Why Method Matters in Political Science

1. Why Method Matters in Political Science Prof. Kenneth Benoit PO1600 9 March 2010

2. Academic disciplines • Divide scholarly activities, also administration and teaching • Organized further into subfields • Political theory • International Relations • “American politics” • Comparative politics

3. Disciplinary characteristics • Scope: defines boundaries of subject matter • Methods: defines how inquiry is conducted • Activities consist of: • Research and publication • Attending conferences • Training more political scientists • Membership in professional associations • Teaching • Contributing to public knowledge

4. What Political Science is NOT: • Economics or Sociology (because of scope) • History (because of theory) • Journalism, story-telling, or editorial opinion (because of method) • Philosophy (because of method) – although theory has always been part of political science as a discipline

5. Basic Goals of Science • Explanation, prediction, control • Generalization: the formulation of propositions that cover a class of phenomena. Generalizations have • Scope is the range and variety of phenomena a generalization relates to one another • Probability is the nearness to certainty in their relationship. • The problem in social sciences is that the degree of probability of a statement tends to vary inversely with its scope.

6. Basic Procedure of Science • Identify a problem • Observation • Description • Inductive generalization • Deduction from the generalization • Further tests • Acceptance, revision, or rejection of a hypothesis

7. Why Methodology Matters • The content of science is its method • Science makes author irrelevant • Science is logical • Science is cumulative • Ability to replicate is critical • Problems of social science subject matter make methods all the more important

8. Methodological challenges for Political Science • Rules of interpretation vary • Experimental data usually unavailable • Subject matter resists generalization • Behavior too complex • Individuals vary (esp. culturally) • Behavior changes • Difficult to separate observer values from research

9. Disciplinary Challenges for Political Science • Need common concepts and replicable research to advance the study of politics as a science • Science knows where it is going • Science identifies common key problems • Science knows roughly how to solve these problems • Science is cumulative • Science involves collaboration

10. Example:Measuring Democracy • Problem: How to empirically measure democracy? • Political rights: Each country and territory is awarded from 0 to 4 raw points for each of 10 questions grouped into three subcategories in a political rights checklist • Civil liberties:15 questions are grouped into four subcategories in a civil liberties checklist. • Combined Score:The total raw points in each checklist correspond to two final numerical ratings of 1 to 7. These two ratings are then averaged to determine a status category of “Free,” “Partly Free,” or “Not Free.”

11. Freedom House Democracy

12. Example:Predicting Wars from Democracy

13. Example:Measuring Left-Right Policy • Analyzing political texts (manifestos) • Surveys of experts • Public opinion surveys • Statistical techniques based on (legislative) voting patterns

14. Measuring Left-Right in Ireland (2002)

15. Measuring attitudes toward European Integration in Ireland (2007)

16. Measuring Left-Right in the European Parliament

17. Assessing the “fit” of British parties in their European Party Groups

18. Measuring relative importance of policy dimensions in Latin America

19. Left-Right Policy Analysis from Expert Surveys

21. Example:Campaign Spending Effects • Question: How much does campaign spending affect electoral success? • Answer comes from data analysis of Irish elections • Relationship is modeled and characterized statistically

22. Campaign Spending Effects

23. Campaign Spending Effects

24. Example: Explaining How Electoral Rules Change

25. Example: Explaining How Electoral Rules Change