Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

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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 essay’s 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 post-colonialist 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 post-colonialist 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 Mungiu-Pippidi 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

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

particularism, or encompassing elements of both (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2006, pp. 91-92). It is 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 anti-corruption 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

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

unintentional removal of ‘cases and variables’, or the ‘the response rate may be low’ (John, 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. 69–98.

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. Russia’s 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.

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Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

To explore the role o f personal networks in Putin’s sistema (1136 Ledeneva)

I stated that previous heads o f the Russian state were known to relyon their security services for gathering and keeping sensitive information(kompromat files) on their staff, friends and enemies, and asked thepresident what information he sought and used on a regular basis withregard to corruption.He also pointed out that the problem ofcorruption resides not in people but in the system. Therefore, targetingpeople with kompromat is ineffective. (1137)

Deciding whether institutional deficiencies create the demandfor manual control or whether manual control restricts the developmento f institutional capacity is the chicken-egg dilemma.(1138)

In the contemporary Russian hybridregime, where elements o f traditional governance and representativedemocracy are intertwined with Putin’s 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 one’ssafety, one’s career or business, complete distrust o f the judicial system,and the insecurity this entails.’ (1157)

The remedy is democracy. Only by ensuring thatthose who have a sinister interest opposed to the general interest canbe thrown out by the electorate can we ensure the coincidence o f intereststhat will eliminate corruption. (Alan Ryan 989)

Transparency was not the issue, since therewas nothing secret about what went on; accountability was an issue—once parliament flexed its muscles, the argument was over and it wasclear that “the public” via parliament had a right to say how the moneywas spent. It was a shift in the moral climate that swept away whatcame to be seen as ancient abuses. (990)

On the view advanced here, transparency is certainly needed tosuppress corruption; accountability is impossible if those who standin temptation’s way don’t have to produce accurate and completeaccounts, don’t run the risk of facing public hearings on the accuracyo f their accounts, aren’t properly audited, and so on. (991)

Consider the contemporary American political system. Althoughthere are areas o f the funding o f political campaigns where more transparencywould help—preventing donors o f large sums o f money fromhiding behind a veil o f anonymity—there is no great difficulty in discoveringwho has funded particular members o f Congress. Nor is there anyConceptions of Corruption 991great difficulty in connecting that funding to the voting record o f themembers o f Congress, either. The difficulty is that there is no consensuson what corruption is. A substantial part of the population thinks it

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

is the job o f a member o f Congress to lobby the government on behalfof the particular districts and economic interests to which they havegiven their allegiance. One person will think that receiving $300,000from the makers o f medical devices and then doing one’s damnedest toget the Affordable Care Act’s tax on such devices repealed is corrupt—essentially, selling one’s vote. Another may think that since the devicemaker operates in the district you represent, your duty is to fight forthe firm and its employees. To put it another way, flagrant, gold-plated,universally condemned corruption is something that greater transparencywould root out. (991-992)

Although there is a relationship between ‘perceived corruption’ and various social and economic factors, ‘measures of actual corruption…correlate with hardly any of these factors once one controls for income’.

Perceived corruption, asmeasured by such indexes, is lower in economically developed, long-establishedliberal democracies, with a free and widely read press, a high share of womenin government, and a history of openness to trade. It is higher in countries thatdepend on fuel exports or have intrusive business regulations and unpredictableinflation. These factors explain up to 90% of the cross-national variation. However,measures of actual corruption experiences, based on surveys that ask businesspeople and citizens in different countries whether they have been expected to paybribes 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 respondto drivers of different income levels (Lagunes 77)

First, survey data used in observationalstudies typically rely on self-reports of corrupt practices, whichoften are unreliable. Second, such data do not differentiate between bribesthat are paid for convenience from those paid as a result of coercion frompublic offi cials. (77)

‘relationshipbetween corruption and socioeconomic status’ (78)

Intrinsic & Instrumental!

“Anumber of offi cers stated that the lack of judicial support allowed wellconnectedindividuals 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 givetickets on stopping a driver.” (89)

“described them as an important source of income” INCOME

“the public is fairly dividedbetween those who show respect and those who do not” CLASS CLEAVEGES

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

“A corollary to our study is the distinct advantages that different methodsoffered in answering various aspects of our question. Although surveysof expert and public perceptions have improved our understandingof corruption’s macro effects, these tools seem less suited for describinghow corrupt practices play out at the micro level.” (91) – could have been able to improve this by asking in third person

Bringingquantitative and qualitative findings together has the potential to offer insights that couldnot otherwise be gleaned. Thus, even when a fusion of the two sets of findings was notenvisioned at the outset of a project, it may be valuable to consider whether the findingssuggest interesting contrasts or help to clarify each other. (Bryman

Our goal is to understand whether corruption isthe exception or whether it is the norm. For each society, we must ask:Are we dealing with modern corruption, where corruption is the exceptionto the norm of universalism? Or are we dealing with particularism92 Journal of Democracyand a culture of privilege, where corruption itself is the norm? Or, as isfrequently the case in the postcolonial world where the modern statewas defectively implanted on a traditional society, are we dealing witha combination of the two? If so, to what extent is the government guidedby universalist norms and to what extent is its main task to promotepatronage 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 askedor the meaning of the answers that they give. Most important, there is always

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

a disjunction between the person who designs the questions (and hence thecoding scheme for those questions) and the person who answers them (thusimplicitly providing the values that will be coded). For this reason the questionsoften fail to communicate exactly the meaning intended. All of thisresults 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 relationshipsfrom aggregate-level findings

Chiesa’s confession set off a domino effect as his naming of names led othersto 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 strategies…demand side of corruption…seek to promote collective actions among bribe givers or those who are cheated of public funds…some of these col act take form of social movements’ (Corbridge, 2013, p. 228)

For example, some qualitativestudies are undertaken with the objective of generating new hypotheses ratherthan testing extant hypotheses. – AV (Gerring, 2012) 365

Size matters, for it means that more evidence is availableto test a given hypothesis, providing insurance against errors caused by thepresence of random variation, and allowing for statistical procedures to correctfor the presence of confounders. A large sample usually means that sufficientvariation is incorporated into the analysis along key parameters (X and Y). Alarge sample also means that the researcher may be able to apply randomsampling techniques (selecting the sample randomly from the population ofinterest), enhancing a study’s external validity.

However, sometimes an increase in sample size causes more problems thanit solves. It may enhance measurement error, for example. A larger samplemay also involve the inclusion of observations that are not fully comparable(in ways that might affect the putative relationship between X and Y). This willcreate heterogeneities in the sample that may impair a valid, precise, and

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

informative assessment of causal relationships. For this reason, it is oftenmore sensible to work with a small, homogeneous sample than with a large,heterogeneous sample – especially if the latter requires complex modelingassumptions in order to render the analysis plausible.10 Increasing sample sizeis also problematic if it does not enhance leverage on key factors of theoreticalinterest (X and Y). This is why rare events (revolutions, world wars, genocides)are often approached in a qualitative manner. Often, it makes more sense tolook intensively at the few cases in which these phenomena occurred (relyingon background knowledge of those cases in which these phenomena did notoccur) rather than to diffuse our energies across the entire population, treatingall observations equally within a large-N sample.Note also that just because a sample is large does not mean that it has beenselected randomly from the population of interest. Indeed, most large-Nsamples are not. So the size of a sample is not always an indication of itsrepresentativeness. (Sometimes, the addition of more observations renders asample 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 manydataset 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

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

‘research is very labor-intensive’ (199)

‘limited interaction between the interviewer and the respondent to avoid bias’ (201)

‘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 comparable…produces 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 in-depth’

‘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 onlyanticorruption legislation, but also anticorruption initiatives with measurableresults (96)

‘analysis of the causes of corrupt behavior’ (95)

To explore the role o f personal networks in Putin’s sistema (1136 Ledeneva)

I stated that previous heads o f the Russian state were known to relyon their security services for gathering and keeping sensitive information(kompromat files) on their staff, friends and enemies, and asked thepresident what information he sought and used on a regular basis withregard to corruption.He also pointed out that the problem ofcorruption resides not in people but in the system. Therefore, targetingpeople with kompromat is ineffective. (1137)

Deciding whether institutional deficiencies create the demandfor manual control or whether manual control restricts the developmento f institutional capacity is the chicken-egg dilemma.(1138)

