Many political science publications advance knowledge using previously collected data and an innovation or two in theory or methods. To encourage students embarking on a seminar paper project, I review some of these publications to illustrate that the understanding of political phenomena often advances in incremental steps. L earning to conduct and present research is an important element of a political science graduate education. Successful defense of a dissertation signals an ability to perform research and report the results in a book-length format. Before that milestone, though, students have opportunities to develop these skills by composing seminar papers of publishable quality.This task is not easy: students often start a course unfamiliar with the literature they are expected to advance, which limits the potential for theory development. Furthermore, they face semester deadlines, sizable reading assignments, and a limited or nonexistent budget, all of which typically preclude research designs involving experiments, original surveys, or substantial data collection or coding.Recognizing these restrictions, Gary King (2006) proposes a procedure for penning a publishable paper: students retrieve data from a recent peer-reviewed publication, replicate the results, and make a methodological modification that increases insight into the substance of the study.Many scholarly publications in the field follow this template. Here, I review 20 types of these exemplars to encourage students embarking on a seminar paper project, with the goal of illustrating that the understanding of political phenomena often advances in incremental steps.
ADD A VARIABLEMuch scholarly attention has been devoted to topics such as vote choice and the onset of war. Standard sets of variables have been deployed to explain such phenomena, but a new influence can sometimes be identified or at least revisited as a result of a change in circumstance or because the influence has been overlooked or not emphasized in previous research. Therefore, the first way to advance knowledge is to test for the influence of a new or neglected variable. This approach provides an opportunity to theorize why a variable should be important and can produce evidence about whether the variable is a substantial influence. For example, state-level variables such as the presence or level of democracy have been the traditional focus of research about the onset of war. However, Horowitz, McDermott, and Stam (2005) presented evidence that the age of a leader is an individual-level influence on the likelihood that the leader will engage in a military dispute, with older leaders more prone to initiate conflict.
INTERACT VARIABLESMany political science models presume that the influence of a variable is linear and additive, but the impact of a variable is often moderated by other factors. Therefore, the second way to advance knowledge is to test whether the impact of an explanatory measure varies in a predictable way. This approach provides an opportunity to theoriz...