1,720,980 research outputs found
Replication Data for: Time Series Analysis for the Social Sciences
No full textReplication data and code to replicate the analyses in Box-Steffensmeier, Janet M., Freeman, John R., Hitt, Matthew P., and Pevehouse, Jon C. 2014. Time Series Analysis for the Social Sciences. New York: Cambridge University Press. If you use these data, please cite the original book, available from Cambridge University Press
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Typologies: Forming Concepts and Creating Categorical Variables
Full text linkPluralizing Comparison
No full textThis chapter provides an overview of pluralizing comparison. It highlights comparison as one of the fundamental building blocks of social science research. Political science graduate students are typically taught the comparative method during their training, which essentially revolves around J. S. Mill’s discussion on the method of agreement and the method of difference. The chapter references Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities study to showcase the possibilities for scholarly breakthroughs that might be possible if we diversify what, how, and why researchers compare. Moreover, the study forces social scientists to question the naturalness of nation-states as a unit of analysis while using comparative techniques, which are not reducible to the goal of causal inference
The Oxford handbook of political methodology
No full textPolitical methodology has changed dramatically over the past thirty years, and many new methods and techniques have been developed. Both the Political Methodology Society and the Qualitative/Multi-Methods Section of the American Political Science Association have engaged in ongoing research and training programs that have advanced quantitative and qualitative methodology. The Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology presents and synthesizes these developments. The Handbook provides comprehensive overviews of diverse methodological approaches, with an emphasis on three major themes. First, specific methodological tools should be at the service of improved conceptualization, comprehension of meaning, measurement, and data collection. They should increase analysts' leverage in reasoning about causal relationships and evaluating them empirically by contributing to powerful research designs. Second, the authors explore the many different ways of addressing these tasks: through case-studies and large-n designs, with both quantitative and qualitative data, and via techniques ranging from statistical modelling to process tracing. Finally, techniques can cut across traditional methodological boundaries and can be useful for many different kinds of researchers. Many of the authors thus explore how their methods can inform, and be used by, scholars engaged in diverse branches of methodology
The Factors of Interest Group Networks and Success: Organization, Issues and Resources
Full text linkWhile interest groups use a variety of techniques to exert influence, coalition strategies are the dominant lobbying technique. However, many questions remain about such coalitions. This paper is the second in a series of social network analyses of purposive and coordinated interest group relationships. We utilize a network measure based on cosigner status to United States Supreme Court amicus curiae, or friend of the court briefs. The illuminated structures lend insight into the central players and overall formation of the network over the first several years of the 21st century. The factions are tied together by various central players, who act as hubs, leaving a disparate collection of organizations that work alone. Using an exponential-family random graph model (ERGM), we find that graph-theorectic and organizational characteristics, such as size and budget, as well as policy interests explain interest group network formation
Invaluable Involvement: Purposive Interest Group Networks in the 21st Century
Full text linkWe present the first social network analysis of purposive and coordinated interest group relationships. We utilize a network measure based on cosigner status to United States Supreme Court amicus curiae, or friend of the court briefs. The illuminated structures lend insight into the central players and overall formation of the network over the first seven years of the 21st century. We find that the majority of interest groups primarily partake in coalition strategies with other groups of similar policy interest and ideological character. This is in contrast to previous literature that focused only on one or the other. The factions are tied together by various central players, who act as hubs, leaving a disparate collection of organizations that work alone. Network analysis provides evidence, for example, that the National Wildlife Foundation, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union are all particularly strong groups, but exploit different central roles. Ultimately, our work and data suggest several subsequent questions and opportunities pertaining to the coalition strategies of interest groups
Replication Data for: Modeling Unobserved Heterogeneity in Social Networks with the Frailty Exponential Random Graph Model
No full textIn the study of social processes, the presence of unobserved heterogeneity is a regular
concern. It should be particularly worrisome for the statistical analysis of networks,
given the complex dependencies that shape network formation combined with the re-
strictive assumptions of related models. In this paper, we demonstrate the importance
of explicitly accounting for unobserved heterogeneity in exponential random graph
models (ERGM) with a Monte Carlo analysis and two applications that have played
an important role in the networks literature. Overall, these analyses show that failing
to account for unobserved heterogeneity can have a significant impact on inferences
about network formation. The proposed frailty extension to the ERGM (FERGM)
generally outperforms the ERGM in these cases, and does so by relatively large mar-
gins. Moreover, our novel multilevel estimation strategy has the advantage of avoiding
the problem of degeneration that plagues the standard MCMC-MLE approach
Quality Over Quantity: Amici Influence and Judicial Decision Making
No full textReplication dataset (STATA 12 format) and code for Box-Steffensmeier, Christenson, and Hitt 2013, Quality Over Quantity: Amici Influence and Judicial Decision Making. Volume 107 Issue 3, American Political Science Review
Replication Data for: Modeling Unobserved Heterogeneity in Social Networks with the Frailty Exponential Random Graph Model
No full textIn the study of social processes, the presence of unobserved heterogeneity is a regular
concern. It should be particularly worrisome for the statistical analysis of networks,
given the complex dependencies that shape network formation combined with the re-
strictive assumptions of related models. In this paper, we demonstrate the importance
of explicitly accounting for unobserved heterogeneity in exponential random graph
models (ERGM) with a Monte Carlo analysis and two applications that have played
an important role in the networks literature. Overall, these analyses show that failing
to account for unobserved heterogeneity can have a significant impact on inferences
about network formation. The proposed frailty extension to the ERGM (FERGM)
generally outperforms the ERGM in these cases, and does so by relatively large mar-
gins. Moreover, our novel multilevel estimation strategy has the advantage of avoiding
the problem of degeneration that plagues the standard MCMC-MLE approach
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