Logical Constraints: The Limitations of QCA in Social Science Research
| Autor: | Kevin A. Clarke |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
021110 strategic
defence & security studies Counterfactual conditional Sociology and Political Science Computer science Qualitative comparative analysis 05 social sciences 0211 other engineering and technologies 02 engineering and technology 0506 political science Epistemology Boolean algebra symbols.namesake Quantitative analysis (finance) Political Science and International Relations 050602 political science & public administration symbols Necessity and sufficiency Social science research Causation |
| Zdroj: | Political Analysis. 28:552-568 |
| ISSN: | 1476-4989 1047-1987 |
| Popis: | Researchers employing qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and its variants use two-element Boolean algebra to compare cases and identify putative causal conditions. I show that the two-element Boolean algebra constrains research in three important ways: it restricts what we can say about sets and the interactions between sets, it embodies a logical language that is too weak to capture modern social science theories, and it restricts our analysis of causation to necessity and sufficiency accounts and does not allow for counterfactuals. Modern quantitative analysis suffers none of these restrictions and provides a much richer way to understand the social world. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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