Sociology or Political Science?

[blahblahblah]

Hello there,

graduation is approaching (econ+philosophy), and now I am asking myself a question that I

[blahblahblah]

Perhaps you can be more specific about your research interests. Comparative political economy is pretty broad -- what are your specific substantive interests? Also, when you say historical, do you just mean empirical (is statistical analysis "historical"?) or are you referring to a particular approach?

(in the PoliSci forum)

By historical, I definitely do not only mean statistical (that, I would call empiricist, probably). Rather, I took that to be a word for "analysis of specific historical social forms/processes as they change/unfold over time". Of course, this can be done in part by using statistics. To give you an example, Barrington Moore Jr

[natofone]

I assume that you've read the work on historical institutionalism?

These people would all be good to work with:

http://web.mit.edu/polisci/faculty/K.Thelen.html

http://www.gov.harvard.edu/faculty/phall/

http://polisci.berkeley.edu/faculty/bio ... Pierson,P/

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/polisci/fac- ... culty.html

http://www.princeton.edu/~hmilner/

http://www.sociology.northwestern.edu/f ... /home.html (crosses over to work with poli sci kids)

Based on your interests, you might also like a few people at Chicago:

http://political-science.uchicago.edu/f ... igel.shtml

http://home.uchicago.edu/~jpadgett/

http://political-science.uchicago.edu/f ... rman.shtml

http://political-science.uchicago.edu/f ... ater.shtml (does a course on comparative historical analysis)

There is also someone good at UCLA, but I'm forgetting who off the top of my head. Anyone?

[deckard]

I graduated from UChicago last year, and can tell you that the comparative poli sci there is top notch. And I'm a sociology major! Dan Slater is a great lecturer, in my opinion. He draws a lot from Barrington Moore and, like Skocpol, focuses on State-society relations. So there is some cross-over with political sociology. Plus, I think William Sewell shld be back in Chicago this year and he's based in the poli sci dept.

[deckard]

The one in UCLA is Michael Mann...historical sociologist of the first class.

[natofone]

My links were poli sci if I wasn't clear. I am applying to poli sci, but I think that the sociologists have this type of approach (and concomitant topics) in the pocket.

[doctoraldude]

You might want to read up some articles such as :

"The role of general theory in comparative-historical sociology" (E Kiser, M Hechter - American Journal of Sociology, 1991) ... etc and similar stuff for polsci - and figure out which suits you better. Btw "historical institutionalism" is a term mostly used in polsci than soc imo.

You might also look at some of the recent work under contention/contentious politics/Social movements .

For related work on the comparative methodology per se, there's Charles Ragin's work you can read up ...

[blahblahblah]

"The role of general theory in comparative-historical sociology" (E Kiser, M Hechter - American Journal of Sociology, 1991)

Thanks a lot! I completely forgot; obviously, readings that clarify the issue are greatly appreciated! What would be corresponding readings for PoliSci?

I assume that you've read the work on historical institutionalism?

From econ, I

[doctoraldude]

I

[misterpat]

One of my TAs from undergrad recently finished his PhD in political sociology, and I asked him if he was satisfied with the discipline or if he wishes he had done Poli Sci. He said that overall he was satisfied with soc., and that he had done some poli sci coursework as well. He warned me that some poli sci programs will try to steer you away from historical methods and more towards modeling in order to make you a more viable candidate for jobs. This probably isn't the case in every department, but just thought I'd share.

[natofone]

From wikipedia:

Historical institutionalism (HI) is a social science method that uses institutions in order to find sequences of social, political, economic behavior and change across time. It is a comparative approach to the study of all aspects of human organizations and does so by relying heavily on case studies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_institutionalism

HI is a historically-based method used in political science and that emphasizes history and concomitant topics (temporal sequencing, path dependency, increasing returns, critical junctions, exogenous shocks).

It seems like something that you'd be interested in.

[blahblahblah]

Thanks natofone,

that seems to be a term for some of the literature I already mentioned (Tilly, Skocpol). But even on wikipedia, the list of authors includes sociologists as well as political scientists. Let me rephrase the question: Given an interest in doing research in that area, what would be reasons to choose, e.g. Political Science over Sociology (or the other way round) ? If the overlap is really that big, it seems like it all boils down to the original question "which department should I send the application to?", or, more generally, "what would be the most important criteria in making that choice".

[natofone]

I'm also interested in topics and methods that pertain to both sociologists and political scientists. I don't think that either discipline has an edge in terms of those topics themselves, but I'm applying to political science because I would prefer to study the secondary areas that political science offers over sociology. For example, I'd rather take courses in international security than social stratification or another sociological topic.

[misterpat]

Thanks natofone,

that seems to be a term for some of the literature I already mentioned (Tilly, Skocpol). But even on wikipedia, the list of authors includes sociologists as well as political scientists. Let me rephrase the question: Given an interest in doing research in that area, what would be reasons to choose, e.g. Political Science over Sociology (or the other way round) ? If the overlap is really that big, it seems like it all boils down to the original question "which department should I send the application to?", or, more generally, "what would be the most important criteria in making that choice".

From what I've heard, the job market in sociology is less treacherous than Poli Sci's. That might be something to consider.

[blahblahblah]

From what I've heard, the job market in sociology is less treacherous than Poli Sci's. That might be something to consider.

You mean the academic, or the non-acedemic job market? I expected at least the non-academic job market to be much more demanding for soc than for polisci phds... Was i wrong? (I

[natofone]

2. Sociology seems to be more pluralist in method

I'll generally agree, but the debates in comparative politics (I assume your potential subfield) have settled on a pluralistic (inductive and deductive, within-case and comparative, stats and rat choice and case studies) approach to methods. This isn't necessarily reflected in the literature or training yet, but if the debates in the journals are an indication of anything, it is the way the discipline is headed.

3. I also have the impression that the average political scientist is better trained in quantitative methods than the average sociologist.

No, the sociologists have a better command of quantitative (at least statistics - maybe not modeling) methods than political scientists. Political scientists almost exclusively (American politics may be an exception - no clue) borrow their methods from other fields, primarily economics, but also sociology. I even took the sociology stats courses over political science because the sociologists have a better command of them, and actually develop many of their own techniques.

[blahblahblah]

Thanks for your help, natofone. That really encourages me, because I have a strong interest in quantitative methods, but almost none in rational choice modelling anymore...

[blahblahblah]

Having taken the GRE recently, things are now getting more specific for me. I scored a combined 1500 (about equally distributed between V and Q), which I hope is sufficient to get into some good schools. Still, the Sociology vs PoliSci question remains unanswered, and worse, I can

[doctoraldude]

imo 'state of the discipline' articles are thngs people write once they have 'seen it all', so to speak. What you'll be doing has more to do with actual bread-and-butter research. I would suggest zeroing in on a top department each in Soc & PolSci and then reading some working papers of faculty at the two places. Whichever floats your boat (thril-wise, dorks that we are...) is more likely to be the field where you can really enjoy your work...

btw, congrats on the score - 750 in each is nice