Political Science

Causal enquiry is central to political science. In this chapter, we argue that Evidential Pluralism can be fruitfully applied to political science. We show that Evidential Pluralism can account for the need for a diversity of methods in political science We illustrate this claim by means of a case study concerning the role of resources in shaping strategies of violence during rebellions. We also argue that Evidential Pluralism captures the structure of causal enquiry in political science better than causal pluralism. Finally, we show how Evidential Pluralism coheres well with process tracing, which is a well entrenched method for causal enquiry in political science, as well as multi-method large-N qualitative analysis, which is a newly emerging approach.