POL 161 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Comparative Politics, Inductive Reasoning, Deductive Reasoning
Document Summary
Interactions between the variables themselves: many are interconnected & interact > multicasuality, 3. Limits to our information & information gathering: limited by the number of countries and attempting to control differences makes the list even smaller, 4. Comparative politics concerns how we access the few cases available: much information needed is not easy to get [money, time, unwilling interviewers, government bar, language skill, single-case studies: give researcher case depth & close observation, 5. Focus tends to be limited on single geographic region [area studies: distributed unevenly around the world [much of the focus in western europe, 6. Problem of bias makes it harder to control for variables & select the right cases [selection bias: 7. Search for cause and effect: problem of distinguishing between cause & effect is endogeneity > cannot ascertain if it is correct. Comparative method: means by which social scientists make comparisons across cases. Comparative politics: study and comparison of domestic politics across countries.
