Government 601: Methods of Political Analysis I

Fall 2003, Tueday 7:00-10:00p (WE 104)

Professors:
Walter R. Mebane, Jr.		Jonas Pontusson
217 White Hall		205 White Hall
255-3868		255-6764
wrm1@cornell.edu		jgp2@cornell.edu
office hours: T 3-5, W 2-3		office hours: MW 10-11

Assignment Due Dates
due date	description
TBA	one weekly discussion paper as assigned (weeks 3-10, 12)
October 28	``explanations'' paper
November 11	research pre-proposal
November 18	Boolean exercise
December 15	research proposal

Reading Availability

We will be reading large proportions of most of the following books, and most are worth having on the shelf, so you may want to buy them. On the other hand, several are expensive. Most of the books should also soon appear on reserve in the Government Reading Room in Olin (room 405). Photocopies of other required reading should also be available in the Reading Room.

Browning, Christopher R. 2000. Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers. New York: Cambridge UP.

Browning, Christopher R. 1998. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins.

Campbell, Donald T., and Julian C. Stanley. 1966. Experimental and Quasi-experimental Designs for Research. Chicago: Rand McNally.

Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. 1996. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Knopf.

Golden, Miriam. 1997. Heroic Defeats. New York: Cambridge UP.

Hedström, Peter, and Richard Swedborg, eds. 1998. Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory. New York: Cambridge UP.

King, Gary, Robert O. Keohane and Sidney Verba. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton: Princeton UP.

Miller, Richard W. 1987. Fact and Method: Explanation, Confirmation and Reality in the Natural and the Social Sciences. Princeton: Princeton UP.

Monroe, Kristen Renwick, ed. 1997. Contemporary Empirical Political Theory. Berkeley: U of California.

Ragin, Charles. 1987. Comparative Method. Chicago: U of California.

Skocpol, Theda. 1979. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China. New York: Cambridge UP.

Reading schedule

Items with a bullet ($\bullet$) are required. Others are supplementary.

1. Goals of Political Science Research (Sept 2)
   • Monroe. Contemporary Empirical Theory. Chapters 1-4, 7, 9, 10, 12 (Easton; Gunnell; Grofman; Laponce; Zuckert and Zuckert; Riker; Hardin; Hartsock).

   Almond, Gabriel A. 1990. A Discipline Divided: Schools and Sects in Political Science. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

   Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Randal Johnson, ed. New York: Columbia UP.

   Greenstein, Fred I., and Nelson W. Polsby. 1975. Handbook of Political Science, Volume 1: Political Science: Scope and Theory. Reading: Addison-Wesley.

   Ricci, David M. 1984. The Tragedy of Political Science: Politics, Scholarship and Democracy. New Haven: Yale UP.

   Shively, W. Phillips. 1974. The Craft of Political Research. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

2. Individualism and Rationality (Sept 9)
   • Sen, Amartya. 1997. Choice, Welfare and Measurement. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Chapters 2 (``Behaviour and the Concept of Preference''), 3 (``Choice, Orderings and Morality'') and 4 (``Rational Fools'').

   • Ordeshook, Peter C. 1986. Game Theory and Political Theory. New York: Cambridge UP. Chapter 2-3.

   • Miller, Gary, and Norman Schofield. 2003. ``Activists and Partisan Realignment in the United States.'' American Political Science Review 97 (May): 245-260.

   Elster, Jon. 1984. Ulysses and the Sirens: Studies in Rationality and Irrationality. Rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

   Elster, Jon. 1983. Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

   Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Knopf.

   Morrow, James D. 1994. Game Theory for Political Scientists. Princeton: Princeton UP.

   Gibbons, Robert. Game Theory for Applied Economists. Cambridge: MIT Press.

   Luce, R. Duncan, and Howard Raiffa. 1989. Games and Decisions: Introduction and Critical Survey. New York: Dover Publications. Republication of Wiley, New York, 1957.

   Schelling, Thomas C. 1960. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge: Harvard UP.

3. Interpretations (Sept 16)
   • Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. Chapters 1 and 15 (``Thick description'' and ``Balinese cockfight'').

   • Lieberman, Robert C. 2002. ``Ideas, Institutions, and Political Order: Explaining Political Change.'' American Political Science Review 96 (December): 697-712.

   • Wedeen, Lisa. 2002. ``Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science.'' American Political Science Review 96 (December): 713-728.

   • Fearon, James D., and David D. Laitin. 1996. ``Explaining Interethnic Cooperation.'' American Political Science Review 90 (December): 715-735.

