Quantitative Cross-national Research Methods

Quantitative nation comparisons pose inevitable trade-offs. One is that much of the contextual reality of individual nations is sacrificed for the sake of broader generalization. We fail to capture the uniqueness that defines a nation’s culture, historical heritage, and endemic logic. The interpretation of a variable may, indeed, only be possible when its is studied contextually (Ragin, 1987; and Lieberson, 1991). Boolean analysis, as Ragin argues, helps overcome this dilemma. It has advantages, such as its ability to build conjunctural models with very few cases, and its ability to analyze non-events. But it needs to be guided by strong theory and substantial knowledge, its applicability is limited to relatively few cases, and it may be too biased in favor of non-additive, conjunctural models. For an empirical application, see Ragin (1994). See also Section 2.3, no. 72.