Political Science 516 Introduction to Political Inquiry State University of New York at Albany Fall 2013

Transcription

1 Political Science 516 Introduction to Political Inquiry State University of New York at Albany Fall 2013 Professor Cheng Chen T 2:45-5:35 Office: Milne Hall 214A Office Hours: Tuesday 12:35-2:35 Phone: cchen@albany.edu Course Description This course is designed to provide students with a solid intellectual foundation for conducting political inquiry across the subfields in the discipline of political science. The first part of the course examines the classic ontological and epistemological debates that underpin and shape contemporary social science methodology. It covers some of the major works in philosophy of social science that are most relevant to the discipline of political science. The second part of the course starts with concept formation and measurement, and then exposes students to a wide range of methods most frequently employed by contemporary political scientists, including formal models; large-n statistical analysis; historical case studies; content analysis; field research and ethnography; and interview and survey research. The third part of the course introduces students to some of the most salient ongoing debates on political science methodology, such as the call for unified standards for social science research, and the recent ascendance of multimethod approaches. This course is required in the Political Science doctoral program curriculum. Upon completion of this course, students should be able to identify the foundational assumptions of various research traditions and methods; evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a wide range of methods in different research settings; and construct original research designs employing appropriate research methods. Course Requirements Your grade in this course will be determined in the following manner: Seminar participation 20% Oral presentation 20% Midterm exam 30% 10-page research design 30% Class attendance and active, informed participation are mandatory. Students must complete the assigned readings prior to the seminar meetings. The oral presentations require each student to analyze and report on a number of assigned readings for a given week. The exact number of the presentations will depend on the number of students enrolled in the seminar. The written assignments will include a midterm take-home exam and a double-spaced 10-page research design addressing a topic within each student s subfield. The final draft of the research design will be due and presented in the last class on December 10. Later papers without university approved reasons will be penalized a third of a letter grade per day late.

2 Readings There is no required book for this course. All the required readings are available on Blackboard. They will be also included in a course pack available at Mary Jane Books on Western Avenue at Quail Street. Those marked with available on-line can be retrieved by the on-line links provided on the syllabus or by clicking on Journals - Print and Online from the Libraries web page and typing in the title of the journal in the search box. August 27: Introduction - Is Political Science Possible? Course syllabus PART I: FOUNDATIONS OF POLITICAL INQUIRY September 3: The Science in Social Science and Absolute Standards Emile Durkheim, What is a Social Fact? in The Rules of Sociological Method (New York: The Free Press, 1938), 1-13 Max Weber, Science as a Vocation, in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Milles, trans. and eds., Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), Max Weber, Objectivity in Social Science and Social Policy, in Edward Shils and Henry Finch, trans. and eds., The Methodology of Social Sciences (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1949), Carl Hempel, The Function of General Laws in History, Journal of Philosophy 39:2 (1942): [available on-line] Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Taylor & Francis e-library, 2005), 3-26 September 10: Progress in Social Sciences Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 1962), 1-22; Imre Lakatos, Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, in Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970) Martin Landau, Political Theory and Political Science: Studies in the Methodology of Political Inquiry (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1972), Chapters 1-2 Larry Laudan, Progress and Its Problems: Toward a Theory of Scientific Growth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977),

3 Michel Foucault, What is Enlightenment? in Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), September 17: The Relativist Challenge and the Varied Responses of Social Sciences Alvin Gouldner, Anti-Minotaur: The Myth of a Value-Free Sociology, Social Problems 9:3 (1962): Clifford Geertz, Thick Description: Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture, in Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 3-30 Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (London: New Left Books, 1975), 9-53 Margaret Archer, Resisting the Revival of Relativism, International Sociology 2:3 (1987): Ernst Haas, Reason and Change in International Life: Justifying a Hypothesis, Journal of International Affairs 44:1 (Spring/Summer 1990): [available on-line] Andrew Abbott, From Causes to Events: Notes on Narrative Positivism, Sociological Methods and Research 20:4 (1992): PART II: CONDUCTING POLITICAL INQUIRY September 24: Concept Formation and Measurement Giovanni Sartori, Concept Misinformation in Comparative Politics, American Political Science Review 64:4 (1970): [available on-line] Robert Adcock and David Collier, Measurement Validity: A Shared Standard for Qualitative and Quantitative Research, American Political Science Review 95:3 (2001): [available on-line] Gerardo Munck and Jay Verkuilen, Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy, Comparative Political Studies 35:1 (2002): 5-34 [available on-line] Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts: A User s Guide (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), Chapter 2 October 1: Formal Models Guest Lecturer: Professor Bryan Early Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), Chapters 1-3 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Toward a Scientific Understanding of International Conflict, International Studies Quarterly 29 (1985): [available on-line] Stephen Walt, Rigor or Rigor Mortis? Rational Choice and Security Studies, International Security 23:4 (Spring 1999): 5-48 [available on-line]

