Study Questions for Marsh and Furlong

  1. What is the authors' main point?
  2. What is ontology?
  3. What is epistemology?
  4. Why do ontology and epistemology matter for research traditions, or political science generally?
  5. What are the differences between positivist, realist, and interpretivist approaches to ontology and epistemology (and what are the similarities)?
  6. What are the two main variants of interpretivism and what are their differences?
  7. Which research tradition(s) are positivist? realist? interpretivist?
  8. How do these approaches handle causality?
  9. What is your approach? Will this affect which research traditions you find attractive?
  10. Why does any of this matter to political scientists?

Things to look for/keep in mind for future readings:

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