Concepts & Mesurement

Conceptual, descriptive and explanatory typologies:

• Forming, clarifying and refining concepts, in particular their meaning;
• Establishing an informative and productive connection between these meanings and terms used to designate them;
• Situating concepts within their semantic field (the constellation of related concepts and terms), including the identification and refinement of hierarchichal relations among concepts (involving "kind hierarchies");
• Drawing out underlying dimensions (multidimensional property spaces);
• Creating categories for classification and measurement;
• Sorting (and selecting) cases;
• Explain empirical phenomena (by displaying some form of association).

→ allow strong statements.

Typologies are based on discrete categories (hence, the link to concepts).

Reduce Complexity (which can be done more or less efficiently).

E.g. Falkner et al. (2005) on compliance with EU legislation: The world of law observance, the world of domestic politics, and the world of transposition neglect.

BUT: Multidimensionality of concepts means that things become very complex very soon. As a consequence, key dimensions need to be selected (depend on what you look at). However, the more dimensions you add, the less useful the concept becomes.

They have to be exclusive and collectively exhaustive:

Exhaustive: Can you fit all cases that you are looking at into a cell? Typology includes all theoretically relevant dimensions and all existing cases can be assigned to one of the types.

Exclusive: Does every case just go in one cell? Empirical cases can be assigned to one type only.

Exceptions: Sometims a cas just does not fit. Depending on your question and probably the amount of cases that do not fit you might adapt the typologies or you might just ignore them. However, these cases are of particular interest because they might enlighten weaknesses of the model: Probably a dimension is missing, Idiosyncratic issues, etc.?

Typologies explicate the meaning of a concept by mapping out its dimensions (Problematic case: Polity IV has 5 dimensions, but are collapsed into one dimension: It remains unclear how these different dimensions relate to each other. how do you decide whether the overarching concept is still met, and if so, if there needs to be a limitation of it).

Typologies guide our empirical analysis by clarifying concepts and pointing out good instances of the phenomenon (eg vote buying)

Typologies help us to sort cases into categories (parlamentary versus presidential democracies etc.) - with analytical "value added" (implications of parlamentarism).

The dimension and cell types of typologies may also help to identify and describe the phenomena under analysis (by means of complexity reduction).

Eg parliamentarism vs. presidentialism; Analytical implications: The relationship between parliament and government are very different. Classificatory implications: Why is Switzerland a quasi-presidentialist system (because they can not be voted out of office).

→ both the term and the typology provide analytical meaning - description has an analytical function (always!)

→ descriptive and explanatory typologies cannot be strictly separated. (eg Welfare state typology)

• "Pure" types (theoretical/hypothetical) and not a real world phenomena;
• Formed from characteristics and elements of given phenomena, but by stressing certain elements we can better understand the phenomena
  • most famously: Max Weber and the Protestant Ethic
• Hypothetical (ideational) construct: idea constructs that help us understand the (chaotic) world (very hight level of concept intension, no concept extension)
• Strong link to analyticism (who does not share the idea of world-mind dualism)
• Theoretically guide our thinking about the (real) world
  • example: Sweden as the prototypical social-democratic welfare state but not the ideal type.

• Multi-Dimensional conceptual classifications based on an explicitly stated theory;
• Cell types (outcomes) are to be explained by the rows and colums of the matrix;
• Rows and Colums of the matrix selected on the basis of theory;
• Tow crucial ontological assumptions underly (work with) explanatory typologies:
  • Configurational thinking (multidimensionality of empirical phenomena);
  • limited diversity: not all types exist in the real world
• Cases versus variables;
• Early stages of research project (but not necessarily).

Limited diversity means that not all "cases" exist in reality. It occurs because the empirical variation in which the social world presents itself tends to be highly limited in its diversity:

• logical impossibilities: Run counter to common sense (e.g. pregnant man, tropical village in Himalaya);
• clustered cases: Occurs because social reality is prestructured by historical, social etc. processes (path dependent) (eg Female US President, former German colony in Latin America);
• Mathematically imposed limited diversity: Number of types exceeds number of cases (eg five conditions (32types) in Study EU28).

→ you cannot avoid making assumptions about limited diversity! they might explain logic in the way reality is organized. A case might be exceptional but it has to be defined with regards to what it is exceptional. If something never appears without some other attributes, these attributes might not be independant and we might measure the same thing twice wich gives it more weight than other attributes have.

• Limited diversity: some "things" do not seem to exist - cell number increases esponentially;
• Some outcomes may be observed only in presence of a configuration of conditions;
• Some outcomes may be the result of different configurations of conditions (equifinality);
• Typologies help us detect patterns in the data, which we might struggl to see otherwise (imagine more dimensions!);

→ The procedure of analyzing typological data can be formalized: QCA (quantitative comparative analysis).

