Oxford Handbook Of Political Methodology, The

Description:
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 emphasises 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.

Review:
This Handbook contains an extraordinary collection of magisterial articles by many of the best methodological minds in political science. Prominent statisticians, econometricians, and sociologists who have taken an interest in our inferential problems are also well represented. The range is broad and substantive, with quantitative, qualitative, formal-theoretic, historical, and mixed methods discussed in relation to all the empirical subfields of the discipline. Every sect will find something to its taste, and those who celebrate the methodological diversity of the profession will have a feast. The articles are written to be accessible, and graduate students will find no better place to begin developing their own methodological judgment. This book is a splendid achievement. Christopher H. Achen, Roger Williams Straus Professor of Social Sciences, Princeton University

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