reading for shit pt 2

Question 1

Conceptual Stretching Revisited: Adapting Categories in Comparative Analysis

page 845 and 846 Sartori’s framework to avoid conceptual stretching

Answer 1

• extension of a category = set of entities in the world to which a category refers
• intension = set of meanings or attributes that define the category and determine membership

law of inverse variation: relation extension and intension -> general categories with limited intension and greater extension and specific categories with great intension and limited extension

Sartori’s ladder of generality = more specific and more general categories occupy subordinate and superordinate positions

• more cases -> decline intension and increase extension = superordinate category
• less cases -> increase intension and decrease extension = subordinate category

e.g. Weber: patrimonial authority (type of authority, which is a type of domination) = successive pairs of categories. within each successive pair of categories:

• first is subordinate
• second is superordinate (contains less specific meaning and covers more cases)

SO: how to fix conceptual stretching?
when you increase the N, move up the ladder of generality: decrease the intension to follow the law of inverse variation

Question 1

Conceptual Stretching Revisited: Adapting Categories in Comparative Analysis

page 845 and 846

Answer 1

Collier, Mahon JR.

task of comparative analysis to extent models and hypotheses to encompass additional cases

problem = categories must often be adapted to fit new contexts
(new interest to this with rise comparative historical analysis)

treatments of this problem of adapting categories = Sartori’s:
*closely related to establising validity

• conceptual traveling = application of concepts to new cases
• conceptual stretching = distortion that occurs when a concept does not fit the new cases (not only spatial: across cases, but also from change over time within cases)

Sartori encourages encourages scholars to be attentive to context but without abandoning broad comparison (when meaning of concept is not similar across cases)

Sartori = based on assumptions classical categorization: relation among categories understood in terms of taxonomic hierarchy of successively more general categories

Question 2

Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics

Sartorini

p. 1033-36
unconscious vs overconsious thinkers

Answer 2

consious thinker = to have mastered theory and method
= middle course between crude logical mishandling and logical perfectionism

in polsci:

majority = unconscious (thinking was already done by earlier scholars)
minority = overconscious (standards of methods and theory are drawn from the physical, paradigmatic sciences)
- won’t talk about heat without thermometer

lack of focus on methodology -> field is impaired by methodological unawareness

Question 3

Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics

Sartorini

pp. 1052-1053 = summary

Answer 3

concepts as elements of a theoretical system + tools for fact-gathering (data containers)

to avoid data misgathering we need a filling system provided by discriminating/taxonomic conceptual containers

-> ladder of abstraction to avoid conceptual misinformation (conceptual stretching)

we need:

1. develop the discipline along a medium level of abstraction with better intermediate categories
2. to maneuver (upwards and downwards) along a ladder of abstraction to bring together assimilation and differentiation, high explanatory power and precise descritpive content, macro-theory and empirical testing

!when going up and down the ladder something is inevitably lost (no level of analysis can be translated exactly into the next level)

Question 4

Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics

Sartorini

p. 1033-36
new political science

Answer 4

“renovatio ab amis” = new comparative expansion, re-concepualization

bc;

1. expansion on politics: wold becoming more politicized (objective) + focus on periphery of politics and its input side (relative expansion) -> study everything that is potentially political
2. lengthening spectrum of political systems (Braibanti) = world-wide cross-area comparisons + proliferation political units

wider world under investigation -> more need for travelling conceptual tools

Question 5

Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics

Sartorini

p. 1033-36
the travelling problem

Answer 5

how far and how can we travel with the help of the available voca of politics?

conceptual stretching = broaden the meaning of concepts so that their applicable range grows -> vague, amorphous conceptualizations
= line of least resistance

• gains in extensional coverage
• losses in connotative precision

this leads to universal, no difference categories with pseudo-equivalences
we seem to verge on the edge of philosophical universals: concepts that are supra-empirical

are world-wide comparisons in this way necessary? methodologically yes: comparative polsci to control: generalizations need to be checked against all cases

• to assimilate = discover deeper or fundamental similarities below the surface of secondary diversities

why haven’t we resolved conceptual stretching?
bc suggestion it can be fixed with ‘how much’ questions rather than ‘what is’ -> degree of concepts (problem: how to measure?) -> frown upon class and taxonomies as old fashioned logic

Sartorini = we shouldn’t dismiss the old fashioned logic (per genus et per differentiam)

Question 6

Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics

Sartorini

p. 1033-36
why should we investigate what is comparable?

Answer 6

argument that we don’t have to = we have performed decently with comparing since Aristotle, so why boter

this argument does not hold:

1. predecessors culturally bound -> travelled only as far as their knowledge allowed them
2. predecessors no quantitive data or orientation
3. predecessors not unguided: taxonomical requisites of comparability
   = class as similarity element + genus/sub-species as differences = per genus et differentiam