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106 results in Research methods in politics

Page 1 of 6

The Practice of Multi-Method Research

Game-Theoretic Models of International Crisis Bargaining
  • Ahmad Tarar
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026

Qualitative Causal Inference and Explanation
  • David Waldner
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2026
    Print publication:
    30 June 2026
  • While existing qualitative, case-study methods deliver specific explanations, quantitative approaches to causal inference emphasize valid inferences at the expense of explanations. In this book, David Waldner presents a hybrid method drawing on both approaches to ensure that explanations are based on validly inferred causes and to avoid making valid inferences that have limited explanatory power. Qualitative Causal Inference and Explanation integrates a qualitative identification strategy based on graph-theoretic analysis into traditional process-tracing methods by introducing three novel methodological concepts: hypothetical interventions, invariant causal mechanisms, and event-history maps. This new approach provides clear and feasible standards for making valid, unit-level causal inferences. The result is a groundbreaking approach to explaining complex social and political phenomena, one that better avoids false positives while providing explanations that satisfy the criteria of explanatory depth, density, relevance, and unification.

Developing Theories in the Social Sciences
  • Methods and Applications
  • Jane Sell, Murray Webster Jr.
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2026
    Print publication:
    30 June 2026
  • Progress in the social sciences entails developing and improving theoretical understanding of social phenomena and improving methods for collecting and analyzing data. Theories organize what we know or expect to learn about phenomena and methods provide the evidential basis for the theories. While we have witnessed great strides in the development of statistical methods, there is less information for developing theories. In Developing Theories in the Social Sciences, Jane Sell and Murray Webster Jr. describe an approach for logical, consistent, and useful explanatory theories for social scientists. They emphasize properly defining concepts to embed in theoretical propositions, while providing guidelines for avoiding missteps that can occur, including imprecise definitions, incomplete assumptions, and missing scope conditions. Offering examples from different disciplines, the authors propose a structured method vital for building and refining theories about social phenomena.

A Practical Guide to Time Series Analysis
  • Suzanna Linn, Matthew J. Lebo, Clayton Webb
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    March 2026
    Print publication:
    31 March 2026
  • Understanding change over time is a critical component of social science. However, data measured over time – time series – requires their own set of statistical and inferential tools. In this book, Suzanna Linn, Matthew Lebo, and Clayton Webb explain the most commonly used time series models and demonstrate their applications using examples. The guide outlines the steps taken to identify a series, make determinations about exogeneity/endogeneity, and make appropriate modelling decisions and inferences. Detailing challenges and explanations of key techniques not covered in most time series textbooks, the authors show how navigating between data and models, deliberately and transparently, allows researchers to clearly  explain their statistical analyses to a broad audience.

Empirical Research and Writing
  • A Political Science Student's Practical Guide
  • 2nd edition
  • Leanne C. Powner
  • Published online:
    15 January 2026
    Print publication:
    22 January 2026
  • Empirical research papers are a mix of technical skill and unwritten insider information. Providing practical guidance on how to design, analyze, and write about research, this engaging second edition is fully updated with expanded coverage of finding and using data, a topical running example, and new appendices introducing quantitative analysis techniques. It covers everything from crafting a question, theory, and hypotheses to choosing a research design, acquiring and analyzing data, drafting, peer review, and presenting your work. Practical strategies are combined with a step-by-step breakdown of every stage of the research design and writing processes, conveyed with clarity and humor. The intuitive presentation illustrates the core insights and concepts in a lively and accessible manner for readers, including those with no mathematical background and from fields beyond political science. New 'Common Challenges' boxes join a wealth of inspiring pedagogical features. Online resources include a revised Instructor's Manual, exercises and essays.

