Qualitative research methods continue to be an important part of the methodological toolkit of political scientists. Yet, the way we understand, conceptualise, evaluate and apply the multitude of qualitative approaches varies not only between qualitative and quantitative scholars, but also within the qualitative community itself.
This workshop aims to bridge these divides by providing a forum for debate on the current state of qualitative methods and its implication on contemporary political science, with a regional focus on Europe. We will do so by conceptualising the different qualities of qualitative methods and the ways we evaluate the quality of their application.
30 years ago, the publication of King, Keohane, and Verba's (1994) seminal book ignited an important debate on quantitative and qualitative methodologies in political science. Today, the question of methodolgoical pluralism has gained renewed attention (Jensen and Moses 2021, APSR Editors 2020), The objective of this workshop is to contribute to this revival by placing the spotlight on qualitative methods within the European context. Europe offers a compelling setting for analysing the state of qualitative methodologies due to its diverse national scientific traditions that have always championed qualitative research approaches, and due to its continued efforts to establish a distinctive ‘European political science’ (Boncourt, Engeli, and Garzia 2021; Engeli, Kostova, and Tronconi 2022).
The workshop will therefore debate the ways we conceptualise, evaluate and apply qualitative methods by looking at:
1) The qualities of qualitative methods.
This is in relation to the ongoing debates on the definitions and conceptualisations of qualitative empirical (Goertz and Mahoney 2012) and qualitative interpretative methods (Koivu and Damman 2015), as well as how other epistemological schools define qualitative approaches.
2) The quality of qualitative methods.
This concerns the continued efforts to ensure the rigor, validity, replicability, transparency, trustfulness, and meaningfulness of high-quality qualitative research (Gerring 2017) (Jacobs et al. 2021), above all in times of increasing public (and political) doubts on scientific results.
The workshop is intended to lay the foundations for an edited volume or a special issue in the field of qualitative methods.
Boncourt, Thibaud, Isabelle Engeli, and Diego Garzia, eds. 2021. Political Science in Europe: Achievements, Challenges, Prospects. London, United Kingdom; Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield International.
Engeli, Isabelle, Dobrinka Kostova, and Filippo Tronconi. 2022. ‘Towards a European Political Science? Opportunities and Pitfalls in the Internationalisation of Political Science in Europe’. European Political Science. https://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41304-022-00378-6 (August 21, 2023).
Gerring, John. 2017. ‘Qualitative Methods’. Annual Review of Political Science 20(1): 15–36.
Goertz, Gary, and James Mahoney. 2012. A Tale of Two Cultures: Qualitative and Quantitative Research in the Social Sciences. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
Jacobs, Alan M. et al. 2021. ‘The Qualitative Transparency Deliberations: Insights and Implications’. Perspectives on Politics 19(1): 171–208.
Jensen, Magnus Rom, and Jonathon W. Moses. 2021. ‘The State of Political Science, 2020’. European Political Science 20(1): 14–33.
King, Gary, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
Koivu, Kendra L., and Erin Kimball Damman. 2015. ‘Qualitative Variations: The Sources of Divergent Qualitative Methodological Approaches’. Quality & Quantity 49(6): 2617–32.
APSR Editors. 2020. ‘Notes from the Editors’. American Political Science Review 114(4): v–vii.
1: What are the specific qualities of qualitative methods?
2: How can we ensure a high quality of the application of qualitative methods?
3: How can we assess the epistemological and methodological divides within qualitative methods practitioners?
4: Which recent innovations in qualitative methods shape European political science?
5: What are the implications of the use of qualitative methods for research and teaching?
1: Qualitative methods in European political science
2: Quality criteria for qualitative methods
3: Transparency issues of qualitative methods
4: Epistemology of qualitative methods
5: Different types of applied qualitative methods
6: New developments in qualitative methods
7: Triangulation of qualitative methods
8: Qualitative methods and political science progress
