Tarrow 1994); electoral and party systems (e.g., Collier and Collier 1991; Kitschelt
1994); and social policy (e.g., Esping-Anderson 1990; Hicks 1999; Skocpol 1992).
Although this listing only scratches the surface of huge literatures, it does point to the
leading place of qualitative methods in the field.
Studies that are associated with alternative methodologies also suggest the
centrality of qualitative methodology. For example, rational choice works often draw on
qualitative methods to help formulate assumptions and test hypotheses. This is especially
true in the field of comparative politics, where analysts often employ rational actor
assumptions in relatively non-mathematical ways to generate hypotheses that apply to a
small number of cases (e.g., Bates 1981; Geddes 2003; Laitin 1999; see also Munck
2001). Indeed, the recent project of “analytic narratives” is an explicit attempt to meld
many of the virtues of qualitative research with the assumptions of rational choice theory
(Bates et al. 1998). Likewise, statistical work in comparative politics increasingly uses
qualitative case studies as a supplementary mode of causal inference (e.g., Huber and
Stephens 2001; Lieberman 2003; Swank 2002; see also Lieberman forthcoming). In fact,
in some of these multimethod studies, the qualitative case studies provide the main
leverage for causal inference.
The ascendance of qualitative methodology has been accompanied by excellent
synthetic articles that discuss different strands and various proposals related to the
comparative method (e.g., Collier 1991; Ragin, Berg-Scholosser, and de Muer 1996;
Munck 1998). Yet the publication of no less than 10 major books on qualitative
methodology in the last five years has made it difficult for scholars of comparative
politics to keep apace with rapid developments in this field. These new books include:
Time Matters: On Theory and Method, by Andrew Abbott (2001); Rethinking Social
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