Customer Reviews

Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science

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Van Evera's book is simple, to be sure, but not simplistic; a prior reviewer's gibes at the notion of flow-charting a theory, with arrows, are a bit off the mark. As the reviewer notes, a theory designates a causal relationship. If so -- no matter what its other "good" points (parsimony, explanatory reach, etc) -- you can draw that causal relationship between the various independent variables and the dependent variable they help to explain. You can even draw it with arrows.

In general this book is recommended for 1st or 2nd year political science graduate students, and useful for advanced undergraduates (who will only care about the 1st 100 pages or so). It is clear and eminently practical. Other reviewers are right to imply there is little here in the way of philosophy of science in the broadest sense. But that merely makes this book a complement, not a substitute, to more esoteric explorations of the topic.

Only an undergraduate student so I'm probably not the best person to review methadology. In the first section, Van Evera gives a good general overview of the basics. The most thorough section is on case studies. This is very helpful as case studies are often ignored by most, though, as the author notes, can be very helpful especially for IR. The third section also discusses in some depth what a dissertation should look like. This is helpful for someone new to the field and (I assume) for someone undertaking this. Just to note, Van Evera is an IR scholar and a lot of his examples and such are taken from the IR field. I enjoyed this, as that's my area of study, but if your not you might find this annoying.

Some say that this book is not a guide to methods, or that it is certainly no model of sophistication. As such, I was skeptical about reading it, but once I did, I realized that Van Evera never does say that he will make the book for such a purpose. "I make no effort to cover the methodological waterfront." (p.1) As such, I think many reviews it receives are unmerited. Instead, I found this book very useful, even as a graduate student who has done many research methods already. Beauty of Van Evera's approach is that he offers an ESSENTIAL guide to those starting social science (I wish I had read this book when starting university), but even for older students, they can find practical advice on different issues, and clarification on topics that others don't explain as clearly (particularity in my previous class we had a big problem over defining 'method of agreement' vs. 'method of difference'). The book puts many complex topics in simplistic terms which helps keep thoughts organized. As such it is a necessary but not sufficient guide to methods for students of political science.

I knew the book was slightly used, but it did not mention the amount of highlighting and underlining in the book. That being said, it is helpful to bring my attention to the important points...but the writing on the pages were not mentioned.

In this book Mr. Van Evera introduces the reader to the gospel of arrow diagraming, in which all political science theories must be drawn as letters, representing variables, with arrows (representing causality) connecting them. Thus, to quote Van Evera, "a theory that cannot be arrow-diagrammed is not a theory and needs reframing to become a theory." Thus, by his measure, much of the poli sci "theories" are not theories at all. So what are GOOD theories, for van Evera, besides those that are easily arrow-diagramed?

Theories are general statements that describe and explain the causes or effects of classes of phenomena. They are composed of causal laws or hypotheses, explanations, and antecedent conditions. Explanations are also composed of causal laws or hypotheses, which are in turn composed of dependent and independent variables. A good theory has 7 characteristics: it has large explanatory power (importance, explanatory range, applicability), and is parsimonious, satisfying, clearly framed, falsifiable, explains important phenomena, and has "prescriptive richness."

In short, the book might teach newbies a thing or two about methodological rigor and research design, but is certainly no model of sophistication. In fact, the book is a perfect example of why American political "science" is sometimes mocked by the rest of the academic world.

This book is not a guide to methods, but a guide to how to write an under-grad paper. It is nothing like Frankfort-Nachmias & Nachmias, which IS a real guide to methods. If you already know what is a theory (e.g. as opposed to a non-causal statement) and how to write a paper reasonably well (i.e. without making silly mistakes of omission or commissin) then you do not need this book. If you do not, you might usefully use this book - BUT DO NOT CONFUSE IT WITH A GUIDE TO METHODS.