Doing Historical IPE: Methods

I sometimes present historical methods in IPE & IR to PhD programmes at the LSE and elsewhere. I mention this with no small amount of delight, as I am eager for the chance to encourage younger scholars. If you are looking for what one might get in a such a PhD-level “historical methods” seminar session, you can find the readings below.

In the spring of 2021, I led a series of “master classes” in the Qualitative Methods programme of the Global Political Economy Project (GPEP), run by the Mortara Center for International Studies at the Walsh School of Foreign Service (at Georgetown University). This culminated in a roundtable discussion, which is viewable here.

What should I read?

I sometimes give one-off workshops/seminars to PhD students–those at the LSE and elsewhere. These are the readings for the session, which is usually called something like, “Historical Sources and Archival Research in IR.”

Background/Surveys of the Field:

Read at least one of the following:

(a) Fioretos, Orfeo. “Historical Institutionalism in International Relations.” International Organization 65 (2), 2011: 367-399.

(b) Morrison, James Ashley. “Historical IPE,” in the Oxford Handbook of International Political Economy. Edited by Jon Pevehouse and Leonard Seabrooke. Forthcoming.

Essential reading:

Read at least one of the following:

(a) Byman, Daniel L., and Kenneth M. Pollack. “Let us now praise great men: bringing the statesman back in.” International Security 25(4) (2001): 107-146.

(b) Saunders, Elizabeth N. “Transformative choices: leaders and the origins of intervention strategy.” International Security 34(2) (2009): 119-161.

Read both of the following:

(a) Irwin, Douglas A. “Political economy and Peel’s repeal of the Corn Laws.” Economics & Politics 1(1) (1989): 41-59.

(b) Schonhardt-Bailey, Cheryl. From the corn laws to free trade: interests, ideas, and institutions in historical perspective. (MIT Press, 2006). Chapter 2.

Note: The contrast between Irwin and Schonhardt-Bailey persists. It is echoed in the contrast between Morrison and Simmons (below); but these classic pieces are more accessible to non-specialists.

Practical reading (for future producers):

Special issue on the Data Access-Research Transparency (DA-RT) initiative. International History & Politics Newsletter 1(2): 12-16. (2016).

Karl, Robert. “Research Methods for Historians. Part 1: Secondary Sources + Best Practices.” YouTube: 21 July 2018 https://youtu.be/sZP6X7EIN6g

Karl, Robert. “Research Methods for Historians. Part 2: Digitizing + Organizing Archival Sources.” YouTube: 21 July 2018. https://youtu.be/zZhBcnVNhgM

Further reading: General

Moravcsik, Andrew. “Trust, but Verify: The Transparency Revolution and Qualitative International Relations.” Security Studies 23(4) (2014): 663-688.

Lustick, Ian S. “History, Historiography, and Political Science: Multiple Historical Records and the Problem of Selection Bias.” The American Political Science Review 90 (3) 1996: 605-618.

Trachtenberg, Marc. The Craft of International History: A Guide to Method. (Princeton University Press, 2009).

Hill, Michael L., Archival Strategies and Techniques (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1993).

Thies, Cameron G. “A Pragmatic Guide to Qualitative Historical Analysis in the Study of International Relations.” International Studies Perspectives 3(4) (2002): 351-372.

Evan S. Lieberman. “Bridging the Qualitative-Quantitative Divide: Best Practices in the Development of Historically Oriented Replication Databases.” Annual Review of Political Science (13) 2010: 37-59.

James Mahoney and P. Larkin Terrie. “Comparative-Historical Analysis in Contemporary Political Science,” in Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier, Henry E. Brady & David Collier (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) E-book.

Further reading: IR applications

Simmons, Beth A, (1994). “Chapter 7: Deficits During Depression: Britain, Belgium and France in the Thirties.” from Simmons, Beth A, Who Adjusts: Domestic Sources of Foreign economic. pp. 219-241. Princeton, N.J.,: Princeton University Press.

Morrison, James Ashley (2016). “Shocking Intellectual Austerity: The Role of Ideas in the Demise of the Gold Standard in Britain.” International Organization, 70, pp 175-207.

Lieshout, Robert H., Mathieu L Segers, and Anna M. van der Vleuten. “De Gaulle, Moravcsik, and The Choice for Europe: Soft Sources, Weak Evidence.” Journal of Cold War Studies 6(4) (2004): 89-139.

Tomila Lankina and Lullit Getachew. “Mission or Empire, Word or Sword? The Human Capital Legacy in Post-colonial Democratic Development.” American Journal of Political Science*, 56, 2 (2012), 465-83.

Kotkin, Stephen, and Mark R. Beissinger, ‘The Historical Legacies of Communism: An Empirical Agenda,’ in, eds. Stephen Kotkin and Mark R. Beissinger (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014): 1-27.

Daren Acemoglu. “From Ancien Regime to Capitalism: The Spread of the French Revolution as a Natural Experiment.” in Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson (eds), Natural Experiments of History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2010): 221-256.

Ziblatt, Daniel. “Shaping Democratic Practice and the Causes of Electoral Fraud: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Germany.” American Political Science Review 103 (1) 2009.

Gibson, David R. “Avoiding Catastrophe: The Interactional Production of Possibility during the Cuban Missile Crisis.” American Journal of Sociology 117(2) (2011): 361-419.