Analytical Politics: Theoretical Models and Empirical Inference

This section is supported by the ECPR Standing Group on Analytical Politics and Public Choice. The section invites contributions that share a commitment to rigorous theorizing and systematic empirical testing of theoretical models from all sub-fields of political science, including legislative studies, electoral politics, interest representation and political responsiveness. The section seeks papers focusing on theoretical and methodological issues as well as addressing the same substantive issues formally and empirically. We encourage papers with a rigorous theoretical core, including papers that use various formal modelling strategies. Such papers include, but are not restricted to, studies applying game theory, spatial models and agent-based computational modelling. With respect to research methodologies the section welcomes both qualitative and/or quantitative papers devoted to rigorous empirical testing. The section is therefore open to papers based on experimental and observational designs alike, and to research using various analytical methods – traditional parametric statistical models, comparative statics analyses and the design of respective statistical models, simulation, matching and qualitative comparative analyses, etc. We are especially interested in attracting papers that propose innovative ways of testing theoretical models with empirical data. Moreover, we encourage papers that test existing theories in new empirical settings. Finally, the section is also interested in papers that discuss the state-of-the-art in measurement and data collection strategies and tools, like automated data extraction, web scraping and text analysis.