Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

Word Count:

Should corruption be studied quantitatively or qualitatively?

This essay will argue that corruption should be studied qualitatively as qualitative
research provides a better understanding of the mechanism of corruption and the way to
diminish it. First, this essay will define the terms corruption, quantitatively, and
qualitatively. Second, this essay will illustrate how qualitative analysis depicts the way that
corruption functions. Third, this essay will give insight on how qualitative analysis is useful
for the reduction of corruption and the prevention of future occurrences of it. Finally, this
essay will present the alternative views to the qualitative method and will afterwards counter
argue the key points of the critique.
This essays definition of qualitative will be a range of techniques including
observation, participant observation, intensive individual interviews with the purpose of
understand[ing] the experiences and practices of key informants and to locate them firmly in
context. (Devine, 2002, p. 197). This essay will define corruption as the misuse of public
power for private or political gain (Rose-Ackerman, 2004, p. 301). Moreover, in order for the
essay to well exemplify the range of corruption, it will adapt the concept that [corruption is]
all encompassing, stretching from the periphery to the centre and involving a large number of
politicians, bureaucrats, entrepreneurs and others (Bull & Newell, 2003, p. 205). Considering
the fact that quantitative analysis is a major part of the critiques of the qualitative method,
this essay will define quantitative" as any inference based on large numbers of dataset
observations, that is, statistical analysis (Gerring, 2012, p. 362), which seek[s] general
description rather than particular instances (King, et al., 1994, p. 3). The essay will focus
on why corruption should be studied qualitatively; it will not explore which of the approaches
is generally more efficient.
Qualitative analysis can give us a better understanding on the mechanism and specifics
of corruption. Through the conduction of different forms of data gathering, the qualitative
methods allow for a broader perspective of a given issue as every individual presents his
interpretation and viewpoint (Devine, 2002). This way, more details can be revealed about the
occurrence of corruption in a society. Data for the scope and specifics of corruption in postcolonialist countries, for example, are heavily reliant on qualitative analysis and specifically,
ethnographic research. By focusing predominantly on the degree of corruption and limits in
the state press in Ghana, Jennifer Hasty indicates the challenges to transparency and freedom
of speech that corruption poses. Without the conduction of qualitative methods of research,
important information such as the fact that state journalists are pressured to portray the state
in a flattering light can be hardly acquired (Hasty, 2006, p. 84). Moreover, the word
corruption does not have an exact equivalent in many African languages and postcolonialist countries. In the case of Cameroon, for example, what the English speakers refer to
as corruption is named as politics of the belly an expression that slightly differs from the
Western perception (Bayart, 1993).
This epistemological phenomenon implies the importance of qualitative methodology
in the study of corruption and renders quantitative comparison as ineffective. Alina MungiuPippidi underlines three different scenarios, based on qualitative analysis, with corruption
being either the exception or the norm. In other words, corruption may be in its modern
form as an exception to the norm of universalism, as the norm itself in a case of
particularism, or encompassing elements of both (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2006, pp. 91-92). It is

