The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1994, Vol 39(2), 225. Reviews the book, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John Zaller (1992). The author's commendable effort to specify a model of mass opinion formation offers readers an introduction to the prevailing vi

The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.

Contrasting treatment‐specific survival using double‐robust estimators

Redesigning Social Inquiry Fuzzy Sets And Beyond

Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the World.

Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the World

Major crises can act as critical junctures or reinforce the political status quo, depending on how citizens view the performance of central institutions. We use an interrupted time series to study the political effect of the enforcement of a strict confinement policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we take advantage of a unique representative web-based survey that was fielded in March and April 2020 in Western Europe to compare the political support of those who took the survey right before and right after the start of the lockdown in their country. We find that lockdowns have increased vote intentions for the party of the Prime Minister/President, trust in government and satisfaction with democracy. Furthermore, we find that, while rallying individuals around current leaders and institutions, they have had no effect on traditional left–right attitudes.

https://ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1475-6765.12401

The effect of COVID-19 lockdowns on political support: Some good news for democracy?

This article provides a first systematic mapping of QCA applications, building upon a database of 313 peer-reviewed journal articles We find out that the number of QCA applications has dramatically increased during the past few years The mapping also reveals that csQCA remains the most frequently used technique, that political science, sociology, and management are the core disciplines of application, that macrolevel analyses, medium-N designs, and a monomethod use of QCA remain predominant A particular focus is also laid on the ratio between the number of cases and number of conditions and the compliance to benchmarks in this respect

From Niche to Mainstream Method? A comprehensive mapping of QCA applications in journal articles from 1984 to 2011

Even after a quarter-century of debate in political science and sociology, representatives of configurational comparative methods (CCMs) and those of regressional analytic methods (RAMs) continue t...

Still Lost in Translation! A Correction of Three Misunderstandings Between Configurational Comparativists and Regressional Analysts

Introduction The goal of this article is provide a first systematic review of the connection between public policy analysis and QCA techniques, with a core emphasis on the state-of-the-art in QCA empirical applications1. First, we present QCA both as an approach and as a set of techniques (crisp-set, multi-value and fuzzy-set QCA), stressing their specific characteristics. In a second section, we argue that, in several ways, there exists a preferential connection between QCA and public policy analysis: in terms of research design and also in terms of the actual goals and needs of policy-oriented research. Then, in the bulk of the article (sections 3 to 7), we provide an exhaustive survey of empirical applications published so far. To do so, we develop a typology of applications along two dimensions: the stages in the policy process (from agenda-setting and policy initiation to policy evaluation) and the level at which the 'cases' or units of analysis are empirically defined (from micro to macro). Finally, we wrap up this inventory by taking stock of what has been achieved so far. On that basis, we discuss some remaining limitations as well as some of the most promising avenues for further developments. Some precautionary notes must be made. To start with, this review is circumscribed to the field of public policy analysis, focusing on the action of public/state bodies with regards to concrete issues or societal demands - as indeed the domain of 'policy analysis' is much broader and could also encompass decision-making processes in private firms2 and other non-public players (e.g. Gill & Saunders 1992). Further, the purpose of this article is to focus on the concrete ways in which QCA has been used in the field. This requires that we provide some short indications on the research questions and research results for most of the applications, and therefore quite large sections of the article are rather descriptive by nature. Finally, this article does not aim at surveying the numerous technical issues and innovations in QCA (see rather Wagemann & Schneider 2010a, 2010b; Schneider & Wagemann forthcoming; Rihoux & Ragin 2009). Neither does it aim to provide 'quantitative' information on all the surveyed applications (e.g. number of cases, number of condition variables, ...) - this will be the purpose of a forthcoming article focusing on the broader population of QCA applications (Rihoux et.al. 2012 forthcoming). 1 QCA in a nutshell (3) 1.1 QCA as an approach QCA designates both an approach and an umbrella term for three specific techniques. The whole approach, as well as the first technique (csQCA - crisp-set QCA, first referred to as QCA) was launched by Charles Ragin's seminal volume (1987). QCA is first and foremost of comparative nature - more precisely: it was initially geared towards multiple case-studies, in a small- or intermediate-N research design. It thus strives to meet two apparently contradicting goals: gathering in-depth insight in the different cases and capture the complexity of the cases (gaining 'intimacy' with the cases), but also producing some level of generalization (Ragin 1987). The whole intention of Ragin (1987, 1997) was to develop an original "synthetic strategy" as a middle way between the case-oriented (or 'qualitative'), and the variable-oriented (or 'quantitative') approaches, which would "integrate the best features of the case-oriented approach with the best features of the variable-oriented approach" (Ragin 1987: 84). On the one hand, indeed, QCA embodies some key strengths of the case-oriented approach (Ragin 1987; Berg-Schlosser et.al. 2009). To start with, it is a holistic approach, in the sense that each individual case is considered as a complex whole which needs to be comprehended and which should not be forgotten in the course of the analysis. Thus, QCA is in essence a case-sensitive approach. Furthermore, QCA develops a conception of causality that leaves room for complexity. …

