Finding your Social Science Project

John Gerring is Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of several books, most recently: The Production of Knowledge: Enhancing Progress in Social Science (Cambridge, 2020; with Colin Elman & James Mahoney), and Population and Politics: The Impact of Scale (Cambridge, 2020; with Wouter Veenendaal), along with numerous articles. He is co-editor of Strategies for Social Inquiry, a book series at Cambridge University Press. Jason Seawright is Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. He is the author of Party-System Collapse: The Roots of Crisis in Peru and Venezuela (2012), Multi-Method Social Science: Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Tools (Cambridge, 2016), and Billionaires and Stealth Politics (2019, with Benjamin I. Page and Matthew Lacombe), along with numerous articles.

'Exploration and inspiration are necessary to locate a good social science topic; and this book tells you why and shows you how. Playful and insightful; highly recommended.' Richard Swedberg, Cornell University, New York

• 1. Introduction John Gerring, Jason Seawright; 2. Current practices John Gerring, Jason Seawright; 3. Contributions to knowledge John Gerring, Jason Seawright; 4. Strategies John Gerring, Jason Seawright; 5. Heuristics John Gerring, Jason Seawright; 6. Case selection John Gerring, Jason Seawright; 7. Soaking and poking John Gerring, Jason Seawright; 8. Theoretical frameworks John Gerring, Jason Seawright; 9. Explanatory challenges John Gerring, Jason Seawright; 10. Tools and tips for theorizing John Gerring, Jason Seawright; 11. From exploration to testing John Gerring, Jason Seawright.