Even the group that is looking after sick people in this village do not really know everyone who ... more Even the group that is looking after sick people in this village do not really know everyone who has HIV. .. I feel it is important that the village headman and other people should know because say if you want to marry someone, you have an idea of what is going on with them. If you get sick, other people will have an idea of how to address your sickness.
This article examines how "iteration"–the dynamic updating of a research design in the ... more This article examines how "iteration"–the dynamic updating of a research design in the course of conducting a study–contributes to making fieldwork a powerful form of inquiry. Considering epistemic disagreement on the utility and acceptability of iteration and drawing on published work, our own experiences, and an original survey and interviews, we contend that iteration is a core aspect of field-based inquiry because such work often examines areas for which theory or empirical knowledge is underdeveloped and requires reacting as the research environment evolves. We demonstrate why iteration is challenging, consider the analytic risks it poses, and offer a framework to help scholars iterate in analytically productive ways. We conclude by outlining the implications for the discipline of embracing and being transparent about iteration.
Many of us were conducting or planning fieldwork this spring 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic spre... more Many of us were conducting or planning fieldwork this spring 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe. Some of us had optimistically hoped that the virus might be waning or somehow under control within a few months. While the situation has improved in some countries such that everyday life is shifting to a "new normal," in other countries, the pandemic has worsened or reemerged after briefly subsiding.
Collaborative methodologies cannot only strengthen the rigor of political science research; they ... more Collaborative methodologies cannot only strengthen the rigor of political science research; they also can offer the possibility of decolonizing knowledge production. Historically, research conducted byWestern researchers in Africa and many regions of the Global South has perpetuated neocolonial power dynamics and reaffirmed inequalities (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018; Zeleza 2009). Often supported by substantial grants, political scientists from the Global North frequently arrived with the entire project specified, or even publicly preregistered, and solicited help from local translators or enumerators to accelerate the “extraction of data” from local respondents or subjects. Many of the dominant methodologies in political science elevate researchers to a position of great power and control as compared to the “researched” (MacLean 2013; Riley, Schouten, and Cahill 2003). In contrast, collaborative methodologies are premised on greater involvement of local scholars and participants in amore inductive and iterative approach to research (Yom 2015). Drawing on a recent project, this article analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of our collaborative methodology. We explain how including a broader range of perspectives from scholars and citizens of the Global South improved the case selection and strengthened the conceptualization and measurement of key concepts. In addition to enhancing critical aspects of research design, collaborative methodologies enabled us to begin to decolonize knowledge production. However, we also reveal multiple structural barriers that limit the realization of decolonization. In the following sections, we explore the concept of collaboration in research methodology and describe how we applied this approach. We then show how including diverse perspectives enabled us to develop a theoretically rigorous, feasible, and ethical selection of communities and focus group participants. Next, we demonstrate how integrating insights from study participants fostered a more nuanced understanding of the local salience of “climate change” and a revised conceptualization of political participation. We then examine both the potential of and the limits to decolonization, offering strategies to overcome the obstacles. We conclude with a commitment to expanding collaborative initiatives well beyond the Global South.
The foremost ethical obligation and therefore the first duty of scholars is the ethical treatment... more The foremost ethical obligation and therefore the first duty of scholars is the ethical treatment of people affected by our research, particularly its human subjects. Our working group's report discusses the implications of the primacy of the ethical treatment of human participants – our term for "human subjects" – for empirical research in political science. Although research ethics encompasses a broader range of issues (including honesty, integrity, competence, and the respectful treatment of students and colleagues, among others), we focus on the primacy of human participants both because the human costs of violating this obligation are likely much higher than, for example, plagiarism, and because this principle may conflict with evolving norms of transparency in the social sciences. We acknowledge that "transparency" frequently has benefits, but nonetheless focus on the tensions between it and the primary obligation to human subjects and other ethical obligations in a wide range of research contexts, including settings of violence and repression. To support our ethical positions, we advance a broad and distinct approach of "reflexive openness" that incorporates sustained reflection on the ethics of research practices, what ethnographers term "reflexivity." This approach has three important elements. First, it promotes ongoing reflexivity by the author vis-a-vis her research participants. Second, it encourages all scholars to provide a reasoned ethical justification of their research practices, especially when seeking to publish their analysis. Finally, the ethical expectations guiding reflexive openness are universal, and thus the approach is inclusive of researchers regardless of subfield, methodology, topic, and empirical context.
