Course syllabus

 

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POLITICS 701: Research Design in Empirical Political Inquiry

SEMESTER 1, 2018

15 points

 
Course Convenor: 

Stephen Noakes s.noakes@auckland.ac.nz

Twitter: @stephennoakes14

http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/people/snoa120

 

Course delivery format:

12 X 2 hour seminars

(Timetable and room details can be viewed on Student Services Online)

 

Course Description and Learning Outcomes:

This postgraduate course is meant to serve students in Politics and International Relations, including those pursuing the Honours (Hons), Master's In Terrorism and Conflict Studies (MCTS), and Master's in Professional Studies in Human Rights and International Relations (MPS IRHR) degrees, as well as cognate social science disciplines through a comparative introduction to some of the main tools and approaches in professional political inquiry. By the end of the course, students will have an understanding of the relative merits and drawbacks of a range of methodological tools, demonstrate an awareness of the trade-offs inherent in any research design strategy, and will be able to apply these tools and approaches as appropriate to a research project of their choosing. The main aim of the course is to enable students to formulate a cogent research design for their own dissertation projects, providing a justification for the research methods and approaches chosen.  Secondarily, the course aims to make students more informed consumers of research.

The course will consist of four parts. Part one explores the epistemological and ontological debates that inform approaches to political research, and develops an awareness of the properties of theory. Part two then examines the core approaches in contemporary empirical research, framing each in the context of scholarly debate regarding the benefits and drawbacks of each. These approaches include rational choice and game theoretic modelling, political opportunity structures, historic and liberal institutionalisms, and the role of ideas in political research, including cognition, constructivism, and culture. Part three undertakes an exploration of methodological techniques commonly employed in the conduct of empirical political science. Topics may shift to accommodate student interests but might include an introduction to the basics of quantitative analysis (i.e. sampling techniques, randomisation), case studies and case selection, small-n structured comparisons, historiography and process- tracing, and experimental methods (including natural experiments). The fourth component of the course will consider questions relating to research ethics, the sociological composition of social science disciplines and their effects on how knowledge is built. The final session of the semester will take the form of a student colloquium, at which students will be expected to communicate their research plans through prepared poster presentations.

 

Assessment Summary:

25% précis of research hypotheses (due Friday April 20th before 9am)

25% poster presentation at Student Symposium (due at final class of semester)

50% research design (due Friday June 8th before 9am)

 

Overview of Weekly Readings and Topics:

Monday February 26: Ants, bees, and the third chimpanzees: human behaviour and epistemology

Joseph Agassi, "Lakatos on the Methodology of Scientific Research Programs," in Karl Popper and his Popular Critics: Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and Imre Lakatos, Agassi, Ed., (New York: Springer 2014), pp. 121-127.

Steven Shapin, "Kuhn's Structure: A Moment in Modern Naturalism," in Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions 50 Years On, Devlin and Bokulich, eds., (London and New York: Continuum, 2008), pp. 11-21.

 

Monday March 5: Properties of theory

W. Phillips Shively, The Craft of Political Research, 6th Ed., (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005), ch. 2.

Peter J. Katzenstein et al., “The Role of Theory in Comparative Politics: A Symposium,” in World Politics, Vol. 48, No. 1, (October 1995), pp. 1-49.

 

Monday March 12: Rational choice, game theory, and their critics

Gerardo Munck, "Game Theory and Comparative Politics: New Perspectives and Old Concerns," in World Politics, Vol. 53, No. 2, (January 2001), pp. 173-204.

Martin Hollis, The Philosophy of Social Science: An Introduction, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 115-141.

Stathis N. Kalyvas, "Wanton and Senseless? The Logic of Massacres in Algeria," in Rationality and Society, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1999), pp. 243-285.

 

Monday March 19: (New and historic) institutionalisms

Kathleen Thelen and Sven Steinmo, "Institutionalism in Comparative Politics," in Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis, in Thelen and Steinmo, Eds., (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1992), pp. 10-32.

James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, "The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life," in American Political Science Review, Vol. 78, No. 3, (1984), pp. 734-749. 

 

Monday March 26: The power of ideas: culture, cognition, and constructivism

Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, "Taking Stock: The Constructivist Research Program in International Relations," in Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 4, (June 2001), pp. 391-416.

Sheri Berman, “Ideas, Norms and Culture in Political Analysis,” in Comparative Politics, Vol. 33, No. 2 (January 2001), pp. 231-250.

Mark Blyth, “Structures Do Not Come with an Instruction Sheet: Interests, Ideas, and Progress in Political Science,” in Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 1, No. 4, (2003), pp. 695-706.

 

Monday April 16: Beyond descriptive statistics: quantitative research tools

Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach, 6th Ed., (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2016), ch. 19, "Doing an Empirical Project."

James Mahoney and Gary Goertz, "A Tale of Two Cultures: Contrasting Quantitative and Qualitative Research," in Political Analysis, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2006), pp. 227-249.  

 

Monday April 23: The revenge of J.S. Mill: small-n comparisons

Barbara Geddes, "How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers you Get: Selection Bias in Comparative Politics," in Political Analysis, Vol. 2, (1990), pp. 131-150.

Mark Blyth, “Great Punctuations: Prediction, Randomness, and the Evolution of Comparative Politics,” in American Political Science Review, Vol. 100, No. 4 (November 2006), pp. 493-498.

 

Monday April 30: Case studies and case selection

Jason Seawright and John Gerring, "Case Selection Techniques in Case Study Research: A Menu of Qualitative and Quantitative Options," in Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 2, (2008), pp. 294-308.

James Mahoney, "The Logic of Process Tracing Tests in the Social Sciences," in Sociological Methods and Research, Vol. 41, No. 4, (2012), pp. 570-597.

Peter Lorentzen, M. Taylor Fravel, and Jack Paine, "Qualitative Investigation of Theoretical Models: The Value of Process Tracing," in Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 29, No. 3, (2017), pp. 467-491.

 

Monday May 7: Experimentation

James M. Druckman, Donald P. Green, James H. Kuklinski, and Arthur Lupia, "The Growth and Development of Experimental Research in Political Science, " in American Political Science Review, Vol. 100, No. 4, (November 2006), pp. 627-635.

Alex Mintz, Steven B. Redd, and Arnold Vedlitz, "Can we Generalize from Student Experiments to the Real World in Political Science, Military Affairs, and International Relations?" in Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 50, No. 5, (2006), pp. 757-776.

 

Monday May 14: Ethical issues in political science research

Lee Ann Fujii, "Research Ethics 101: Dilemmas and Responsibilities," in PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol. 45, No. 4, (October 2012), pp. 717-723.

Kevin D. Haggerty, "Ethics Creep: Governing Social Science Research in the Name of Ethics," in Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 27, No. 4, (December 2004), pp. 391-414.

Richard Van Noorden, "Political Science's Problem with Research Ethics," in Nature, 29 June 2015.

 

Monday May 21: The sociology of a not-so-international discipline

Samuel P. Huntington, "One Soul at a Time: Political Science and Political Reform," in American Political Science Review, Vol. 82, No. 1, (March 1988), pp. 3-10.

Ole Waever, "The Sociology of a Not-So-International-Discipline: American and European Developments in International Relations, " in International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 4, (1998), pp. 687-727.

Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan, "Why is there No Non-Western International Relations Theory? Ten Years On," in International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Vol. 17, No. 3, (2017), pp. 341-370.

Teri Caraway, “Gendering Comparative Politics,” in Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 8, No. 1, (March 2010), pp. 169-175.

 

Monday May 28: Student Symposium (poster presentations due)

No readings.

 

Course summary:

Date Details Due