Introduction to Political Science Research Summary Part 1
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Course
Introduction to political research
Institution
Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
This is a summary of all the litterally read during the first part of Introduction to Political Science Research: all articles & Political Research Methods and Practical Skills by Sandra Halperin & Oliver Heath. This was super helpful for studying and scored me an 8 so I hope it's helpful for you a...
Introduction to Political Science Research Summary.
Article. Strangers in their own land. By, Arlie Russel Hochschild.
Use of interviews and focus groups.
An empathy wall is an obstacle to deep understanding of another person, one that can make us feel
indifferent or even hostile to those who hold different beliefs or whose childhood is rooted in
different circumstances.
Regarding America, one can state that partyism beats race as the source of divisive prejudice.
The split between the two main parties in the US has widened, because the right has moved right,
not because the left has moved left.
Tea party: a US political movement that emerged from a series of conservative protests against the
federal government in 2009.
Article Homer gets a tax cut. By, Larry Bartels.
Use of surveys, systemically quantitative data (tables).
The United States government has done ‘less than almost any other rich democracy to limit
economic inequality.’
According to the researcher’s analysis the most Americans supported tax cuts, not because they
were indifferent to economic inequality, but because they largely failed to connect inequality and
public policy.
Ordinary people can orient themselves to complex issues of public policy on the basis of simple-
minded and sometimes misguided considerations of self-interest.
Article. Theory and Methods in Political Science. By, David Marsh & Gerry Stoker.
According to this article every political scientist has its own oncological and epistemological
positions. Ontology is the study of being, it relates to the study of becoming, existence and reality.
Epistemology is the theory of knowledge.
Ontological questions are prior, because they deal with the very nature of ‘being’. The key question is
whether there is a ‘real’ world ‘out there’. If an ontological position reflects the researchers’ view
about the nature of the world, their epistemological position reflects their view of what we can know
about the world and how we can know it. There are two key questions: can an observer identify ‘real’
or ‘objective’ relations between social phenomena? If so, how?
Foundationalist ontology: these researchers thought there was a real world ‘out there’. Their focus
was upon identifying the causes of social behavior. The emphasis was upon explanation.
The empiricist (knowledge starts from our senses) tradition played a crucial role in the development
of social science.
Within the scientific tradition, there are three distinct positions:
1. Positivist position. Positivists adhere to a foundationalist ontology and are concerned to
establish causal relationships between social phenomena, thus developing explanatory, and
indeed predictive, models.
2. Realist position. The realist is also foundationalist in ontological terms. However, unlike
positivists, they do not privilege direct observation. The realist believes that there are deep
structural relationships between social phenomena which cannot be directly observed, but which
are crouch for any explanation of behavior.
,3. Interpretivist position. Anti-foundationalists that believe the world is socially constructed. They
focus upon the meaning of behavior. The emphasis is upon understanding, rather than
explanation.
Ontological and epistemological concerns cannot be ignored. Three points are important here:
1. The issues involved are not easy, but neither are they difficult, if they are explained simply and
with appropriate examples (put in the ‘too hard-basket’).
2. Ontological and epistemological positions should not be treated like a sweater that can be ‘put
on’ and ‘taken off’.
3. Researchers cannot adopt one position at one time for one project and another on another
occasion for a different project. These positions are not interchangeable, because they reflect
fundamental different approaches to what social science is and how we do it.
Positivism:
• Positivism is based upon a foundationalist ontology. So, to the positivists (and realists), the world
exists independently of our knowledge of it.
• To the positivist, natural science and social science are broadly analogous.
• Use of direct observation.
• To positivists, the aim of social science is to make causal statements; in their view it is possible to
establish causal relationships between social phenomena. Realists also think this, while
interpretivists deny the possibility of such statements.
• Positivists also argue that it is possible to separate empirical questions. So questions about what is
from questions about what should be (normative questions).
-> Positivists use data.
The criticism of positivism takes two broad forms:
• The first line of criticism argues that positivists misinterpret how science really proceeds.
