Week 1 - Introduction Flashcards
What is falsifiability
creating explanations that can be empirically tested against real-world data
Internal validity
casual relations between variables/cause and effects
external validity/generalisation
how well a study applies to other contexts beyond the case directly
” A theory must be …”
falsifiable - there must be some imaginable observation that could falsify or refute the theory
What are grand narrative, middle-range, and existing literature explanations?
grand narrative - explains everything, middle-range, transferrable concepts, existing literature - particular phenomena
Path dependency
past conditions shape future conditions/critical junctures
Materialism
material conditions (economic and material factors) causing societal change
agency-based
role of individual or collective agents (leaders, activists, political parties, or social movements) in shaping political outcomes
Dependent variable
what one is trying to explain / the outcome
Independent variable
the one that is causing a change
Intervening variable
intermediate steps in a causal chain
Deduction
Moves from general to more specific: theory -> hypotheses -> intervention/alternative politics
Induction
Moves from specific observation to broader generalizations: make observations/detect patterns -> hypotheses -> theory
What is method of agreement?
a method focusing on a common factor across different cases that share the same outcome -> if all multiple cases exhibit the same outcome, and there is only one factor common to all these cases -> that factor might be the cause of the outcome
What is method of comparison?
a method comparing cases with different outcomes -> if two cases are similar in all aspects except for one, and they have different outcomes, then the differing factors might cause the difference.
Epistemology
Knowledge generating
Ontology
- putting things into categories
- seeing the world as it is
- to explain it
Process tracing
a step-by-step method used to understand and validate causal mechanisms
structural-based explanation
argues that human actions are influenced by social structures -> class systems, economic forces, cultural norms
Agency-based explanations
emphasizes the role of individual or group voices, motivations, and strategies in producing social outcomes
bottom-up approach
influence flows from voters to political parties
top-down approach
influence flows from political parties to voters
what is a counterfactual and what does it do?
- something that hasn’t happened but could have been done
- used to test hypotheses
monocausality
focusing on just one cause for an outcome
endogeneity
It can be hard to tell whether one factor is causing another, or if they are both influenced by other variables. This makes it tricky to isolate a clear cause
