Postgraduate course 2021/2022

Interpretive research in political science: theory and methods

Type: Elective course

Area of studies: Political Science and Area Studies

Delivered by: School of Politics and Governance

When: 2 year, 1 semester

Mode of studies: offline

Open to: students of one campus

Instructors: Iain Ferguson

Language: English

ECTS credits: 4

Contact hours: 36

Course Syllabus

Abstract

This is an advanced, 9-week course on qualitative methods in political science. It is designed to help students make choices about which method(s) to use in their PhD dissertations The methods that we look at on this course involve either a positivist explanation of political cases and processes or an interpretive explanation of political ideas and actions. What distinguishes these approaches to research in political science is not where we look for evidence, or even how we gather that evidence, but what actually counts as evidence. The course opens with an exploration of this problem of explanation with reference to the ‘democratic peace theory’ in international relations. The claim of this theory is the absence of war between democratic states “comes as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations” . Where a positivist test of this theory focuses on regime type and institutional incentives, an interpretive test focuses on the action-guiding ideas of a certain mode of political association. These different empirical foci (regime type or political ideas) support different explanations of political behaviour and arrive at different conclusions about whether this theory is reasonable or not. The ‘positivist’ and the ‘interpretivist’, in other words, see the world differently. Where we choose to begin in our qualitative research – what explanatory angle of vision we take – will have significant implications for the evidence we gather, the methods we use and the conclusions we reach. This choice is one that we will return to at the end of the course in our discussion on research design. Two important points to add: (1) There is more of an emphasis on the interpretive approach to qualitative research in this course; which is justifiable given that most courses on methods and methodology in the Department emphasise a positivist ontology and epistemology. (2) The ‘democratic peace thesis’ is the one international relations example of qualitative research we will look at. The bulk of this course is aimed at supporting qualitative research on comparative politics and government.