Posing a Question
Asking a research question is our first step when we do social science. However, political scientists ask particular kinds of research questions, which may differ in specific ways from adjacent disciplines like history or economics. In political science, our research questions ask about some kind of political phenomenon. Our research questions may be descriptive or causal. When our research question is causal, we answer it with an empirically testable theory.
What is a Research Question?
Research questions in political science ask about some general political phenomenon. They often ask about a cause-and-effect relationship. For example, how do populist appeals shape the strength of democratic institutions? Why do some democratically-elected leaders carry out authoritarian actions? What role do political parties play in determining presidential nominees?
Descriptive Research Questions
These ask: what does the world look like? They describe a pattern, a sequence of events, how something behaves, a trend, etc.
For example: Do people vote? Have political parties become more polarized?
Causal Research Questions
These ask: why does the world look the way it does? They explain the cause of some phenomenon.
Causal research questions involve cause and effect, also known as independent and dependent variables.
For example: Why do people vote? How have political parties become more polarized?
Sometimes, causal research questions are framed in terms of the dependent variable - they ask about the “causes of effects.”
For example: Why do people vote? Why have political parties become more polarized?
Sometimes causal research questions are framed in terms of the independent variable - they ask about the “effects of causes.”
For example: What is the impact of polarization on political rhetoric? What is the consequence of eroded political norms?
Research questions in published political science:
Why do people in different parts of the world, in neighboring countries, and even within the same nation, experience such dramatic divergences in their levels of [socio-economic] well-being?
-Singh, How Solidarity Works for Welfare (2015), p. 1
Show me another!
Test yourself!
For each research question below, classify it as descriptive or causal. If it is a descriptive research question, try re-writing it as a casual question. If it is causal, try re-writing it as descriptive.
Question 1:
Do voters in country X choose candidates on the basis of their policy platforms?
Question 2:
How have revolutionary leaders understood the role of democracy and rule of law?
Question 3:
Why do some provinces in country X have much higher levels of economic inequality than others?
Research Questions as Puzzles
In political science, it can be useful to think of a causal research question as a “puzzle” that our theory attempts to solve. Framed in this way, political science puzzles tend to come in two flavors:
Flavor 1: Variation that we cannot explain
Our outcome, our effect, or our dependent variable looks different in different places or at different times, and we want to explain why.
For example:
Why do we see ethnically-based parties in some countries but not others?
Why was voter participation in country X high during one election, but not another?
Why are some democracies strong and stable while others flirt with authoritarian backsliding?
Flavor 2: Violation of a conventional wisdom
We expect to see some phenomenon in the world based on existing research or based on our intuitions, but in fact we see the opposite. We want to explain why.
For example:
If wealthy countries are more likely to democratize, then how has economically growing China remained authoritarian?
If ethnic conflict tends to occur in places with higher ethnic diversity, then why has Northern Ireland, despite a history of intense sectarian conflict, remained peaceful over the past 25 years?
Puzzles motivate our theories by giving us something to solve. They are based on what we observe descriptively in the world. The puzzles above motivate our theories based on qualitative observation, but we can also use data or visualizations to communicate political science puzzles.
Americans were much less polarized in 1994 than in 2004. What explains this change over time?
source: Pew Research Center
In some countries, citizens are much more likely to perceive their government as corrupt than in others. What explains this variation over space?
source: Transparency International
How do I answer research questions and puzzles?
The answer to our research question is our argument, or what we often call our theory. Click here to learn more about how to write theories, or arguments, that answer research questions.