4 Robert Powell, The Modeling Enterprise and Security Studies, International Security 24:2 (Fall 1999): [available on-line] Paul K. MacDonald, Useful Fiction or Miracle Maker: The Competing Epistemological Foundations of Rational Choice Theory, American Political Science Review 97 (November 2003): [available on-line] James Johnson, What Rationality Assumption? Or, How Positive Political Theory Rests on a Mistake, Political Studies 58:2 (2010): [available on-line] October 8: Experiments and Quasi-Experiments Guest Lecturer: Professor David Rousseau Alan Gerber and Donald Green, The Effects of Canvassing, Direct Mail, and Telephone Calls on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment, American Political Science Review 94:3 (2000): [available on-line] Rose McDermott, Experimental Methods in Political Science, Annual Review of Political Science 5 (2002): [available on-line] Thad Dunning, Improving Causal Inference: Strengths and Limitations of Natural Experiments, Political Research Quarterly 61 (2008): [available on-line] Macartan Humphreys and Jeremy Weinstein, Field Experiments and the Political Economy of Development, Annual Review of Political Science 12 (2009): Jonah Lehrer, Trials and Errors: Why Science is Failing Us, Wired 20:1 (2012): [available on-line at October 15: Large-N Statistical Analysis Guest Lecturer: Professor Victor Asal Robert J. Barro, Economic Growth in a Cross-section of Countries, Quarterly Journal of Economics 106:2 (May 1991): [available on-line] David Dessler, Beyond Correlations: Toward a Causal Theory of War, International Studies Quarterly 35 (1991): [available on-line] Gary King, Michael Tomz, and Jason Wittenberg, Making the Most of Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation, American Journal of Political Science 44 (2000): [available on-line] Alan S. Gerber, Donald P. Green, and Edward H. Kaplan, The Illusion of Learning from Observational Research, in Ian Shapiro, Rogers M. Smith, and Tarek M. Masoud, eds., Problems of Methods in the Study of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), Bernhard Kittel, A Crazy Methodology? On the Limits of Macroquantitative Social Science Research, International Sociology 21:5 (2006): [available on-line] October 22: Historical and Case Studies

5 Graham T. Allison, Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis, American Political Science Review 63:3 (1969): [available on-line] Arend Lijphard, Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method, American Political Science Review 65 (1971): [available on-line] Barbara Geddes, How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get: Selection Bias in Comparative Politics, Political Analysis 2:1 (1990): [available on-line at Stanley Lieberson, Small N s and Big Conclusions: An Examination of the Reasoning in Comparative Studies Based on a Small Number of Cases, Social Forces 70:2 (1991): [available on-line] John Gerring, What is a Case Study Good for? Case Study versus Large-N Cross-Case Analysis, in Case Study Research: Principles and Practices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), James Mohoney, Toward a Unified Theory of Causality, Comparative Political Studies 41:4-5 (2008): [available on-line] October 29: Content Analysis Lisa Wedeen, Acting As If : Symbolic Politics and Social Control in Syria, Comparative Studies in Society and History 40:3 (1998): [available on-line] Jennifer Milliken, The Study of Discourse in International Relations: A Critique of Research and Methods, European Journal of International Relations 5:2 (1999): [available on-line] Ted Hopf, Discourse and Content Analysis: Some Fundamental Incompatibilities, Qualitative Methods Newsletter (Spring 2004): Rawi Abdelal, Yoshiko M. Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston, and Rose McDermott, Identity as a Variable, Perspectives on Politics 4:4 (2006): [available on-line] Daniel Hopkins and Gary King, A Method of Automated Nonparametric Content Analysis for Social Science, American Journal of Political Science 54:1 (2010): [available on-line] November 5: Survey and Interview Research Herbert McClosky, Consensus and Ideology in American Politics, American Political Science Review 58:2 (1964): [available on-line] Robert L. Peabody et al., Interviewing Political Elites, PS: Political Science and Politics 23:3 (1990): [available on-line] Richard T. LaPiere, Attitudes vs. Actions and the Pitfalls of Quantitative Survey Research, in Gregg Lee Carter, ed., Empirical Approaches to Sociology: A Collection of Classic and Contemporary Readings (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998), Norbert Schwarz, Self-Reports: How the Questions Shape the Answers, American Psychologist 54:2 (1999): [available on-line]

