Political ScienceWordPress.com

Politics, Science, Political Science

Home PageAtom Feed
language
Published
Author Ingo Rohlfing

About two weeks ago, COMPASSS issued a Statement on Rejecting Article Submissions because of QCA Solution Type. In short, the reasoning was that methodological work on QCA is developing and that reviewers and editors should not judge empirical work based on whether one particular solution type is interpreted as causal.

Published
Author Ingo Rohlfing

The idea of most-likely and least-likely cases dates back to Eckstein and was one of the few remaining things in qualitative research there seemed to be no disagreement about because they are considered an asset in causal analysis. In a paper that is advance access, Beach and Pedersen (BP) now argue that process tracing and the analysis of mechanisms does not make sense with most-likely and least-likely cases.

Published
Author Ingo Rohlfing

One of the recent big and, in my view, underappreciated innovations in the field of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is Baumgartner’s formulation of the Coincidence Analysis algorithm (CNA). Baumgartner presents it as an alternative to QCA, which I do not find convincing because I do not see QCA married to a specific algorithm.

Published
Author Ingo Rohlfing

For some time now, a discussion has been raging about the pros and cons of set theory and the use of set-theoretic methods (STM) in the social sciences (e.g., in Sociological Methodology and the APSA Newsletter). Following up on a critical discussion by Paine and a constructive, comparative discussion of STM and regression analysis by Thiem, Baumgartner and Bol (TBB), Comparative Political Studies organized a symposium on STM.

Published
Author Ingo Rohlfing

When we use the Quine-McCluskey algorithm to derive a QCA solution, we can choose between the conservative, intermediate or parsimonious solution. While I do not have any figures about which solution has been produced how frequently in empirical research, it is safe to say that the conservative solution is quite popular.

Published
Author Ingo Rohlfing

The social science literature is full of discussions about causation and what the best method for causal inference might be. However, a relatively small percentage of them draw on the philosophical debate about causation. Certainly, there is a great deal of talk about philosophy of science on the ontological and metaphysical level, including, for example, engagement with the relation between neo-positivism and realism.

Published
Author Ingo Rohlfing

Recently, Frontal 21 – a German newscast – reported about the handling of error in treatments under German health care law (about which I am not an expert). A lawyer specializing in health care law explained that it is very difficult to win lawsuits against medical doctors (MD’s) because the patient claiming to experience treatment error has to substantiate this claim (except for grave treatment error). Particularly problematic are cases where