   Elster, Jon. 1993. Political Psychology. New York: Cambridge UP.

   Fearon, James D., and David D. Laitin. 2003. ``Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War.'' American Political Science Review 90 (February): 75-90.

   Stinchcombe, Arthur. 1978. Theoretical Methods in Social History. New York: Academic.

   Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. New York: Cambridge UP.

4. Mechanisms, Models, Theory (Sep 23)
   • Hedström and Swedborg. Social Mechanisms. Chapters 1-3, 5-8, 10 (Hedström and Swedborg; Schelling; Elster; Gambetta; Cowen; Kuran; Boudon; Sorenson).

   • Elster, Jon. 2000. ``Rational Choice History: A Case of Excessive Ambition.'' American Political Science Review 94:685-695.

   • Bates, Robert H., Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, and Barry R. Weingast. 2000. ``The Analytic Narrative Project.'' American Political Science Review 94:696-702.

   • Golden, Miriam, Heroic Defeats. Chapters 2, 6.

   Bates, Robert H., Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, and Barry R. Weingast. 1998. Analytic Narratives. Princeton: Princeton UP.

   Barry, Brian. 1978. Sociologists, Economists and Democracy. Chicago: U of Chicago.

   Green, Donald P., and Ian Shapiro. 1994. Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory: A Critique of Applications in Political Science. New Haven: Yale UP.

   Schelling, Thomas. 1986. Micromotives and Macrobehavior. New York: Norton.

5. Causal Explanation and Confirmation (Sep 30)
   • Brady, Henry, ``Models of Causal Inference: Going Beyond the Neyman-Rubin-Holland Theory.'' To appear in Henry Brady and David Collier, eds., Rethinking Social Inquiry. Available from
     http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/midx2003.pdf

   • Miller. Fact and Method. Introduction, Chapters 1-4.

   Holland, Paul W. 1986. ``Statistics and Causal Inference.'' Journal of the American Statistical Association 81 (Dec.): 945-960.

   Dempster, Arthur P. 1988. ``Employment Discrimination and Statistical Science.'' Statistical Science, 3 (May): 149-161.

   Krüger, Lorenz, et al., eds. 1987. The Probabilistic Revolution. Cambridge: MIT.

   Kuhn, Thomas S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2d ed. Chicago: U of Chicago.

   Lakatos, Imre, and Alan Musgrave, eds. 1970. Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

   Suppe, Frederick, ed. 1977. The Structure of Scientific Theories. 2d ed. Urbana: U of Illinois.

6. Trying to Demonstrate Intentions (Oct 7)
   • Browning. Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers. Entire.

   • Browning. Ordinary Men. Chapters 17-18 and Afterword (pages 147-223).

   • Goldhagen. Hitler's Willing Executioners. Chapters 15-16 and Epilogue (hardcover pages 375-461).

   Ioanid, Radu. 2000. The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.

   Littell, Franklin H. 1997. Hyping the Holocaust: Scholars Answer Goldhagen. East Rockaway, NY: Cummings and Hathaway.

   Finkelstein, Norman G., and Ruth Bettina Birn. 1998. A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth. New York: Henry Holt.

   Lindemann, Albert S. 1997. Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews. New York: Cambridge University Press.

   Weiss, John. 1996. Ideology of Death: Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany. Chicago: I. R. Dee.

7. Testing Explanations: Conditional Expectation (Oct 21)
   • Campbell and Stanley. Experimental and Quasi-experimental Designs for Research. Entire.

   • Gerber, Alan S., and Donald P. Green. 2000. ``The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment.'' American Political Science Review 94:653-663.

   • Imai, Kosuke. 2003. ``Do Get-Out-The-Vote Calls Reduce Turnout? The Importance of Statistical Methods for Field Experiments.'' Forthcoming. American Political Science Review.
     http://www.princeton.edu/~kimai/research/files/matching.pdf

   • Gilliam, Franklin D. Jr., and Shanto Iyengar. 2000. ``Prime Suspects: The Influence of Local Television News on the Viewing Public.'' American Journal of Political Science 43:560-573.

   Cook, Thomas D., and Donald T. Campbell. 1979. Quasi-experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings. Chicago: Rand McNally College Pub. Co.

   Kinder, Donald R. and Thomas R. Palfrey, eds. 1993. Experimental Foundations of Political Science. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan.

