Suchergebnisse

In the Fall of 2002, APSA created its 37th Organized Section, devoted to the study, development, and dissemination of qualitative methods. Since that time, I have served as the editor of this newsletter. My job, as I saw it, was to bring to the attention of our members the most interesting, innovative, and (it follows) contentious issues in the field of political methodology, regardless of whether they might be categorized conventionally as 'qualitative' or 'quantitative.' (Issues of import solely to quantitative work have been deferred to the Political Methodology section–no need to duplicate effort.) With that caveat, the mission of the newsletter was interpreted broadly to include all methodological issues of relevance to the study of politics. Symposia have ranged from broad philosophy-of-science issues to narrower debates about technique. For the most part, these topics have been chosen in response to ideas from our members and as extensions of APSA panels and roundtables. Usually, the management of a symposium was delegated to the person taking the initiative to organize a discussion on that topic.

This paper offers four main arguments about the nature of causation in the social sciences. First, contrary to most recent work, I argue that there is a unitary conception of causation: a cause raises the probability of an event. This understanding of causation, borrowed from but not wedded to Bayesian inference, provides common semantic ground on which to base a reconstruction of causation. I argue, second, that rather than thinking about causation as a series of discrete types or distinct rules we ought to re-conceptualize this complex form of argument as a set of logical criteria applying to all arguments that are causal in nature (following the foregoing definition), across fields and across methods. Here, it is helpful to distinguish between the formal properties of a causal argument and the methods by which such an argument might be tested, the research design. Sixteen criteria apply to the former and seven criteria apply to the latter, as I show in the body of the paper. In summary, causation in the social sciences is both more diverse and more unified than has generally been recognized.

This paper offers four main arguments about the nature of causation in the social sciences. First, contrary to most recent work, I argue that there is a unitary conception of causation: a cause raises the probability of an event. This understanding of causation, borrowed from but not wedded to Bayesian inference, provides common semantic ground on which to base a reconstruction of causation. I argue, second, that rather than thinking about causation as a series of discrete types or distinct rules we ought to re-conceptualize this complex form of argument as a set of logical criteria applying to all arguments that are causal in nature (following the foregoing definition), across fields & across methods. Here, it is helpful to distinguish between the formal properties of a causal argument & the methods by which such an argument might be tested, the research design. Sixteen criteria apply to the former & seven criteria apply to the latter, as I show in the body of the paper. In summary, causation in the social sciences is both more diverse & more unified than has generally been recognized. 2 Tables, 154 References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright 2005.]

Present research on minor party performance consists largely of single-country studies or pooled studies including a raft of widely varying electoral systems. This study examines the topic from a cross-national perspective, but is limited to democratic polities with single-member districts and first-past-the-post rules. An original dataset is compiled including 217 elections drawn from 37 countries and several historical eras. Five political-institutional factors are explored: (1) federalism, (2) presidentialism, (3) electoral system institutionalization, (4) party organization, and (5) electoral volatility. The evidence suggests that major party hegemony is more complete in polities with unitary constitutions, parliamentary executives, long-enduring electoral systems, strong party organization and low electoral volatility.

This paper aims to clarify the meaning, and explain the utility, of the case study method, a method often practiced but little understood. A "case study," I argue, is best defined as an intensive study of a single unit with an aim to generalize across a larger set of units. Case studies rely on the same sort of covariational evidence utilized in non-case study research. Thus, the case study method is correctly understood as a particular way of defining cases, not a way of analyzing cases or a way of modeling causal relations. I show that this understanding of the subject illuminates some of the persistent ambiguities of case study work, ambiguities that are, to some extent, intrinsic to the enterprise. The travails of the case study within the discipline of political science are also rooted in an insufficient appreciation of the methodologicaltradeoffsthat this method calls forth. This paper presents the familiar contrast between case study and non-case study work as a series of characteristic strengths and weaknesses—affinities—rather than as antagonistic approaches to the empirical world. In the end, the perceived hostility between case study and non-case study research is largely unjustified and, perhaps, deserves to be regarded as a misconception. Indeed, the strongest conclusion to arise from this methodological examination concerns the complementarity of single-unit and cross-unit research designs.

A discussion of the relatively new field of American Political Development (APD) focuses on whether APD has been hurt by its purposeful avoidance of methodology. The origins of APD are traced from its diverse foundations in European social theory, comparative historical methods, traditional political history, & behavioralist political science. Three seminal works in APD are critically reviewed in light of their methodological contribution: Stephen Skowronek's founding text, Building a New American State (1982), Richard Bensel's Yankee Leviathan (1990), & Rogers M. Smith's, Civic Ideals (1997). The importance to APD of methodological self-awareness in relation to questions of conceptualization & research design is discussed, along with the critical need for concepts to respond to the criteria of resonance, operationalization, & analytic utility. It is argued that APD's contradictory impulse, varied intellectual ambitions, & wide range of substantive & theoretical goals have led to laxness in the formation of concepts, propositions, & research design. It is concluded that APD must expand spatially & temporally by incorporating additional country cases & longer periods of time respectively. J. Lindroth

Fuzzy-Set Social Science, by Charles Ragin, is reviewed.