1- the logic of comparison Flashcards
what does comparative politics help us to understand?
- why political outcomes happen in different countries and then helps to make policies to change outcomes
what factors make answers valuable?
- falsifiability, can it be proved wrong?
- internal validity, is there cause and effect in your research
- external validity: are your findings relevant to other existing research or cases?
what is a theory?
a logically consistent statement that tells us why things we observe occur
trys to explain the world
what are the three types of theory?
- grand narrative
- middle range
- existing literature
what are grand narrative theories?
ones that try to explain everything such as marxism or feminism
what are middle range theories?
transferable concepts
for example how the bourgeois are important to democratisation
what are existing literature theories
particlar pheonomena
such as the domestic division of labour
what is path dependency?
past conditions shape future conditions institutions can be committed to develop in certain ways as a result of their strucual properties or values
history shapes the future
what is a dependent variable?
the thing you are trying to explain
ex. democratic collapse
what is an independent variable
that causes of what you are trying to explain
ex. authoritarian leaders
what are intervening variables
intermediate steps in a casual chain
explaining why or how the relationship exists
ex level of income helps to explain the relationship between level of education (independent variable) and spending (dependent variable)
what is deductive reasoning
- when a theory is observed
- a hypothesis is created and then researched
- to either be confirmed or denied
from the general to the specific
theory to obersvation and confirmation
what is inductive reasoning?
- observing something happening
- indetifies a patterns an regulartieis
- then test a hypotheiss to create a theory
obersvation to theory
mills method of agreement
look for all factors that are present on all occasions that E occurs
for example when studying democratic backsliding you will look for all occasions whereit has happened and look at all the similar factors
mills method of difference
- tells us to look for some factors present when E occurs and absent when another similar occasion happens when E doesn’t occur
what research is mill’s method of difference used in?
‘small N’ investigations
flaws with mill’s methods
- makes large assumptions leading to curiosity rather than research outcomes and the examination of only one cause rather than more than 2 factors working together
leads to deterministic rather than probabilistic research method
what is a casual mechanism
an explanation of how a cause produces and effect
what is process tracing?
- involves following the steps of the causal mechanism
- links the dependent and independnet variabels together throug the process of interveinign vraibles
links how things flow from x to y
what are the steps of logic of process tracing?
- a researcher comes up with a clear and explicit casual chain
- this is derived from some general theory or common sense
- then they confirm each stage of the link do exist by utilising specific obersevations drawn from the case
what are divergences?
- when two events occur with a similar factor but different outcomes
convergences?
when two or more events occur without a similar factors but have similar outcomes
what is a controlled comparison?
examining the relationship between an independnet variable and a dependnet variable
advantages of controlled comparisons
- when done correct can generate external and internal validity
- can illuminate the world’s great divergences and convergences across nation sates
- divergences sucha s why india left british colonialism a democracy but bermuda didnt
- convergences such as the french revolution v the intervwar russian revoltion when they had similar outocomes but different motivations
disadvantages of controlled comparisons
- crticised by quanitiative scholars for having restictive epstimological assumptions made that dont justify the uthors ambitions
- multi-method becoming more popular way to research
what issues are there of trade offs in comparative research
- lots of research has to decide in either having a large statement after research which has wide applicbility across a broad population an dhavng a deeper narrower arguent that idenify a causual pathway in a smalll number of cases
- multimethod has calmed this down
what are the four levels of analysis to explain politics
- individual agency shaping politics
- group agency shaping politics
- states
- international organisations
what is the supply and demand argument of politics
do social structures shape institutions (agency) v do institutions shape social structures (strucutral)
what are counterfactuals?
give a different perspective of what hasn’t happened but could have
for example
if germany had one the second world war what the world would have looked like
disadvantages of comparison
- monocaulsaity: some things canot be compared with others
- endogeinity: when a variable observed that isnt included in our model is related to a varibale we have incorperated into out model
- hard to establish internal validity as some exmaples wont show cause and effect
- external validity: soem exampples are bad to be used in an external setting
- selection bais: amny researches choose exmapels that fit into their hypotheiss n dprove it right
what do theories aim to do?
- produce a set of causual relationships between the DV and IV
- makes predicitions
- create a testable hypothesis
- is falsifiable
what is epsteimology
the theory of knlowedge and generating knoweldge
in politics it is how to gain knowedlge to make society just
what is ontology?
a way to explain the world by. putting things into categoriy. explains things as they are rather than trying to change things
