Morgan,
Good summary of what she’s saying. Can you add to you ‘concepts’ post by pulingl out the most important concepts that she’s using throughout the book? You can do this in bullet points — identify the concept, maybe highlight it in bold, quote her definition of this concept, and add your own comments about how she uses it throughout the book. For each concept, is it useful? Is it different from what we see elsewhere in the literature?
Thank you for this post, especially this section: “On another note, Geddes spends a substantial amount of pages considering the amount of, and the importance of case study evidence in comparative politics. This is argued as a way to create and build upon a substantial and firm foundation in the field. While comparative is a method of discovering empirical relationships, it is not the scientific method, and it is not a method of measurement.”
One of the trickier aspects of comparative politics may be the search for empirical relationships while using methods that are not necessarily measurements of something material or naturalistic. I like that you picked out the author’s contrast between the empirical relationships found in comparative political study work- or the empirical patterns- and the very different approach to “measurement” that political science has to other sciences.
Thank you! I think that Geddes work in showing that the measures and the empirical work needed to be done in comparative is so applicable to all of political science as a whole. It is difficult to really conceptualize and meausre the concepts and relationships that we are dealing with. Because of this, I feel that not only does Geddes contribute to the methodological workings and structures inside of comparative politics, but that she also speaks broadly to the entirety of political science methodology.
Morgan,
Good summary of what she’s saying. Can you add to you ‘concepts’ post by pulingl out the most important concepts that she’s using throughout the book? You can do this in bullet points — identify the concept, maybe highlight it in bold, quote her definition of this concept, and add your own comments about how she uses it throughout the book. For each concept, is it useful? Is it different from what we see elsewhere in the literature?
Hi, Morgan,
Thank you for this post, especially this section: “On another note, Geddes spends a substantial amount of pages considering the amount of, and the importance of case study evidence in comparative politics. This is argued as a way to create and build upon a substantial and firm foundation in the field. While comparative is a method of discovering empirical relationships, it is not the scientific method, and it is not a method of measurement.”
One of the trickier aspects of comparative politics may be the search for empirical relationships while using methods that are not necessarily measurements of something material or naturalistic. I like that you picked out the author’s contrast between the empirical relationships found in comparative political study work- or the empirical patterns- and the very different approach to “measurement” that political science has to other sciences.
Yes, I agree!
Thank you! I think that Geddes work in showing that the measures and the empirical work needed to be done in comparative is so applicable to all of political science as a whole. It is difficult to really conceptualize and meausre the concepts and relationships that we are dealing with. Because of this, I feel that not only does Geddes contribute to the methodological workings and structures inside of comparative politics, but that she also speaks broadly to the entirety of political science methodology.