Demonstrates the crucial role of concepts, providing a contribution that draws both on the classic work of Giovanni Sartori and the writing of a younger generation of scholars. This book juxtaposes major writings of Sartori with other work that exemplifies important approaches to concept analysis. It introduces comparative political analysis.

David A. Freedman presents here a definitive synthesis of his approach to causal inference in the social sciences. He explores the foundations and limitations of statistical modeling, illustrating basic arguments with examples from political science, public policy, law, and epidemiology. Freedman maintains that many new technical approaches to statistical modeling constitute not progress, but regress. Instead, he advocates a shoe leather methodology, which exploits natural variation to mitigate confounding and relies on intimate knowledge of the subject matter to develop meticulous research...