Comparative Politics and Religion

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Comparative Politicsand Religion

• POLITICAL PROBLEMS OF THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD
• PS 597n.02
• MR DOUG PERKINS

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TODAYS AGENDA

• Talk about the News
• Comparative Political Science
• Comparative Method
• Mechanisms/Rational Choice
• Case Studies
• Science and Religion
• Take Roll
• By the way pick a good seat!!!

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TERM OF THE DAY

• Media Effects
• Framing providing a ideological reference
• Agenda Setting selecting what news to show
• Priming setting the standard of judgment

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POLITICAL NEWS

• Provide Current Examples of
• Framing
• Agenda Setting
• Priming

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POLITICAL SCIENCE ???(King et al ch. 1)

• Two Objectives of Course
• Scope AND Methods
• Journalism Vs. Politology
• Politology Vs. Political Science
• The Challenge of a Science of Politics
• The Challenge of Comparative P.S.
• Qualitative Vs. Quantitative Data

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AN IDEAL RESEARCH DESIGN (from King, Keohane,
and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry)

• Research Question
• Criteria? Should be important, interesting
• The Theory
• Hypothesis/es
• Rely on existing literature
• The Data
• Predict some results using your hypothesis
• So called observable implications
• If my explanation is correctwhat should I
  expect in the real world?
• Find Positive AND Negative Examples
• The More Data, the Better!
• Where does it come from? Bias?
• Use of the Data
• Uncover and explain variation (comparative
  method)
• Explain mechanism (stylized description/rational
  choice?)
• Tell how it happened in the real world (case
  studies)
• We Can (and will) Judge Research by the Above

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DESCRIBING DATA

• Data and Data Collection Should be Transparent
• Replicable Why?
• Units The Object of Inquiry
• E.g. leaders states
• Variables Aspects of the Object
• E.g. height GNP
• Do we include EVERYTHING?
• Observations A Specific Instance
• Putin Uganda
• Whence Comes This Data?

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USING THE DATA COMPARATIVE METHOD

• Ideographic vs. Nomothetic
• Science Find and Explain Patterns/Variation
• Test hypotheses
• Experiments gt Statistics gt C.M.
• Assumption of unit homogeneity
• Units are interchangeable
• Compare to a real experiment
• John Stuart Mill
• Method of Agreement
• select similar outcomes
• vary the potential causes
• Indirect Method of Difference (ideal)
• vary the outcomes
• vary the potential causes
• Uncover patterns of correlations between ivs and
  dv

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CAUSALITY

• The Causal Effect is the difference between the
  systematic component of observations made when
  the explanatory variable takes on one value and
  the systematic component of comparable
  observations when the variable takes on another
  value.
• King et.al.
  p. 82

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CAUSAL EFFECT SAY WHAT?

• Is It Just Correlation?
• How much of y is caused by x?
• Sounds great
• But How do We do It?

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KKVs RULES FOR CONDUCTING SCIENCE

• 1) Construct Falsifiable Theories
• How can we disprove it?
• Find limits of theory (when it is true)
• 2) Build Internally Consistent Theories
• Formal Modelling Helps
• 3) Select Dep. Variables Carefully
• Dont select on dep. variable!
• Make sure the Dep. variable varies!
• 4) Maximize Concreteness
• Observable operationalizations
• 5) Be Encompassing w/ Theories
• Increases the possible n
• Allows us to explain more

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POTENTIAL PROBLEMS

• Indeterminacy
• More Inferences than Observations
• One Observation gt One Inference
• Multicollinearity
• Two ivs are Highly Correlated
• Cannot discriminate between the two
• A B C D -gt G
• a B C D -gt G So we can eliminate variable
  A.
• A b C D -gt G So we can eliminate variable
  B.
• a b c d -gt g Cannot eliminate anything
  new.
• A b c d -gt g Ditto.
• a B C D -gt g Ditto.
• Variables C and D are multicollinear.
• Our data suggest that A and B have no effect on
  G, and that C and D do, but we cannot separate
  the effects of C and D.
• We only know that
• C D -gt G
• c d -gt g
• How do we fix it?

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MULTICOLLINEARITY

• When two or more independent variables are
  correlated (multicollinear), no analysis will be
  able to distinguish the effects of one from the
  effects of the other.
• They may as well be measuring the same thing.
• (QUESTIONS ON COMPARATIVE METHOD?)

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MECHANISMS

• Correlation versus Causation
• Spurious, Tautological, Coincidence
• How Do We Prove Causation?
• Must Identify the MECHANISMS
• How did it happen?
• These Three Methods Will Help
• Conduct an Experiment or...
• Use Psychology or Rational Choice

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RATIONAL CHOICEFILTER 2 DESIRE/UTILITY

• When faced with several courses of action,
  individuals usually do what they believe is
  likely to maximize their utility. Elster
  p. 22
• Decision Making under Certainty
• Preference Ordering
• Utility Function
• Decision Making Under Risk
• Lotteries
• Expected Utility

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WHAT ABOUT CONTEXT? THE ENVIRONMENT

• Context Matters!
• Both Constrains and Empowers
• Affects the Size of the Opportunity Set
• and the Payoffs of the Opportunities
• Positive Direction
• Negative Direction
• So Rational Choice REQUIRES History!

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DESIRES OPPORTUNITIES

• VERY Powerful Simplification
• What do People WANT?
• What Options are Available?
• Sometimes Desires are Irrelevant
• Do They Matter at All?
• Given the same opportunities, same choices?

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OPPORTUNITIES

• Easier to Measure
• How do we measure opportunities?
• How do we measure desires?
• Easier to Change/Manipulate
• How can we change opportunities?
• How have we?
• How are desires/preferences formed?
• Can we change them? How?
• Speaking of which
• RC beats Cultural Explanations

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REVIEWRational Choice

• Desires and Opportunities
• Cost-Benefit Calculation
• Utility
• Risk, Lotteries, and Expected Utility
• Uncertainty?

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INTERACTIONPRISONERS DILEMMA

• Dominant Strategy
• Equilibrium
• What would YOU do?
• Why might you cooperate?
• Iterated Game

NOTE THESE ARE IN UTILITY NOT YEARS IN PRISON!!!
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COLLECTIVE ACTION PROBLEM

• Examples of Regular Cooperation
• When it is better for all if some do it, but
  better for each not to do it (p.
  126)
• Lets Get a Feel For It
• Tragedy of the Commons
• Deforestation
• Others???
• n-person Prisoners Dilemma

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1,000 WORDS?
Cost of Cooperation
Great
Terrible
Many
Few
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TERMS

• Free Rider
• Sucker
• How Can We Solve These?
• Carrots (inducements) and Sticks (fines)
• Socialization? Iteration?

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THE GENERAL WILL???

• Unanimity? (Rousseau the Totalitarian?)
• Majority Rules?
• Control of the Agenda Matters

Questions on Mechanisms or Rational Choice?
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CASE STUDIES

• Already found variation
• Already provided a mechanism
• Now put the proper nouns back in
• Case studies describe how the result was actually
  obtained. Should be structured, focused, and
  guided by theory.

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DISCUSSION

• What are the special problems related to a
  scientific study of politics?
• What are the special problems related to a
  scientific study of religion?
• See especially the Iannaccone discussions!
• My thoughts The Flight of the Phoenix

Plot Outline After a plane crash in the Sahara,
one of the survivors says he's an airplane
designer and they can make a flyable plane from
the wreckage
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QUESTIONS???