Understanding Bayesianism: Fundamentals for Process Tracers

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Andrew Bennett ◽  
Andrew E. Charman ◽  
Tasha Fairfield
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Bayesian Analysis ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
The State ◽  
Process Tracing ◽  
Bayesian Reasoning ◽  
Mutual Exclusivity ◽  
Positive View

Abstract Bayesian analysis has emerged as a rapidly expanding frontier in qualitative methods. Recent work in this journal has voiced various doubts regarding how to implement Bayesian process tracing and the costs versus benefits of this approach. In this response, we articulate a very different understanding of the state of the method and a much more positive view of what Bayesian reasoning can do to strengthen qualitative social science. Drawing on forthcoming research as well as our earlier work, we focus on clarifying issues involving mutual exclusivity of hypotheses, evidentiary import, adjudicating among more than two hypotheses, and the logic of iterative research, with the goal of elucidating how Bayesian analysis operates and pushing the field forward.

A Better Solution to the General Problem of Creation

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-162
Author(s):  
Jeremy W. Skrzypek
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
General Problem ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Better Than

It is often suggested that, since the state of affairs in which God creates a good universe is better than the state of affairs in which He creates nothing, a perfectly good God would have to create that good universe. Making use of recent work by Christine Korgaard on the relational nature of the good, I argue that the state of affairs in which God creates is actually not better, due to the fact that it is not better for anyone or anything in particular. Hence, even a perfectly good God would not be compelled to create a good universe.

Reconceptualizing Clans: Kinship Networks and Statehood in Kazakhstan

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Schatz
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Sustained Attention ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Kinship Networks ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
Do So

What role, if any, does kinship play in modern political life? Recent work in comparative politics has focused on a variety of informal relationships. It is striking that kinship has not received similar, sustained attention. The broad assumption of most theoretically-driven work is that kinship is the domain of the anthropologist; to the extent that political scientists consider kinship, they do so as something for modern institutions to overcome, as something in fundamental opposition to the state apparatus.

‘Riding the Juggernaut’: Selectivity and Entrepreneurship in Ireland

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Carr
Keyword(s):  
Expert System ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Industrial Policy ◽  
Institutional Analysis ◽  
The State ◽  
Enterprise Culture ◽  
Dependency Theory ◽  
Science Discussion ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Relationship

The creation of a class of strong native entrepreneurs has long been an aim of Irish industrial policy. Social science discussion of strategies stimulating Irish enterprise have tended to emanate from two broad theoretical viewpoints, modernisation theory and dependency theory,f which hold opposing views on the role the Stale can play in the promotion of business and enterprise. Considerations of the relationship between the State and an indigenous class of entrepreneurs have tended to centre on notions of ‘modernising’ and the ‘modernisation’ of society. This article shifts the focus away from a concentration on modernising to a consideration of the nature of modernity. The tendency to equate modernisation and modernity is liable to conceal or misrepresent the activities of certain economic actors, in particular State personnel. Using elements of the institutional analysis of modernity developed by Giddens (1991), the article examines the ‘selectivity function’ of Irish State personnel and their relationship with potential Irish entrepreneurs. This selectivity function can be construed as an attempt to establish an expert system to enable State personnel to assert some control over the enterprise culture juggernaut.

scholarly journals Queensland’s Frontier Killing Times – Facing Up To Genocide

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Baldry ◽  
Ailsa McKeon ◽  
Scott McDougall
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Aboriginal People ◽  
The State ◽  
Consistent Pattern ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Sustained Use ◽  
Conspiracy Of Silence

<em>Timothy Bottoms’ recent work</em> Conspiracy of Silence: Queensland’s Frontier Killing Times <em>comprehensively documents the systematic killing of thousands of Aboriginal people across the State from the mid-19th until the early 20th century. The record suggests that during this period, significant portions of clan groupings and, in some cases, arguably entire nations of people were slaughtered. The sustained use of State-sanctioned violence via the Queensland Native Police Corps and the consistent pattern of killings raise several questions: Did these acts of violence constitute genocide? If so, who is responsible? What legal and policy avenues are available to address the intergenerational impacts of these unrecognised acts of genocide?</em>

scholarly journals Afterword: Citizenship and the politics of (im)material stigma and infrastructure

Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110553
Author(s):  
Charlotte Lemanski
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Infrastructure Health

