Nya möjligheter och utmaningar inom det jämförande studiet av politik

Abstract

New possibilities and challenges in comparative politics. The first decade of the 21st century has brought with it two important breakthroughs in the study of comparative politics. The first one concerns the availability of data. Nowadays, access to a wide range of information sources for a large number of countries in the world can be gained without too much effort. The second one concerns the methodological achievements made in recent years. Today, sophisticated multi-level analyses can be conducted fairly easily. Among qualitatively oriented researchers, Charles Ragin has made a significant contribution by introducing the fs/j2C4-technique into the field of political science. However, the growing amount of data and the new methods not only open up new possibilities for the researcher. The present article explicitly deals with the problems related to the use of multi-level analyses and fs/QCA in comparative political research. In addition, attention is drawn to the drawbacks of using survey data from heterogeneous settings.