micro-macro links in the social sciencessocialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityof... ·...

Micro-Macro Links in the Social Sciences

CCNER*WZB

Data Linkages in Cross National Electoral Research

Berlin, 20 June, 2012

Bernhard Weßels

Research Unit “Democracy”

Bernhard Weßels, Research Unit „Democracy“

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1. Remarks on the History of Micro-Macro, and Related Concepts

2. Levels of Analysis

3. Why – Problems of Inquiry

4. Moving up: Micro to Macro

5. Moving down: Macro to Micro

6. Macro-Micro Design‘s Contribution to Comparative Analysis

Outline of the presentation


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1. Remarks on the History of „Micro-

Macro“ and Related Concepts “Micro-Macro”, “Level”, “Nestedness”, “Analytic Reduction” today seem to be self-evident

concepts. They are not:

Result of struggle for understanding and explanation.

First systematic use of “micro and macro”, and “levels of analysis”:

Stein Rokkan 1962: "The Comparative Study of Political Participation: Notes Toward a

Perspective on Current Research“ (Differences in voter turnout national/local elections)

Probably first systematic use of “Nestedness”:

Hans Eulau, mid-1960’s, regarding legislative behavior

Probably first use of "Analytic Reduction“: Donald Stokes (1966)


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2. Levels of Analysis

Rokkan 1962:

— (1) micro-micro: studying the relationships between individual

characteristics, roles, cognitions, or motivations and political dispositions

and decisions;

— (2) macro-micro: studying "the effects of variations and changes in

structural contexts on the rates of given political decisions and on the

strength and direction of “micro-micro relationships" ;

— (3) micro-macro: studying the "effects" of citizen attitudes and decisions on

party policies, strategies, and tactics, and "on the operation of the

established systems of structural restraints on decision-making";

— (4) macro-macro: studying "the functions of given structural restraints in the

maintenance, legitimation, and stabilization of the over-all political system"

(1962: 57).


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3. Why – Problems of Inquiry

Levels of Analysis, Levels of Inference, and Fallacies

Individual (person level) conclusions from individual level data: may involve

atomistic fallacy

Group/Aggregate level conclusions from aggregate data: may involve (lower

level) omitted variable bias

Individual (person level) conclusions from aggregate level data: may involve

ecologic fallacy

Group/Aggregate level conclusion from individual level data: may involve

reductionist fallacy (the whole is more than its parts, Durkheim)


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PA 2005


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Description or explanation?

— As long as we stay with descriptions it might be sufficient to

compare country frequencies and means

— As soon as we want to explain, the question of determination,

intervention, and control is on the table

— Cross-national models of explanation needs to model micro-level

relationships under varying constrains of macro conditions

or

varying micro level relationships producing/constraining higher

level outcomes


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Assumptions which we cannot make in

truly cross-national research

— That levels of a variable are the same across countries

— That relationships between variables are the same across

countries

Implication:

At least, we have to control for macro-variations in order not to

neglect differences in levels and relationships across countries,

regions, elections etc.


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4. Moving up: Micro to Macro

Donald Stokes (1966) "Analytic Reduction in the Study of Institutions“.

— Institutional analysis must exploit reduction to the level of the individual

actors involved. It is called for "in any field of inquiry where phenomena at a

macroscopic level can be comprehended in terms of phenomena at some

microscopic level„.

— Voting studies must rise up "out of a total immersion in the psychology and

sociology of individual choice„

— Contribution of electoral behaviour analysis to the study of political

structures/institutions


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Principles:

— System level phenomena are explained by the activities of the parts.

Mechanisms, accordingly, exist in a "nested hierarchy": The activity of an

entity at a given level may be looked at (1) in isolation, (2) constitutively, i.e.

by identifying the lower level mechanisms that generate its activity, or (3)

contextually, by showing how it fits into the organization of a higher-level

mechanism (Craver 2001, 65-71).

— Philosophy of science: "for a higher-level law to be mechanically explicable,

it must be realized by some lower-level mechanism" (Glennan 1996, 62).

Research Reality?

Modernization theory and persistence of democracy (Lipset 1959, "Some

Social Requisites of Democracy„)

„..Perhaps the most widespread generalization linking political system to

other aspects of society has been that democracy is related to the state of

economic development„ (75).

Explication of mechanisms – even if data are not available!


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Only some three decades later: specification by Welzel & Inglehart (2003)

— “We specify this syndrome as ‘human development’, arguing that its three

components have a common focus on broadening human choice.

Socioeconomic development gives people the objective means of choice by

increasing individual resources; rising emancipative values strengthen

people's subjective orientation towards choice; and democratization

provides legal guarantees of choice by institutionalizing freedom rights.

Analysis of data from the World Values Surveys demonstrates that the

linkage between individual resources, emancipative values and freedom

rights is universal in its presence across nations, regions and cultural zones;

that this human development syndrome is shaped by a causal effect of

individual resources and emancipative values on freedom rights; and that

this effect operates through its impact on elite integrity, as the factor which

makes freedom rights effective.


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5. Moving down: Macro to Micro

Rokkan:

Ambivalence concerning causality regarding:

a) Macro-Macro

b) Micro-Micro

c) Macro-Micro

Quite confident concerning demonstration of causality by

d) Macro-Micro-Micro

Przeworski/Teune:

Regard only d) as true comparative analysis


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From Ecological Fallacy to Multi-level: An Example


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Considerations:

Who voted Nazis? Being unemployed was not the reason for voting Nazi.

Alternative Hypothesis: Potential looser/threat

The middle classes felt the more at risk the higher the unemployment rate.

Their probability of voting Nazi was positively related to unemployment

rates.

Multi-level problem/cross-level interaction:

— Voters nested in constituencies, constituency context matters for individual-

level relationship:


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— Although closer to measuring causality, it is still “only” testing for

implications of a theory/hypothesis

— The psychological process of threat is (plausibly) assumed, not measured

Role of theory assuming reasonable mechanisms


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Typical general questions at the heart of political science and

sociology

Political science:

Do institutions matter?

Sociology:

Does context matter?

6. Macro-Micro Design‘s Contribution

to Comparative Analysis


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— Data richness will not solve our problems but it helps

— Theory is and will be the most important tool to come up with proper models

— The problem of “only” testing implications of theories/hypotheses will neither

be solved by technique nor by data

Thus:

Good theories about the impact of institutions on attitudes and behavior

needed (incentive structure/constraints)

Good theories needed how lower levels impact higher levels (power, conflict

theories)

We are in quantitative terms (number of analyses) and qualitative terms

(good macro-micro theories) still at the beginning.


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Thank you very much for your

attention


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