Abstract
This chapter covers the nuts and bolts of empirical political science. It gives an introduction into empirical research in the social sciences and statistics; explains the notion of concepts, theories, and hypotheses; as well as introduces students to the different steps in the quantitative research process.
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Notes
- 1.
The Polity IV database adheres to rather minimal definition of democracy. In essence, the database gauges the fairness and competitiveness of the elections and the electoral process on a scale from −10 to +10. −10 describes the “worst” autocracy, while 10 describes a country that fully respects free, fair, and competitive elections (Marshall et al. 2011).
- 2.
The UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset defines minor wars by a death toll between 25 and 1000 people and major wars by a death toll of 1000 people and above (see Gleditsch 2002).
- 3.
The idea behind parsimony is that scientists should rely on as few explanatory factors as possible while retaining a theory’s generalizability.
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Further Reading
Research Design
Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Nice introduction into the two main research traditions qualitative and quantitative research. The book also covers mixed methods’ approaches (approaches that combine qualitative and quantitative methods).
McNabb, D. E. (2015). Research methods for political science: Quantitative and qualitative methods. London: Routledge (Chap. 7). Nice introduction into the nuts and bolts of quantitative methods. Introduces basic concepts such as reliability and validity, as well as discusses different types of statistics (i.e. inferential statistics).
Shively, W. P. (2016). The craft of political research. New York: Routledge. Precise and holistic introduction into the quantitative research process.
Theories and Hypotheses
Brians, C. L., Willnat, L., Manheim, J., & Rich, R. (2016). Empirical political analysis. London: Routledge (Chaps. 2, 4, 5). Comprehensive introduction into theories, hypothesis testing and operationalization of variables.
Qualitative Research
Elster, J. (1989). Nuts and bolts for the social sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. A nice introduction into causal explanations and causal mechanisms. The book explains what causal mechanisms are and what research steps the researcher can conduct to detect them.
Gerring, J. (2004). What is a case study and what is it good for?. American political science review, 98(2), 341–354. A nice introduction on what a case study is, what is good for in political science, and what different types of case studies exist.
Lijphart, A. (1971). Comparative politics and the comparative method. American Political Science Review, 65(3), 682–693. Seminal work on the comparative case study. Explains what a comparative case study is, how it relates to the field of comparative politics, and how to conduct a comparative case study.
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Stockemer, D. (2019). The Nuts and Bolts of Empirical Social Science. In: Quantitative Methods for the Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99118-4_2
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