POLI 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Research Question, Authoritarianism, Richard Fenno

• School: McGill University
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLI 210
• Professor: Dietlind Stolle

Document Summary

Research question: a (cid:396)esea(cid:396)(cid:272)h (cid:395)uestio(cid:374)s asks the (cid:862)who, what, whe(cid:396)e, whe(cid:374) o(cid:396) why(cid:863) (cid:271)ehi(cid:374)d so(cid:373)e phenomenon of interest. Theory: a theory is a potential causal mechanism or explanation that answers a research question, set of logically related propositions that explain political phenomena, more reflective than a research question. Involves more thinking: testable statement of relationship between two variables. Per country: dependent and independent variable, explain relationship between the variables, comparison between values of independent variable, direction of relation, empirically testable. Why do some people engage in politics more than either: can also be more narrow. Why does trump have so much support: come from news, current events, values, etc. Deductive: start from a theory, top down approach, start from a theory and derive empirical implications from that theory. Involves using general and abstract statements to derive concrete theories: example: rational choice theory. Inductive: start from observations, bottom up approach, making generalizations based on observations, soak and poke.