Crossroads of Social Science: The Icpsr 25th Anniversary Volume

188 Pages·1989·1.14 MB·English

by  Heinz Eulau

Crossroads of Social Science

Crossroads of Social Science:
The ICPSR 25th Anniversary Volume
Heinz Eulau
Editor
Agathon Press
New Yor k
0 1989 Agathon i'rcss
Agathon Press is iiii imprint 01'
ALGORA ~'UBLISMINC;
222 Riverside Drivc. New Yok h'Y 10023
AN Rights Reserved
No portion of this book may be reproduced by any
process, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form, or by any means, without the express
written permission of the publisher.
Printed in the United States
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Crossroads of social science.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Social sciences - Research - Congress. I. Eulau,
Heinz, 1915- . 11. Inter-university Consortium
for Political and Social Research.
H63.A3C76 1989 300l.72 88-7421
ISBN 0-87586-090-7
ISBN 0-87586-091-5 (pbk.)
Contents
About the Contributors vii
Preface ix
Introduction: Crossroads of Social Science
Heinz Eulau 1
1, Toward Cumulative Knowledge:
Theoretical and Methodological Issues
Hubert M. Blalock, JK 15
Comment
Progress in Research Methodology:
Theory, Technology, Training
Herbert E Weisberg 38
2. A Strange Case of Identity Denied:
American History as Social Science
Allan G. Bogue 51
Comment
Time Is on the Historian’s Side
Eric Monkkonen 87
3. When Social Science Findings Conflict
Philip E. Converse 91
Comment
On Conflict Resolution: Right Makes Right
Karl Taeuber 113
4. What We Know, What We Say We Know:
Discrepancies Between Warranted and
Unwarranted Conclusions
Norval D. Glenn 119
Comment
Causal Inferences: Can Caution Have Limits?
Susan Welch 141
V
5. Research Life as a Collection of
Intersecting Probability Distributions
Warren E. Miller 147
Comment
Innovation: Individuals, Ideas, and Institutions
Ivor Crewe 161
Infrastructures for Comparative
Political Research
Max Kaase 166
Index 175
vi
About the Contributors
Hubert M. Blalock, Jr. is Professor of Sociology and Adjunct Professor
of Political Science, University of Washington, Seattle. His research interests
are in applied statistics, causal modeling, theory construction, conceptual-
ization and measurement, and race relations. His most recent books are
Conceptualization and Measurement in the Social Sciences (1982) and Basic
Dilemmas in the Social Sciences (1984). He is currently working on a book
dealing with power and conflict processes. He is an Associate Director of
ICPSR.
Allan G. Bogue is the Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History,
University of Wisconsin, Madison. His books include The Earnest Men:
Republicans of the Civil War Senate (1981) and Clio and the Bitch Goddess:
Quantification in American Political History (1983). A member of the Na-
tional Academy of Sciences, he has also served as president of several pro-
fessional associations. He is currently completing The Congressman’s Civil
War: An Institutional Reconnaissance.
Philip E. Converse is the Robert Cooley Angel1 Distinguished Professor of
Sociology and Political Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and
Director of the Institute for Social Research at the university. His books
include The American Voter (1960), The Human Meaning of Social Change
(1972), The Quality of American Life (1976), and Political Representation in
France (1986).
Ivor Crewe is Professor and Chair of the Department of Government,
University of Essex, England. A former Director of the ESRC Data Archive
and Co-director of the British Election Studies, he is currently coeditor of
the British Journal of Political Science. Recent books include Decade of
Dealignment (1983), British Parliamentary Constituencies (1984), Electoral
Change in Western Democracies (1985), and Political Communications: The
General Election Campaign of 1983 (1986).
Heinz Eulau is the William Bennett Munro Professor of Political Science,
Emeritus, Stanford University. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, he edits the journal Political Behavior, published by Agathon
Press. He serves as an Associate Director of ICPSR. His latest book is
Politics, Self and Society (1986). He is working on a book in the methodol-
ogy of micro and macro analysis.
vii
Norval D. Glenn is Professor of Sociology and Research Associate in the
Population Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. He is editor of the
Journal of Family Issues and serves on the editorial boards of Public Opin-
ion Quarterly, Journal of Marriage and the Family, and Social Indicators
Research. He is an Associate Director of ICPSR.
Max Kaase is Professor of Political Science and Comparative Social Re-
search, University of Mannheim, Germany. A former Executive Director of
ZUMA, his research interests include empirical democratic theory, political
participation, voting behavior, mass communication, and social science
methodology. He is the author of Political Action: Mass Participation in
Five Western Democracies (1979).
Warren E. Miller is Professor of Political Science, Arizona State Univer-
sity, Tempe. He is Director of the National Election Studies, Center for
Political Studies, University of Michigan. A former President of the Ameri-
can Political Science Association, his most recent books are Leadership and
Change: The New Politics and the American Electorate (1976) and Parties
in Transition: A Longitudinal Study of Party Elites and Party Supporters
(1986).
Eric H. Monkkonen is Professor of History, University of California, Los
Angeles. He has published books and articles on U. S. criminal justice
history, historical methods, and urban history. His most recent book is
America Becomes Urban: The Development of US. Cities and Towns,
1790-I 980 (1 988).
Karl Taeuber is Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison,
and a member of the University’s Institute for Research on Poverty and its
Center for Demography and Ecology. His current research is on trends in
racial segregation in housing and schooling in the U. S. He is currently
serving as chair of the Council of ICPSR.
Herbert E Weisberg is Professor of Political Science, Ohio State Univer-
sity, Columbus. A former member of the ICPSR Council, his research
interests include voting behavior, Congressional politics, and research meth-
ods. He has served as coeditor of the American Journal of Political Science
and has edited two volumes: Controversies in American Voting Behavior
(1976), and Political Science: The Science of Politics (1986).
Susan Welch is the Carl Happold Professor of Political Science at the
University of Nebraska, Lincoln. A member of the ICPSR Council, her
recent books are Women, Elections, and Representation (1987) and Urban
Reform and Its Consequences (1988).
viii
Preface
T
he papers brought together here were presented on the occasion of
the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Inter-University Consortium for
Political and Social Research, held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in
November, 1987. In the instructions to the contributors no attempt was
made to harness them to a particular theme or suggest a specific topic.
Knowing their interests and experience as well as their diverse and distin-
guished roles in the development of the social sciences and the Consortium,
we were confident that they would have something worthwhile to say on an
occasion that called for reflection on the successes and failures of the social
sciences over the last few decades as well as on their future.
As reading of the chapters in this volume will show, of concern is of
course that sector of the social sciences that is devoted to empirical research,
theory and method - the sector cutting across the various disciplines that
defines the mission of the Consortium as the country’s and perhaps the
world’s leading center for archiving quantitative data and for utilizing these
data through instruction in relevant theories and methods. Needless to say, it
was our hope that the contributors would note the contributions of the
Consortium to the development of the social sciences and its relation to
broader trends in the various disciplines.
However, the Consortium is not the “object” of these essays or in any
sense their main focus. Rather, the focus is on generic problems, difficulties,
and dilemmas in the social sciences that the contributors are uniquely quali-
fied to articulate. Each of them has been intimately involved in the develop-
ment of one or another discipline in the last thirty years or so; each has
made significant contributions to that development in many ways; each has
a personal perspective on accomplishments and failures, promises and
needs, continuities to be cultivated and opportunities to be seized. We have
brought the anniversary essays together in this volume because, we feel, the
experiences and thoughts of their authors can be beneficially shared by the
larger social science community and deserve the community’s reflective con-
sideration.
Jerome M. Clubb
Executive Director, ICPSR
ix