Despite the recognition that institutions matter for international development, the debates over ... more Despite the recognition that institutions matter for international development, the debates over institutional reforms tend to obscure the role of power. Neoliberal models of development are often promoted in terms of their technical merits and efficiency gains and rarely account for the multiple ways that social, economic and political power shape institutional design and institutional change. Even recent efforts to address power tend to conceptualize it too narrowly. This special issue seeks to rethink the role of power in institutional creation and change in the context of persistent neoliberalism. In the introduction, we synthesize the literature on the nature of power to develop a new conceptual framework-a power in institutions matrix-that highlights the multiple dimensions of power involved in institutional development and change. We argue that such a theoretically-informed mapping of power in institutions will enable scholars, practitioners, and citizen groups to go beyond the standard critiques in order to analyze the multifaceted effects of neoliberal institutional change. Our introduction draws on an extensive literature review as well as the special issue contributors who examine institutional change in a variety of policy sectors in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and North America. We find that a range of diverse local, national and transnational actors, with disparate access to power, negotiate institutional changes from above and below through overt imposition of and resistance to new rules, influence of agendas, and promotion of discourses. Neoliberalism thus creates a new distributive politics. The special issue thus offers a theoretically-grounded approach for linking international and domestic power differences to the process of institutional change, with a specific focus on equity and sustainability. In a departure from the current literature's focus on elite bargains, we showcase the efforts by less powerful groups to gain a foothold in decision-making processes.
Generations of political scientists have set out for destinations near and far to pursue field re... more Generations of political scientists have set out for destinations near and far to pursue field research. Even in a digitally networked era, the researcher’s personal presence and engagement with the field context continue to be essential. Yet exactly what does fieldwork mean, what is it good for, and how can scholars make their time in the field as reflective and productive as possible? Thinking of field research in broad terms—as leaving one’s home institution to collect information, generate data, and/or develop insights that significantly inform one’s research—reveals that scholars of varying epistemological commitments, methodological bents, and substantive foci all engage in fieldwork. Moreover, they face similar challenges, engage in comparable practices, and even follow similar principles. Thus, while every scholar’s specific project is unique, we also have much to learn from each other. In preparing for and conducting field research, political scientists connect the high-lev...
This study analyzes the degree to which renewable energy policies, in particular feed-in tariffs ... more This study analyzes the degree to which renewable energy policies, in particular feed-in tariffs and renewable portfolio standards, facilitate renewable energy generation growth across a wide range of countries using an original cross-national dataset of 164 countries between 1990 and 2010. Results provide evidence that both policies are important predictors of renewable energy market growth. The dependent variable is operationalized first as the percentage of total electricity from renewable energy and second as the annual increase in total renewable energy generation in a country. Results are robust to several alternative model specifications including those that exclude hydroelectric generation in the construct of renewable energy. The degree to which feed-in tariffs are endogenous, however, is not conclusive. Besides the prominent role of these policies, results reveal that factors related to annual increases in renewable energy differ from those related to an overall transition toward greater reliance on renewable energy. This suggests that simply increasing renewable generation does not necessarily decrease reliance on fossil fuels or help countries make the shift to a clean energy economy.
Roughly 60% of Africans lack access to electricity, negatively impacting development opportunitie... more Roughly 60% of Africans lack access to electricity, negatively impacting development opportunities. Nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) have started promoting distributed generation-small-scale, localized electricity generation-to change this situation. Despite widespread need, however, the dispersion of these distributed generation NGOs (DG-NGOs) is uneven, with high concentrations in a few African countries. Drawing on an original database and field research, we analyze location variation among DG-NGOs across the continent. We find that DG-NGOs are likely to operate in democratic settings with large populations that lack access to electricity. International DG-NGOs are also likely to operate where aid allocation levels are relatively high.
