Description
Book SynopsisThis volume represents a first. Never before has a book focused completely on the implications of necessary conditions for social science research, logic, methodology, research design, and theory. Rarely is the contrast so wide between the prevalence of a concept in scholarship and its absence in methodology texts. Necessary Conditions presents literally hundreds of necessary condition hypotheses from all areas of political science and other social science methodologies, and is authored by many of the most influential social scientists of the last fifty years. Thus, this volume brings together essential work that deals not only with the analysis of common methodological, logical, and research design errors, but also the proper means-qualitative and quantitative-to analyze the many ramifications of necessary condition hypotheses and theories.
Trade ReviewThe book makes an important argument accessible to social scientists whether or not they are mathematically or statistically literate. Refreshing. * Sociology *
These essays contribute to fill a critical lacuna in the social science literature. Necessary Conditions deserves to be on the syllabus for all scope-and-methods courses for graduate training. * Journal of Peace Research *
This is an important and timely book. * Contemporary Sociology *
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction: Necessary Condition Logics, Research Design, and Theory Chapter 2 Basic Logic and Research Design: Conceptualization, Case Selection, and the Form of Relationships Chapter 3 Cause, Correlation, and Necessary Conditions Chapter 4 The Substantive Importance of Necessary Condition Hypotheses Chapter 5 Evidence and Inference in the Comparative Case Study Chapter 6 Necessary Conditions in Case Studies: Preferences, Constraints, and Choices in July 1914 Chapter 7 Practicing Coercion: Revisiting Successes and Failures Using Boolean Logic and Comparative Methods Chapter 8 Fuzzy-set Analysis of Necessary Conditions Chapter 9 The Statistical Methodology of Necessary Conditions Chapter 10 Opportunity, Willingness, and Political Uncertainty: Theoretical Foundations of Politics Chapter 11 Veto Players and Law Production in Parliamentary Democracies: An Empirical Analysis Chapter 12 The Decision to Attack Iraq: A Noncompensatory Theory of Decision-Making Chapter 13 Necessity and Sufficiency in Social Phenomena: Theoretical and Methodological Progress
