Oxford Handbook Of Political Methodology, The

Description:
Political methodology has changed dramatically over the past thirty years, and many new methods and techniques have been developed. Both the Political Methodology Society and the Qualitative/Multi-Methods Section of the American Political Science Association have engaged in ongoing research and training programs that have advanced quantitative and qualitative methodology. The Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology presents and synthesizes these developments. The Handbook provides comprehensive overviews of diverse methodological approaches, with an emphasis on three major themes. First, specific methodological tools should be at the service of improved conceptualization, comprehension of meaning, measurement, and data collection. They should increase analysts' leverage in reasoning about causal relationships and evaluating them empirically by contributing to powerful research designs. Second, the authors explore the many different ways of addressing these tasks: through case-studies and large-n designs, with both quantitative and qualitative data, and via techniques ranging from statistical modelling to process tracing. Finally, techniques can cut across traditional methodological boundaries and can be useful for many different kinds of researchers. Many of the authors thus explore how their methods can inform, and be used by, scholars engaged in diverse branches of methodology.

Table of Contents:
PART I: INTRODUCTION; 1. Political Science Methodology; 2. Normative Methodology; PART II: APPROACHES TO SOCIAL SCIENCE METHODOLOGY; 3. Meta-methodology: Clearing the Underbrush; 4. Agent-based Modeling; PART III: CONCEPTS AND MEASUREMENT; 5. Concepts, Theories, and Numbers: A Checklist for Constructing, Evaluating, and Using Concepts or Quantitative Measures; 6. Measurement; 7. Typologies: Forming Concepts and Creating Catagorical Variables; 8. Measurement versus Calibration: A Set-theoretic Approach; 9. The Evolving Influence of Psychometrics in Political Science; PART IV: CAUSALITY AND EXPLANATION IN SOCIAL RESEARCH; 10. Causation and Explanation in Social Science; 11. The Neyman-Rubin Model of Causal Inference and Estimation via Matching Methods; 12. On Types of Scientific Enquiry: The Role of Qualitative Reasoning; 13. Studying Mechanisms to Strengthen Causal Inferences in Quantitative Research; PART V: EXPERIMENTS, QUASI-EXPERIMENTS AND NATURAL EXPERIMENTS; 14. Experimentation in Political Science; 15. Field Experiments and Natural Experiments; PART VI: QUANTITATIVE TOOLS FOR DESCRIPTIVE AND CAUSAL INFERENCE: GENERAL METHODS; 16. Survey Methodology; 17. Endogeneity and Structural Equation Estimation in Political Science; 18. Structural Equation Models; 19. Time-series Analysis; 20. Time-series Cross-section Methods; 21. Bayesian Analysis; PART VII: QUANTITATIVE TOOLS FOR DESCRIPTIVE AND CAUSAL INFERENCE: SPECIAL TOPICS; 22. Discrete Choice Methods; 23. Survival Analysis; 24. Cross-level/Ecological Inference; 25. Empirical Models of Spatial Interdependence; 26. Multilevel Models; PART VIII: QUALITATIVE TOOLS FOR DESCRIPTIVE AND CAUSAL INFERENCE; 27. Counterfactuals and Case Studies; 28. Case Selection for Case-study Analysis: Qualitative and Quantitative Techniques; 29. Interviewing and Qualitative Field Methods: Pragmatism and Practicalities; 30. Process Tracing: A Bayesian Perspective; 31. Case-oriented Configurational Research: Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), Fuzzy Sets, and Related Techniques; 32. Comparative-historical Analysis in Contemporary Political Science; 33. Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Methods; PART IX: ORGANIZATIONS, INSTITUTIONS, AND MOVEMENTS IN THE FIELD OF METHODOLOGY; 34. Qualitative and Multimethod Research: Organizations, Publication, and Reflections on Integration; 35. Quantitative Methodology; 36. Forty Years of Publishing in Quantitative Methodology; 37. The EITM Approach: Origins and Interpretations; Index