Rethinking Comparison in the Social Sciences: Promises and Possibilities

Session Submission Type: Virtual Roundtable

Session Description

The proposed round table will bring together scholars who have contributed chapters to the forthcoming volume, Rethinking Comparison: Innovative Methods for Qualitative Political Research. The authors will convene to explore together the motivating questions for the volume: (1) why do we compare what we compare and (2) how do the methodological assumptions we make about why and how we compare shape the knowledge we produce? We believe these are two of the most fundamental methodological questions in the social sciences.

Qualitative comparative methods—and specifically controlled qualitative comparisons–have been central to some of the most influential works of social science. Controlled comparisons drive studies of phenomena as varied as the paths to democracy and dictatorship (Moore 1993), the preconditions of social revolution (Skocpol 1979), and the effects of social capital on state effectiveness (Putnam 1993). These kinds of comparison continue to be a dominant force in political science methods.

Yet even as controlled comparisons have produced lasting insights and continue to dominate research designs, they are not the only form of comparison that scholars utilize. There is little methodological guidance, however, for how to design or execute comparisons that do not rely on control as a central element. Furthermore, there is little epistemological insight on why such comparisons might be compelling. As a result, scholars often eschew comparative research designs that are not premised on controlled comparisons. And even when scholars do employ a non-controlled comparative approach they rarely explain the utility of the comparisons that they employ. The consequences for knowledge are severe. When we limit the kinds of comparisons that we make, we necessarily constrain the kinds of questions that we ask, and limit the kinds of knowledge we produce (Ragin 2004, 128).

Each of the participants in the proposed round table has contributed a chapter to Rethinking Comparison that helps to fill this gap. The aim of the volume is to develop and explore the logics of comparisons that are not motivated by control. The collected essays achieve this goal by asking and answering foundational questions about comparative methods and their applicability to social science research. For instance, what kinds of questions lend themselves to non-controlled comparisons? How should we think through case selection? What kinds of insights about the world are non-controlled comparisons uniquely positioned to produce? In exploring these questions the book not only challenges conceptions of what a case is and what kinds of processes we should be comparing but also asks us to expand the possibilities for explanatory goals in political science.

With the chapters now complete, and largely written in isolation from one another since the initial workshop that launched the project, we would like to come together to talk about what we have learned, share ideas gleaned from writing process, and have a generative conversation about new possibilities produced by the approaches that each author has developed. The roundtable conversation will, we hope, take the insights developed in the book one step further. By coming together to discuss the ideas developed in each chapter we hope we will generate new insights, allowing us to continue to challenge conceptual foundations and create new possibilities to advance what we know about politics. As qualitative methods scholars we have much to gain by coming together to discuss the contributions of each of the book’s chapters and to share our insights as a community.

By expanding modes of qualitative comparative inquiry social scientists can both uncover new questions and drive innovations in how we ask questions about power and governance that have dominated the discipline for decades. The proposed conversation will encourage us to revisit big, ambitious research questions that are often difficult to tackle when we confine ourselves to cases that meet the standards of controlled comparison. More generally, the conversation will build on the goals of the edited volume by creating space to critically engage with the concepts that drive our discipline. Comparisons are not merely reflective of the field and its subjects; they serve to constitute both. If we can expand how we think about comparison, we can challenge how we think about the world and improve our understanding of it a result.

Sub Unit

• Division 46: Qualitative Methods

Chair

• Erica S. Simmons University of Wisconsin, Madison

Presenters

• Nicholas Rush Smith

• Jonathan Obert Amherst College

• Benjamin L. Read University of California, Santa Cruz