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

In the contemporary Russian hybridregime, where elements o f traditional governance and representativedemocracy are intertwined with Putin’s 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 one’ssafety, one’s career or business, complete distrust o f the judicial system,and the insecurity this entails.’ (1157)

The remedy is democracy. Only by ensuring thatthose who have a sinister interest opposed to the general interest canbe thrown out by the electorate can we ensure the coincidence o f intereststhat will eliminate corruption. (Alan Ryan 989)

Transparency was not the issue, since therewas nothing secret about what went on; accountability was an issue—once parliament flexed its muscles, the argument was over and it wasclear that “the public” via parliament had a right to say how the moneywas spent. It was a shift in the moral climate that swept away whatcame to be seen as ancient abuses. (990)

On the view advanced here, transparency is certainly needed tosuppress corruption; accountability is impossible if those who standin temptation’s way don’t have to produce accurate and completeaccounts, don’t run the risk of facing public hearings on the accuracyo f their accounts, aren’t properly audited, and so on. (991)

Consider the contemporary American political system. Althoughthere are areas o f the funding o f political campaigns where more transparencywould help—preventing donors o f large sums o f money fromhiding behind a veil o f anonymity—there is no great difficulty in discoveringwho has funded particular members o f Congress. Nor is there anyConceptions of Corruption 991great difficulty in connecting that funding to the voting record o f themembers o f Congress, either. The difficulty is that there is no consensuson what corruption is. A substantial part of the population thinks itis the job o f a member o f Congress to lobby the government on behalfof the particular districts and economic interests to which they havegiven their allegiance. One person will think that receiving $300,000from the makers o f medical devices and then doing one’s damnedest toget the Affordable Care Act’s tax on such devices repealed is corrupt—essentially, selling one’s vote. Another may think that since the devicemaker operates in the district you represent, your duty is to fight forthe firm and its employees. To put it another way, flagrant, gold-plated,universally condemned corruption is something that greater transparencywould root out. (991-992)

Perceived corruption, asmeasured by such indexes, is lower in economically developed, long-established

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

liberal democracies, with a free and widely read press, a high share of womenin government, and a history of openness to trade. It is higher in countries thatdepend on fuel exports or have intrusive business regulations and unpredictableinflation. These factors explain up to 90% of the cross-national variation. However,measures of actual corruption experiences, based on surveys that ask businesspeople and citizens in different countries whether they have been expected to paybribes 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 respondto drivers of different income levels (Lagunes 77)

First, survey data used in observationalstudies typically rely on self-reports of corrupt practices, whichoften are unreliable. Second, such data do not differentiate between bribesthat are paid for convenience from those paid as a result of coercion frompublic offi cials. (77)

‘relationshipbetween corruption and socioeconomic status’ (78)

Intrinsic & Instrumental!

“Anumber of offi cers stated that the lack of judicial support allowed wellconnectedindividuals 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 givetickets on stopping a driver.” (89)

“described them as an important source of income” INCOME

“the public is fairly dividedbetween those who show respect and those who do not” CLASS CLEAVEGES

“A corollary to our study is the distinct advantages that different methodsoffered in answering various aspects of our question. Although surveysof expert and public perceptions have improved our understandingof corruption’s macro effects, these tools seem less suited for describinghow 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 can’t always be taken at face value and their inferences about the data may be wrong. (Abduction!)

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

‘Quantitative research characterizes observed phenomena using numbers, while qualitative research does not’ (Benoit 2005, 9).

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 first-past-the-post, Electoral Studies 23:3, 431-53.

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, 1011-8.

Collier, David, 2011. Understanding process tracing, PS: Political Science and Politics 44:4, 823-30.

Candidate Number: V24955 Date: 03/12/2014

Ferrell, Jeff, 1997. Criminological verstehen: inside the immediacy of crime, Justice Quarterly 14:1, 3-23.

Gerring, John, 2012. Social Science Methodology: A Unified Framework. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2nd edition.

Renwick, Alan, 2009. Do ‘wrong winner’ elections trigger electoral reform? Lessons from New Zealand, Representation 45:4, 357-67.

Ross, Michael, 2008. Oil, Islam, and women, American Political Science Review 102:1, 107-23.