From Decision Theory to Game Theory
  • Reasoning about the Decisions of Others
  • Andrés Perea
  • Published online:
    17 June 2025
    Print publication:
    19 June 2025
  • From Decision Theory to Game Theory shows how the reasoning patterns of common belief in rationality, correct beliefs and symmetric beliefs can be defined in a unified way. It explores the link between decision theory and game theory, particularly how various important classes of games (e.g., games with incomplete information, games with unawareness and psychological games), can be analysed from both a unified decision-theoretic and unified interactive-reasoning perspective. Providing a smooth transition between one-person decision theory and game theory, it views each game as a collection of one-person decision problems – one for every player. Written in a non-technical style, this book includes practical problems and examples from everyday life to make the material more accessible. The book is targeted at a wide audience, including students and scholars from economics, mathematics, business, philosophy, logic, computer science, artificial intelligence, sociology and political science.

Designing Empirical Social Networks Research
  • Jennifer M. Larson
  • Published online:
    07 November 2024
    Print publication:
    21 November 2024
  • A user-friendly introductory guide to the empirical study of social networks. Jennifer M. Larson presents the fundamentals of social networks in an intuition-forward way which guides theory-driven research design. Substantial attention is devoted to a framework for developing a network theory that will steer data collection to be maximally informative and minimally frustrating. Other features include: Coverage of a range of practical topics including selecting operationalizations, cutting survey costs, and cleaning data; A tutorial for getting started in analyzing networks in R; Technical sections full of examples, points to hone intuition, and practice problems with solutions. Designing Empirical Social Networks Research will be a valuable tool for advanced undergraduates, Ph.D. students in the social sciences, especially political science, and researchers across the social sciences who are new to the study of networks.

Elementary Statistics for Public Administration
  • An Applied Perspective
  • Daniel S. Scheller
  • Published online:
    01 November 2024
    Print publication:
    12 September 2024
  • Taking a simplified approach to statistics, this textbook teaches students the skills required to conduct and understand quantitative research. It provides basic mathematical instruction without compromising on analytical rigor, covering the essentials of research design; descriptive statistics; data visualization; and statistical tests including t-tests, chi-squares, ANOVAs, Wilcoxon tests, OLS regression, and logistic regression. Step-by-step instructions with screenshots are used to help students master the use of the freely accessible software R Commander. Ancillary resources include a solutions manual and figure files for instructors, and datasets and further guidance on using STATA and SPSS for students. Packed with examples and drawing on real-world data, this is an invaluable textbook for both undergraduate and graduate students in public administration and political science.

Polls, Pollsters, and Public Opinion
  • A Guide for Decision-Makers
  • Clifford Young, Kathryn Ziemer
  • Published online:
    01 November 2024
    Print publication:
    04 July 2024
  • A vast literature exists on theories of public opinion - how to measure, analyze, predict, and influence it; however, there is no synthesis of best practices for interpreting public opinion: existing knowledge is disparate and spread across many disciplines. Polls, Pollsters, and Public Opinion presents a systematic analytical approach for understanding, predicting, and engaging public opinion. It tells the story through the eyes of the pollster and draws an analytical road map for examining public opinion, both conceptually and practically. Providing a theoretical and conceptual foundation, as well as debunking popular myths, this book delves into the science of polling, offering tools analysts can use to assess the quality of polls. It also introduces methods that can be used to predict elections and other socio-political outcomes while understanding the nuances of messaging, engaging, and moving public opinion.

Contests
  • Theory and Applications
  • Carmen Beviá, Luis Corchón
  • Published online:
    30 May 2024
    Print publication:
    06 June 2024
  • Contest theory is an important part of game theory used to analyse different types of contests and conflicts. Traditional microeconomic models focus on situations where property rights are well defined, and agents voluntarily trade rights over goods or produce rights for new goods. However, much less focus has been given to other situations where agents do not trade property rights, but rather fight over them. Contests: Theory and Applications presents a state-of-the art discussion of the economics of contests from the perspective of both core theory and applications. It provides a new approach to standard topics in labour, education, welfare and development and introduces areas like voting, industrial organisation, mechanism design, sport, and military conflict. Using elementary mathematics, this book provides a versatile framework for navigating this growing area of study and serves as an essential resource for its wide variety of applications in economics and political science.

Regression Inside Out
  • Eric W. Schoon, David Melamed, Ronald L. Breiger
  • Published online:
    21 March 2024
    Print publication:
    22 February 2024
  • Linear regression analysis, with its many generalizations, is the predominant quantitative method used throughout the social sciences and beyond. The goal of the method is to study relations among variables. In this book, Schoon, Melamed and Breiger turn regression modeling inside out to put the emphasis on the cases (people, organizations, and nations) that comprise the variables. By re-analyzing influential published research, they reveal new insights and present a principled way to unlock a set of more nuanced interpretations than has previously been attainable. The emphasis is on intuition and examples that can be reproduced using the code and datasets provided. Relating their contributions to methodologies that operate under quite different philosophical assumptions, the authors advance multi-method social science and help to bridge the divide between quantitative and qualitative research. The result is a modern, accessible, and innovative take on extracting knowledge from data.

Active Statistics
  • Stories, Games, Problems, and Hands-on Demonstrations for Applied Regression and Causal Inference
  • Andrew Gelman, Aki Vehtari
  • Published online:
    07 March 2024
    Print publication:
    14 March 2024
  • This book provides statistics instructors and students with complete classroom material for a one- or two-semester course on applied regression and causal inference. It is built around 52 stories, 52 class-participation activities, 52 hands-on computer demonstrations, and 52 discussion problems that allow instructors and students to explore in a fun way the real-world complexity of the subject. The book fosters an engaging 'flipped classroom' environment with a focus on visualization and understanding. The book provides instructors with frameworks for self-study or for structuring the course, along with tips for maintaining student engagement at all levels, and practice exam questions to help guide learning. Designed to accompany the authors' previous textbook Regression and Other Stories, its modular nature and wealth of material allow this book to be adapted to different courses and texts or be used by learners as a hands-on workbook.

Polling at a Crossroads
  • Rethinking Modern Survey Research
  • Michael A. Bailey
  • Published online:
    29 February 2024
    Print publication:
    07 March 2024
  • Survey research is in a state of crisis. People have become less willing to respond to polls and recent misses in critical elections have undermined the field's credibility. Pollsters have developed many tools for dealing with the new environment, an increasing number of which rely on risky opt-in samples. Virtually all of these tools require that respondents in each demographic category are a representative sample of all people in each demographic category, something that is unlikely to be reliably true. Polling at a Crossroads moves beyond such strong limitations, providing tools that work even when survey respondents are unrepresentative in complex ways. This book provides case studies that show how to avoid underestimating Trump support and how conventional polls exaggerate partisan differences. This book also helps us think in clear and sometimes counterintuitive ways and points toward simple, low-cost changes that can better address contemporary polling challenges.

Set-Theoretic Multi-Method Research
  • A Guide to Combining QCA and Case Studies
  • Carsten Q. Schneider
  • Published online:
    22 February 2024
    Print publication:
    29 February 2024
  • A state-of-the-art comprehensive exposition of combining Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and case studies, this book facilitates the efficient use and independent learning of this form of SMMR (set-theoretic multi-method research) with the best available software. It will reduce the time and effort required when performing both QCA and case studies within the same research project. This is achieved by spelling out the conceptual principles and practices in SMMR, and by introducing a tailor-made R software package. With an applied and practical focus, this is an intuitive resource for implementing the most complete protocol of SMMR. Features include Learning Goals, Core Points, and Empirical Examples, as well as boxed examples of R codes and the R output it produces. There is also a glossary for key SMMR terms. Additional online material is available, comprising machine-readable datasets and R scripts for replication and independent learning.

Formal Models of Crisis Bargaining
  • Applications in the Politics of Conflict
  • William Spaniel
  • Published online:
    30 November 2023
    Print publication:
    09 November 2023
  • Over the last quarter century, crisis bargaining has become the prevailing paradigm for the study of war. This textbook presents a concise and approachable overview of the crisis bargaining literature, surveying the canonical formal models in the bargaining approach to war. It begins by considering different explanations for war, then delves into two classes of explanation: commitment problems and incomplete information. This textbook is essential reading for advanced undergraduates, graduates, and researchers alike. Each chapter delves into a specific part of the puzzle, rigorously unravelling the twisted logic that causes wars to begin. More than seventy illuminating figures illustrate the strategic reasoning outlined and more than 100 exercises of graded levels of difficulty help clarify readers' own understanding of the issues. Online resources include an instructor answer key and numerous engaging video lectures.