• Conceptual typologies help us clarify concepts (e.g. the difference between turnout buying and vote buying);
• Concepts and typologies serve an analytical function (in particular complexity reduction);
• Explanatory typologies help us explain empirical phenomena (e.g. behavior by great powers):
  • Strategies of complexity reduction (Elman);
  • Formalized procedures (e.g. QCA);
• Limited diversity, equafinality, multidimensionality and configurations (e.g. welfare states):
  • Ontological assumptions influence strategies to reduce complexity;
  • Typologies can be the starting point of an analysis or the result (cf. development of indicator and case selection).

Polysemy addresses the problem that the social science vocabulary lacks the clarity and consistency of the natural science vocabulary. More specifically, it means that ...

... key words in the social science lexicon often are defined in different ways.

Polysemy addresses the problem that the social science vocabulary lacks the clarity and consistency of the natural science vocabulary. More specifically, it means that ...

... different terms often mean approximately the same thing.

This distinction goes back at least to Locke, but probably all the way to Aristotle. Both philosophers dinstinguish between "essential" and "superficial" charaqcteristics of an object.

Change in essential characteristics constituted a change in kind, while changes in superficial traits - "nominal" in Locke's terminology - did not result in a change in kind. (essential = civil rights, nominal/superficial = presidential to parliamentary).

Theories about ontology are theories about the fundamental constitutive elements of a phenomenon. He uses the term in a straightforward way to designate a core characteristics of a phenomenon and their interrelationships. "What consitutes a phenomenon?"

The amount of attention devoted to a concept is inversly related to the attention devoted to the quantitative measure.

A Concept involves a theoretical and empirical analysis of the object or phenomenon reffered to by the word.

Concepts structure and mediate our experience (apprehension) and our reflections (comprehension).

A good concept draws distinctions that are important in the behavior of the object. The central attributes that a definition refers to are those that prove relevant for hypotheses, explanations, and causal mechanisms. In a theoretical and empirical view of scienific concepts their semantics change as our understanding of the phenomenon changes.

Goertz stresses that most important concepts are multidimensional and multilevel in natur. He prefers a framework of "three-level" concepts:

1. Basis Level: It is cognitively central. It is the noun to which we attach adjectives (such as parliamentary democracy or democratic corporatism). The basic level is what we use in theoretical propositions.
2. Secondary Level: attributes that give the constitutive dimensions of the basic level concept. The secondary level dimensions form much of the ontological analysis of concepts. They also play a central role in causal mechanisms of various sorts (eg. civil rights, competitive elections etc for a democracy). They remain part of the theoretical edifice, but they are concrete enough to be operationalized by the 3rd level.
3. Indicator/data Level: specific enough that data can be gathered, which permits us to categorizewhether or not a specific phenomenon, individual or event falls under the concept.

1. How many levels do they have?
2. How many dimensions does each level have?
3. What is the substantive content of each of the dimensions at each level?

The family resemblance structure contains no necessary conditions. All one needs is enough resemblance on secondary-level-dimensions to be part of the family.

Conceptual stretching occurs when concepts are loosened up so that they apply to additional cases. In the philosophical literature this is the contrast between extention and intension.

We must first think clearly about the substance and structure of our concepts and then we can begin to think aobut how to validly operationalize that theory into a quantitative measure. Since most complex concepts are three level, we need to ask aobut the degree t owhich the quantitative measure reflects the concept structure. In fact there are two structural questions:

1. How to combine indicators to form the secondary-level dimensions; and
2. How to combine secondary-level dimensions to get the basic-level concept.

A concept is "the basic unit of thinking. It can be said that we have a concept of A (or of A-ness) when we are able to distinguish A from whatever is not-A"

Example: Wealthy

A measure is "a unit in terms of which quantitative differences applicable to entities or properties can be compared and assigned numerical values".

Example: GDP (per capita PPP)

• Theories are logically consistent sets of concepts that form statements to explain phenomena of interest;
• Concepts are the basis of all claissifications and typologies and often have important political implications;
• Measurement is a crucual tool to describe the world; indicators often have important political implications;
• Different indicators of the same phenomena may lead to widely different conclusions.

Democratic states do not fight wars against each other.

• Concepts are not simple depictions of reality;
• Concepts posess certain internal theoretical strucutures that reflect assumptions (ontological, normative) of the theorist who uses them:
  • Soviet democracy vs. liberal democracy
  • Relevance of election vs. constraints on power
• Internal theoretical structure becomes increasingly important as...
  • ... researchers analyze the theoretical relationships linking concepts (cf. democratic peace thesis)
  • ... researchers use politically-laden everyday language.

Goertz expounds an extreme nominalist view regarding concepts. H argues that a concept involves a theoretical and empirical analysis of the object or phenomenon referred to by the word: All those who focus purely on semantic issues are liable to end up seeing definitions as arbitrary. If the concept is not intimately related to the empirical analysis of a phenomenon then there is nothing to which one can anchor the concept, and everything becomes a matter of who is in charge of the definition.

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