Provides a framework to demonstrate how to unify formal, theoretical and empirical analysis through various interdisciplinary examples.

Tension has long existed in the social sciences between quantitative and qualitative approaches on one hand, and theory-minded and empirical techniques on the other. The latter divide has grown sharper in the wake of new behavioural and experimental perspectives which draw on both sides of these modelling schemes. This book works to address this disconnect by establishing a framework for methodological unification: empirical implications of theoretical models (EITM). This framework connects behavioural and applied statistical concepts, develops analogues of these concepts, and links and evaluates these analogues. The authors offer detailed explanations of how these concepts may be framed, to assist researchers interested in incorporating EITM into their own research. They go on to demonstrate how EITM may be put into practice for a range of disciplines within the social sciences, including voting, party identification, social interaction, learning, conflict and cooperation to macro-policy formulation.

At present much of political science consists of a large body of formal mathematical work that remains largely unexplored empirically and an expanding use of sophisticated statistical techniques. While there are examples of noteworthy efforts to bridge the gap between these, there is still a need for much more cooperative work between formal theorists and empirical researchers in the discipline. This book explores how empirical analysis has, can, and should be used to evaluate formal models in political science. The book is intended to be a guide for active and future political scientists who are confronting the issues of empirical analysis with formal models in their work and as a basis for a needed dialogue between empirical and formal theoretical researchers in political science. These developments, if combined, are potentially a basis for a new revolution in political science.

Political scientists use models to investigate and illuminate causal mechanisms, generate comparative data, and more. But how do we justify and rationalize the method? Why test predictions from a deductive, and thus truth-preserving, system? Primo and Clarke tackle these central questions in this novel work of methodology.

The volume addresses major features in empirical social research from methodological and theoretical perspectives. Prominent researchers discuss central problems in empirical social research in a theory-driven way from political science, sociological or social-psychological points of view. These contributions focus on a renewed discussion of foundations together with innovative and open research questions or interdisciplinary research perspectives.

Sean Gailmard is the Judith E. Gruber Associate Professor in the Travers Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. John W. Patty is associate professor of political science at Washington University.

Political scientists use models to investigate and illuminate causal mechanisms, generate comparative data, and more. But how do we justify and rationalize the method? Why test predictions from a deductive, and thus truth-preserving, system? Primo and Clarke tackle these central questions in this novel work of methodology.