Field research in political science: practices and principles "Fieldwork continues to be the most... more Field research in political science: practices and principles "Fieldwork continues to be the most productive and exciting part of what we do." Philippe Schmitter (quoted in Munck and Snyder 2007, 337) Fieldwork is "one of the more disagreeable activities that humanity has fashioned for itself."
Buku ini meliputi strategi jitu untuk melakukan penelitian di bidang politik yang meliputi 10 pem... more Buku ini meliputi strategi jitu untuk melakukan penelitian di bidang politik yang meliputi 10 pembahasan praktis yaitu diawali dengan pembahasan terkait pengantar penelitian ilmu politik dilihat dari prinisp dan praktiknya, penjelasan tentang awalmula disiplin penelitian ilmu politik dan perkembangannya, persiapan untuk pelaksanaan penelitian lapangan, pengaturan lapangan meliputi manajemen untuk menghadapi kendala alat dan bahan, proses komunikasi lapangan dan sosialisasi, kegiatan operasional dan penyesuaian dengan etika yang berlaku di lapangan, cara pengambilan data dengan teknik yang berbeda, strategi wawancara, teknik menelusur informasi tersirat (dari lisan ke lisan), dan FGD (diksusi terfokus), menelaah pendekatan studietnografi dan observasi, penelitian menggunakan teknik survei, pengaturan teknik penelitian eksperimen, proses analisis, penulisan dan melengkapi data lapangan, serta pengembangan penelitian ilmu politik di masa mendatang
Even the group that is looking after sick people in this village do not really know everyone who ... more Even the group that is looking after sick people in this village do not really know everyone who has HIV. .. I feel it is important that the village headman and other people should know because say if you want to marry someone, you have an idea of what is going on with them. If you get sick, other people will have an idea of how to address your sickness.
This article examines how "iteration"–the dynamic updating of a research design in the ... more This article examines how "iteration"–the dynamic updating of a research design in the course of conducting a study–contributes to making fieldwork a powerful form of inquiry. Considering epistemic disagreement on the utility and acceptability of iteration and drawing on published work, our own experiences, and an original survey and interviews, we contend that iteration is a core aspect of field-based inquiry because such work often examines areas for which theory or empirical knowledge is underdeveloped and requires reacting as the research environment evolves. We demonstrate why iteration is challenging, consider the analytic risks it poses, and offer a framework to help scholars iterate in analytically productive ways. We conclude by outlining the implications for the discipline of embracing and being transparent about iteration.
Many of us were conducting or planning fieldwork this spring 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic spre... more Many of us were conducting or planning fieldwork this spring 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe. Some of us had optimistically hoped that the virus might be waning or somehow under control within a few months. While the situation has improved in some countries such that everyday life is shifting to a "new normal," in other countries, the pandemic has worsened or reemerged after briefly subsiding.
Collaborative methodologies cannot only strengthen the rigor of political science research; they ... more Collaborative methodologies cannot only strengthen the rigor of political science research; they also can offer the possibility of decolonizing knowledge production. Historically, research conducted byWestern researchers in Africa and many regions of the Global South has perpetuated neocolonial power dynamics and reaffirmed inequalities (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018; Zeleza 2009). Often supported by substantial grants, political scientists from the Global North frequently arrived with the entire project specified, or even publicly preregistered, and solicited help from local translators or enumerators to accelerate the “extraction of data” from local respondents or subjects. Many of the dominant methodologies in political science elevate researchers to a position of great power and control as compared to the “researched” (MacLean 2013; Riley, Schouten, and Cahill 2003). In contrast, collaborative methodologies are premised on greater involvement of local scholars and participants in amore inductive and iterative approach to research (Yom 2015). Drawing on a recent project, this article analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of our collaborative methodology. We explain how including a broader range of perspectives from scholars and citizens of the Global South improved the case selection and strengthened the conceptualization and measurement of key concepts. In addition to enhancing critical aspects of research design, collaborative methodologies enabled us to begin to decolonize knowledge production. However, we also reveal multiple structural barriers that limit the realization of decolonization. In the following sections, we explore the concept of collaboration in research methodology and describe how we applied this approach. We then show how including diverse perspectives enabled us to develop a theoretically rigorous, feasible, and ethical selection of communities and focus group participants. Next, we demonstrate how integrating insights from study participants fostered a more nuanced understanding of the local salience of “climate change” and a revised conceptualization of political participation. We then examine both the potential of and the limits to decolonization, offering strategies to overcome the obstacles. We conclude with a commitment to expanding collaborative initiatives well beyond the Global South.