• The second line of criticism argues that there are obvious differences between social and physical
or natural phenomena that make social ‘science’ impossible.
> Post-positivists: acknowledge the interdependence of theory and observation: recognize that
normative questions are important and not always easy to separate from empirical questions; and
accept that other traditions have a key role to play in political and social analysis.
-> The aim is to test hypothesized relationships between the social phenomena studied.
Interpretivist:
• Interpretivist researchers reject the notion that the world exists independently of our knowledge of
it. Rather, they contend that the world is socially constructed (anti-foundationalism).
• For researchers working within this tradition, social phenomena do not exist independently of our
interpretation of them.
• However, we must acknowledge that ‘objective’ analysis is impossible. Knowledge is theoretically
or discursively laden. This position acknowledges the double hermeneutic.
> Complications:
• This position argues that there is no objective truth. That the world is socially constructed, and
that the role of social ‘scientists’ is to study those social constructions. Quantitative data are
useless. So, we need qualitative methods (interviews, focus groups etc.)
The criticisms of the interpretivist tradition:
- To positivists, the interpretivist tradition merely offers opinions or subjective judgements about the
world. As such, there is no basis on which to judge the validity of their knowledge claims. Because to
interpretivist researchers one person’s view is as good as another person’s view.
-> There are variants within the interpretivist tradition. However, they are all anti-foundationalist and
critical of positivism.
Realism:
, • To realists, the world exists independently of our knowledge of it. In ontological terms they are,
like positivists, foundationalists.
• Again, like positivists, realists contend that social phenomena/structures do have causal powers, so
we can make causal statements.
• Unlike positivists, realists contend that not all social phenomena, and the relationships between
them, are directly observable.
There are two sorts of criticism on realism:
• The positivists denied the existence of unobservable structures. More importantly, they argued
that positing them makes the knowledge claims of realism untestable and, thus, unfalsifiable.
• Interpretivist researchers criticize the foundational claims of realism. In their view, there are no
structures that are independent of social action and no ‘objective’ basis on which to observe the
actions or infer the deep structures.
> Realism has methodological implications. It acknowledges the utility of both quantitative and
qualitative data.
Article. The Chain of Security. By, Marieke de Goede.
Transactions analysis forms part of a security chain, whereby commercial data are analyzed,
collected, reported, shared, moved, and eventually deployed as a basis for intervention by police and
prosecution. In this context, private companies (including facebook, bank airlines etc) find
themselves in the frontline of fighting terrorism and other security threats. However, banks, airlines,
and social media companies are extremely reluctant security actors.
Private security judgements, such as account closures, can have major effects on individual lives and
political freedom.
The production of security knowledge is far less regulated than that of scientific facts. The production
of security knowledge is much more speculative.
• Banks: Banks are required to freeze transactions relating to sanctions lists and to report suspicious
transactions to FIUs.
• Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs): FIUs receive Unusual Transactions Reports from banks’ and in
their turn pass on information to police and prosecutors.
• Court judgement: From prosecution to court. clearly, the most suspicious transactions reports
generated in the financial security chain never lead to court cases.
Article. Balancing inside and outside lobbying… By, Hanegraaf et al.
At first sight the extensive use of outside lobbying by transnational lobbyists seems puzzling. The
international level lacks a coherent public that can be mobilized as the relevant publics are situated
within countries, and there is no such thing as a global public opinion to influence and involve in
lobbying activities. Hence, one would expect interest groups to invest mostly in inside lobbying and
refrain from outside lobbying. Outside lobbying is also puzzling because international policy making is
largely a state affair with governments bargaining in settings that remain remote from domestic
audiences.
• Inside lobbying, or sometimes called direct lobbying, describes efforts by lobbyists to influence
legislation or rule-making directly by contacting legislators and their assistants, sometimes called
staffers or aides.
• Outside lobbying, or sometimes indirect lobbying, includes attempts by interest group leaders to
mobilize citizens outside the policymaking community, perhaps by public relations methods
or advertising, to prompt them to pressure public officials within the policymaking community.
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