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protagonists(albeit with slight changes) and latest epistemologies a la mode. Thus,
theoretical openness is often a euphemism for middle-range theory-cum-referential
pluralism. Though middle-range theorists are often recreants of ‘high theory’,
regulationist resort to middle-range analysis does not explicitly announce that meta-
theoretical elements are thorougly redundant for the analysis of long-term and
concrete phenomena as in elsewhere. Therefore, middle-range theory is not altogether
totemic for regulationist research, insofar as this is a pre-regulationist understanding
of unadulterated(i.e. Mertonian) middle-range theory. The consequences of a
particular regulationist middle range theory, on the other hand, is that high theory,
though most galvanic, may nonetheless be parametrically tacit and practically nominal
within a middle-range theory and, more profoundly, it may be optional. In these
terms, regulation theory is a ‘quasi-general theoretical façade’ than a true middle-
range theory. Bob Jessop agrees that
[regulation theory] has not yet realized its full potential for the critique of
political economy. This is reflected in an increasing eclecticism that derives
from emphasis on middle-range theoretical convergence and/or the listing of
similarities and differences among different approaches at a middle-range
level. But not all theoretical approaches have something to ‘say’ about
specific middle-range phenomena or processes are really theoretically
commensurable. Thus some serious ontological, epistemological, and
methodological work is required to develop the RA further and link it to
parallel theoretical enquiries into other features of the social world(Jessop
2005:35-6).
The two arguments contrast in that, for Jessop, regulation theory is inadvertantly short
of ‘its full potential’ and for Mavroudeas, ‘it is its very constitutive structure that
warranted both [regulation theory’s] previous radical theses and its present
realignment to socio-economic orthodoxy’(1999). However, much in Mavroudeas is
taciturn about the fact that middle-range theory is very much a consequence of the
regulationist former prolepsis against closed theoretical systems as well as a part of
their ongoing theoretical research. Perhaps one would better consider the
contradictory consequences of middle-range theory for regulationist research over and
above its consequences for a totalistic as well as complacent aboutissement in
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