The Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology

by Box-Steffensmeier, Janet M.; Brady, Henry E.; Collier, David

• ISBN13: 9780199286546
• ISBN10: 019928654X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-10-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Political methodology has changed dramatically in the past thirty years. Not only have new methods and techniques been developed, but the Political Methodology Society and the Qualitative Methods Section of the American Political Science Association have engaged in ongoing research and training programs that have advanced both quantitative and qualitative methodology. The Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology is designed to reflect these developments. It provides comprehensive overviews and critiques of all the key specific methodologies. The volume emphasizes three things. Firstly, techniques should be the servants of improved data collection, measurement, conceptualization, and the understanding of meanings and the identification of causal relationship in social science research. Techniques will be described with the aim of showing how they contribute to these tasks, and the emphasis will be upon developing good research designs--not upon simply using sophisticated techniques. Second, there are many different ways that these tasks can be undertaken in the social sciences through description and modeling, case-study and large-n designs, and quantitative and qualitative research. Third, techniques can cut across boundaries and be useful for many different kinds of researchers. The chapter authors ask how their methods can be used by, or at least inform, the work of those outside those areas where they are usually employed. For example, those describing large-n statistical techniques should ask how their methods might at least inform, if not sometimes be adopted by, those doing case studies or interpretive work, and we want those explaining how to do comparative historical work or process tracing to explain how it could inform those doing time-series studies.

Author Biography

Janet Box-Steffensmeier is the Vernal Riffe Professor of Political Science, Director of the Program in Statistics and Methodology, and courtesy faculty of Sociology at the Ohio State University. She holds a B.A. in mathematics and political science from Coe College (1988), and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Texas at Austin (1993).
Henry Brady is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at UC Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in Economics and Political Science from MIT in 1980. His areas of interest include Quantitative Methodology, American and Canadian Politics, and Political Behavior. He teaches undergraduate courses on political participation and party systems and graduate courses on advanced quantitative methodology.
David Collier is Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley. His fields are comparative politics, Latin American politics, and methodology. His latest book is Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), of which he is co-editor and co-author with his Berkeley colleague Henry E. Brady.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Political Science Methodology as a Disciplinary Crossroads: An Overview of Diverse Influence	p. 1
Building Blocks of Social Science Methodology	p. 1
Intentionality, Rationality and Individual Action: Alternative Views
Interpretive Perspectives: Meaning, Action and Intersubjectivity
New Economic Perspectives: Beliefs, Signaling, Updating and Expectations
Concepts and Measurement
Theoretical Approaches to Concepts	p. 1
The Evolving Influence of Psychometrics and Measurement Theory	p. 1
Measurement in Qualitative Research and Exemplars of Concept Formation. and Measurement	p. 1
General Lessons on Measurement
Causality and Explanation in Social Research
What is Causality?
Statistical Framework for Inferring Causality
Causal Inference in Quantitative and Qualitative Research
Quantitative Tools for Causal Inference
History of Quantitative Methodology
Bayesian Analysis
Time-Series Cross-Sectional Data Technique
Spatial Analysis
Hierarchical Modeling
Discrete Choice Modeling18. Wendy K. Cho, Charles Manski: Ecological Inference
Survey Methodology
Survival Analysis
Time Series Analysis
Potentials and Limits of Political Methodology in Macrocomparative Research Designs
Qualitative Tools for Causal Inference
Case Studies, Process Tracing and Structured focused Comparison
Comparative Historical Methods
Fuzzy Set Analysis: Calibration versus Measurement
Case-Orientated Configurational Research Using QCA
Interviewing, Ethnography and Qualitative Field Methods
Integrating Measurement and Causal Inference
Methodology and Micro Foundations
Studying Mechanisms: Strengthening Casual Inference in Quantitative Research
Agent-Based Modeling
Experiments, Quasi-Experiments and Natural Experiments
Experimentation in Political Science
Quasi-Experiments, Natural Experiments and Evaluation Research
Organizations and Institutions in the Field of Methodology
ICPSR, CQRM and APSA Political Methodology and Qualitative Methods Section
Forty Years of Publishing in Political Methodology: Sage Publications, Specialized Journals, Newsletters and Access to Mainstream Journals
Political Methodology: Old and New
Making the Most of Complimentarily: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods
Intersections in the Trajectories of Qualitative and Qualitative Methods
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