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“New Political History”: Some Statistical Questions Raised

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

William G. Shade
William G. Shade*
Affiliation:
Lehigh University
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Extract

In the last two decades, the most interesting new perspectives on the history of American voting behavior have come from a small group of historians writing what Bogue (1968) termed the “New Political History.” While members of this group have been characterized by theoretical and methodological concerns that transcend their interest in quantitative analysis, they have emphasized the use of statistics in historical research. At first, this technical innovation awed traditional historians and limited critical commentary on the techniques employed by the “new” historians. Recently, however, both the substantive findings and the methods of these historians have received increasing scrutiny Wright, 1973; McCormick, 1974; Kousser, 1976).

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Spring 1981 , pp. 171 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1981

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