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) in Public Policy Analysis : An Extensive Review

Current standard practices put sufficiency at the core of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), while the analysis of necessity is limited to the test for necessary conditions. Here, we argue that the possibilities of QCA in the latter domain are much greater. In particular, it can be used to empirically confront theories centered on necessary relations and that involved various conditions. A new operation, labeled the "systematic necessity assessment," is therefore introduced. To show its added value, a published QCA study that confronts theories centered on necessary relations but using the regular minimization is replicated.(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)IntroductionMore than 20 years ago, Most and Starr (1989), followed by Goertz and Starr (2003), called upon their peers to be more rigorous in the analysis of necessary conditions, all types of research design considered. They argued that despite the existence in political science of many theories based on necessary relations, researchers rarely use appropriate techniques to empirically test them. The reason for this gap, lies in the absence of an adequate tool-kit. With the exception of the quantitative models developed by Braumoeller and Goertz (2000) and by Clark, Gilligan, and Golder (2006), mainstream quantitative methods unravel symmetric causal relations that cannot grasp the particularity of necessary relations. Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) in contrast, Goertz and Starr argued (2003, 13), could potentially overcome these shortcomings and complete the tool-kit in this respect, thanks to its set-theoretic logic.For many years, however, QCA developers did not seem to have attached great importance to this possibility. As a matter of fact, the development of the method was mainly concerned with the other type of asymmetrical causal relation, namely sufficiency. Today, despite the recent rise of specific operations to evaluate the necessary character of individual conditions, the analysis of necessary relations is still falling behind. To fill this gap, this article proposes a new operation, labeled as the "systematic necessity assessment"1 that fully exploits QCA's possibilities in this domain, and that produces useful answers to research questions addressing competing theories centered on necessary relations. In particular, it allows identifying how some of these conditions are combined, sometimes in unexpected ways, to form SUIN conditions (sufficient but unnecessary part of a configuration that is insufficient but necessary for the outcome). The article is structured in four parts, first, the current standard practices concerning necessity in QCA are described; second, in mirroring the minimization, the systematic necessity assessment is presented together with the central concepts of SUIN conditions; third, a stepwise procedure to perform this operation is described in a didactical way; and finally, a published QCA analysis is replicated to show its added value.Necessity and QCAThanks to its set-theoretic feature, QCA is well-equipped for the analysis of necessary conditions. One of its strengths indeed resides in its ability to deal with causal complexity and more particularly with asymmetrical causality such as necessary relations. Formally speaking, necessity applies to conditions that are present in every case disclosing the outcome. Yet, and this is where the asymmetry appears, it does not say anything for the cases not disclosing it. Those cases are thus irrelevant for the necessary relation as the outcome may be present or absent without hindering the necessity feature of the conditions. Put in terms of set-theoretic logic, it amounts to saying that the outcome is a subset of the necessary condition (Ragin 2008, 13-28).Nevertheless, despite QCA's ability to deal with asymmetrical causal relations, necessity did not occupy a central position in Ragin's seminal work introducing csQCA (Ragin 1987). …

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/23563604

Damien Bol

Papers

The effect of COVID-19 lockdowns on political support: Some good news for democracy?

From Niche to Mainstream Method? A comprehensive mapping of QCA applications in journal articles from 1984 to 2011

Still Lost in Translation! A Correction of Three Misunderstandings Between Configurational Comparativists and Regressional Analysts

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) in Public Policy Analysis : An Extensive Review

Confronting Theories Based on Necessary Relations: Making the Best of QCA Possibilities