The political science discipline has recently engaged in contentious debate about the value of “research transparency,” particularly for research with human participants. The discipline is also holding vital conversations about research ethics and is rekindling dialogue about different ways of knowing. We offer an integrated account of how the actions that scholars who conduct human participant research take to respect ethical principles (which vary by research substance and settings), and their epistemological commitments (which vary across researchers), influence openness, a broader concept than “transparency.” These principles and commitments shape scholars’ openness practices simultaneously—both independently and in concert—serving as a prism through which multiple features of a research project are refracted, and resulting in a scholar’s inclination and ability to pursue openness in different ways and to different degrees with the audiences of her work. We also show how ethical principles and epistemological commitments can not only constrain and prevent openness, but also animate and require it. We suggest that scholars pursuing openness ethically, and in ways that honor their epistemological commitments, represents good social science, and we offer strategies for doing so. To develop our argument, we focus primarily on two research methods, ethnography and interviews, and on openness toward two audiences, human participants and research communities. Our account illuminates how the heterogeneity of human participant research makes it inappropriate, indeed impossible, to develop blanket rules for pursuing openness. Throughout, we highlight the importance of reflexivity for the ethical conduct of, and for being ethically open about, political science research.

In recent years, a variety of efforts have been made in political science to enable, encourage, or require scholars to be more open and explicit about the bases of their empirical claims and, in turn, make those claims more readily evaluable by others. While qualitative scholars have long taken an interest in making their research open, reflexive, and systematic, the recent push for overarching transparency norms and requirements has provoked serious concern within qualitative research communities and raised fundamental questions about the meaning, value, costs, and intellectual relevance of transparency for qualitative inquiry. In this Perspectives Reflection, we crystallize the central findings of a three-year deliberative process—the Qualitative Transparency Deliberations (QTD)—involving hundreds of political scientists in a broad discussion of these issues. Following an overview of the process and the key insights that emerged, we present summaries of the QTD Working Groups’ final reports. Drawing on a series of public, online conversations that unfolded at www.qualtd.net, the reports unpack transparency’s promise, practicalities, risks, and limitations in relation to different qualitative methodologies, forms of evidence, and research contexts. Taken as a whole, these reports—the full versions of which can be found in the Supplementary Materials—offer practical guidance to scholars designing and implementing qualitative research, and to editors, reviewers, and funders seeking to develop criteria of evaluation that are appropriate—as understood by relevant research communities—to the forms of inquiry being assessed. We dedicate this Reflection to the memory of our coauthor and QTD working group leader Kendra Koivu.1

To leverage the full range of observed variation in patterns of violence toward the development and testing of theories of political violence, scholars need adequate conceptual foundations: what should we mean by a pattern of violence on the part of an armed organization? Scholars often distinguish degrees or levels or types of violence across organizations and conflicts, but definitions and measures vary sharply. We argue that patterns of violence are not reducible in ways often assumed in the literature: lethal violence is not a good proxy for the overall pattern, and differences in patterns are not well captured in the binary “terror” versus “restraint.” To address these concerns, we provide a new conceptualization of political violence, defining an organization’s pattern of violence as the configuration of repertoire, targeting, frequency, and technique in which it regularly engages. This approach adds precision to the documentation and analysis of political violence, clarifies the evaluation of rival theories, and opens up new research questions. We demonstrate its utility through an analysis of violence against civilians in Colombia, drawing on an original database of massacres, judicial proceedings, and other sources, and show that the concept of “pattern” helps bring ideology and politics back into the analysis of organized violence.

Scholars increasingly document different forms of conflict-related sexual violence, their distinct causes, and their sharply varying deployment by armed organizations. In this paper, I first summarize recent research on this variation, emphasizing findings that contradict or complicate popular beliefs. I then discuss distinct interpretations of the claim that such violence is part of a continuum of violence between peace and war. After analyzing recent research on the internal dynamics of armed organizations, I suggest that widespread rape often occurs as a practice rather than as a strategy. Finally, I advance some principles to guide policy in light of recent research.