Why Method Matters in Political Science Prof. Kenneth Benoit PO March 2010

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

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

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

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.

Basic Procedure of Science 1.Identify a problem 2.Observation 3.Description 4.Inductive generalization 5.Deduction from the generalization 6.Further tests 7.Acceptance, revision, or rejection of a hypothesis

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

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

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

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.”

Freedom House Democracy

Example: Predicting Wars from Democracy Freedom House 1973Expected Wars Mean Standard Error(0.23)

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

Measuring Left-Right in Ireland (2002)

Measuring attitudes toward European Integration in Ireland (2007)

Measuring Left-Right in the European Parliament

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

Measuring relative importance of policy dimensions in Latin America

Left-Right Policy Analysis from Expert Surveys

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

Campaign Spending Effects

Example: Explaining How Electoral Rules Change