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

important to determine the subcategory of corruption as this paves the path towards its
successful diminishment. Due to the hybridity of the Russian regime, which includes both
elements of the traditional government and representative democracy, instruments of
informal governments are obscured even further; thus, additional information gathering is
required (Ledeneva, 2013, p. 1145). Ledeneva conducts a study in order to determine the
significance of personal networks and the reliance of the Russian elite on the so-called
kompromat files through the usage of qualitative analysis in the form of interviewing and
observation. The drawn conclusion is that fear stems from the complete distrust of the
judicial system (Ledeneva, 2013, p. 1157). Therefore, one of the weak spots in the Russian
anti-corruption policy is the malfunction of the judiciary.
A qualitative study that was conducted in order to determine the relationship between
corruption and socioeconomic status further reveals the ability of qualitative methods to
indicate the governmental elements that are most severely affected by corruption (Fred, et al.,
2010, p. 78). Interviews with the police officers illustrate various flaws in the system:
inefficient judiciary as the lack of judicial support allowed well-connected individuals to
punish officers; economic issues bribery is regarded as an important source of income;
diverse perceptions of the police officers of the fairly divided [public] (Fred, et al., 2010, pp.
88-90) . Such scenarios, in which corruption stems from certain cleavages, may be efficiently
explored through the usage of qualitative analysis. Still, the methodology should be varied
and put in such way that fears of self-incrimination (Treisman, 2007, p. 214) are reduced to a
minimum. Results with greater accuracy may have been achieved if the interviewers had
altered the structure of the question without obscuring its goal. In the case of Lagunes, for
example, this can be achieved by asking police officers in third rather than first person of
corruption-related cases of their colleagues rather than themselves (Lagunes book).
Obtaining information through qualitative analysis is crucial to successfully tackle
corruption. Results from qualitative analysis tend to have an impact on the forms of anticorruption policies or may strengthen the power of the civil society. People who are cheated
of public funds may seek collective action [in the] form of social movements as a way to
prevent future occurrences of corruption and to grant themselves a certain level of security
(Corbridge, 2013, p. 228). Generally, the panacea to the understanding and diminishment of
corruption is the establishment of democracy as the electorate allows for individuals that have
a sinister interest opposed to the general interest to be removed from the system (Ryan,
2013, p. 989). Qualitative analysis, however, pinpoints that the remedy to corruption is
strongly dependent on a set of unique factors in every society. While in one scenario the issue
may be the level of transparency, in other cases it may be in the form of accountability,
especially in developed and democratic countries. Alan Ryan well illustrates this with the
contemporary American political system in which transparency is unproblematic as
donations can be easily tracked, yet there is no consensus on what should be considered
corruption (Ryan, 2013, pp. 990-992).
Alternative views to the usage of qualitative analysis in the study of corruption include
usage of the quantitative and the mix-method approaches. One of the main critiques is that in
interviews or other qualitative means of obtaining data people may misunderstand the
question they are asked, thus resulting in a distortion of their actual viewpoint by fail[ing] to
communicate exactly the meaning intended (Franklin, 2008, p. 248). Although they may be
such occurrences present, in the case of corruption, information may be hardly misinterpreted
to such a degree that would eventually obstruct the perception of the severity of corruption.
Furthermore, surveys pose many dilemmas as they are occurrences of a vast range of errors
or problems. They may contain vaguely-defined concepts, data [may] get lost, there may be
unintentional removal of cases and variables, or the the response rate may be low (John,

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

2010, p. 270). The interviews and the discussions a widespread form of the qualitative
analysis are subject to different forms of analysis, thus they are being processed by a
number of analyzers, which minimizes the margin of misinterpretation (Devine, 2002, p. 199).
Mix-method research, on the other hand, poses the danger of inability to deal with apparent
inconsistencies between data sets and the priority [of one data source] over another (Devine
& Heath, 1999, pp. 199-205). Survey data may be considered as unreliable as it is unable
to distinguish between different types of corruption; for example, bribery paid for
convenience and [bribes] paid as a result of coercion (Laguna 77)
Another issue with qualitative analysis that critics point out is the presence of selection
bias. Selection bias, however, is inevitable even in quantitative and mix-method analyses. The
official statistics [of] governmental departments, for example, may be a mere reflection only
on specific data that the government has chosen. Therefore, the public statistical information
that is presented is determined by the politicians and bureaucrats (John, 2010, p. 269). Even
statistics produced by organizations such as Transparency International suffer from selection
bias and autocorrelation as to a great extent they reflect the views of business people that
are heavily affected by previous TI scores (Corbridge, 2013, p. 224). In terms of size, an
increment in the sample size may enhance measurement error or include observations that
are not fully comparable, which blurs the relationship between corruption and a given
variable. Furthermore, the large size of a sample does is not necessarily equivalent to its
random selection (Gerring, 2012, p. 365). Despite the fact that individual-level error is
averaged in quantitative research (Franklin, 2008, p. 248) a few causal-process observations
are more important than many dataset observations (Gerring, 2012, p. 366) as they efficiently
portray the components of corruption in a society.
As a conclusion, this essay argued that corruption should be studied qualitatively as
qualitative research provides critical insight on the innards of corruption and the ways to
reduce it. First, it defined the key concepts what is understood by qualitative,
quantitative, and corruption. Second, this essay exemplified the importance of qualitative
research in the understanding of the specifics of corruption. Third, this essay depicted the role
of qualitative analysis in the lessening of corruption as qualitative methods indicate the
vulnerabilities of a given political system. Finally, this essay introduced the counter arguments
to the usage of qualitative research methods in the study of corruption by depicting the key
points of the quantitative and the mix-method researches.

Bibliography
Bayart, J.-F., 1993. The Politics of the Belly. 1st ed. New York: Longman.
Bull, M. J. & Newell, J. L., 2003. Corruption in Contemporary Politics. Palgrave:
Macmillan.
Corbridge, S., 2013. Corruption in India. In: A. Kohli & P. Singh, eds. Routledge
Handbook of Indian Politics. Hooboken : Routledge, pp. 222-229.
Devine, F., 2002. Qualitative Methods. In: Theory and Methods in Political
Science. 2nd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

Devine, F. & Heath, S., 1999. Sociological research methods in context. 1st ed.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Franklin, M., 2008. Quantitative analysis. In: D. D. Porta & M. Keating, eds.
Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences: A Pluralist Perspective.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 240-262.
Gerring, J., 2012. Social Science Methodology: A Unified Framework. 2nd ed.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hasty, J., 2006. Performing power, composing culture: The state press in Ghana.
Ethnography, 7(1), p. 6998.
John, P., 2010. Quantitative Methods. In: D. Marsh & G. Stoker, eds. Theory and
Methods in Political Science. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 267-285.
King, G., Keohane, R. O. & Verba, S., 1994. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific
Inference in Qualitative Research. 1st ed. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Ledeneva, A. V., 2013. Russias Practical Norms and Informal Governance: The
Origins of Endemic Corruption. Social Research, 80(4), pp. 1135-1162.
Mungiu-Pippidi, A., 2006. Corruption: Diagnosis and Treatment. Journal of
Democracy, 17(3), pp. 86-99.
Rose-Ackerman, S., 2004. Governance and Corruption. In: Global Crises, Global
Solutions. s.l.:Cambridge University Press.
Ryan, A., 2013. Conceptions of Corruption, Its Causes, and Its Cure. Social
Research, 80(4), pp. 977-992.

To explore the role o f personal networks in Putins sistema (1136 Ledeneva)

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

I stated that previous heads o f the Russian state were known to rely
on their security services for gathering and keeping sensitive information
(kompromat files) on their staff, friends and enemies, and asked the
president what information he sought and used on a regular basis with
regard to corruption.
He also pointed out that the problem of
corruption resides not in people but in the system. Therefore, targeting
people with kompromat is ineffective. (1137)
Deciding whether institutional deficiencies create the demand
for manual control or whether manual control restricts the development
o f institutional capacity is the chicken-egg dilemma.(1138)
In the contemporary Russian hybrid
regime, where elements o f traditional governance and representative
democracy are intertwined with Putins power over his networks,
instruments o f informal governance are obscured even further (1145)
partnerships is the system o f mutual feeding (1150)
Fear for ones
safety, ones career or business, complete distrust o f the judicial system,
and the insecurity this entails. (1157)
The remedy is democracy. Only by ensuring that
those who have a sinister interest opposed to the general interest can
be thrown out by the electorate can we ensure the coincidence o f interests
that will eliminate corruption. (Alan Ryan 989)
Transparency was not the issue, since there
was nothing secret about what went on; accountability was an issue
once parliament flexed its muscles, the argument was over and it was
clear that the public via parliament had a right to say how the money
was spent. It was a shift in the moral climate that swept away what
came to be seen as ancient abuses. (990)
On the view advanced here, transparency is certainly needed to
suppress corruption; accountability is impossible if those who stand
in temptations way dont have to produce accurate and complete
accounts, dont run the risk of facing public hearings on the accuracy
o f their accounts, arent properly audited, and so on. (991)
Consider the contemporary American political system. Although
there are areas o f the funding o f political campaigns where more transparency
would helppreventing donors o f large sums o f money from
hiding behind a veil o f anonymitythere is no great difficulty in discovering
who has funded particular members o f Congress. Nor is there any
Conceptions of Corruption 991
great difficulty in connecting that funding to the voting record o f the
members o f Congress, either. The difficulty is that there is no consensus
on what corruption is. A substantial part of the population thinks it
is the job o f a member o f Congress to lobby the government on behalf
of the particular districts and economic interests to which they have

