Government 601: Scope and Methods of Political Analysis
Fall 1999
Monday 2:30-4:25 (MG 145)
Professor: Walter R. Mebane, Jr.
Office: 121 McGraw Hall (255-3868).
Email: wrm1@macht.arts.cornell.edu
WWW: http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1.html
Office hours: Tue 4:30-5:30, Wed 2-4 or other times by appointment.

due date description

November 15 pre-proposal

December 17 research proposal

December 9-15 final exam (2-day take-home)

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. 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.

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

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

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

Putnam, Robert D., Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti. 1992. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton UP.

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

Reading schedule

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

1. Goals of Political Science Research (Sept 6)
   • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1988. Homo Academicus. Stanford: Stanford UP. Preface and Chapter 1 (``A Book for Burning?'').
   • Miller. Fact and Method. Pages 3-12.
   • 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 13)
   • Becker, Gary S. 1996. Accounting for Tastes. Chapter 1 (``Preferences and Values'').
   • Stigler, George J., and Gary S. Becker. 1977. ``De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum.'' American Economic Review 67:76-90. [Chapter 2 in Becker 1996]
   • Sen, Amartya. 1997. Choice, Welfare and Measurement. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Chapters 2 (``Behaviour and the Concept of Preference''), 3 (``Choice, Orderings and Morality''), 4 (``Rational Fools''), 13 (``The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal'') and 16 (``Equality of What?'').
   • Ordeshook, Peter C. 1986. Game Theory and Political Theory. New York: Cambridge UP. Chapter 2.

   Roemer, John. 1996. Theories of Distributive Justice. Harvard UP.

   Kymlicka, Will. 1989. Liberalism, Community and Culture. New York: Oxford UP.

   Rawls, John. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia UP.

   Sen, Amartya. 1981. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford: Oxford UP.

   Sen, Amartya. 1987. On Ethics and Economics. Oxford: Blackwell.

   Shepsle, Kenneth A., and Barry R. Weingast. 1987. ``The Institutional Foundations of Committee Power.'' American Political Science Review 81:85-104.

   Krehbiel, Keith. 1992. Information and Legislative Organization. Ann Arbor: University of Michgan Press.

3. Psychological Mechanisms (Sept 20)
   • Elster. Political Psychology.
   • Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. Chapter 15 ("Balinese cockfight").

   Veyne, Paul. 1976. Le pain et le cirque: sociologie historique d'un pluralisme politique. Paris: Seuil.

   Zinoviev, Aleksandr. 1979. The Yawning Heights. Gordon Clough, trans. New York: Random House.

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

   Culler, Jonathan. 1982. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. Ithaca: Cornell UP.

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

4. Simple Games (Sept 27)
   • Ordeshook, Peter C. 1986. Game Theory and Political Theory. New York: Cambridge UP. Chapter 3.

   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.

   Heap, Shaun Hargreaves, Martin Hollis, Bruce Lyons, Robert Sugden and Albert Weale. 1992. The Theory of Choice: A Critical Guide. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

5. Mechanisms, Models, Theory (Oct 4)
   • Hedström and Swedborg. Social Mechanisms. Chapters 1-3, 5-8, 10 (Hedström and Swedborg; Schelling; Elster; Gambetta; Cowen; Kuran; Boudon; Sorenson).
   • Geertz. The Interpretation of Cultures. Chapter 1 ("Thick description").

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

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

6. Causal Explanation and Confirmation (Oct 18)
   • Miller. Fact and Method. Chapters 1, 2, 4.

   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.

7. Trying to Demonstrate Intentions (Oct 25)
   • Browning. Ordinary Men.
   • Goldhagen. Hitler's Willing Executioners.

   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.

8. Basic Statistics: Sampling Theory (Nov 1)
   • Tufte. Data Analysis for Politics and Policy. Chapters 1 and 2 [and 3 and 4].
   • Thompson, Steven K. 1992. Sampling. New York: Wiley. Chapters 1-3.

   Tufte, Edward R. 1983. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.

   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.

9. Quasi-experimental and Pseudo-experimental Design (Nov 8)
   • Campbell and Stanley. Experimental and Quasi-experimental Designs for Research. Entire.
   • Sniderman, Paul M., Thomas Piazza, Philip E. Tetlock and Ann Kendrick. 1991. ``The New Racism.'' American Journal of Political Science, 35:423-447.

   Blalock, Hubert M. Jr. 1964. Causal Inferences in Non-experimental Research. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina.

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

10. Explanation and Selection I (Nov 15)
    • Davidson, Chandler, and Bernard Grofman, eds. 1994. Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, 1965-1990. Princeton UP. Editors' Introduction and Chapters 1, 10.
    • McAdam, Doug. 1984. ``Structural vs Attitudinal Factors in Movement Recruitment.'' American Journal of Sociology, 92:64-90.
    • Verba, Sidney, Kay Schlozman and Henry Brady. 1995. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Chapters 9, 12-13 and Appendices A-C.

    McAdam, Doug. 1988. Freedom Summer. New York: Oxford UP.

11. Explanation and Selection II (Nov 22)
    • Putnam, et al. Making Democracy Work.
    • Geddes, Barbara. 1991. ``How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get: Selection Bias in Comparative Politics.'' Political Analysis 2:131-150.
    • Skocpol, Theda. 1979. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Chapters 1-3.

    George, Alexander, and Timothy J. McKeown. 1985. Case studies and theories of organizational decision making. Advances in Information Processing in Organizations, 2:21-58.

    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.

    George, Alexander. 1979. Case studies and theory development: the method of structured, focussed comparison. In Paul Lauren, ed., Diplomacy: New Approaches in History, Theory and Policy. New York: Free Press. Pages 43-68.

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

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

12. Regression Analysis (Nov 29)
    • Tufte. Data Analysis for Politics and Policy. Chapters 3 and 4.
    • Davidson and Grofman. Quiet Revolution in the South. Chapters 11 and 12.

    Achen, Christopher H. 1982. Interpreting and Using Regression. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.

    Agresti, Alan. 1996. An Introduction to Categorical Data Analysis. New York: Wiley.

    Aldrich, John H., and Forrest D. Nelson. 1984. Linear Probability, Logit and Probit Models. Beverly Hills: Sage.

    King, Gary. 1989. Unifying Political Methodology: The Likelihood Theory of Statistical Inference. New York: Cambridge UP.

    Stinchcombe, Arthur. 1968. Constructing Social Theories. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

• About this document ...