The Qualitative Foundations of Political Science Methodology

Abstract

The last decade has seen a contentious dialogue between quantitative and qualitative scholars over the nature of political science methodology. Even so, there has often been a consensus that quantitative and qualitative research share a “unified logic of inference;” that the differences between these “traditions are only stylistic and are methodologically and substantively unimportant.” All of the books under review here share these convictions. Yet the most remarkable feature of these works taken as a whole —and the focus of this review essay—is the more capacious view of the scientific enterprise on display. John Gerring's Social Science Methodology, David Collier and Henry Brady's Rethinking Social Inquiry, and Charles Ragin's Fuzzy-Set Social Science all focus on aspects of the scientific process beyond the testing of hypotheses—science being “a systematic, rigorous, evidence-based, generalizing, nonsubjective, and cumulative” way of discovering the truth about the world (Gerring, p. xv). If science is the systematic gathering of knowledge, testing hypotheses—the central concern of statistical inference—is an important part of this. But it is only one part. Before we can turn to testing hypotheses, we must be clear about concepts, theories, and cases. And here both Barbara Geddes's Paradigms and Sand Castles and the Elmans' Bridges and Boundaries complement the other works by attending closely to these issues even when the larger goal remains the testing of theory.George Thomas is assistant professor of political science at Williams College (gthomas@williams.edu). The author thanks the anonymous reviewers for Perspectives on Politics, Mark Blyth, Brian Taylor, and, especially, Craig Thomas for helpful comments.