Using historical institutionalism
as a method for qualitative process tracing in comparative politics
Abstract
Historical
institutionalism (HI) is often regarded as the least rigorous and
the more tautological of the ‘new institutionalisms’, but this reputation
is undeserved. I argue that HI, when viewed as a method for, rather
than a theory of, examining institutional stasis and change, can
provide a rigorous approach to process tracing that is useful in
examining the impact of institutional legacies on contemporary
political issues. Famous HI scholars, including Kathleen Thelen,
suggest that systematic approaches to comparative temporal analyses
can help to overcome the shortcomings of the inductive method in
comparative politics. While for Karl Popper the inductive method
is, in effect, hopeless in its scientific utility, my contention is
that the nature of the social sciences means that falsifiability
is, for the most part, a bridge too far for comparative political
research. Plausibility, as opposed to falsifiability, can be
achieved using systematic HI processes that are more sophisticated
than simply rummaging through the past to find evidence that
supports a given hypothesis. In this seminar, I aim to present a
method that is not only useful in conducting comparative political
analysis over time, but that can also address some of the
inevitable shortcomings inherent in the conduct of inductive,
comparative political science research by providing a systematic
and rigorous system of process tracing over time.
This
seminar is aimed at improving my work-in-progress paper for a panel
I am convening at the ACSPRI conference to be held via Zoom from
Tuesday 1 December to Thursday 3 December 2020. The conference
website details are here: https://conferences.acspri.org.au/2020/
and the call for papers here: https://conferences.acspri.org.au/2020/cfp.
If you are interested in presenting, you can enter submissions
until 8th October 2020 23:59 (Australia/Sydney time).
Bio
Dr Michael de Percy FCILT is Senior Lecturer in
Political Science in the Canberra School of Politics, Economics,
and Society at the University of Canberra. He is a graduate of the
Australian National University (PhD) and the Royal Military College
Duntroon, and he is a Chartered Fellow (FCILT) of the Chartered
Institute of Logistics and Transport. Michael maintains a blog on
his research, teaching and community engagement activities at www.politicalscience.com.au and
you can follow him on twitter @madepercy.
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