Comparative Methods in Social and Political ResearchOff-line SyllabusThis document allows additional perspective on our course. Yet, it is not the primary outline for this class !. The real class is on-line. It is interactive and collaborative principles which will dominant the learning process. Thus, please refer to the outlines of the class in order to get a more accurate perspective on the dynamics of on-line teaching in our class.
The Class Major Textbooks
Ragin Charles, Constructing Social Research, Pine Forge Press, Thousands Oaks, CA, 1994. King Gary, Keohane O. Robert, and Verba Sidney, Designing Social Inquiry, Princeton University Press, 1994. Ragin Charles, The Comparative Method: Moving Beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1987.
Peters, Guy, Comparative Politics: Theory and Methods, New York University Press, New York, 1998. Smelser J. Neil, Comparative Methods in the Social Sciences, Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1976. Dogan Matttei and Kazancigil Ali, Comparing Nations: Concepts Strategies, Substance,Blackwell, Oxford UK & Cambridge, Oxford, 1994. Pennings Paul, Keman Hans, Jas Kleinnijenhuis, Doing Research in Political Science: An Introduction to Comparative Methods and Statistics, Sage Publications, London, 1999. Przeworski, Adam and Teune Henry, The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry, Wiley-Interscience, New York, 1970. Rose Richard, Comparing Forms of Comparative Analysis, Political Studies, 1991, Vol. 39, pp. 446-462. Comparative Methods & Comparative Politics
Lijphart Arend, "Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method", American Political Science Review, Vol. 45, 1971, pp. 682-93. Daalder, Hans, "Countries in Comparative European Politics", European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 15, 1987, pp. 3-21. Daalder, Hans,Comparative European Politics: The Story of a Profession, Pinter, 1997. Dogan Matttei and Pelassy Dominique, How to Compare nations:Strategies in Comparative Politics, Chatham House Publishers, New Jersey, 1984 Reviews of Developments in Comparative Methodology
Collier, David, "The Comparative Method: Two Decades of Change," in Rustow and Erickson, eds. Comparative Political Dynamics, New York: Harper Collins, pp. 7-31.
The Logic of the Comparative Research
Kalleberg, Arthur, "The Logic of Comparison: A Methodological Note on the Comparative Study of Political Systems," World Politics, Vol. 19, 1966, pp. 69-82. John Frendreis, "Explanation of Variation and Detection of Covariation: The Purpose and Logic of Comparative Analysis," Comparative Political Studies, 1983, pp. 255-272. Zelditch, Morris, "Intelligible Comparisons", In Vallier I. (ed) Comparative Methods in Sociology, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1971, pp. 267-307. Ragin, Charles and David Zaret, "Theory and Method in Comparative Research: Two Strategies", Social Forces, 61, 1983, 731-754. Faure M. Andrew, "Some Methodological Problems in Comparative Politics", Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 6, No. 3, 1994, pp. 307-322. Kligman David, Temporal and Spatial Diffusion in the Comparative Analysis of Social Change, The American Political Science Review, Vol. 74, No. 1, 1980, pp. 123-137
Focused Comparisons
Lijphart, Arend "The Comparable-Cases Strategy in Comparative Research", Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 8, 1975, pp. 169-181. Meckstroth, Theodore, "Most Different Systems' and 'Most Similar Systems: A Study in the Logic of Comparative Inquiry," Comparative Political Studies, 1975, pp. 133-177. Locke Richard and Kathleen Thelen, Problems of Equivalence in Comparative Politics: Apples and Oranges, APSA-CP, Vol. 9, No. 1, Winter 1998, pp. 9-12.
Case Studies and the Comparative Method
George, Alexander and Tim McKeown, "Case Studies and Theories of Organizational decision Making," in Robert Coulam and Richard Smith, eds., Advances in Information Processing in Organizations, Greenwich, CT. JAI Press, 1985, pp. 43-68. Geertz, Clifford, Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture, in Geertz C., Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Ragin C. Charles and Becker Howard (eds.), What is a Case?: Exploring the Foundation of Social Inquiry, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992. Bradshaw, York & Michael Wallace, "Informing Generality and Explaining Uniqueness: The Place of Case Studies in Comparative Research," International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Vol. 32, pp. 154-171. Eckstein, Harry. "Case Study and Theory in Political Science," in F.I. Greenstein & N.W. Polsby (eds.) The Handbook of Political Science, Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1975, pp. 79-138. McKeown, Timothy, "Case Studies and the Statistical World View: Review of King, Keohane, and Verba's Designing Social Inquriy: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research," International Organization Vol. 53, No. 1, 1999, pp. 161-190. Bent, Flyvbjerg, Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research." In Clive Seale, Giampietro Gobo, Jaber F. Gubrium, and David Silverman, eds., Qualitative Research Practice. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004, pp. 420-434. PDF format
Concepts and the Comparative Methodology
Sartori Giovanni, "Comparing and miscomparing", Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 3, 1991, pp. 243-257. Sartori, Giovanni, Social Science Concepts, A Systematic Analysis, Sage Publications, 1984. See his Ten Commandments for Concpet Analysis Sartori, Giovanni, "Concept Misinformation in Comparative Politics," American Political Science Review, Vol. 64, 1970, pp. 1033-1053. Collier David and Levitsky S. "Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research", World Politics, 49, No. 3, 1997, pp. 430-451. Collier David and James Mahon, "Conceptual Stretching Revisited: Adapting Categories in Comparative Analysis", American Political Science Review, 1993, pp. 845-855. Collier David and Adcock Robert 1999, "Democracy and Dichotomies: A Pragmatic Approach for Choices About Concepts", Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 2, pp. 537-565.
