Qualitative Comparative Analysis Method And China's International Relations Research

There are two main streams in social science methodology:Qualitative analysis and Quantitative analysis.Qualitative logic based on the complexity of social phenomenon which focuses on single case and aims to catch the unique explanation of one outcome.Quantitative logic,however,keep eyes on generality of social phenomenon which advocates variable-oriented large-N analysis and try to get general explanation.Unfortunately,whether generality or complexity can not guarantee that social phenomenon will clear to be understood entirely.Qualitative Comparative Analysis(QCA),is one of the newest fruits that social scientists make great efforts to combine generality(Qualitative)and complexity(Quantitative)and which are used widely in recent years.QCA is good at enhancing the reliability of causal inference in medium number cases.And the main objection of international studies are always grave,scarce and complex issues.Therefore QCA has relative superiority in international studies.This thesis is divided in five chapters.Introduction covers the target and significance,review and framework.The body has three chapters.And conclusion is the last chapter of thesis.Chapter one content definition and characteristics of QCA,compare QCA with Qualitative and Quantitative analysis and then prove the great similarity between QCA and international studies.QCA is case-oriented analysis with Boolean logic and Set theory,which search for efficient,necessary conditions and condition combinations.QCA has four features:1.based on case and emphasis to treat a case as a complex and whole unit;2.compare holistic cases that could find homogeneity and heterogeneity;3.construct explanation with iteration and strengthen the dialogue between ideas and evidence;4.pay attention to conjunctural causal conditions and consider that one condition combination could cause different result in different context.Therefore QCA adopt holistic principle and complexity form Qualitative and accept variable and parsimony requirements from Quantitative.As for international studies,the main objections of researchers have two features:1.the number of cases are between 10-100,in other words,medium N;2.we must both understand the complexity and generality.So international studies provide a good platform for QCA.Chapter two introduce the four main techniques of QCA:csQCA,fsQCA,mvQCA and TQCA.csQCA is the original technique of QCA and the base for other three techniques.csQCA emerges 2~k(k is the number of conditions)different condition combinations with binary variable.Researcher construct Truth Table with outcome condition,variables and other information.The software of cs QCA will minimize Truth Table with Boolean algebra and output explanation models.fsQCA modified csQCA on two aspects:1.enlarged the scope of value to 0-1;2.adopt Set theory and turned the variable relationship to membership in set theory.Qualitative anchor is the most vital step which is the benchmark to assignment.fsQCA could produce 3~k-1different condition combinations.fsQCA software will minimize combinations and output parsimonious model.Similar with fsQCA,mvQCA changes binary variable also.But mvQCA different from fsQCA on one vital thing:the value of variable is discrete.mvQCA use finite value(for example 3).mvQCA can be regarded a general model of csQCA.That is to say,csQCA is a special case of mvQCA.TQCA adopt chronological order and hold time makes great influence on outcome.However,the number of condition combinations soaring exponentially(k!*2~k).That is a major problem for TQCA.Chapter three make an assessment on application of QCA in China international studies.More and more Chinese researchers use QCA in their research fields.QCA spread in many subjection:politics,economy,social science,management science and so on though total number is relatively low.Politics,especially international politics,is a big fan of QCA.However,there are many obstacles when using QCA in Chinese.One reason is from the bugs of QCA techniques;the other is the researcher who have not enough understanding on QCA.Chapter four is a conclusion of this thesis which summarizes whole article and points out the weakness.This thesis card the main contents and specific techniques of QCA.And make a first step on assessment.Nevertheless,this article is lack of the state of calibration,which is the next target of me.