The complications of using similar concepts in different situations are well known to everyone in comparative politics.
This volume faces the problems of comparability and equivalence head on and indicates practical ways they can be tackled. Each contribution focuses on a theoretically relevant theme, such as tolerance, political values, religious orientation, gender roles, voluntary associations, party organisations, party positions, democratic regimes, and the mass media.
Chapters cover different approaches, methods, data and countries, making use of widely available empirical research to illustrate the gains of finding equivalent measures in realistic research settings. Many of the strategies show how the complicated search for comparability and equivalence uncovers substantial additional information in comparative politics. Dealing with these problems can enhance the quality and reliability of any research.
This edition includes a new introduction from Jan W van Deth, examining developments in the field over the last twenty years.
Comparative studies are a growth industry in political science, although the issue of concept and data equivalence is often a neglected one. When this volume first appeared greatly contributed to understand how to deal with different aspects of equivalence. The second edition is a welcome update of the state of art on this topic. -- Paolo Segatti, Università di Milano
For any scholar or practitioner concerned with the validity of cross-national and cross-cultural comparison, the problem of equivalence affects questions concerning conceptual and theoretical development, measurement and analysis, and the generation of useful inferences that matter for the real world. Jan W van Deth has long been the world’s leading scholar on this topic and this volume offers an updated and expanded examination of equivalence that charts a pragmatic 'middle road' between universality and relativity in comparative politics, which will appeal to a wide range of readers. -- Todd Landman, University of Essex
Jan W van Deth is Professor of Political Science and International Comparative Social Research at the University of Mannheim (Germany). His main research areas are political culture (especially social capital, political engagement, and citizenship), social change, and comparative research methods. He was Director of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), convenor of the network Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy (CID) of the European Science Foundation, and Series Editor of the Studies in European Political Science for ECPR Press. He is a Corresponding Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and national coordinator of the German team for the European Social Survey (ESS). Recent publications include New Participatory Dimensions in Civil Society (Routledge, 2012; edited with William Maloney).
Michael Braun was Senior Project Director at the Centre for Survey Research and Methodology (ZUMA) in 1998. He still holds an equivalent position in 2012 at the Department of Survey Design and Methodology at GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Mannheim. He is also Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Mannheim. His research interests include the methodology of cross-national survey research, migration, and family and gender roles.
Martin Feldkircher joined marketing agency OgilvyOne, that is part of WPP – the world’s largest communication services group, in 1999. As Head of Marketing Analytics at the Frankfurt office he leads the analytics team and supports strategic planning with target group insights based on data analysis. Effective measurement and data strategies are one of his primary key consultancy focal points. Back in 1998 he was a Researcher at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) in a comparative project on the change of intermediary organisations and value orientations in political subcultures.
Ronald Inglehart is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. He helped found the Eurobarometer surveys, and is coordinator of the World Values Surveys (WVS). Currently, he is directing a new Laboratory for Comparative Social Research at the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg, Russia.
André Kaiser is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Cologne and member of the Faculty of the International Max Planck Research School, the Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences and the Cologne Research Training Group. Professor Kaiser's international experience includes visiting professorships in Poland, Austria, New Zealand, Australia and Great Britain.
Professor Kaiser's research interest is informed by the actor-centred institutionalist approach to the study of politics. Current research projects include party strategies on electoral markets, macro and micro effects of electoral systems and federalism and decentralisation effects in OECD countries, among others. He has published numerous books and articles in international journals.
Frauke Kreute was Research Assistant at the University of Konstanz in 1998. She is now Associate Professor in the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA and currently affiliated with the University of Munich and the Institute for Employment Research in Nuremberg, Germany. Prior to joining the University of Maryland she was Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Department of Statistics at the University of California in Los Angeles, USA. Her current research interests cover problems of data quality and measurement, as well as issues with nonresponse in social surveys.
Thomas Poguntke is Professor of Comparative Politics at the Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf and Director of the Düsseldorf Party Research Institute (PRuF). He has previously held chairs at the universities of Keele, Birmingham, and Bochum. In 1998 he was Senior Research fellow at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) at the University of Mannheim. His research interests include the comparative analysis of political parties, parties in the European union, and the presidentialisation of modern democracies.
Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck is Professor of Political Science at the University of Mannheim, director of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), and one of the principal investigators of the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES). From the assistant professorship which he held in 1998 he moved to the Centre for Survey Research and Methodology (ZUMA) where he served as scientific director. From 2003 to 2008 he held a professorship for political science at the University of Duisburg-Essen. His main areas of research include electoral behaviour, citizen attitudes, political communication, and political campaigns.
Gábor Tóka is a Professor of Political Science at the Central European University, Budapest, where he was an Assistant Professor in 1998. He is interested in the comparative study of voting behaviour and particularly in how and when the democratic process helps citizens to make choices that faithfully reflect their underlying preferences. He directed election studies in six East Central European countries and served on the Planning Committee of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, as co-principal investigator of the 2004 European Election Study, and as academic adviser for cross-national deliberative polls and the 2010 European Media Systems Survey.
Bettina Westle was Professor of Political Science at the University of Bielefeld in 1998. After teaching at the universities of Mainz and Erlangen/Nuremberg she is Professor for Political Science, especially for Methods and Empirical Research on Democracies, at the University of Marburg since 2005. Her research interests cover political cognitions (e.g. knowledge), attitudes (e.g. on legitimacy of political actors and the political system) and social as well as political participation (e.g. voting behaviour), national and European identity and effects of migration on political culture. Main areas of research are Europe and Germany.
