POL222H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Thick Description, Comparative Politics, Political Philosophy
Document Summary
Political science is a diverse field : the main (only?) commonality is that we study politics, main subfields, political theory, canadian politics, comparative politics, international relations. Theory & hypothesis: democracies = less prone to war, economic development facilitates democratization. Empirical analysis: one we formulate our theory, we wish to explore whether our theory is correct, we examine actual cases in the real world to see if these cases coincide with our theory"s expectation. Qualitative empirical analysis: case studies: we may choose to examine a single case or a few cases intensively (small-n, detailed historical accounts, field research, qualitative interview, participant observation, thick description. Quantitative empirical analysis: collect data on a large number of cases (large-n, quantify relevant information = important concept measured in numbers, survey research (quantitative interview), aggregate data, statistical analysis. Why quantitative: we would like to know the systematic empirical regularity of political phenomena of our interest.
