The Fallacy of Multiple Methods

Political scientists are trained to identify logical fallacies, yet as a subfield, comparativists have fallen victim to a pernicious failure of reasoning, one that I will call the fallacy of multiple methods. The fallacy goes like this: Comparative politics maximizes its understanding of the political world when multiple methods are employed; therefore, graduate students in comparative politics should produce work that employs multiple methods. To understand why this is a fallacy, it is helpful to unpack the argument into its constituent parts.The premise of the statement, in my view, is on firm ground. Ethnographic and interpretive work offers deep insight into the motivations and understandings of particular political actors. Statistics gives us the tools to make statements of more or less confidence about populations of political actors or governing entities. Experimental research identifies causal relationships that are otherwise difficult or impossible to observe. Game theory provides a language for understanding the strategic interaction that is often central to politics. One could go on. The point is that the diversity of methods in comparative politics exists for a reason.