   Rosenbaum, Paul R., and Donald B. Rubin. 1985. ``Constructing a Control Group Using Multivariate Matched Sampling Methods That Incorporate the Propensity Score.'' The American Statistician 39 (Feb.): 33-38.

   Rosenbaum, Paul R., and Donald B. Rubin. 1983. ``The Central Role of the Propensity Score in Observational Studies for Causal Effects.'' Biometrika 70 (Apr.): 41-55.

   Tufte, Edward R. 1974. Data Analysis for Politics and Policy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

   Tukey, John W. 1977. Exploratory Data Analysis. Reading: Addison-Wesley.

   Wonnacott, Thomas H., and Ronald J. Wonnacott. 1990. Introductory Statistics. 5th edition. New York: Wiley.

   Gill, Jeff. Bayesian Methods: A Social and Behavioral Sciences Approach. Boca Raton, FL: Chapman and Hall/CRC.

8. The Case Study in Comparative Politics (Oct 28)
   • James Scott, Weapons of the Weak (skim chapters 5-6).

   • Eckstein, Harry. 1975. ``Case Study and Theory in Political Science.'' In Nelson W. Polsby and Fred I. Greenstein, eds., Handbook of Political Science. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Volume 7, pp. 79-137.

9. Comparative Case Studies: Debates on Skocpol (Nov 5 [note Wednesday meeting])
   • Skocpol. States and Social Revolutions. Chapters 1-3.

   Rational choice vs. structuralism:

   • Michael Taylor, ``Rationality and Revolutionary Collective Action'' in Taylor, ed., Rationality and Revolution (1987), pp. 63-97.

   • Theda Skocpol. Social Revolutions in the Modern World (1994), pp. 321-326.

   The Millian logic:

   • Elizabeth Nichols, ``Skocpol on Revolution'' in Comparative Social Research, (1986), 9:163-186.

   • Theda Skocpol, ``Analyzing Causal Configurations in History'' in Comparative Social Research, (1986), 9:187-194.

   • Jasjeet S. Sekhon. ``Quality Meets Quantity: Case Studies, Conditional Probability and Counterfactuals.'' Forthcoming. Perspectives on Politics.
     http://jsekhon.fas.harvard.edu/papers/QualityQuantity.pdf

   Selection bias:

   • Geddes, Barbara. 1991. ``How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get: Selection Bias in Comparative Politics.'' Political Analysis 2:131-150.

   • David Collier and James Mahoney, ``Insights and Pitfalls: Selection Bias in Qualitative Research,'' World Politics, 49, 1 (October 1996), 56-91.

   Stanley Lieberson, ``Small N's and Big Conclusions'' in Ragin and Becker (eds), What is a Case? (1992, Cambridge UP), 105-118.

   Douglas Dion, ``Evidence and Inference in the Comparative Case Study,'' Comparative Politics, 30 (1998):127-145.

10. Correlational Analysis in Comparative Politics (Nov 11)
    • Putnam, et al. Making Democracy Work. (skim ch. 2)

    • Sidney Tarrow, ``Making Social Science Work Across Space and Time,'' American Political Science Review, (1996) 90:389-397.

    • Symposium on Putnam in Politics and Society (1996) 7-55.

11. Boolean Qualitative Comparative Analysis (Nov 18)
    • Charles Ragin, The Comparative Method.

    • Timothy Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin, ch. 12.

    Charles Ragin, ``A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Pension Systems'' in Thomas Janoski and Alexander Hicks, eds., The Comparative Political Economy of the Welfare State, 320-345.

    Olli Kangas, ``The Politics of Social Security'' in Janoski and Hicks, 346-364.

    Ragin, Fuzzy Set Social Science.

12. Regression and Comparative Politics (Nov 25)
    • Michael Shalev, ``Limits of and Alternatives to Multiple Regression in Macro-comparative Research'' (unpublished, 2002).

    • David Rueda and Jonas Pontusson, ``Wage Inequality and Varieties of Capitalism,'' World Politics, 52 (2000): 350-383.

    • Hyeok Yong Kwon and Jonas Pontusson, ``Dynamics of Government Partisanship and Welfare Spending in OECD Countries, 1962-98'' (unpublished, 2003).

    Przeworski, Adam, and Henry Teune. 1970. The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry. New York: Wiley. Chapters 1-3.

    Bruce Western, Between Class and Market, chs. 6-8.

13. Summation: A Qualitative-Quantitative Divide? (Dec 2)
    • Selections from Brady and Collier, Rethinking Social Inquiry.

    • King, Keohane and Verba. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry.