Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-b95js Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-02T04:13:45.358Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Active Citation: A Precondition for Replicable Qualitative Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2010

Andrew Moravcsik
Andrew Moravcsik
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Qualitative research dominates political science. In the field of international relations (IR), for example, about 70% of scholars primarily employ qualitative methods, compared to 21% favoring formal or quantitative analysis (Jordan et al. 2009). Since nearly all of the latter make secondary use of textual and historical methods, overall over 90% of IR scholars employ qualitative analysis, whereas 48% use any statistical and only 12% any formal methods. This understates the dominance of qualitative analysis, for many statistical data sets rest ultimately on historical work, and IR scholars, when polled, report that qualitative case studies are more relevant for policy than quantitative or formal work. Hardly any major IR debate—whether that over the end of the cold war, American unipolarity, Chinese foreign policy, the nature of European integration, compliance with international law, democratic peace, the causes of war, or the impact of human rights norms—remains untouched by important qualitative contributions.

Type
Symposium
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 29 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2010

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

Bass, Gary. 2008. Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Bates, Robert H., Greif, Avner, Levi, Margaret, Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent, and Weingast, Barry R. 1998. Analytic Narratives. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Box-Steffensmeier, Janet M., and Tate, Katherine. 1995. “Data Accessibility in Political Science: Putting the Principle into Practice.” PS: Political Science and Politics 28 (3): 470–72.Google Scholar
Brady, Henry, and Collier, David. 2004. Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Christensen, Thomas. 1996. Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization and Sino-American Conflict, 1947–1958. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Elman, Colin, Kapiszewski, Diana, and Vinuela, Lorena. 2010. “Qualitative Data Archiving: Rewards and Challenges.” PS: Political Science and Politics 43 (1): 23–27.Google Scholar
George, Alexander L., and Bennett, Andrew. 2005. Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Goldgeier, James M. 1999. Not Whether but When: The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Jordan, Richard, Maliniak, Daniel, Oakes, Amy, Peterson, Susan, and Tierney, Michael J.. 2009. “One Discipline or Many? TRIP Survey of International Relations Faculty in Ten Countries.” Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) Project, Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations, The College of William and Mary. http://irtheoryandpractice.wm.edu/projects/trip/Final_Trip_Report2009.pdf.Google Scholar
King, Gary. 1995. “Replication, Replication.” PS: Political Science and Politics 28 (3): 444–52.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
Khong, Yuen Foong. 1992. Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, Jack S., Christensen, Thomas J., and Trachtenberg, Marc. 1991. “Correspondence: Mobilization and Inadvertence in the July Crisis.” International Security 16 (1): 189–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lieber, Keir A. 2007. “The New History of World War I and What It Means for International Relations Theory.” International Security 32 (2): 155–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lieberman, Evan, Howard, Marc, and Lynch, Julia. 2004. “Symposium: Field Research.” Qualitative Methods 2 (Spring): 2–15.Google Scholar
Lustick, Ian. 1996a. “Read My Footnotes,” APSA-CP 7 (1): 6–10. http://www.nd.edu/~apsacp/pdf/APSA-CP_7_1.pdfGoogle Scholar
Lustick, Ian. 1996b. “History, Historiography, and Political Science: Multiple Historical Records and the Problem of Selection Bias.” American Political Science Review 90 (3): 605–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milner, Helen V. 1989. Resisting Protectionism: Global Industries and the Politics of International Trade. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Moravcsik, Andrew. 1998. The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Moravcsik, Andrew. 2000a. “De Gaulle between Grain and Grandeur: The Economic Origins of French EC Policy, 1958–1970 (Part I).” Journal of Cold War Studies 2 (2): 3–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moravcsik, Andrew. 2000b. “De Gaulle between Grain and Grandeur: The Economic Origins of French EC Policy, 1958–1970 (Part 2).” Journal of Cold War Studies 2 (3): 4–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owen, John M. 2000. Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Parry, Odette, and Mauthner, Natasha S.. 2004. “Whose Data Are They Anyway? Practical, Legal and Ethical Issues in Archiving Qualitative Research Data.” Sociology 38 (February): 139–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skocpol, Theda. 1984. Vision and Method in Historical Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tønnesson, Stein. 2009. “Extended notes for Stein Tønnesson, Vietnam 1946: How the War Began, Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 2010.” http://www.cliostein.com/documents/2009/091002_Extended_notes_for_%20VN_1946.pdf.Google Scholar
Trachtenberg, Marc. 2006. The Craft of International History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Trachtenberg, Marc. n.d. “A Constructed Peace: Appendices.” http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/trachtenberg/appendices/annexlist.html.Google Scholar
Van Evera, Stephen. 1997. Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar