Abstract
Political scientists of all stripes have proposed numerous necessary or sufficient condition hypotheses. For methodologists a question is how can we assess the importance of these necessary conditions. This article addresses three central questions about the importance of necessary of sufficient conditions. The first concerns de “trivialness” of necessary or sufficient conditions. The second is how much a necessary or sufficient condition is “relevant?” The third important question deals with the relative importance of necessary or sufficient conditions: for example, ifX 1 andX 2 are necessary or sufficient conditions, is one more important than the other? The article develops measures to assess the importance of necessary or sufficient conditions in three related contexts: (1) Venn diagram, (2) 2×2 tables, and (3) fuzzy sets. Two empirical examples are discussed at length: (1) Skocpol’sStates and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China and (2) Ragin’s (2000) analysis of the cause of IMF riots.
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Additional information
Gary Goertz is professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Arizona. He is the author or co-author of four books and more than 25 articles on issues of international politics, methodology, and conflict studies. He is the author ofSocial Science Concepts (Princeton University Press, 206),Contexts of International Politics (Cambridge, 1994), co-author with Paul Diehl ofTerritorial Changes and International Conflict (Routledge, 1992), andWar and Peace in International Rivalry, (University of Michigan Press, 2000).
I would like to thank Bear Braumoeller, Jim Mahoney, and the editors and reviewers ofSCID for comments on earlier drafts. Special thanks go to Charles Ragin for his many suggestions and comments, in particular the one that led to the basic measure of trivialness proposed below.
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Goertz, G. Assessing the Trivialness, Relevance, and Relative Importance of Necessary or Sufficient Conditions in Social Science. St Comp Int Dev 41, 88–109 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02686312
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02686312