Analytical sociology is a broad and evolving approach to understanding the social world. Its practitioners share a commitment to clear and precise theorizing, rigorous empirical research, and explanations that seek to identify how social outcomes come about rather than merely documenting associations between them. There is, however, no single agreed-upon definition of analytical sociology.

Two broad understandings coexist within the community. A broad conception regards analytical sociology primarily as a commitment to the basic principles of good explanatory social science: conceptual clarity, theoretical precision, methodological rigor, and careful attention to the processes that generate observed social phenomena. In this view, analytical sociology is less a distinct school of sociology than an articulation of standards to which sociology more generally should aspire.

A more specific conception places greater emphasis on mechanism-based and micro-founded explanation. It seeks to explain macro-level patterns and dynamics by identifying the social mechanisms that generate them, with particular attention to actors and their interactions, macro-to-micro and micro-to-macro transitions, and the processes through which individual actions aggregate into collective outcomes. This tradition is often associated with generative models and the analysis of social mechanisms.

These understandings overlap substantially but are not identical, and the relationship between them continues to be discussed within analytical sociology. INAS provides a forum for scholars working across this spectrum, as well as for critical discussion about the scope, foundations, and future of analytical sociology.