RDSI Comment

Is causal-process observation an oxymoron? a commenton Brady and Collier (eds.) Rethinking Social Inquiry∗Nathaniel BeckDepartment of PoliticsNYUNew York, NY USAnathaniel.beck@nyu.eduDraft of November 16, 2005∗Thanks to Henry Brady, David Collier and Gary King, as well as my colleagues Bernard Manin andAdam Przeworski for interesting conversations on this topic.1When I first read King, Keohane and Verba (1994), (“KKV”) I was excited by thegeneralthemeofwhatseemedtometheobvious,butusuallyunspoken,ideathatallpoliticalscientists,bothquantitativeandqualitative,arescientistsandgovernedbythesamescientificstandards. KKV,asHenryBrady(BradyandCollier,2004,ch. 3)cleverlynotes,clearlywerepreaching to the qualitative researcher, and the subject of the sermon was that qualitativeresearchersshouldadoptmanyoftheideasstandardinquantitativeresearch. Thus, toabuseboth the metaphor and KKV, one might compare KKV to the view of the Inquisition thatwe are all God’s children. But, having sat through many talks based on case studies, it isclear to me that getting everyone to think about the nature of the scientific enterprise weare all engaged in can only be a good thing.Brady and Collier (2004) (“BC”) clearly take no exception to this general position. Butwhile KKV more or less argue that, mutatis mutandis, qualitative researchers should learnmuch about research design from quantitative scholars, BC put more emphasis on the mu-tatis, so that all God’s children can happily ...