The foremost ethical obligation and therefore the first duty of scholars is the ethical treatment... more The foremost ethical obligation and therefore the first duty of scholars is the ethical treatment of people affected by our research, particularly its human subjects. Our working group's report discusses the implications of the primacy of the ethical treatment of human participants – our term for "human subjects" – for empirical research in political science. Although research ethics encompasses a broader range of issues (including honesty, integrity, competence, and the respectful treatment of students and colleagues, among others), we focus on the primacy of human participants both because the human costs of violating this obligation are likely much higher than, for example, plagiarism, and because this principle may conflict with evolving norms of transparency in the social sciences. We acknowledge that "transparency" frequently has benefits, but nonetheless focus on the tensions between it and the primary obligation to human subjects and other ethical obligations in a wide range of research contexts, including settings of violence and repression. To support our ethical positions, we advance a broad and distinct approach of "reflexive openness" that incorporates sustained reflection on the ethics of research practices, what ethnographers term "reflexivity." This approach has three important elements. First, it promotes ongoing reflexivity by the author vis-a-vis her research participants. Second, it encourages all scholars to provide a reasoned ethical justification of their research practices, especially when seeking to publish their analysis. Finally, the ethical expectations guiding reflexive openness are universal, and thus the approach is inclusive of researchers regardless of subfield, methodology, topic, and empirical context.
Despite the recognition that institutions matter for international development, the debates over ... more Despite the recognition that institutions matter for international development, the debates over institutional reforms tend to obscure the role of power. Neoliberal models of development are often promoted in terms of their technical merits and efficiency gains and rarely account for the multiple ways that social, economic and political power shape institutional design and institutional change. Even recent efforts to address power tend to conceptualize it too narrowly. This special issue seeks to rethink the role of power in institutional creation and change in the context of persistent neoliberalism. In the introduction, we synthesize the literature on the nature of power to develop a new conceptual framework-a power in institutions matrix-that highlights the multiple dimensions of power involved in institutional development and change. We argue that such a theoretically-informed mapping of power in institutions will enable scholars, practitioners, and citizen groups to go beyond the standard critiques in order to analyze the multifaceted effects of neoliberal institutional change. Our introduction draws on an extensive literature review as well as the special issue contributors who examine institutional change in a variety of policy sectors in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and North America. We find that a range of diverse local, national and transnational actors, with disparate access to power, negotiate institutional changes from above and below through overt imposition of and resistance to new rules, influence of agendas, and promotion of discourses. Neoliberalism thus creates a new distributive politics. The special issue thus offers a theoretically-grounded approach for linking international and domestic power differences to the process of institutional change, with a specific focus on equity and sustainability. In a departure from the current literature's focus on elite bargains, we showcase the efforts by less powerful groups to gain a foothold in decision-making processes.
