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 talking at cross purposes. In this article, we clear up three fundamental misunderstandings that have been widespread within and between the two communities, namely that (a) CCMs and RAMs use the same logic of inference, (b) the same hypotheses can be associated with one or the other set of methods, and (c) multiplicative RAM interactions and CCM conjunctions constitute the same concept of causal complexity. In providing the first systematic correction of these persistent misapprehensions, we seek to clarify formal differences between CCMs and RAMs. Our objective is to contribute to a more informed debate than has been the case so far, which should eventually lead to progress in dialogue and more accurate appraisals of the possibilities and limits of each set of methods.
AmentaE.PoulsenJ. D. (1996). Social politics in context: The institutional politics theory and social spending at the end of the New Deal. Social Forces, 75, 33-60.
2.
BabbieE. (2007). The practice of social research (11th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth.
BaumgartnerM. (2013a). Detecting causal chains in small-n data. Field Methods, 25, 3-24.
5.
BaumgartnerM. (2013b). A regularity theoretic approach to actual causation. Erkenntnis, 78, 85-109.
6.
BradyH. E. (2013). Do two research cultures imply two scientific paradigms?Comparative Political Studies, 46, 252-265.
7.
BradyH. E.CollierD. (Eds.). (2004). Rethinking social inquiry: Diverse tools, shared standards. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
8.
BraumoellerB. F.GoertzG. (2000). The methodology of necessary conditions. American Journal of Political Science, 44, 844-858.
9.
BreimanL. (2001). Statistical modeling: The two cultures. Statistical Science, 16, 199-231.
10.
BuckleyJ. J.EslamiE. (2002). An introduction to fuzzy logic and fuzzy sets. Heidelberg, Germany: Physica.
11.
ClarkW. R.GilliganM. J.GolderM. (2006). A simple multivariate test for asymmetric hypotheses. Political Analysis, 14, 311-331.
12.
CopiI. M.CohenC.FlageD. E. (2007). Essentials of logic (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
13.
CronqvistL.Berg-SchlosserD. (2009). Multi-Value QCA (mvQCA). In RihouxB.RaginC. C. (Eds.), Configurational comparative methods: Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and related techniques (pp. 69-86). London, England: Sage.
14.
DavidssonJ. B.EmmeneggerP. (2013). Defending the organisation, not the members: Unions and the reform of job security legislation in Western Europe. European Journal of Political Research, 52, 339-363.
15.
DubrovaE. (2002). Multiple-valued logic synthesis and optimization. In HassounS.SasaoT. (Eds.), Logic synthesis and verification (pp. 89-114). New York, NY: Springer Science + Business Media.
16.
DuşaA.ThiemA. (2014). QCA: A package for Qualitative Comparative Analysis, R package version 1.1-4. Retrieved from: http://cran.r-project.org/package=QCA
17.
DuvergerM. (1954). Political parties. New York, NY: John Wiley.
18.
EliasonS. R.StrykerR. (2009). Goodness-of-fit tests and descriptive measures in fuzzy-set analysis. Sociological Methods & Research, 38, 102-146.
19.
FeldmanJ. (2000). Minimization of Boolean complexity in human concept learning. Nature, 407, 630-633.
20.
FissP. C.SharapovD.CronqvistL. (2013). Opposites attract? Opportunities and challenges for integrating large-n QCA and econometric analysis. Political Research Quarterly, 66, 191-198.
21.
FortinJ. (2012). Is there a necessary condition for democracy? The role of state capacity in postcommunist countries. Comparative Political Studies, 45, 903-930.
22.
FoxJ. (2008). Applied regression analysis and generalized linear models (2nd ed.). London, England: Sage.
23.
GerringJ. (2001). Social science methodology: A critical framework. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
24.
GerringJ. (2012). Social science methodology: A unified framework (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
25.
GillJ. (1999). The insignificance of null hypothesis significance testing. Political Research Quarterly, 52, 647-674.
26.
GivantS.HalmosP. (2009). Introduction to Boolean algebras. New York, NY: Springer.
27.
GleditschN. P. (1995). Democracy and the future of European peace. European Journal of International Relations, 1, 539-571.
28.
GoertzG. (2003). The substantive importance of necessary condition hypotheses. In GoertzG.StarrH. (Eds.), Necessary conditions: Theory, methodology, and applications (pp. 65-94). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
29.
GoertzG.MahoneyJ. (2012). A tale of two cultures: Qualitative and quantitative research in the social sciences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
30.
GoertzG.MahoneyJ. (2013a). For methodological pluralism: A reply to Brady and Elman. Comparative Political Studies, 46, 278-285.
31.
GoertzG.MahoneyJ. (2013b). Methodological Rorschach tests: Contrasting interpretations in qualitative and quantitative research. Comparative Political Studies, 46, 236-251.
32.
GrandoriA.FurnariS. (2008). A chemistry of organization: Combinatory analysis and design. Organization Studies, 29, 459-485.
33.
GriffinL. (1993). Narrative, event-structure analysis, and causal interpretation in historical sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 98, 1094-1133.
34.
GriffinL.RaginC. (1994). Some observations on formal methods of qualitative analysis. Sociological Methods & Research, 23, 4-21.
35.
GrofmanB.SchneiderC. Q. (2009). An introduction to crisp set QCA, with a comparison to binary logistic regression. Political Research Quarterly, 62, 662-672.
36.
GrossM. L. (1994). Jewish rescue in Holland and France during the Second World War: Moral cognition and collective action. Social Forces, 73, 463-496.
37.
HeikkilaT. (2004). Institutional boundaries and common-pool resource management: A comparative analysis of water management programs in California. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 23, 97-117.
38.
HeiseD. R. (1989). Modeling event structures. Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 14, 139-169.
39.
HohnF. E. (1966). Applied Boolean algebra: An elementary introduction (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Macmillan.
40.
HugS. (2013). Qualitative Comparative Analysis: How inductive use and measurement error lead to problematic inference. Political Analysis, 21, 252-265.
41.
KallebergA. L.VaiseyS. (2005). Pathways to a good job: Perceived work quality among the machinists in North America. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 43, 431-454.
42.
KatzA.vom HauM.MahoneyJ. (2005). Explaining the great reversal in Spanish America. Sociological Methods & Research, 33, 539-573.
43.
KingG.KeohaneR. O.VerbaS. (1994). Designing social inquiry: Scientific inference in qualitative research. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
44.
LandryP. F.DavisD.WangS. (2010). Elections in rural China: Competition without parties. Comparative Political Studies, 43, 763-790.
45.
LichbachM. I. (1981). Regime change: A test of structuralist and functionalist explanations. Comparative Political Studies, 14, 49-73.
46.
MahoneyJ. (2007). Qualitative methodology and comparative politics. Comparative Political Studies, 40, 122-144.
47.
MahoneyJ. (2008). Toward a unified theory of causality. Comparative Political Studies, 41, 412-436.
48.
MahoneyJ.GoertzG. (2006). A tale of two cultures: Contrasting quantitative and qualitative research. Political Analysis, 14, 227-249.
49.
MarxA.RihouxB.RaginC. (2014). The origins, development, and application of Qualitative Comparative Analysis: The first 25 years. European Political Science Review, 6, 115-142.
50.
McCluskeyE. J. (1965). Introduction to the theory of switching circuits. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
51.
NorthD. C.WeingastB. R. (1989). Constitutions and commitment: The evolution of institutional governing public choice in seventeenth-century England. Journal of Economic History, 49, 803-832.
52.
RaginC. C. (1987). The comparative method: Moving beyond qualitative and quantitative strategies. Berkeley: University of California Press.
53.
RaginC. C. (2000). Fuzzy-set social science. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
54.
RaginC. C. (2006). Set relations in social research: Evaluating their consistency and coverage. Political Analysis, 14, 291-310.
55.
RaginC. C. (2008). Redesigning social inquiry: Fuzzy sets and beyond. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
56.
RaginC. C.MayerS. E.DrassK. A. (1984). Assessing discrimination: A Boolean approach. American Sociological Review, 49, 221-234.
57.
RihouxB.De MeurG. (2009). Crisp-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (csQCA). In RihouxB.RaginC. C. (Eds.), Configurational comparative methods: Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and related techniques (pp. 33-68). London, England: Sage.
58.
SchneiderC. Q.WagemannC. (2010). Standards of good practice in Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and fuzzy-sets. Comparative Sociology, 9, 397-418.
59.
SchneiderC. Q.WagemannC. (2012). Set-theoretic methods for the social sciences: A guide to Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
60.
SmithsonM. (2005). Fuzzy set inclusion: Linking fuzzy set methods with mainstream techniques. Sociological Methods & Research, 33, 431-461.
61.
SmithsonM.VerkuilenJ. (2006). Fuzzy set theory: Applications in the social sciences. London, England: Sage.
62.
SouthG. F. (1974). Boolean algebra and its uses. New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
63.
ThiemA. (2013). Clearly crisp, and not fuzzy: A reassessment of the (putative) pitfalls of multi-value QCA. Field Methods, 25, 197-207.
64.
ThiemA. (2014a). Mill’s methods, induction and case sensitivity in Qualitative Comparative Analysis: A comment on Hug (2013). Qualitative & Multi-Method Research, 12(2), 19-24.
65.
ThiemA. (2014b). Parameters of fit and intermediate solutions in multi-value Qualitative Comparative Analysis. Quality & Quantity, 49, 657-674.
VerkuilenJ. (2005). Assigning membership in a fuzzy set analysis. Sociological Methods & Research, 33, 462-496.
72.
VinkM. P.VlietO. (2009). Not quite crisp, not yet fuzzy? Assessing the potentials and pitfalls of multi-value QCA. Field Methods, 21, 265-289.
73.
VisB. (2012). The comparative advantages of fsQCA and regression analysis for moderately large-n analyses. Sociological Methods & Research, 41, 168-198.
74.
WagemannC.SchneiderC. Q. (2010). Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and fuzzy-sets: Agenda for a research approach and a data analysis technique. Comparative Sociology, 9, 376-396.
75.
WooldridgeJ. M. (2008). Econometric analysis of cross section and panel data (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
