Why Should Politics and IR Students and Researchers Care About Methods?
Guest post by Christopher Lamont and Mieczyslaw P. Boduszynski
From Kasia Figiel, Sage Research Methods Community Manager: Christopher Lamont and Mieczyslaw P Boduszynski are the authors of the recently published second edition of Research Methods in Politics and International Relations. In the post below they make a case for the utmost importance of methodology in any research project and explain how their accessible and practical textbook can support even the most novice PIR researcher.
Christopher Lamont is Dean of E-Track’s International Relations program and Vice Dean of the Graduate School of International Relations at Tokyo International University in Japan.
Mieczyslaw P. Boduszynski is Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at Pomona College in California, USA.
Let’s say you care a lot about the causes of civil war. And you want to write a paper or thesis about one of these subjects.
What research methods will you use in your research and why? And why should you think about a related concept, methodology?
As a novice researcher, these are questions that you might find distracting, or a source of stress, when you launch a research project. Whether it is a short paper, a lengthier class essay, a bachelor’s or postgraduate thesis–or even a policy brief–there are certain shared principles of good academic research and writing. For example, it is helpful to have a clear research question that frames your inquiry. Research should also engage with theory.
But not all research questions seek knowledge in the same way. And it turns out that there are many ways of uncovering knowledge in politics and international relations. If you are interested in migration, you might examine the domestic political party dynamics that determine migration policy. But you could also delve into the discourse–in politics, media, and even in popular culture–that shapes public attitudes toward migrants and migration policy.
Our textbook, Research Methods in Politics and International Relations, helps students understand research practice, which consists of research methodology (how we make sense of phenomena), research methods (the tools you use to analyze it), and research design (the overall blueprint for your research). Understanding research practice opens the door to a diverse kaleidoscope of choices and tools available to analyze the most pressing issues in the world today. In our book we emphasize that research practice requires you to navigate complex choices, with the goal of helping you to navigate them
We guide you through the process of carrying out a Politics and International Relations (PIR) research project, step-by-step, starting with discussing how to formulate a research question. This is the first and most important step in the research process.
Are you asking a question about the cause of a particular civil war in a single country? Or do you want to know about what explains the genesis of civil war more generally?
Each of these pursuits would lead you down a different path when it comes to research methodology and methods. For example, when asking general questions about the causes of civil war, you will probably need to collect large amounts of data on many instances of civil war across multiple countries and analyze it using statistical methods. How do you collect such data? How do you identify and measure potential determinants of civil war, such as ethnic or sectarian divisions? And how do you analyze it? Finally, how do you present the findings of your research, which may even be useful to policymakers in international organisations or national governments? Our textbook guides you through this process.
On the other hand, what if you don’t want to generalize about all civil wars, but instead wish to tell the story of why civil war broke out in a country that you have read about in your classes? This approach is also highly valuable PIR research, but one that relies on a different methodology and methods than the one which seeks to uncover the causes of civil war more generally. Here, you would likely conduct an empirical study of a single country case that delves into its culture, history, economics, and politics. Our textbook will help you do that as well.
We also cover other important topics related to research practice in PIR. We discuss how to compile and write a literature review, introduce various kinds of research designs, and thoroughly cover the important topic of research ethics, including guidance on how to approach, and reference, AI-generated text. We provide an overview of how to use theory in PIR research, as well as a tour through the major theories that students are likely to encounter in their studies. We do so while citing cutting-edge PIR research and drawing on current global issues.
The textbook teaches you how to gather data from diverse sources–from texts and surveys to archives and interviews –and how to analyze it using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Finally, we discuss how to ensure that your final product is complete, properly cited, and reaches its intended audience.
We believe our textbook can empower you to carry out research you are passionate about in a rigorous manner.