Sheri Berman

Political Change and the Rise of Labour in Comparative Perspective (review)

What most distinguishes Igo’s study apart is her effort to understand how the public responded to the use of inferential statistics to project mental constructs of a society using inferential statistics. She assesses the public’s reaction to the various studies by following coverage in magazines and newspapers with a mostly middle class readership. She also digs into the correspondence directed to Kinsey, the Lynds, Gallup and Roper from interested citizens. The public was initially skeptical of the ability of survey research methods to gauge public sentiment on an array of topics. There was plenty to be skeptical about. Igo points to numerous shortcomings in the methodologies of all three studies. Pollsters discovered that interviewees had a disconcerting habit of responding differently to different interviewers. No one was attempting anything that approximated a random sample, a concept even the pollsters initially dismissed as a fad. The social scientists did not invite close inspection of their methodology and portrayed their enterprise as strictly empirical, value free, scientific inquiry. They disavowed any hidden agenda or political proclivities that might cloud their professional judgment; their task—like that of any election official—was to render an honest count. Gallup claimed that he did not even vote. To judge from the correspondence, the public’s suspicions of the statistical analysis was not based on any sophisticated understanding of the pitfalls of sampling or questionnaire design; more commonly skeptics grounded their doubts on the simple fact that they were not surveyed. Nevertheless, Igo concludes, postwar Americans became resigned to the new authority invested in social scientists as national oracles giving voice to the people’s will. Cultural historians of the modern era and social scientists of many stripes will find much to admire in this insightful volume. Igo reminds us how deeply steeped social scientific inquiries are in contemporary social conventions and attitudes. She also outlines the overlooked role social scientists have played in shaping today’s imagined communities, picking up where the census takers, map makers and newspaper publishers had left off during the century previous. In some particulars, I wonder if Igo’s reach has exceeded her grasp. Gauging the public’s reaction to these studies on the basis of correspondence directed to their authors obviously has its hazards. (Igo quotes from a number of letters the Kinsey Institute relegated to its “crank” file.) Yet, The Averaged American at least tells us what the public was told about these studies if not what it actually believed. If only we had a poll!

Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences

Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. By Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. 331p.

Ideational Theorizing in the Social Sciences since “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State”

50.00 cloth,

Kevin J. Callahan. Demonstration Culture: European Socialism and the Second International, 1889–1914. Leicester: Troubador Publishing Ltd. 2010. Pp. xxxii, 324.

20.00 paper. In recent years, there has been a surge in work on what has come to be known as “qualitative methods.” The trend is essentially reactive, developing as a response to the outpouring of work on quantitative and formal methods and the assertions by scholars in those areas that case studies and historical work are impressionistic, unscientific, and noncumulative. To counter such claims, some of the fields most distinguished qualitative scholars (e.g., Stephan Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science, 1997; James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, eds., Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences, 2003; and Marc Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History, 2006) have spent much time and ink to show that researchers who eschew regressions or game theory can be just as methodologically aware and sophisticated as those who embrace them. Alexander George and Andrew Bennetts Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences is an impressive and welcome addition to this literature.