This afterword to the Urban Vulnerabilities: Infrastructure, Health and Stigma special issue highlights two cross-cutting themes that are addressed by all the articles in the issue, and that have the potential to make a significant contribution to debates within urban studies. First, I reflect on how the articles reveal the inseparable connections between infrastructure and stigma, demonstrating both as political and material processes that are inter-dependent and mutually constitutive. Consequently, it is urgent to bridge disciplinary siloes in bringing these scholarly debates into deeper conversation in ways that recognise the materiality of stigma and the politicisation of infrastructure (and vice versa). Second, to a greater and lesser extent, the articles all reveal the centrality of citizenship to the capacity of both urban dwellers and the state to negotiate and/or restrict access to infrastructure, and to perpetuate and/or challenge the impacts of stigma. While the connections between infrastructure and citizenship are explored in my recent work on infrastructural citizenship, the articles in this collection demonstrate the importance of temporality and scale in understanding how citizens negotiate their material and political rights.

scholarly journals Islamic Sharia and Non-Muslim Citizens in Kanunname During Sultan Abdul Hamid II of the Ottoman Empire

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-68
Author(s):  
Meirison Alizar ◽  
Qasim Muhammadi
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Judicial System ◽  
Good Treatment ◽  
Analysis Approach ◽  
Leadership Crisis ◽  
Islamic Jurisprudence

The tolerant spirit of Islam has inspired Ottoman rulers to adopt policies relating to non-Muslim citizens. The leadership crisis in the Ottoman Empire and the Western interests through capitulation have changed judicial system in the empire, including the system for non-Muslims that allows them to conduct their own judiciary and provide absolute freedom of religious matters. Tanzimāt, which is expected to bring improvements to the legislation system in Ottoman Empire, has marginalized Islamic law which is only enforced in aḥwāl al-shakhṣiyyah. Sultan Abdul Hamid II tried to maintain Islamic law by codifying Western European style. Some legal codifications contain qawāid fiqhiyyah (principles of Islamic law) which are sourced from the books of the Hanafi School of jurisprudence, and some others adopt Western laws by taking a few opinions of Islamic jurisprudence. This study analyzed various literatures related to policies towards non-Muslim citizens in the Ottoman era. The study uses descriptive and qualitative methods with a content analysis approach. Broadly speaking, this study found that the Ottoman Empire had given good treatment to non-Muslim citizens. The non-Muslim citizens get various facilities from the State, including the establishment of special institutions that handle their own affairs, although at the same time they have been used by Western countries to support their interests in Ottoman Empire.

Introduction to the Special Issue “Causal Complexity and Qualitative Methods”

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Goertz
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative Methods ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Empirical Social Science ◽  
Causal Complexity

This special issue of Political Analysis engages in a dialogue between qualitative and quantitative methods. It proposes that each has something to say to the other and more generally has a contribution to make to empirical social science.

scholarly journals Historical Disparities and Gendered Citation Patterns

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 338-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. M. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Citation Data ◽  
Science Methodology ◽  
Social Science Methodology ◽  
Over Time

In this comment on Dion, Sumner, and Mitchell’s article “Gendered Citation Patterns across Political Science and Social Science Methodology Fields,” I explore the role of changes in the disparities of citations to work written by women over time. Breaking down their citation data by era, I find that some of the patterns in citations are the result of the legacy of disparity in the field. Citations to more recent work come closer to matching the distribution of the gender of authors of published work. Although the need for more equitable practices of citation remains, the overall patterns are not quite as bad as Dion, Sumner, and Mitchell conclude.

scholarly journals Law, Governance, and the Ecological Ethos

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Butt
Keyword(s):  
Coercive Force ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Command And Control ◽  
The State ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
And Control

This chapter examines the limitations of both command-and-control and market-based legal mechanisms in the pursuit of environmental justice. If the environment is to be protected to at least a minimally acceptable degree, approaches that focus on the coercive force of the state must be complemented by the development of an “ecological ethos,” whereby groups and individuals are motivated to act with non-self-interested concern for the environment. The need for this ethos means that the state is dependent on the cooperation of a wide range of non-state actors. Recent work on environmental governance emphasizes the delegation of aspects of governing to such actors and supports efforts to increase popular participation in governmental processes. The chapter therefore advocates a governance approach that seeks to rectify some of the limitations of state-led environmental law, while encouraging popular participation in a way that can encourage the development of an ecological ethos among the citizenry.

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