The Macro-Micro Divide
La Palombara, Joseph Macrotheories and Microapplications in Comparative Politics: A Widening Chasm, Comparative Politics, Vol. 1, 1968, pp. 52-78. Tilly, Charles, "Micro, Macro, Or Megrim?", unpublished manuscript, August 1997.
Some Common Pitfalls of Comparative Research
DeFelice, Gene "Comparison Misconceived: Common Nonsense in Comparative Politics," Comparative Politics, Vol. 13, 1980, pp. 119-124. Geddes Barbara, "How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get: Selection Bias in Comparative Politics", Political Analysis, Vol. 2, 1990, , pp. 131-150. David Collier and James Mahoney, "Insights and Pitfalls: Selection Bias in Qualitative Research," World Politics Vol. 49, no. 1 (October, 1996) pp. 56-91.
Comparative Historical Analysis
Skocpol Theda and Somers Margaret "The Uses of Comparative History in Macro-social Theory", Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 22, 1980, pp. 174-197. Skocpol Theda (ed.), Vision and Method in Historical Sociology, Cambridge University Press, 1984. See the book's home page Tilly Charles, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons, Basic Books, 1984. Vernon K. Dibble, "Four Types of Inference from Documents to Events," History and Theory, Vol. 3, 1963, pp. 203-21. John D. Milligan, "The Treatment of an Historical Source," History and Theory Vol. 18, 1979, pp. 177-96. Bartolini Stefano, On Time and Comparative Research, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1993, pp. 131-167. David Collier, "Comparative-Historical Analysis: Where Do We Stand?" APSA-CP Newsletter, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1998, pp. 1-5.
Debating the Qualitative - Quantitative DivideJohn H. Goldthorpe, Current Issues in Comparative Macrosociology: A debate on Methodlogical Issues, Comparative Social Research, Volume 16, 1997, pages 1-26. Ragin, C. Charles, Turning the Tables: How Case-Oriented Research Challenges Variable-Oriented Research, Comparative Social Research, Vol. 16, 1997, pp.27-42. Firebaugh, Glenn, "Cross-National Versus Historical Regression Models: Conditions of Equivalence in Comparative Research." Comparative Social Research Vol. 3, 1980, pp. 333-44. Sidney Tarrow, Bridging the Qualitative-Quantitative Divide in Political Science, American Political Science Review, Vol. 89, 1995, pp. 471-5. Coppedge, Michael, Thickening Thin Concepts and Theories: Combining Large-N and Small in Comparative Politics, Comparative Politics, Vol. 31, No. 4, 1999, pp. 465-476.
Causal Inference in Comparative Politics
Pearl Judea, Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference Cambridge University Press, 2000. Hedstrom Peter and Swedberg Richard (eds), Social Mechanism: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory, Cambridge University Press, 1998. Little, Daniel, Microfoundations, Method, and Causation, New Brunswick and London, Transaction Publishers, 1998. Salmon, Wesley, Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1984. Lieberson, Stanley. 1991. "Small N’s and Big Conclusions: An Examination of the Reasoning in Comparative Studies Based on a Small Number of Cases" Social Forces Vol. 70, No. 2, pp. 307-320. Lieberson, Stanley. 1994. "More on the Uneasy Case for Using Mill-Type Methods in Small-N Comparative Studies." Social Forces, Vol. 72, pp. 1225-1237. Dion Douglas, Evidence and Inference in the Comparative Case Study, Comparative Politics, Vol. 39, 1998, pp. 127-45. James Fearon, "Counterfactuals and Hypothesis Testing in Political Science," World Politics Vol. 43, 1991, pp. 169-195. Imre Lakatos, "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programs," in Lakatos and Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Cambridge University Press, 1970, pp. 91-138, 173-180. Mahoney, James, 1999, "Nominal, Ordinal, and Narrative Appraisal in Macrosociological Analysis", American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 104, pp. 1154-1196. Mahoney, James, "Strategies of Causal Inference in Small-N Analysis", Sociological Methods & Research, Vol. 28, No. 4, 2000, pp. 387-424. DeFelice, E. Gene, 1986, "Causal Inference and Comparative Methods", Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 19, pp. 415-437. Vaughn McKim and Stephen Turner, eds., Causality in Crisis? Statistical Methods and the Search for Causal Knowledge in the Social Sciences, University of Notre Dame, 1997, pp. 1-19. Rogowski, Ronald, "The Role of Theory and Anomaly in Social-Scientific Inference." American Political Science Review 89, 1995, pp. 467-70. Savolainen, Jukka 1994, "The Rationality of Drawing Big Conclusions Based on Small Samples: In Defense of Mill's Methods", Social Forces, Vol. 72, pp. 1217-1224. David Dessler, "Beyond Correlations: Toward a Causal Theory of War," International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 35, 1991, pp. 337-355.
A Boolean Approach for Comparative Analysis
Ragin, Charles, Mayer E. Susan and Drass A. Kriss, Assessing Discrimination: A Boolean Approach, American Sociological Review, Vol. 49, 1984, pp. 221-34.
Comparative Studies of Israel
Barnett N. Michael (editor), Israel in Comparative Perspective: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1996. Levi-Faur, David, Sheffer Gabriel and Vogel, David (eds), Israel: The Dynamics of Change and Continuity, Frank Cass, London, 1999.
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