social science heuristic is that his critical realism often than not caters toward an at
best realistic rearrangement in ‘theorizing and conceptualization’ for which the real is
positivistically contingent; and secondly, since for Jessop all ‘underdetermined
models’ are models of ‘contextualisation’(1995), all theory is ultimately
‘contextualisation’.
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