Sidney Verba

Bio: Sidney Verba is an academic researcher from Harvard University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Politics & Democracy. The author has an hindex of 57, co-authored 175 publications receiving 45963 citations. Previous affiliations of Sidney Verba include Stanford University & Princeton University.

Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics

Abstract: * *1. Introduction * Part I: The World of Participation *2. Defining Political Participation *3. Political Participation: How Much? About What? *4. Interpreting Political Activity: A Report from Activists *5. Recruiting Political Activists * Part II: Participation and Representation *6. Thinking about Participatory Representation *7. Who Participates? Economic Circumstances and Needs *8. Who Participates? Race, Ethnicity, and Gender * Part III: The Civic Voluntarism Model *9. Explaining Participation: Introductory Considerations *10. Resources for Politics: Time and Money *11. Resources for Politics: Civic Skills *12. Resources, Engagement, and Political Activity *13. Institutions and Recruitment *14. Participation and the Politics of Issue Engagement *15. From Generation to Generation: The Roots of [incomplete]

Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research

Abstract: While heated arguments between practitioners of qualitative and quantitative research have begun to test the very integrity of the social sciences, Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba have produced a farsighted and timely book that promises to sharpen and strengthen a wide range of research performed in this field. These leading scholars, each representing diverse academic traditions, have developed a unified approach to valid descriptive and causal inference in qualitative research, where numerical measurement is either impossible or undesirable. Their book demonstrates that the same logic of inference underlies both good quantitative and good qualitative research designs, and their approach applies equally to each. Providing precepts intended to stimulate and discipline thought, the authors explore issues related to framing research questions, measuring the accuracy of data and uncertainty of empirical inferences, discovering causal effects, and generally improving qualitative research. Among the specific topics they address are interpretation and inference, comparative case studies, constructing causal theories, dependent and explanatory variables, the limits of random selection, selection bias, and errors in measurement. Mathematical notation is occasionally used to clarify concepts, but no prior knowledge of mathematics or statistics is assumed. The unified logic of inference that this book explicates will be enormously useful to qualitative researchers of all traditions and substantive fields.

The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations.

Abstract: An Approach to Political Culture Patterns of Political Cognition Feelings Toward Government and Politics Patterns of Partnership The Obligation to Participate The Sense of Civic Competence Citizen Competence and Subject Competence Competence, Participation, and Political Allegiance Social Relations and Civic Cooperation Organizational Membership and Civic Competence Political Socialization and Civic Competence Profiles of Nations and Groups The Civic Culture and Democratic Stability

The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations

Abstract: An Approach to Political Culture Patterns of Political Cognition Feelings Toward Government and Politics Patterns of Partnership The Obligation to Participate The Sense of Civic Competence Citizen Competence and Subject Competence Competence, Participation, and Political Allegiance Social Relations and Civic Cooperation Organizational Membership and Civic Competence Political Socialization and Civic Competence Profiles of Nations and Groups The Civic Culture and Democratic Stability

The Civic Culture

Abstract: Ouvrage de science politique qui a popularise la culture politique comme champ de recherche ; premiere edition en 1963, edition mise-a-jour en 1980 : The civic culture revisited ; traduction espagnole en 1970

The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism

Abstract: A model is presented to account for the natural selection of what is termed reciprocally altruistic behavior. The model shows how selection can operate against the cheater (non-reciprocator) in the system. Three instances of altruistic behavior are discussed, the evolution of which the model can explain: (1) behavior involved in cleaning symbioses; (2) warning cries in birds; and (3) human reciprocal altruism. Regarding human reciprocal altruism, it is shown that the details of the psychological system that regulates this altruism can be explained by the model. Specifically, friendship, dislike, moralistic aggression, gratitude, sympathy, trust, suspicion, trustworthiness, aspects of guilt, and some forms of dishonesty and hypocrisy can be explained as important adaptations to regulate the altruistic system. Each individual human is seen as possessing altruistic and cheating tendencies, the expression of which is sensitive to developmental variables that were selected to set the tendencies at a balance ap...

Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research

Abstract: While heated arguments between practitioners of qualitative and quantitative research have begun to test the very integrity of the social sciences, Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba have produced a farsighted and timely book that promises to sharpen and strengthen a wide range of research performed in this field. These leading scholars, each representing diverse academic traditions, have developed a unified approach to valid descriptive and causal inference in qualitative research, where numerical measurement is either impossible or undesirable. Their book demonstrates that the same logic of inference underlies both good quantitative and good qualitative research designs, and their approach applies equally to each. Providing precepts intended to stimulate and discipline thought, the authors explore issues related to framing research questions, measuring the accuracy of data and uncertainty of empirical inferences, discovering causal effects, and generally improving qualitative research. Among the specific topics they address are interpretation and inference, comparative case studies, constructing causal theories, dependent and explanatory variables, the limits of random selection, selection bias, and errors in measurement. Mathematical notation is occasionally used to clarify concepts, but no prior knowledge of mathematics or statistics is assumed. The unified logic of inference that this book explicates will be enormously useful to qualitative researchers of all traditions and substantive fields.

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

Abstract: Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms

Abstract: The ‘new institutionalism’ is a term that now appears with growing frequency in political science. However, there is considerable confusion about just what the ‘new institutionalism’ is, how it differs from other approaches, and what sort of promise or problems it displays. The object of this essay is to provide some preliminary answers to these questions by reviewing recent work in a burgeoning literature. Some of the ambiguities surrounding the new institutionalism can be dispelled if we recognize that it does not constitute a unified body of thought. Instead, at least three different analytical approaches, each of which calls itself a ‘new institutionalism’, have appeared over the past fifteen years. We label these three schools of thought: historical institutionalism, rational choice institutionalism, and sociological institutionalism.’ All of these approaches developed in reaction to the behavioural perspectives that were influential during the 1960s and 1970s and all seek to elucidate the role that institutions play in the determination of social and political outcomes. However, they paint quite different pictures of the political world. In the sections that follow, we provide a brief account of the genesis of each school and characterize what is distinctive about its approach to social and political problems. We then compare their analytical strengths and weaknesses, * An earlier version of this paper WLS presented at the 1994 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association and at a Conference on ‘What is Institutionalism Now? at the