Theory and Credibility - by Scott Ashworth & Christopher R Berry & Ethan Bueno De Mesquita (Paperback)

About the Book

"As political science has come to depend more and more on quantitative methods, with a significant focus on causal identification (put simply, "what causes what"), there has been a growing concern that the questions scholars address are getting smaller, shrinking to include only those topics for which the so-called "identification problem" can be satisfactorily solved. Yet even if this problem cannot yet be solved for many important and complex topics--democracy, inequality, violence, stability, and many more--there is much left to learn; in particular, clear theories that provide better insight into the central mechanisms at work. These theories can help orient new empirical work, thus fueling a virtuous cycle between empirical and theoretical insights. In this ambitious book. Ashworth et al address this key challenge in the field with a new vision of how to connect empirical and theoretical work, one rooted in the idea of "all else equal." Theory, the authors argue, implicitly rests of the idea of "all-else-equal," and it's precisely this question that empirical work attempts to confirm. Thus theory and empirics have an intrinsic connection, and in recognizing this scholars can bridge the gap between the two. The first part of the book examines the "all-else-equal" connection and goes on to show how how theoretical models yield empirical implications and how substantive identification is the lynch-pin of a credible research design. The second part then follows the progressive back-and-forth between theory and empirics in existing scholarship, breaking these interactions into five types: reinterpreting, elaboration, distinguishing, disentangling, and modeling the research design. Each chapter in this section provides concrete examples, discussing a handful of papers that illustrates the relevant interaction between theory and empirics. The overall goal of the book is to facilitate a closer and more productive interaction between theory and empirics in social science"--

Book Synopsis

A clear and comprehensive framework for bridging the widening gap between theorists and empiricists in social science

The credibility revolution, with its emphasis on empirical methods for causal inference, has led to concerns among scholars that the canonical questions about politics and society are being neglected because they are no longer deemed answerable. Theory and Credibility stakes out an opposing view--presenting a new vision of how, working together, the credibility revolution and formal theory can advance social scientific inquiry.

This authoritative book covers the conceptual foundations and practicalities of both model building and research design, providing a new framework to link theory and empirics. Drawing on diverse examples from political science, it presents a typology of the rich set of interactions that are possible between theory and empirics. This typology opens up new ways for scholars to make progress on substantive questions, and enables researchers from disparate traditions to gain a deeper appreciation for each other's work and why it matters.

Theory and Credibility shows theorists how to create models that are genuinely useful to empirical inquiry, and helps empiricists better understand how to structure their research in ways that speak to theoretically meaningful questions.

About the Author

Scott Ashworth is professor at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. Twitter @soashworth Christopher R. Berry is the William J. and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor at Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. He is the author of Imperfect Union. Ethan Bueno de Mesquita is the Sydney Stein Professor and deputy dean at Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. He is the author of Political Economy for Public Policy (Princeton). Twitter @ethanbdm