Methodology and political science: the discipline needs three fundamentally different methodological traditions

the methodology of political philosophy and political science

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The Qualitative Foundations of Political Science Methodology

T he last decade has seen a contentious dialogue between quantitative and qualitative scholars over the nature of political science methodology. Even so, there has often been a consensus that quantitative and qualitative research share a “unified logic of inference;” that the differences between these “traditions are only stylistic and are methodologically and substantively unimportant.” All of...

Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms

Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms*

The ‘new institutionalism’ is a term that now appears with growing frequency in political science. However, there is considerable confusion about just what the ‘new institutionalism’ is, how it differs from other approaches, and what sort of promise or problems it displays. The object of this essay is to provide some preliminary answers to these questions by reviewing recent work in a burgeonin...

Political Science, Biometric Theory, and Twin Studies: A Methodological Introduction

As political scientists begin to incorporate biological influences as explanatory factors in political behavior, the need to present a methodological road map for utilizing biometric genetic theory and twin data is apparent. The classical twin design (CTD) remains the most popular design for initial examinations of the source of variance among social and political behaviors, and a vast majority...