Analytical Politics: Linking Theory and Data

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 theorising and systematic empirical testing of theoretical models from all subfields 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 modeling strategies. Such papers include, but are not restricted to, studies applying game theory, spatial models and agent-based computational modeling. With respect to research methodologies the section welcomes both qualitative and/or quantitative papers devoted to rigorous theoretical 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, matching and related techniques, fuzzy sets and qualitative comparative analysis, 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.