Generations of political scientists have set out for destinations near and far to pursue field re... more Generations of political scientists have set out for destinations near and far to pursue field research. Even in a digitally networked era, the researcher’s personal presence and engagement with the field context continue to be essential. Yet exactly what does fieldwork mean, what is it good for, and how can scholars make their time in the field as reflective and productive as possible? Thinking of field research in broad terms—as leaving one’s home institution to collect information, generate data, and/or develop insights that significantly inform one’s research—reveals that scholars of varying epistemological commitments, methodological bents, and substantive foci all engage in fieldwork. Moreover, they face similar challenges, engage in comparable practices, and even follow similar principles. Thus, while every scholar’s specific project is unique, we also have much to learn from each other. In preparing for and conducting field research, political scientists connect the high-lev...
This study analyzes the degree to which renewable energy policies, in particular feed-in tariffs ... more This study analyzes the degree to which renewable energy policies, in particular feed-in tariffs and renewable portfolio standards, facilitate renewable energy generation growth across a wide range of countries using an original cross-national dataset of 164 countries between 1990 and 2010. Results provide evidence that both policies are important predictors of renewable energy market growth. The dependent variable is operationalized first as the percentage of total electricity from renewable energy and second as the annual increase in total renewable energy generation in a country. Results are robust to several alternative model specifications including those that exclude hydroelectric generation in the construct of renewable energy. The degree to which feed-in tariffs are endogenous, however, is not conclusive. Besides the prominent role of these policies, results reveal that factors related to annual increases in renewable energy differ from those related to an overall transition toward greater reliance on renewable energy. This suggests that simply increasing renewable generation does not necessarily decrease reliance on fossil fuels or help countries make the shift to a clean energy economy.
Roughly 60% of Africans lack access to electricity, negatively impacting development opportunitie... more Roughly 60% of Africans lack access to electricity, negatively impacting development opportunities. Nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) have started promoting distributed generation-small-scale, localized electricity generation-to change this situation. Despite widespread need, however, the dispersion of these distributed generation NGOs (DG-NGOs) is uneven, with high concentrations in a few African countries. Drawing on an original database and field research, we analyze location variation among DG-NGOs across the continent. We find that DG-NGOs are likely to operate in democratic settings with large populations that lack access to electricity. International DG-NGOs are also likely to operate where aid allocation levels are relatively high.
Field research in political science: practices and principles "Fieldwork continues to be the most... more Field research in political science: practices and principles "Fieldwork continues to be the most productive and exciting part of what we do." Philippe Schmitter (quoted in Munck and Snyder 2007, 337) Fieldwork is "one of the more disagreeable activities that humanity has fashioned for itself."
Buku ini meliputi strategi jitu untuk melakukan penelitian di bidang politik yang meliputi 10 pem... more Buku ini meliputi strategi jitu untuk melakukan penelitian di bidang politik yang meliputi 10 pembahasan praktis yaitu diawali dengan pembahasan terkait pengantar penelitian ilmu politik dilihat dari prinisp dan praktiknya, penjelasan tentang awalmula disiplin penelitian ilmu politik dan perkembangannya, persiapan untuk pelaksanaan penelitian lapangan, pengaturan lapangan meliputi manajemen untuk menghadapi kendala alat dan bahan, proses komunikasi lapangan dan sosialisasi, kegiatan operasional dan penyesuaian dengan etika yang berlaku di lapangan, cara pengambilan data dengan teknik yang berbeda, strategi wawancara, teknik menelusur informasi tersirat (dari lisan ke lisan), dan FGD (diksusi terfokus), menelaah pendekatan studietnografi dan observasi, penelitian menggunakan teknik survei, pengaturan teknik penelitian eksperimen, proses analisis, penulisan dan melengkapi data lapangan, serta pengembangan penelitian ilmu politik di masa mendatang
This workshop will provide an introduction to the key debates and issues surrounding mixed method... more This workshop will provide an introduction to the key debates and issues surrounding mixed methods research. It will begin by considering whether everyone should use mixed methods and will then demonstrate how to use a data collection plan to design and assess research. Finally, the workshop will highlight how to prepare, organize, implement, and analyze mixed methods research. The workshop is designed to be valuable for students at any stage of their research process, whether or not they have decided to employ a mixed methods approach.
Uploads
Papers by Lauren MacLean