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Reading-list for the Methods Course for the Master Programme in

Politics and International Studies, Uppsala University

Convenors: Allan Dafoe (Allan.Dafoe@pcr.uu.se) and Katrin Uba (Katrin.Uba@statsvet.uu.se)

Required books:

Kellstedt, Paul and Guy Whitten. 2008. The Fundamentals of Political Science Research.

Cambridge University Press.

George, Alexander L. and Andrew Bennett. 2004. Case Studies and Theory Development in the

Social Sciences. MIT Press.

All required reading will be uploaded to the Studentportalen or will be available via Up-

Unet i.e. search via library or scholar.google.com.

Introduction: Overview

Required Readings:

1) Kellstedt and Whitten: Chapter 1

2) Excerpts from Sagan, Carl. 1997. The Demon-Haunted World . Random House, Inc.

3) Gerring, John. 2012. Social Science Methodology: A Unified Framework: Chapter 1

(Discovery and Appraisal) and Chapter 2 (Toward a Research Question):

Recommended Readings:

1) Platt, J. R. 1964. “Strong Inference.” Science.

2) C Booth, Wayne, Gregory G Colomb, and Joseph M Williams. 2008. The Craft of

 Research: Prologue, Ch1, Ch3, Ch4:

3) Jervis, Robert. 2002. “Politics, Political Science, and Specialization.” PS: Political

Science and Politics.

4) King, G. 2006. “Publication, publication.” PS: Political Science and Politics.

5) For example of output from a replication assignment, see:Dafoe, A. 2011. “Statistical Critiques of the Democratic Peace: Caveat Emptor.”

 American Journal of Political Science 55(2): 247–262.

6) For a very short intro to Bayesian thinking:

Paulos, John Allen. 2011. “The Mathematics of Changing Your Mind.” The New York

Times. 

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Introduction: Empirics

Required Readings:

1) Dafoe, Allan & Devin Caughey. “Honor and War: Using Southern Presidents to Identify

Reputational Effects in International Conflict.”

2) Kellstedt and Whitten: Ch33) Gerring 2012: Ch 4 Analysis

4) Rosenbaum. 2010. Design of Observational Studies: Ch 6

Recommended Reading:

1) Collier, Brady, and Seawright. Rethinking Social Inquiry. p 13-44 (Guidelines:

Summarizing DSI’s Framework)

Chapter 13 (p229-233, 244-250, 252-266)

Appendix (p267-271)

2) Glossary from Gerring 20123) Brady, Henry E, D Collier, and J Seawright. 2006. “Toward a pluralistic vision of

methodology.” Political Analysis 14(3): 353–368.

4) Höglund, Kristine and Magnus Öberg. 2011. Chapter 1, “Doing Empirical Peace

Research.” In Kristine Höglund and Magnus Öberg., eds., Understanding Peace

Research: Methods and Challenges.

5) Höglund, Kristine and Magnus Öberg. 2011. Chapter 11, “Improving Information

Gathering and Evaluation.” In Kristine Höglund and Magnus Öberg., eds., Understanding

Peace Research: Methods and Challenges.

Introduction: Theory Formation, Concepts and Different Methods

Required Readings:

1) Kellstedt and Whitten: Chapter 2, p22-44

2) Brady, D. 2003. “Rethinking the Sociological Measurement of Poverty”. Social Forces,

81(3):715-751.

3) Rosenfeld, J. 2010. “‘The meaning of poverty’ and contemporary quantitative povertyresearch” British Journal of Sociology

4) Piazza, James A. (2011) “Poverty, minority economic discrimination, and domesticterrorism” Journal of Peace Research, 48(3):339–353

Recommended Readings:

1) Gerring, John. 2012. Social Science Methodology: A Unified Framework , Chapter 3

(Arguments), Chapter 6 (Concepts)

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2) Krishna, A. 2010. “Who Became Poor, Who Escaped Poverty, and Why? Developing and

Using a Retrospective Methodology in Five Countries”, Journal of Policy Analysis and

 Management , Vol. 29, No. 2, 351–372 (2010)

3) Brady, D. Fullerton and Moren “2009. ”Putting Poverty in Political Context: A Multi-

Level Analysis of Adult Poverty across 18 Affluent Democracies”, Social Forces, Volume

88, Number 1, September 2009, pp. 271-299

Case Studies and Qualitative Methods: Comparative Case Studies: Strengths,

Design Operationalisations

Required:

1) Kellstedt and Whitten: Chapter 3-4

2) George, Alexander L. and Andrew Bennett. 2004. Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. MIT Press.

3) Chapter 1 from Hedström, Peter and Swedberg, Richard. 1998. Social Mechanisms:

An Analytical Approach to Social Theory. Cambridge University Press

4) Gerring, John and Seawright, Jason. 2008. "Case-selection Techniques in Case Study

Research: A Menu of Qualitative and Quantitative Options" Political Research

Quarterly 61:294-308

5) Gerring, John. 2007. "Is There a (Viable) Crucial-Case Method?" Comparative

Political Studies 40:231-53

6) Gerring, John. 2005. "Causation: A Unified Framework for the Social Sciences."

Journal of Theoretical Politics 17:163-987) Gerring, John. 2004. "What is a Case Study and What is it Good For?" American

Political Science Review 98:341-54

Case Studies and Qualitative Methods: Case Studies: Process Tracing & QCA

Required:

1) Bennett, Andrew. 2010. “Process Tracing and Causal Inference.” In Henry E. Brady and

David Collier, eds., Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards, 2nd

edn. Lanham, MD. Rowman & Littlefield.2) Seawright, J. 2005. “Qualitative Comparative Analysis vis-à-vis Regression” Studies in

Comparative International Development, 40(1):3-26.

3) Rihoux, B. 2006. “Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Related Systematic

Comparative Methods: Recent Advances and Remaining Challenges for Social Science

Research”, International Sociology 21: 679-706.

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Recomended:

1) Mahoney, J. 2010. “Review Articles. After KKV.The New Methodology of

Qualitative Research” World Politics 62(1):120-147

2) Fearon, J. 1991. “Counterfactuals and hypothesis testing in political science.” World

Politics.

3) Gerring 2011, Chapter 12 “Generalizing the framework”

Theory Formation & Formal Theory: Theory Formation and Inference

Required Readings:

1) Kellstedt and Whitten: Ch2

2) Gerring 2012: Ch 3 Argument, Ch 5 Concepts

Theory Formation & Formal Theory: Critical Approaches and the Philosophy

of Science

Required Reading:

1) Ch1 and 13 of Moses, Jonathon and Torbjørn L. Knutsen. 2007. Ways of Knowing:

Competing Methodologies in Social and Political Research.

2) Ch 7 of George and Bennett.

3) McGovern, Mike. 2011. “Popular Development Economics—An Anthropologist among

the Mandarins.” Perspectives on Politics 9(02): 345–355.

Recommended Readings

1) Chapter by James Fearon and Alexander Wendt entitled “Rationalism v. Constructivism:

A Skeptical View”, in Carlsnaes, Walter, and Beth A Simmons. 2002. Handbook of

 International Relations.

2) Latour, Bruno. “The Last Critique”. Harper’s Magazine. April 2004.

3) Ch 1 of Gross, Paul R. and Levitt, Norman. 1994. Higher Superstition: The Academic

 Left and Its Quarrels With Science.

Theory Formation & Formal Theory: Formal Theory/Game Theory

Required Readings:

1) p24-39 (The Modeling Enterprise) in Powell, Robert. 1999. In the Shadow of Power.

2) Preface (xiii-xv) in Gintis, Herbert. 2009. The bounds of reason: game theory and the

unification of the behavioral sciences.

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3) Osborne, Martin J. 2004. An introduction to game theory.

Introduction (p1-8)

Skim Ch 2: 10-52

3.3 Electoral Competition

(Optional: Ch 5 for extensive form games)

Recommended Readings:

1) Harrington. Games, Strategies , and Decision Making.

2) Morrow, James. Game Theory for Political Scientists

3) McCarty and Meirowitz. Political Game Theory: An Introduction.

4) Fudenberg and Tirole, Game Theory.

5) Paul Krugman on how he works (listen to the gentiles, question the question, dare to be

silly, simplify simplify): http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/howiwork.html

6) Gintis, Herbert. Game Theory Evolving  

Theory Formation & Formal Theory: Applications and Critiques of Formal

Theory

Required:

1) Walt, S. M. 1999. “Rigor or rigor mortis?: Rational choice and security studies.”

 International Security. 23(4).

2) Powell, R. 1999. “The modeling enterprise and security studies.” International Security.

24(2).

3) Zagare, F. C., and B. L. Slantchev. 2010. “Game Theory and Other ModelingApproaches.”

Recommended:

1) D. Green and I. Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory, Chapter 1-3

2) The rest of the debate in International Security, Volume 24, Issue 2.

3) Aldrich, John H. and Arthur Lupia. 2011. “Experiments and Game Theory’s Value to

Political Science.” in James N. Druckman et al., eds., Cambridge Handbook of

 Experimental Political Science. 

4) Paul Krugman on Formalism: http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/formal.html

5) Paul Krugman on Formal Theory in Development Economics: http://www.pkarchive.org/theory/dishpan1.html

Statistical Comparisons: Descriptive statistics

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Required:

1) Kellstedt and Whitten, chapter 5 “Measurements”, chapter 6 “Descriptives”

Recommended:

1) Gerring 2011, Chapter 5 “Descriptive Arguments”, Chapter 7 “Measurements”2) Adcock, R. and Collier, D. 2001. “Measurement validity: A Shared Standard for

Qualitative and Quantitative Research” The American Political Science Review,

93(3):529-546

Statistical Comparisons: Inferential Statistics & Bivariate Relationships

Required:

1) Kellstedt and Whitten, chapter 7 “Statistical Inference”, chapter 8 “”Bivariate

Hypothesis Testing

Recommended:

2) Gerring 2011, Chapter  8 ”Causal Arguments”, Chapter 9 “Causal analyses”,

Statistical Comparisons: Introduction to Stata

Readings links:

http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/default.htm (how to learn Stata)

http://statcomp.ats.ucla.edu/stata/ (text-book examples)

http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/dae/ (data analysis examples)

http://www.stata.com/links/resources1.html (general links for learning more about Stata)

Multivariate Relationships: Selection on Observables

Required:

1) Morgan, Stephen, and Chris Winship. 2007. Counterfactuals and Causal Inference:

 Methods and Principles for Social Research.

Intro (except 1.3), Chapter 3 (skip the technical parts)

Recommended:

1) Morgan and Winship, Ch 6

2) Gerring 2012 Ch 9

Multivariate Relationships: Crosstabs and Regression Analysis

Required:

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1) Kellstedt and Whitten, Ch 9 ”Bivariate Regression Models”, Ch 10 “”Multiple

Regression Models I: The Basics”

2) Alford, John R., Carolyn L. Funk, and John R. Hibbing. 2005. "Are Political

Orientations Genetically Transmitted?" American Political Science Review 99 (2, May):

153-168 (bivariate correlations, z-score tests for significance in differences betweencorrelations)

3) Achen, Christopher. 1977. “Measuring Representation: Perils of the Correlation

Coefficient.” American Journal of Political Science 21 (4): 805–15.

Recommended:

1) Achen, Christopher H. 1982. Interpreting and Using Regression. London: Sage

Publications

2) Berry, William D. 1993. Understanding Regression Assumptions. London: Sage

Publications3) Lewis-Beck, Michael. 1980. Applied Regression – An Introduction. London: Sage

Publications

Multivariate Relationships: Regression Analysis

Required:

1) Kellstedt and Whitten, Ch 11 “Multiple Regression Models II: Crucial Extensions”

2) Krueger, James S. and Michael S. Lewis-Beck. 2007. “Goodness-of-Fit: R-Squared, SEE

and ‘Best Practice’.” The Political Methodologist 15 (1): 2–4

Multivariate Relationships: Logistic Regression & Interaction Effects

Required:

1) Brambor, Thomas, William Roberts Clark, and Matt Golder 2006. “Understanding

Interaction Models: Improving Empirical Analyses “, Political Analysis 14(1): 63-82

Recommended:

1) de Rooij, Elaine 2011. “Patterns of Immigrant Political Participation: Explaining

Differences in Types of Political Participation between Immigrants and the Majority

Population in Western Europe.” European Sociological Review (online, doi: 10.1093/esr/ 

 jcr010 )

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2) Stolzenberg, Ross, Maty Blair-Loy, and Linda J. Waite. 1995. “Religious Participation in

Early Adulthood: Age and Family Life Cycle Effects on Church Membership.” ASR

60:84-103 [very good probit article with graphs]

3) McCarty, J., Clark McPhail, and Jackie Smith. 1996. “Images of Protest: Dimensions of

Selection Bias in Media Coverage of Washington Demonstrations 1982 and 1991.” ASR61:478-499 [nice odd-ratio interpretation]

Multivariate Relationships: Visualizing Data, Diagnostics

Required:

1) Kastellec, JP, and EL Leoni. 2007. “Using graphs instead of tables in political science.”

Perspectives on Politics 5(04): 755–771.

 

Recommended:

1) Cleveland, William S.; Persi Diaconis; and Robert McGill. 1982. “Variables on

Scatterplots Look More Highly Correlated When the Scales are Increased.” Science. 216:

1138-1141

2) Cleveland, William S. and Robert McGill. 1987. “Graphical Perception: The Visual

Decoding of Quantitative Information on Graphical Displays of Data.” (with discussion)

JRSS A. 150: 192-229.

Design-Based Inference: Experiments and Natural Experiments

Required:

1) Dunning, Thad. 2010. “Design-Based Inference: Beyond the Pitfalls of Regression

Analysis?” Ch 14 in Brady, Collier, and Seawright. Rethinking Social Inquiry. 2nd

Edition

2) Rosenbaum. 2010. Design of Observational Studies.

Sections: 1-1.5

Sections: 5.1-5.2.4 (skim)

Summary: Key Elements of Design

3) Gerring 2012, Ch 10 (Causal Strategies)

Recommended:

1) Dunning, T. 2008. “Improving Causal Inference.” Political Research Quarterly 61(2):

282.

2) Angrist, JD, and JS Pischke. 2010. “The Credibility Revolution in Empirical Economics:

How Better Research Design is Taking the Con Out of Econometrics.” Journal of

 Economic Perspectives 24(2).

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3) Rosenzweig, M, and Kenneth I Wolpin. 2000. “Natural ‘Natural Experiments’ in

Economics.” Journal of Economic Literature 38(4).

Design-Based Inference: Instrumental Variables, RD, Mechanisms

Required Reading:

1) Rosenbaum 2010, 5.3-end (skim)

2) Morgan and Winship, ch 8 (skim)

3) Acemoglu, D, S Johnson, and JA Robinson. 2001. “The colonial origins of comparative

development: An empirical investigation.” American Economic Review 91(5): 1369– 

1401.

Recommended Reading:

1) Morgan and Winship, Ch 7

Design-Based Inference: Multiple-Comparisons Bias, Publication Bias,

Robustness

Required Reading:

1) Morgan and Winship, 5.4.2

2) Gelman, A, and D Weakliem. 2009. “Of Beauty, Sex and Power: Too little attention has

 been paid to the statistical challenges in estimating small effects.” American Scientist  

97(4): 310–316.

3) Ioannidis, John P A. 2005. “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” PLoS

Medicine 2(8): e124.

4) Leamer, EE. 1983. “Let's take the con out of econometrics.” The American EconomicReview.

5) Mullard, Asher. “Reliability of ‘new drug target’ claims called into question.” Nature

 Reviews Drug Discovery 10: 643-644.

6) Freedman, David H. 2011. “Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science.” The Atlantic.

7) Seife, Charles. “The Mind-Reading Salmon: The True Meaning of Statistical

Significance.” Scientific American.

Recommended Reading:

1) Blattman, Chris. 2011. “Behavioral Economics and Randomized Trials: Trumpeted,

Attacked and Parried.” Blog Entry.

2) Goldacre, Ben. 2011. “Backwards Step on Looking into the Future”. The Guardian. 

3) Zimmer, Carl. 2011. “It’s Science, but Not Necessarily Right.” The New York Times.

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Research Design AssignmentMA Social Science Methods, 2011, Uppala University

Convenors: Katrin Uba and Allan Dafoe

One cannot repair a weak research design with a strong data analysis.

-Richard Berk

 Research design begins, and ends, with the evaluation of “plausible rival hypotheses”.

-John Gerring, 20121 

The basis of good research is a solid research design. Furthermore, methods are often more fun

and easy to learn when they are in the context of advancing one’s research. For these reasons, the

major graded assignment in this course is a research design assignment in which you will

 propose a design to study a question of interest. You should think of this as a draft proposal for

your MA thesis project or a grant proposal.

The first draft is due Friday Dec 9thth

, the final draft due noon Jan 9th

. The assignment should be

no more than 5 pages, including figures and tables (Times New Roman, 12 point font, 1.5 lines,

1 inch margins). Your list of references are not included in the 5 pages. Note, you should easily

 be able to fill 40 pages with your thinking about your research design; being forced to articulate

it in only 5 pages is a challenge, not a break.2  Submit your assignment as a pdf -format

3 with

filename consisting of RDA (for research design assignment), an underscore, and your last name,

1

 In other words (Gerring 2012): “A good research design allows one to prove the mainhypothesis and reject plausible alternatives.”

2 Quoting Gerring 2012 on the arduousness of concision: “Pascal once apologized to a

correspondent: ‘The present letter is long, as I had no time to make it shorter.’”3 Professionally, you should always submit documents as at least a pdf-format since it is more

robust, open, and free of viruses than proprietary formats like word.

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like this: RDA_Smith.pdf. Post it to your group’s folder in Studentportalen. If you compose your

assignment in word, also post a word -format of the assignment, similarly labelled.

The assignment should include a research question, primary and alternative theories with

 precisely articulated rival testable hypotheses, and the research design (how you will test these

hypotheses, the data you will use, your case selection strategy, how you will analyse the data).

Your assignment should begin with a very short (e.g. 150 words) abstract summarizing your

research proposal.

You can choose any interesting and relevant research question, but you have to argue for this

choice. We do not expect you to have knowledge of all the relevant theories and prior literature

about your chosen topics, but you need to articulate at least two plausible theories that imply

competing hypotheses (otherwise, how could you draw any inferences!). These theories and

hypotheses may be drawn from the literature, may be your own synthesis of different literatures,

or may be your own ideas. You can use course materials as well as external literatures to argue

for the value of your research question, theory, and research design. At some point, you should

articulate precisely what your testable hypotheses are by stating, e.g., “ Hypothesis 1: ...”

You can receive VG, G or U for this assignment. An excellent paper has all the following done

very well:

•  Short and appropriate title (either informative or intriguing)

•  Abstract summarizing proposal in less than one half of a page.

•  Clearly articulated research question. An argument for the importance of studying this

question.

•  Brief discussion of at least one good theory (scoring high on Gerring’s criteria) that speak

to this research question, and ideally multiple.

•  Explicitly stated testable rival hypotheses.4 

•  A research design that can generate evidence that will discriminate between these

hypotheses.

4 One of the hypotheses can be the typical “null of no difference”.

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•  Discussion of potential issues in the research design, and how they might be addressed

(case selection, confounding, selection biases, low power, dependence, limited access to

data, measurement issues, etc…)

•  Appropriate citations to the literature, with a reference list at the end of the proposal (not

counted in the 5 pages).

You will turn in two drafts of this assignment. The first will be due by 5pm Friday December

9thth

. You will get feedback on this draft in the seminar on December 16th

. The second and final

draft will be due at noon January 9th

. You will be graded on this final draft.

Below follows the (slightly edited, but otherwise verbatim) description of a similar assignment

 by John Gerring, which you may use for additional insight into how to think about this

assignment. Gerring’s assignment is geared towards PhD students, though, and the assignment is

much more extensive. You are not expected to, for example, provide a very thorough literature

review. Where there is other disagreement between Gerring’s assignment and ours, clearly you

should use our description as your guide.

***

The assignment…

The major written work for this class consists of a research proposal on a subject of your own choosing.

This proposal should take approximately the same form as a dissertation prospectus or grant

 proposal. Indeed, you may consider this assignment as a dress-rehearsal for your master’s thesis,

dissertation, or grant proposal. It should include a big theory (what it’s all about; the theoretical interest),

a specific hypothesis or set of related hypotheses, and a research design (how you propose to investigate

your hypothesis). Be as clear and well-organized as possible. Anticipate possible objections.

In addition to this brief set of guidelines, you are well-advised to consult various sources on

writing and publishing listed in the Addenda of the course syllabus.

OBJECTIVES 

1. The theory, and the hypothesis, informing the study must be fairly general in scope. At the very

least, it must be broader than a single country. You may, however, focus in on a small terrain for purposes

of testing your idea. Sometimes, small samples have high external validity.

2. You are strongly encouraged to make a causal argument, rather than a predictive or descriptive

one. Predictive arguments may flow from causal arguments (indeed, they may be unavoidable), but they

would not typically be the main subject of a political science proposal. The reasons for preferring causal

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over descriptive arguments are more complicated and should be briefly reviewed. First, descriptive

inference is in some respects harder (as discussed in the course). Second, we will be talking mostly about

causal arguments during the course of the semester. Third, the discipline is obsessed with causal

arguments, so it is a good idea to figure out how they work. And finally, there is more pay-off to you (on

the job market or wherever you end up).

3. You must propose a specific hypothesis. Clarify, if it is not entirely clear, what change on X is predicted to result in what change in Y. Of course, you may be unsure about which of several possible

hypotheses to focus on. It is natural to begin a dissertation with a high degree of uncertainty. However, it

is not possible to write a convincing proposal by merely stating a series of questions. Exploratory

 proposals are possible, but only if there are some plausible expectations that render the proposal

interesting – theoretically and/or substantively. The more specific you can be, the better, for without such

specificity it is very difficult to engage questions of method – the primary purpose of the course.

4. A dissertation is a large piece of work so there is space to make more than one argument. The

 proposal, however, is a very short piece of work and there is space for only one main hypothesis, or a set

of hypotheses that are tightly integrated. Do not suppose that the proposal must incorporate all that you

will deal with in the dissertation (and the eventual book or set of articles that you plan to write).

5. Remember that you need not stick with your chosen theory and hypothesis through the rest of

your graduate career. This is an exercise, not a final product. Its purpose is largely heuristic, that is, to

help you think through the process of conceptualizing and implementing research – and, more

specifically, writing a dissertation. It does not matter to me whether you do end up doing what you say

you will be doing. Consider the proposal a hypothetical plan of action. It matters whether this plan is

workable, but it does not matter if you choose to abandon it or dramatically reformulate it in future years.

6. The literature review must be extensive enough to show the value-added of your suggested

 project. That is, you need to verify whether your idea has already been explored by other scholars, and if

so with what results. If your contribution is empirical rather than theoretical, then you need to show that

your research design is better than – or adds something significant – to the body of extant empirical work

on the subject. Your review should involve printed sources (published books and articles, as well asunpublished papers) but also direct contact with scholars working in the chosen subfield. Sometimes, the

latter is the best way to arrive at a determination of whether a topic is truly novel, or merely

commonsense, and whether it is workable. But if not (and given the specialization of the academy, this is

unlikely) you should consult scholars by email wherever they happen to be. Remember that your prof in

this course is not an expert in everything (some might argue that he is an expert in nothing). The most that

I can do is to weigh in on the methodological components of your proposal; its substantive contribution is

 probably not an area in which I will have much to say (and if I do say anything you should take it with a

grain of salt).

ORGANIZATION 

As a summary of your proposal, please include this information on the first page, along with your name,

the title of the project, and the date:

1)  Theory:

2)   Hypothesis:

3)   Research Design:

This is the format employed by AJPS in all their articles and you might want to scan this journal if you

are unsure what these categories mean or how they can be answered in several sentences. Of course, they

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are highly reductive. You will have plenty of chance to explain if your proposal does not fit neatly into

these boxes.

In the body of the proposal, you might consider the following organization (keeping in mind that

this will vary somewhat according to the topic, the state of the literature on this topic, and your

argument):

 Introduction. Introduce the general topic or question of your research. What’s the big picture?You should say something about the everyday or policy significance of the topic if not this is not

apparent.

General theory and literature review. Clarify what the value-added of your study might be,

relative to extant work on the subject. There are three ways of establishing this. You may point out that a)

this topic is insufficiently studied; b) there are important unresolved questions (debates); or c) the

 prevailing wisdom on this matter is wrong. (These three tacks are not mutually exclusive.)

Do not write pages and pages of literature review. Try to be as concise as possible, while

remaining comprehensive, in your review. The best way to do this is usually to structure your discussion

 by way of substantive points, citing authors as you go. For example, rather than reviewing what Smith

(1980), Jones (1999), and Hall (2005) have to say, seriatim, disaggregate the literature on the topic by its

substantive findings and/or methods. For example: “There are three approaches to the question of the

democratic peace: a) the case study (e.g., Smith 1980), b) the crossnational statistical study (e.g., Jones

1999), and c) the formal model (e.g., Hall 2005).”

If the literature on your subject is vast and complicated, you might consider presenting them in

tabular format. E.g.,

Study Finding Sample Method Weakness

Smith (1980) Positive Switzerland Case study

Jones (1999) Negative All countries, 1960- Large-N Xnatl

Hall (2005) Positive None Formal model

 Hypothesis. Sometimes, the hypothesis can be stated as part of the general theory. Sometimes, it

is helpful to introduce it later, as an instantiation of that theory.

In any case, if your argument is rather complicated, draw a diagram showing how the major

factors in your theory inter-relate. As an example, here is a diagram that I constructed for a recent project

on democracy and development:

1. Economic policy2. Infrastructure

3. Policy continuity

4. Social peace

5. Environmental policy

6. Education

7. Public health

8. Gender equality

9. Economic growth

1. Policy investments

2. Learning

3. Institutionalization

4. Inclusion

5. Consensus, Stability

Causal Outcomes

Democratization

Causal

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 Research design. Next, discuss the nature of the evidence that you will be evaluating and the

form of analysis that you will employ. Since this is the main topic of the course, this is the section that I

will be paying closest attention to.

If there are a relatively small number of cases and a large number of variables, I stronglyencourage you to construct a “truth table” in which you score each case (or each case type) on each

dimension (i.e., on each independent and dependent variable). This will allow you – and us – to evaluate

the evidence in a concise format. Of course, this is not possible in projects that incorporate a large sample

or where the scoring of cases is unknown, as with experiments.

Be sure you justify your choice of research design. How does your approach differ (or not) from

other writers? Why did you choose this research design, and not others?

Finally, and very importantly, discuss the possible weaknesses of this research design. Recall that

the objective of this course is to teach methodology, not simply to develop good research. This means

enhancing methodological selfconsciousness. If your research design has flaws or limitations (as all do),

acknowledge these. Your job is not to identify a perfect research design but rather the one that is “best

 possible,” under the circumstances – given limited time, resources, access to materials, ethical constraints,

and so forth.