This book began as a series of conversations among colleagues about the dearth of good resources to illustrate how theory building and policy-relevant research is done in political science, particularly using qualitative methods. We noted the negative impact on theory building in policy-oriented fields. We discussed the all-too-frequent divide between scholarship and policy. We lamented the lack of relevance of many of the primarily quantitative methods prevalent in the discipline to the sorts of research projects many researchers do. Then we began to plan this book.
We thus strive to address three pressing needs. First, we engage with the debate in the field over the validity of qualitative methods, illustrating throughout the chapters how various approaches can not only be methodologically rigorous, but also contribute to deeper, richer , and more nuanced understanding of important political phenomena. Second, we directly address how various qualitative and transdisciplinary methods can be particularly useful for theory building and policy-relevant research because they provide detail-rich explanations conducive to both. Finally, we focus on “the doing” part of research, namely exactly how particular methods were applied in specific research contexts. We assert, through our work presented here, that qualitative political research produces valid results that are opportune to building and refining theory and informing practice. In so doing, we weigh in on a robust epistemological debate within the social sciences over how the study of social phenomena should be conducted in order to build empirical understanding and theoretical knowledge. In political science, there is a tendency to prefer quantitative analysis, including large-n studies and formal models , given their purported relative strength in external validity . Qualitative researchers have been counseled to approximate the “scientific” approach , defined as following the conventions of quantitative models as closely as possible (King et al. 1994). Yet, many questions within the field are not conducive to quantitative analysis. We demonstrate here that, structured appropriately, qualitative studies of such phenomena can build theory and inform policy through empirical study, and in so doing add to our understanding of important international events.
We, therefore, contribute to the ongoing, larger discussion that is taking place in political science pertaining to the formulation of so-called appropriate methods. We expose how qualitatively oriented political science scholars actually do their work, in order to clarify our procedures, and be frontal with our methodological considerations and choices with the aim of illustrating the methodological rigor at the foundation of this type of research. One of the advantages of this work is that it not only demonstrates a range of alternative methods for doing political research, but it also explains the utility of these particular methods in order to answer key questions in the discipline. In addition, we begin to answer the call for qualitative researchers to be more explicit in how we conduct our work. Indeed, scholars have noted that criticism of qualitative research can in part be a response to the fact that “researchers have not been as clear about their methods” as they could have been (Yanow 2003, 11).
This has led to debate in the field on data access and research transparency (DA-RT) . Amid urgent calls from the Council of the American Political Science Association , qualitative scholars in particular are being enjoined to address at length how their data is generated and how they draw inferences on the basis of such data. Indeed, it has been spelled out that “DA-RT allows qualitative scholars to demonstrate the power of their inquiry, offering an opportunity to address a central paradox: that scholars who value close engagement with the social world and generate rich, thick data rarely …detail how they generated and deployed those data” (Elman and Kapiszewski 2014, 46). While we do not agree with all aspects of the debate,1 and resulting policy positions, we do agree that greater reflection and transparency on how research is conducted can contribute to greater systematicity and rigor.
In debates regarding the validity of qualitative methods, disagreements between qualitative and quantitative researchers are commonly referred to as the quantitative-qualitative divide, so wide is the chasm between these two approaches to the study of politics. Although our point of departure herein is that qualitative research methods can, and do, contribute to the generation and refinement of theories, within political science, researchers working in this tradition tend to be sidelined, their work being viewed as lacking rigor , generalizability , objectivity , replicability , and a systematic approach. This view of qualitative research is usually held up in sharp contrast to quantitative research that tends to be viewed in a much more “positive” light, bringing “rigor to the logical structure of theories and the assessment of evidence for and against those theories. This rigor aims at making the creation and analysis of data and the elaboration of theory more visible to the scientific community” (McLaughlin Mitchell et al. 2012, xiii). Before elucidating how qualitative research contributes to theory building, we lay the foundation for our assertion by looking briefly at these two broad approaches to knowledge production —the quantitative approach and the qualitative approach.
As political science researchers, one key question we should ask of ourselves is: what is the purpose of political and other kinds of social research? As researchers, we are producing and making claims to knowledge. Correspondingly, there is a politics of knowledge 2 that at least, in part, asks the question: how do we come by this knowledge? Put simply, how do we know what we know? What are the acceptable methods within the political and other social sciences for acquiring this knowledge? For quantitative political scientists whose work is grounded in a positivist epistemology , the path to knowledge is often viewed as being linear, value-free, neutral, and testable. On this basis, there is an objective reality to be studied, understood, and explained, and scientists can grasp this objective reality because any subjectivity which they may take with them to collecting and explaining their data can be “controlled for” by strictly abiding by neutral procedures for systematic experiments and logical deductions. This is typically delineated as the theory-testing approach.
It usually begins with a review of the relevant literature in the researcher’s field in which the aim is to pull the key concepts related to their project and utilize them to formulate or restate their research question ; this will consist of different theoretical hypotheses that suggest different relationships between the concepts (Ackerly and True 2010). This may be referred to as the theoretical argument of the question. Thereafter, this set of hypotheses is tested empirically to answer the research question, as well as to arrive at a deeper understanding of the subject at hand. However, in order to test the theoretical argument, its composite concepts and the relationship between them must be approximated by measurable real-world proxies. This is, then, a literature-based approach to developing theory and testing hypotheses, which follows the path of formulating a theoretical argument of the question before formulating a research plan. The logic of this approach to research emphasizes: the collection of data using standardized approaches to a range of variables ; the search for patterns of causal relationships between these variables ; and the testing of a given theory by confirming or denying precise hypotheses (Henn et al. 2009). Also of note, in this approach the researcher and the researched are seen as being on “different planes.” It involves a hierarchical positioning in which the researcher is privileged as the only knower (Hesse-Biber and Leavy 2011, 8). There is no agency on the part of the researched.
In contrast, for qualitative researchers, the central logic is not to test given theories; it is, instead, to seek theories (Ackerly and True 2010) or to build theories (Henn et al. 2009). In this approach, there is no linear course such as that seen in quantitative research. In following the theory-seeking path, qualitative researchers work to understand and interpret a particular phenomenon utilizing conceptual tools that are formulated in the process of reflecting upon the phenomenon in question. As such, this is an explicitly non-linear path t...