Interaction Models
  • Specification and Interpretation
  • William Roberts Clark, Matt Golder
  • Published online:
    02 November 2023
    Print publication:
    16 November 2023
  • The radical interdependence between humans who live together makes virtually all human behavior conditional. The behavior of individuals is conditional upon the expectations of those around them, and those expectations are conditional upon the rules (institutions) and norms (culture) constructed to monitor, reward, and punish different behaviors. As a result, nearly all hypotheses about humans are conditional – conditional upon the resources they possess, the institutions they inhabit, or the cultural practices that tell them how to behave. Interaction Models provides a stand-alone, accessible overview of how interaction models, which are frequently used across the social and natural sciences, capture the intuition behind conditional claims and context dependence. It also addresses the simple specification and interpretation errors that are, unfortunately, commonplace. By providing a comprehensive and unified introduction to the use and critical evaluation of interaction models, this book shows how they can be used to test theoretically-derived claims of conditionality.

Integrated Inferences
  • Causal Models for Qualitative and Mixed-Method Research
  • Macartan Humphreys, Alan M. Jacobs
  • Published online:
    13 October 2023
    Print publication:
    30 November 2023
  • There is a growing consensus in the social sciences on the virtues of research strategies that combine quantitative with qualitative tools of inference. Integrated Inferences develops a framework for using causal models and Bayesian updating for qualitative and mixed-methods research. By making, updating, and querying causal models, researchers are able to integrate information from different data sources while connecting theory and empirics in a far more systematic and transparent manner than standard qualitative and quantitative approaches allow. This book provides an introduction to fundamental principles of causal inference and Bayesian updating and shows how these tools can be used to implement and justify inferences using within-case (process tracing) evidence, correlational patterns across many cases, or a mix of the two. The authors also demonstrate how causal models can guide research design, informing choices about which cases, observations, and mixes of methods will be most useful for addressing any given question.

The Grammar of Time
  • A Toolbox for Comparative Historical Analysis
  • Marcus Kreuzer
  • Published online:
    11 May 2023
    Print publication:
    25 May 2023
  • Kreuzer offers guidance to scholars looking to comparative historical analysis (CHA) for the tools to analyze macro-historical questions. Like history, CHA uses the past to formulate research questions, describe social transformations, and generate inductive insights. Like social science, CHA compares those patterns to explicate generalizable and testable theories. It operates in two different worlds—one constantly changing and full of cultural particularities and another static and full of orderly uniformities. CHA draws attention to the ontological constructions of these worlds; how scholars background historical and geographic particularities to create a social reality orderly enough for theorizing, while others foreground those particularities to re-complexify it to generate new inductive insights. CHA engages in ontological triage, dialogue between exploration and confirmation, and conversation in how to translate test results into genuine answers. This book is supplemented by online materials including introductory videos, diagnostic quizzes, advanced exercises, and annotated bibliographies.

The Politics of Budgets
  • Getting a Piece of the Pie
  • Christine S. Lipsmeyer, Andrew Q. Philips, Guy D. Whitten
  • Published online:
    16 March 2023
    Print publication:
    23 March 2023
  • While governments prefer to alter budgets to fit their ideological stances, the domestic and international contexts can facilitate or constrain behavior. The Politics of Budgets demonstrates when governments do and do not make preferred budgetary changes. It argues for an interconnected view of budgets and explores both the reallocation of expenditures across policy areas and the interplay among budgetary components. While previous scholars have investigated how politics and economics shape a single budgetary category, or collective categories, this methodologically rich study analyzes data for thirty-three countries across thirty-five years to provide a more comprehensive theoretical approach: a 'holistic' framework about the competition and contexts around the budgetary process and an of examination of how and when these factors affect the budgetary decision-making processes.

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