The Committee on Concepts and Methods (C&M - IPSA RC01) used to publish two highly regarded series of working papers. In 2011, the Committee introduced the Best C&M Working Paper Award, which recognized the best working paper published in either of its two series during the three previous years. After being discontinued following the 2014 award, it was revived in 2024, and it now also covers journal articles and contributions to edited volumes.
IPSA C&M
Committee on Concepts and Methods
International Political Science Association
http://www.concepts-methods.org
Recipients
2024
Winner (journal article):
James Johnson
“Models-as-Fables: An Alternative to the Standard Rationale for Using Formal Models in Political Science,” (Perspectives in Politics, 2021).
Jury's Comments
James Johnson’s article “Models-as-Fables” is a bold intervention. Johnson argues that formal models are not what we think they are: games or theories to make predictions about the world to then be tested empirically. Instead, scholars use them as akin to fables, meant to convey “relatively simple lessons, morals, or ‘truths’.” A reconceptualization of models as fables and not predictive devices elucidates the role of models in the “translation of abstract and concrete, general and particular.” Johnson argues that, much like fables, models reveal truths and lessons by showing what a general assertion would imply in concrete instances. Thus understood, models exhort us to ruminate on what we cannot explain or need to investigate further. In this article, James Johnson turns the conventional view of models on its head and illustrates models’ distinct value in helping political scientists make sense of the world. Broad in application and illuminating, Johnson’s radically new take on formal modeling is the kind of article one continues to mull over after reading. It will help future scholars think about models in a different way and for a very different purpose.
Honorable mention (book chapter):
Joe Soss
“On Casing a Study versus Studying a Case” (Rethinking Comparison: Innovative Methods for Qualitative Political Research, 2021).
Jury's Comments
Joe Soss’ book chapter, “On Casing a Study versus Studying a Case” argues for an “interpretive” or “nominal” approach to cases, rather than the prevailing “realist” approach. Soss argues that cases do not exist independent of researchers, but are rather “analytic construct[s] that we develop through our efforts to theorize the phenomena we study.” Hence, no case is obviously an instance of one thing or the other; they are not pre-defined objects that readily exist in the world and self-evidently fall into pre-existing categories. The interpretive and nominal approach offered by Soss leverages the insights produced by pausing on and answering the question “what is this a case of?” in different ways as we seek to make sense of the world’s political phenomena. The chapter provides scholars engaged in the iterative casing of a study with language to articulate the logic and rigor inherent in this process, formalizing a new and more honest approach to selecting and studying cases. Soss’ chapter will be tremendously useful for anyone engaging in qualitative research.
2023 Award Jury (2 Committees):
Rachel Schwartz
Yuna Blajer de la Garza
Ajay Verghese
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2014
Peter Stone (Trinity College, Dublin)
"The Concept of Picking" (Political Concepts 50, May 2011).
In this paper Stone seeks to defend as rational the idea that agents sometimes simply pick among options in the absence of reasons to justify that selection. In instances where the standard ‘filters’ of rational decision making (first identify the feasible set, then choose the best option in that set) leave the agent with either no option or several, she may be justified in picking. Stone traces the genealogy of this idea, defends it against several skeptical alternative views, and in the process specifies the conditions under which it holds. In so doing he not only contributes to the task of delineating the concept of rational action, but offers a rich assessment of picking as a distinctive enterprise.
2014 Award Jury:
James Johnson, University of Rochester (chair)
Beth Leech, Rutgers University
Zachary Elkins, University of Texas – Austin
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2011
David Kuehn (University of Heidelberg) and Ingo Rohlfing (University of Cologne)
"Causal Explanation and Multi-Method Research in the Social Sciences" (Political Methods 26, February 2010).
After a long and often fiercely fought debate over the respective values of quantitative and qualitative methods in the social sciences, multi-method research (MMR) is emerging as a new methodological paradigm. The debate on MMR meets with the ongoing discussion about standards of good causal inference and explanation. It is now widely acknowledged in the philosophy of science and social sciences that one should strive for causal explanations that include propositions of both causal effects and causal processes. Our paper provides a systematic discussion of the potential of MMR to assess and produce robust causal explanations, which is an issue that has received surprising little attention so far. We argue that the salient dimension to be addressed in light of the plea for causal explanations and MMR concerns the distinction between deterministic and probabilistic causality. In the first part of the paper, we detail the implications of determinism and probabilism for the formulation of causal explanations and cross-case and within-case propositions in particular. Based on this framework, we evaluate the potential of MMR to develop and test causal explanations in the second part. We conclude from this discussion that the causal inferences generated through MMR are considerably less certain than the current state of the debate about MMR suggests.
Awarded at the APSA meeting in Seattle.
2011 Award Jury:
Gary Goertz, University of Arizona (chair)
Daniela Piana, University of Bologna
Markus Haverland, Erasmus University Rotterdam
