Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-fqc5m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T15:50:52.323Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Simple Multivariate Test for Asymmetric Hypotheses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

William Roberts Clark
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and the Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan, ISR 4202 Box 1248, 426 Thompson Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248. e-mail: wrclark@umich.edu (corresponding author)
Michael J. Gilligan
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, New York University, 7th Floor, 726 Broadway, New York, NY 10003. e-mail: michael.gilligan@nyu.edu
Matt Golder
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Florida State University, 531 Bellamy Building, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2230. e-mail: mgolder@fsu.edu

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that claims of necessity and sufficiency involve a type of asymmetric causal claim that is useful in many social scientific contexts. Contrary to some qualitative researchers, we maintain that there is nothing about such asymmetries that should lead scholars to depart from standard social science practice. We take as given that deterministic and monocausal tests are inappropriate in the social world and demonstrate that standard multiplicative interaction models are up to the task of handling asymmetric causal claims in a multivariate, probabilistic manner. We illustrate our argument with examples from the empirical literature linking electoral institutions and party system size.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Da Silva, Afonso Virgílio,. 2006. Duverger's Laws: Between social and institutional determinism. European Journal of Political Research 45: 3141.Google Scholar
Amorim Neto, Octavio, and Cox, Gary. 1997. Electoral institutions: Cleavage structures and the number of parties. American Journal of Political Science 41: 149–74.Google Scholar
Brambor, Thomas, Clark, William Roberts, and Golder, Matt. 2006. Understanding interaction models: Improving empirical analyses. Political Analysis 14: 6382.Google Scholar
Braumoeller, Bear. 2003. Causal complexity and the study of politics. Political Analysis 11: 209–33.Google Scholar
Braumoeller, Bear. 2004. Hypothesis testing and multiplicative interaction terms. International Organization 58: 807–20.Google Scholar
Braumoeller, Bear F., and Goertz, Gary. 2000. The methodology of necessary conditions. American Journal of Political Science 44: 844–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, William Roberts, and Golder, Matt. 2006. Rehabilitating Duverger's theory: Testing the mechanical and strategic modifying effects of electoral laws. Comparative Political Studies 39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collier, David, Mahoney, James, and Seawright, Jason. 2004. Claiming too much: Warnings about selection bias. In Rethinking social inquiry: Diverse tools, shared standards, eds. Brady, Henry E. and Collier, David, 85102. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Dion, Douglas. 1998. Evidence and inference in the comparative case study. Comparative Politics 30: 127–45.Google Scholar
Duverger, Maurice. [1954] 1963. Political parties: Their organization and activity in the modern state. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.Google Scholar
George, Alexander L., and Bennett, Andrew. 2005. Case studies and theory development in the social sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Goertz, Gary. 2001. Necessary condition theory: What Kingdon, Ostrom, and Skocpol have in common. AZ: Department of Political Science, University of Arizona.Google Scholar
Goertz, Gary. 2002. The substantive importance of necessary condition hypotheses. In Necessary conditions: Theory, methodology, and applications, ed. Goertz, Gary and Starr, Harvey. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Gordon, Sandford C., and Smith, Alastair. 2004. Quantitative leverage through qualitative knowledge: Augmenting the statistical analysis of complex causes. Political Analysis 12: 233–55.Google Scholar
Hildebrand, David K., Laing, James D., and Rosenthal, Howard. 1977. Analysis of ordinal data: Quantiative applications in the social sciences. Beverley Hills, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Kam, Cindy D., and Franzese, Robert J. Jr. Forthcoming. Modeling and interpreting interactive hypotheses in regression analysis: A brief refresher and some practical advice. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
King, Gary, Keohane, Robert O., and Verba, Sidney. 1994. Designing social inquiry: Scientific inference in qualitative research. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakatos, Imre. 1970. Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes. In Criticism and the growth of knowledge, ed. Lakatos, Imre and Musgrave, Alan, 91195. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lieberson, Stanley. 1987. Making it count: The improvement of social research and theory. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
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 70: 307–20.Google Scholar
Mackie, John L. 1965. Causes and conditions. American Philosophical Quarterly 2: 245–64.Google Scholar
Mahoney, James, and Goertz, Gary. 2006. A tale of two cultures: Contrasting quantitative and qualitative research. Political Analysis 10.1093/pan/mpj017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mainwaring, Scott. 1993. Presidentialism, multipartism, and democracy: The difficult combination. Comparative Political Studies 26: 198228.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1986 [1874]. A system of logic, ratiocinative and inductive: Being a connected view of the principles of evidence and the methods of scientific investigation. 8th ed. New York: Harper and Brothers.Google Scholar
Popper, Karl. 1959. The logic of scientific discovery. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Przeworski, Adam. 2006. Forthcoming. Is the science of comparative politics possible? In Oxford handbook of comparative politics, ed. Boix, Carles and Stokes, Susan. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Przeworski, Adam, Alvarez, Michael E., Antonio Cheibub, José, and Limongi, Fernando. 2000. Democracy and development: Political institutions and well-being in the world, 1950–1990. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ragin, Charles C. 1987. The comparative method: Moving beyond qualitative and quantitative strategies. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ragin, Charles C. 2000. Fuննy-set social science. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ragin, Charles C. 2006. Set relations in social research: Evaluating their consistency and coverage. Political Analysis 10.1093/pan/mpj019.Google Scholar
Riker, William H. 1982. The two-party system and Duverger's Law: An essay on the history of political science. American Political Science Review 76: 753–66.Google Scholar
Rosenbaum, Paul R. 2002. Observational studies. 2nd ed. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Rubin, Donald. 1974. Estimating the causal effects of treatments in randomized and nonrandomized studies. Journal of Education Psychology 66: 688701.Google Scholar
Seawright, Jason. 2005. Qualitative comparative analysis vis-à-vis regression. Studies in Comparative International Development 40: 326.Google Scholar
Stasavage, David. 2002. Private investment and political institutions. Economics and Politics 14: 4163.Google Scholar
Tsebelis, George. 2003. Veto players and law production in parliamentary democracies: An empirical analysis. In Necessary conditions: Theory, methodology, and applications, ed. Goertz, Gary and Starr, Harvey, 249–76. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar