Week 1 - Introduction

Question 1

What is falsifiability

Answer 1

creating explanations that can be empirically tested against real-world data

Question 2

Internal validity

Answer 2

casual relations between variables/cause and effects

Question 3

external validity/generalisation

Answer 3

how well a study applies to other contexts beyond the case directly

Question 4

” A theory must be …”

Answer 4

falsifiable - there must be some imaginable observation that could falsify or refute the theory

Question 5

What are grand narrative, middle-range, and existing literature explanations?

Answer 5

grand narrative - explains everything, middle-range, transferrable concepts, existing literature - particular phenomena

Question 6

Path dependency

Answer 6

past conditions shape future conditions/critical junctures

Question 7

Materialism

Answer 7

material conditions (economic and material factors) causing societal change

Question 8

agency-based

Answer 8

role of individual or collective agents (leaders, activists, political parties, or social movements) in shaping political outcomes

Question 9

Dependent variable

Answer 9

what one is trying to explain / the outcome

Question 10

Independent variable

Answer 10

the one that is causing a change

Question 11

Intervening variable

Answer 11

intermediate steps in a causal chain

Question 12

Deduction

Answer 12

Moves from general to more specific: theory -> hypotheses -> intervention/alternative politics

Question 13

Induction

Answer 13

Moves from specific observation to broader generalizations: make observations/detect patterns -> hypotheses -> theory

Question 14

What is method of agreement?

Answer 14

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

Question 15

What is method of comparison?

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

Epistemology

Answer 16

Knowledge generating

Question 17

Ontology

Answer 17

• putting things into categories
• seeing the world as it is
• to explain it

Question 18

Process tracing

Answer 18

a step-by-step method used to understand and validate causal mechanisms

Question 19

structural-based explanation

Answer 19

argues that human actions are influenced by social structures -> class systems, economic forces, cultural norms

Question 20

Agency-based explanations

Answer 20

emphasizes the role of individual or group voices, motivations, and strategies in producing social outcomes

Question 21

bottom-up approach

Answer 21

influence flows from voters to political parties

Question 22

top-down approach

Answer 22

influence flows from political parties to voters

Question 23

what is a counterfactual and what does it do?

Answer 23

• something that hasn’t happened but could have been done
• used to test hypotheses

Question 24

monocausality

Answer 24

focusing on just one cause for an outcome

Question 25

endogeneity

Answer 25

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