Reflection on the Methods of Political Science on Both Sides of the Atlantic

Nonna Mayer (1)

1 CEE - Centre d'études européennes et de politique comparée (Sciences Po, CNRS)

For its Ninth Congress in Toulouse (5-7 September 2007), the French Political Science Association (AFSP) invited the American Political Science Association (APSA) to hold a joint “table-ronde”, comparing methods on both sides of the Atlantic. It took the form of three consecutive panels, devoted to qualitative and quantitative approaches, to the dimension of time and to contextual and inference problems. During three days, 18 papers were presented, over 60 participants attended, contrasting ways to validate theories and models were discussed at length, illustrated by concrete research examples. The objective here is less to sum up all that was said than to outline the main differences and convergences of our methodologies. (...)

Keywords: Methods of political science; French Political Science Association; American Political Science Association

Keywords: Méthode comparative en science politique; AFSP; APSA

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Sociology; Humanities and Social Sciences; Political science

Nonna Mayer. Reflection on the Methods of Political Science on Both Sides of the Atlantic. The Political Methodologist, 2008, 15 (2), pp.5 - 7. ⟨hal-01320308v2⟩