Introduction to the Virtual Issue: Recent Advances in Discrete Choice Methods in Political Science

Abstract

A “discrete choice” situation occurs when a political agent (i.e., voter, political leader, country) faces a choice or a series of choices from among a finite set of discrete options. These types of situations are frequently studied by political scientists, but it is only in the last decade that our understanding and use of discrete choice models has really started to evolve. While even into the mid-1990s it was not unusual to see linear regression applied to binary or ordinal dependent variables (e.g., Gerber 1996), now discrete choice models are part of the standard toolkit for applied researchers, and methodological training in the use of these models is required in many graduate programs. The leading edge of the field has also advanced rapidly. In the last decade political methodologists have moved beyond the “welcoming” of discrete choice methods from economics and other fields (Beck 2000) to the development of new discrete choice methods. In this virtual issue I have selected six articles from Political Analysis that I feel best exemplify this trend. These articles are: