Abstract
Village Republics (VR) (Wade 1988) explains village-based collective action in terms of intravillage conflict rooted in ecological conditions. Ragin et al. (2003 [this issue]) say that VR's data point to intervillage conflict as the main driver—villagers organize themselves against incursions from people in other villages intent on stealing their resources. The authors show how Ragin et al. misstate VR's argument and go on to describe problems with their measurement of key variables (intervillage density, water location, collective action). The authors end with some thoughts about a more general problem with the quantitative comparative analysis method—it throws out confidence-affecting information that both qualitative case studies and quantitative statistical analyses would use.
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