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

given their allegiance. One person will think that receiving $300,000
from the makers o f medical devices and then doing ones damnedest to
get the Affordable Care Acts tax on such devices repealed is corrupt
essentially, selling ones vote. Another may think that since the device
maker operates in the district you represent, your duty is to fight for
the firm and its employees. To put it another way, flagrant, gold-plated,
universally condemned corruption is something that greater transparency
would root out. (991-992)
Although there is a relationship between perceived corruption and various social and
economic factors, measures of actual corruptioncorrelate with hardly any of these factors
once one controls for income.
Perceived corruption, as
measured by such indexes, is lower in economically developed, long-established
liberal democracies, with a free and widely read press, a high share of women
in government, and a history of openness to trade. It is higher in countries that
depend on fuel exports or have intrusive business regulations and unpredictable
inflation. These factors explain up to 90% of the cross-national variation. However,
measures of actual corruption experiences, based on surveys that ask business
people and citizens in different countries whether they have been expected to pay
bribes recently, correlate with hardly any of these factors once one controls for income.
(Daniel Treisman 212)
Wording is often chosen to reduce respondents fears of self-incrimination (214)
We conduct a fi eld experiment to test how traffi c police offi cers respond
to drivers of different income levels (Lagunes 77)
First, survey data used in observational
studies typically rely on self-reports of corrupt practices, which
often are unreliable. Second, such data do not differentiate between bribes
that are paid for convenience from those paid as a result of coercion from
public offi cials. (77)
relationship
between corruption and socioeconomic status (78)
Intrinsic & Instrumental!
A
number of offi cers stated that the lack of judicial support allowed wellconnected
individuals to punish offi cers who issued them a citation (88) JUDICIARY
In clear contradiction to our empirical fi ndings,
the other police offi cers interviewed stated that offi cers always give
tickets on stopping a driver. (89)
described them as an important source of income INCOME
the public is fairly divided
between those who show respect and those who do not CLASS CLEAVEGES
A corollary to our study is the distinct advantages that different methods

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

offered in answering various aspects of our question. Although surveys
of expert and public perceptions have improved our understanding
of corruptions macro effects, these tools seem less suited for describing
how corrupt practices play out at the micro level. (91) could have been able to improve this
by asking in third person

Bringing
quantitative and qualitative findings together has the potential to offer insights that could
not otherwise be gleaned. Thus, even when a fusion of the two sets of findings was not
envisioned at the outset of a project, it may be valuable to consider whether the findings
suggest interesting contrasts or help to clarify each other. (Bryman
Our goal is to understand whether corruption is
the exception or whether it is the norm. For each society, we must ask:
Are we dealing with modern corruption, where corruption is the exception
to the norm of universalism? Or are we dealing with particularism
92 Journal of Democracy
and a culture of privilege, where corruption itself is the norm? Or, as is
frequently the case in the postcolonial world where the modern state
was defectively implanted on a traditional society, are we dealing with
a combination of the two? If so, to what extent is the government guided
by universalist norms and to what extent is its main task to promote
patronage and cater to specific interest groups?. (Mungiu 91-2) 92-

Surveys pose many dilemmas as they often contain vaguely-defined concepts (Peter
John 270); files sometimes get corrupted and data get lost ; response rates to surveys may
be low and archives may contain missing years
research assistants or survey companies sometimes input responses to questionnaires
incorrectly researchers accidentally delete cases and variables (270)

discussions are usually either tape-recorded or extensive notes are taken which are subject to
different forms of analysis (199)

People fail to understand the questions they are asked

or the meaning of the answers that they give. Most important, there is always
a disjunction between the person who designs the questions (and hence the

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

coding scheme for those questions) and the person who answers them (thus
implicitly providing the values that will be coded). For this reason the questions
often fail to communicate exactly the meaning intended. All of this
results in error. There is generally much less error in higher-level data because
individual-level error is averaged out during the process of aggregation (franklin 2008,
248)
PRONE to ecological fallacies - inferring individual-level relationships
from aggregate-level findings

Chiesas confession set off a domino effect as his naming of names led others
to confess and they in their turn to do likewise. (Newell & Bull 44)
official statistics that governmental departments produce may reflect political decisions
about what kinds of data to collect. In the end, official information is what politicians and
bureaucrats wish to make public (Peter John 269

The annual league tables produced by Transparency International suffer from

selection bias and autocorrelation: they mainly sample the perception of business people, and
perceptions in any one year may be influenced by previous TI scores (Corbridge, 2013, p.
224)
voice strategiesdemand side of corruptionseek to promote collective actions among
bribe givers or those who are cheated of public fundssome of these col act take form of
social movements (Corbridge, 2013, p. 228)

For example, some qualitative

studies are undertaken with the objective of generating new hypotheses rather
than testing extant hypotheses. AV (Gerring, 2012) 365
Size matters, for it means that more evidence is available
to test a given hypothesis, providing insurance against errors caused by the
presence of random variation, and allowing for statistical procedures to correct
for the presence of confounders. A large sample usually means that sufficient
variation is incorporated into the analysis along key parameters (X and Y). A
large sample also means that the researcher may be able to apply random
sampling techniques (selecting the sample randomly from the population of
interest), enhancing a studys external validity.
However, sometimes an increase in sample size causes more problems than
it solves. It may enhance measurement error, for example. A larger sample
may also involve the inclusion of observations that are not fully comparable
(in ways that might affect the putative relationship between X and Y). This will
create heterogeneities in the sample that may impair a valid, precise, and
informative assessment of causal relationships. For this reason, it is often
more sensible to work with a small, homogeneous sample than with a large,

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

heterogeneous sample especially if the latter requires complex modeling
assumptions in order to render the analysis plausible.10 Increasing sample size
is also problematic if it does not enhance leverage on key factors of theoretical
interest (X and Y). This is why rare events (revolutions, world wars, genocides)
are often approached in a qualitative manner. Often, it makes more sense to
look intensively at the few cases in which these phenomena occurred (relying
on background knowledge of those cases in which these phenomena did not
occur) rather than to diffuse our energies across the entire population, treating
all observations equally within a large-N sample.
Note also that just because a sample is large does not mean that it has been
selected randomly from the population of interest. Indeed, most large-N
samples are not. So the size of a sample is not always an indication of its
representativeness. (Sometimes, the addition of more observations renders a
sample less representative.) 365
An increase in the sample size may enhance measurement error or include observations
that are not fully comparable Furthermore, the large size of a sample does is not necessarily
equivalent to its random selection (Gerring, 2012:365).

Sometimes, a few causal-process observations are more important than many

dataset observations. (366)

Scope is little so what? If it is not accurate, it does not matter

in-depth interviewing (Devine, 2002, 198)

usually conducted with only a small sample of informants (198)
in contrast to the highly structured interview used in survey research, based on tightly
defined questionnaire and closed questions,
(Mann 1985; Brenner et al. 1985)
intensive interviewing, for example, allows people to talk freely and offer their interpretation
of events (199) (Harvey 1990)
Bryman 1988:62; Rose 1982
research is very labor-intensive (199)
limited interaction between the interviewer and the respondent to avoid bias (201)

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

qualitative methods have been aligned with an interpretative epistemology that stresses the
dynamic, constructed and evolving nature of social reality (201)
involve collecting data in different ways (202)
a combination of methods can lead to a more rounded and hollistic approach (202)
qualitative research is neither replicable nor comparableproduces soft, unscientific results
(204)
Depends on the aim of the research political party example (205) it is not concerned with
frequency of particular views and opinions but with voters attachment to a political party indepth
choice of sampling methods or the use of sampling frames is no less important (Devine et
al., 1999, pp. 13-4)
Plausibility enhancing the validity of interpretations can be discussed with a group of
researchers to obtain consensus on an interpretation ask the informant for their reaction to
the interpretation (206)
Inability to generalize the findings from a study that confines itself to a small number of
people or a particular setting (207) qualitative research findings are often the basis on
which subsequent quantitative research is conducted from which generalizations can be made
(207); the findings of one in-depth study can be collaborated with other research to establish
similarities and differences
should include not only
anticorruption legislation, but also anticorruption initiatives with measurable
results (96)
analysis of the causes of corrupt behavior (95)

To explore the role o f personal networks in Putins sistema (1136 Ledeneva)

I stated that previous heads o f the Russian state were known to rely
on their security services for gathering and keeping sensitive information
(kompromat files) on their staff, friends and enemies, and asked the
president what information he sought and used on a regular basis with
regard to corruption.
He also pointed out that the problem of
corruption resides not in people but in the system. Therefore, targeting
people with kompromat is ineffective. (1137)
Deciding whether institutional deficiencies create the demand
for manual control or whether manual control restricts the development
o f institutional capacity is the chicken-egg dilemma.(1138)
In the contemporary Russian hybrid
regime, where elements o f traditional governance and representative
democracy are intertwined with Putins power over his networks,
instruments o f informal governance are obscured even further (1145)

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

partnerships is the system o f mutual feeding (1150)
Fear for ones
safety, ones career or business, complete distrust o f the judicial system,
and the insecurity this entails. (1157)
The remedy is democracy. Only by ensuring that
those who have a sinister interest opposed to the general interest can
be thrown out by the electorate can we ensure the coincidence o f interests
that will eliminate corruption. (Alan Ryan 989)
Transparency was not the issue, since there
was nothing secret about what went on; accountability was an issue
once parliament flexed its muscles, the argument was over and it was
clear that the public via parliament had a right to say how the money
was spent. It was a shift in the moral climate that swept away what
came to be seen as ancient abuses. (990)
On the view advanced here, transparency is certainly needed to
suppress corruption; accountability is impossible if those who stand
in temptations way dont have to produce accurate and complete
accounts, dont run the risk of facing public hearings on the accuracy
o f their accounts, arent properly audited, and so on. (991)
Consider the contemporary American political system. Although
there are areas o f the funding o f political campaigns where more transparency
would helppreventing donors o f large sums o f money from
hiding behind a veil o f anonymitythere is no great difficulty in discovering
who has funded particular members o f Congress. Nor is there any
Conceptions of Corruption 991
great difficulty in connecting that funding to the voting record o f the
members o f Congress, either. The difficulty is that there is no consensus
on what corruption is. A substantial part of the population thinks it
is the job o f a member o f Congress to lobby the government on behalf
of the particular districts and economic interests to which they have
given their allegiance. One person will think that receiving $300,000
from the makers o f medical devices and then doing ones damnedest to
get the Affordable Care Acts tax on such devices repealed is corrupt
essentially, selling ones vote. Another may think that since the device
maker operates in the district you represent, your duty is to fight for
the firm and its employees. To put it another way, flagrant, gold-plated,
universally condemned corruption is something that greater transparency
would root out. (991-992)

Perceived corruption, as
measured by such indexes, is lower in economically developed, long-established
liberal democracies, with a free and widely read press, a high share of women
in government, and a history of openness to trade. It is higher in countries that
depend on fuel exports or have intrusive business regulations and unpredictable
inflation. These factors explain up to 90% of the cross-national variation. However,
measures of actual corruption experiences, based on surveys that ask business

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

people and citizens in different countries whether they have been expected to pay
bribes recently, correlate with hardly any of these factors once one controls for income.
(Daniel Treisman 212)
Wording is often chosen to reduce respondents fears of self-incrimination (214)
We conduct a fi eld experiment to test how traffi c police offi cers respond
to drivers of different income levels (Lagunes 77)
First, survey data used in observational
studies typically rely on self-reports of corrupt practices, which
often are unreliable. Second, such data do not differentiate between bribes
that are paid for convenience from those paid as a result of coercion from
public offi cials. (77)
relationship
between corruption and socioeconomic status (78)
Intrinsic & Instrumental!
A
number of offi cers stated that the lack of judicial support allowed wellconnected
individuals to punish offi cers who issued them a citation (88) JUDICIARY
In clear contradiction to our empirical fi ndings,
the other police offi cers interviewed stated that offi cers always give
tickets on stopping a driver. (89)
described them as an important source of income INCOME
the public is fairly divided
between those who show respect and those who do not CLASS CLEAVEGES
A corollary to our study is the distinct advantages that different methods
offered in answering various aspects of our question. Although surveys
of expert and public perceptions have improved our understanding
of corruptions macro effects, these tools seem less suited for describing
how corrupt practices play out at the micro level. (91) could have been able to improve this
by asking in third person
Quantitative
Descriptive statistics (e.g. total, average).
Descriptive statistics involve information loss.
Inferential statistics (especially through statistical analysis).
Good quantitative social scientists know their data cant always be taken at face value and
their inferences about the data may be wrong. (Abduction!)
Quantitative research characterizes observed phenomena using numbers, while
qualitative research does not (Benoit 2005, 9).

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

Qualitative
Verstehen (implicitly) see p. 199.

Goertz & Mahoney (2012): causal inference. Explicitly sidestep interpretative approaches.
Symposium in Qualitative Methods 3:1: ignore all except Benoit.
Fearon and Laitin (2011, 2): Done well, multimethod research combines the strength of
large-N designs for identifying empirical regularities and patterns, and the strength of case
studies for revealing the causal mechanisms that give rise to political outcomes of interest.
Not always done well (Bryman 2007).
Devine (2002, 207-15) on voting behaviour.
Ferrell (2006): verstehen approach to crime.
Allison (1971): test how well different theories fit the Cuban missile crisis.

Allison, Graham, 1971. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. Boston:
Little, Brown and Co. [See also 2nd edition, 1999.]
Bennett, Alexander, 2010. Process tracing and causal inference, in Henry Brady and David
Collier, eds., Rethinking Social Inquiry, 2nd edition. Here.
Benoit (2005) in Symposium I, pp. 1-22) in Qualitative Methods 3:1 (2005), on reading list.
Blau, Adrian, 2004. A quadruple whammy for rst-past-the-post, Electoral Studies 23:3, 43153.
Blau, Adrian, 2012. Anti-Strauss, The Journal of Politics 74:1, 142-55.
Bryman, Alan, 2007. Barriers to integrating quantitative and qualitative research, Journal of
Mixed Methods Research 1:1, 8-22.
Budge, Ian, and Michael McDonald, 2006. Choices parties define: policy alternatives in
representative elections, 17 countries 1945-96, Party Politics 12:4, 451-66.
Budge, Ian, and Michael McDonald, 2007. Election and party system effects on policy
representation: bringing time into a comparative perspective, Electoral Studies 26:1, 168-79.
Carter, Travis, Melissa Ferguson and Ran Hassin, A single exposure to the American flag
shifts support toward Republicanism up to 8 months later, Psychological Science 22:8, 10118.
Collier, David, 2011. Understanding process tracing, PS: Political Science and Politics 44:4,
823-30.
Ferrell, Jeff, 1997. Criminological verstehen: inside the immediacy of crime, Justice
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