6 Beth L. Leech et al., Symposium: Interview Methods in Political Science, PS: Political Science and Politics 35:4 (2002): [available on-line] Mitchell A. Seligson, Improving the Quality of Survey Research in Democratizing Countries, PS: Political Science and Politics (2005): [available on-line] November 12: Field Research and Ethnography James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 1-27 Richard F. Fenno, Jr., Observation, Context, and Sequence in the Study of Politics, American Political Science Review 80 (1986): 3-15 [available on-line] Lorraine Bayard de Volo and Edward Schatz, From the Inside Out: Ethnographic Methods in Political Research, PS: Political Science and Politics (April 2004): [available on-line] D. Aldrich et al., Symposium: Fieldwork, Identities, and Intersectionality: Negotiating Gender, Race, Class, Religion, Nationality, and Age in the Research Field Abroad, PS: Political Science and Politics (2009): [available on-line] Lisa Wedeen, Reflections on Ethnographic Work in Political Science, Annual Review of Political Science 13 (2010): November 19: Research Ethics Guest Lecturer: Professor Julie Novkov The University at Albany s on-line human subjects training module for Group 3: Graduate Students [accessible from the UAlbany research web page ( under Research Compliance or directly at UAlbany Research Compliance page ( Look for the training link in the left hand menu and then scroll down until you see the Collaborative IRB Training (CITI) link ( American Political Science Association, APSA Guide to Professional Ethnics in Political Science [available on-line at Charlotte Allen, Spies like Us: When Sociologists Deceive Their Subjects, Lingua Franca (November 1997): [available on-line at J. P. Van Deventer, Ethnical Considerations during Human Centered Overt or Covert Research, Quality and Quantity 43:1 (2009): [available on-line] PART III: RECENT DEBATES ON POLITICAL INQUIRY November 26: Unity and Plurality

7 David Laitin, Toward a Political Science Discipline: Authority Patterns Revisited, Comparative Political Studies 31:4 (1998): [available on-line] Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, In Defense of Diverse Forms of Knowledge, PS: Political Science and Politics (2002): [available on-line] James Morrow, Diversity through Specialization, PS: Political Science and Politics (2003): [available on-line] David Collier, Jason Seawright, and Gerardo L. Munck, The Quest for Standards: King, Keohane, and Verba s Designing Social Inquiry, in Henry Brady and David Collier, eds., Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards (Lanham: Roman and Littlefield, 2004), December 3: Is Multi-Method Research the Answer? Howard White, Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches in Poverty Analysis, World Development 30:3 (2002): [available on-line] Evan S. Lieberman, Nested Analysis as a Mix-Method Strategy for Comparative Research, American Political Science Review 99:3 (2005): [available on-line] David Collier, Henry Brady, and Jason Seawright, Outdated Views of Qualitative Methods: Time to Move On, Political Analysis 18:4 (2010): John Gerring, How Good is Good enough? A Multi-dimensional Best-Possible Standard for Research Design, Political Research Quarterly 64:3 (2011): [available on-line] Amel Ahmed and Rudra Sil, When Multi-Method Research Subverts Methodological Pluralism or, Why We Still Need Single-Method Research, Perspectives on Politics 10:4 (2012): [available on-line] Gary Goertz and James Mahoney, Methodological Rorschach Tests: Contrasting Interpretations in Qualitative and Quantitative Research, Comparative Political Studies 46:2 (2013): [available on-line] December 10: Research Design Reports