^aManchester Business School, Booth Street, West Manchester, M15 6PB, UK. E-mail: ian.greener@mbs.ac.uk

Abstract

This piece considers the main points from Ross' response to my original article, suggesting that the application of path dependence to politics needs to take greater account of the differences between that discipline and those of biology and physics, from where the concept originates. While Ross is right to criticize path dependence as a concept for often being imprecisely used, taking an approach from a complementary ontology, such as realism, allows the construction of a philosophically and methodologically robust approach to rehabilitation.