Table Of ContentExperimental Political Science
Research Methods Series
General Editors: B ernhard Kittel, Professor of Economic Sociology, Faculty of
Business, Economics and Statistics, University of Vienna, Austria, and B enoît Rihoux,
Professor of Political Science, Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Belgium.
In association with the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), Palgrave
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tative methods.
Titles include :
Alexander Bogner, Beate Littig and Wolfgang Menz ( editors)
INTERVIEWING EXPERTS
Bernhard Kittel, Wolfgang J. Luhan and Rebecca B. Morton (editors)
EXPERIMENTAL POLITICAL SCIENCE
Principles and Practices
Lane Kenworthy and Alexander Hicks (editors)
METHOD AND SUBSTANCE IN MACROCOMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
Audie Klotz and Deepa Prakash ( editors)
QUALITATIVE METHODS IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
A Pluralist Guide
Research Methods Series
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Experimental Political
Science
Principles and Practices
Edited by
Bernhard K ittel
Professor of Economic Sociology,
University of Vienna, Austria
Wolfgang J. L uhan
Assistant Professor
Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
and
Rebecca B. M orton
Professor of Politics
New York University, USA
Editorial matter and selection © Bernhard Kittel, Wolfgang J. Luhan
and Rebecca B. Morton 2012
All remaining chapters © respective authors 2012
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-30085-9
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First published 2012 by
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
Contents
List of Figures v ii
List of Tables v iii
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
Notes on the Contributors xi
1 Introduction: Experimental Political Science in Perspective 1
Bernhard Kittel and Rebecca B. Morton
Part I Overview
2 Voting Behavior and Political Institutions:
An Overview of Challenging Q uestions in Theory
and Experimental Research 17
Bernhard Kittel and Kamil Marcinkiewicz
3 Laboratory Tests of Formal Theory and Behavioral Inferences 5 4
Jonathan Woon
4 Voting Mechanism Design: Modeling Institutions in Experiments 7 2
Jens Großer
Part II Experimental Designs
5 Strategic Voting in the Laboratory 95
Nicolas Sauger, André Blais, Jean-François Laslier and
Karine van der Straeten
6 Survey Experiments: Partisan Cues in Multi-party Systems 1 12
Ted A. Brader and Joshua A. Tucker
7 Experimental Triangulation of Coalition Signals:
Varying Designs, Converging Results 140
Michael F. Meffert and Thomas Gschwend
P art III Exploring and Analyzing Experimental Data
8 Statistical Analysis of Experimental Data 1 63
Susumu Shikano, Thomas Bräuninger and Michael Stoffel
v
vi Contents
9 E xperimental Chats: Opening the Black Box of
Group Experiments 1 78
Thomas Kalwitzki, Wolfgang J. Luhan and Bernhard Kittel
Part IV Challenges to Inferences from Experiments
10 O n the Validity of Laboratory Research in the Political
and Social Sciences: The Example of Crime and Punishment 2 09
H eiko Rauhut and Fabian Winter
11 G athering Counter-Factual Evidence: An Experimental
Study on Voters’ R esponses to Pre-Electoral Coalitions 2 33
Marc Hooghe, Sofie Marien and Thomas Gschwend
12 U sing Time in the Laboratory 2 49
Rebecca B. Morton
Part V Conclusion
13 Conclusion: Ways Ahead in Experimental Political Science 2 63
B ernhard Kittel and Wolfgang J. Luhan
Appendix: Resources for Experimental Research in
the Social Sciences 275
Jana Keller, Bernhard Kittel and Wolfgang J. Luhan
Index 2 79
Figures
5.1 Positions of candidates 98
5.2 Scores of the top-two contenders (Nagayama triangles) 102
5.3 Scores of the second and third finishers (Nagayma triangles) 103
6.1 The effect of single party cues
from one’s preferred party in Russia 1 25
6.2 The effect of single party cues from the communist party
of the Russian federation 125
6.3 The effect of multiple party cues on matching
the position of one’s preferred party for self-identified
partisans in Russia 1 26
6.4 The effect of partisan cues on opinion giving in Russia 1 27
7.1 Game screen of economic experiment 148
7.2 Poll results screen of psychological experiment 1 52
8.1 ANOVA and ANCOVA 1 66
8.2 BSS and FP configuration of ideal points 1 71
8.3 Model 2 and Model 3 174
8.4 Subject-level effects in Model 4 1 75
9.1 Process of inductive categorization 1 92
10.1 The extended inspection game 217
10.2 Effects of punishment severity on crime and
inspection in experiment 1 2 24
10.3 E ffects of punishment severity on crime and
inspection in experiment 2 225
vii
Tables
3.1 Flood and Dresher’s experimental test of Nash equilibrium 60
3.2 Comparison of alternative voting rules 6 5
3.3 Voter behavior 6 7
3.4 Politicial behavior 6 8
5.1 Main variants of the protocol 1 01
5.2 A conditional logit model of vote choice 1 04
5.3 Total vote share obtained by candidates A and E
in experiments with and without chances of
winning question 1 07
5.4 Probability of voting sincerely according to voters’
positions and subjects’ characteristics 1 08
6.1 Comparing experiments by type 1 13
6.2 Policy topics by type of experiment and country 1 20
6.3 Single party cue vs. multiple-party cue experiments 1 24
7.1 Key characteristics of studies 1 46
7.2 Share of optimal decisions by election difficulty
and available information 1 50
7.3 Vote intention for preferred party of green party
and FPÖ supporters 1 56
7.4 Key results of studies 1 57
8.1 Experimental design of example in Section 8.3 1 68
8.2 Estimation results 1 73
9.1 Payoffs 1 90
10.1 The inspection game 2 13
10.2 Crime as a prisoner’s dilemma 2 16
10.3 E ffects of punishment severity on crime
and inspection behavior 2 26
11.1 Results of party and coalition vote conditions 2 42
11.2 Voter reactions to likely and unlikely coalitions 2 45
viii
Preface and Acknowledgments
This book is one of the tangible results of Rebecca B. Morton’s fellowship at
the Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK) in Delmenhorst, situated in north-
western Germany between Bremen and Oldenburg, in the fall of 2008, where
she had been invited to stay by Bernhard Kittel and Wolfgang J. Luhan for
some joint experiments on voting behavior.
In December 2008, a group of German and American experimentalists in
political science met at the HWK to discuss some recent work. Though the
group was rather small, among the participants was a large share of all polit-
ical scientists doing experimental work in Germany at that time. During
the discussions, the idea came up to compile a book that aims beyond a
handbook-style overview of the field and the explanation of the principles
of experimental work. This book should cover the issues that have been the
topic of the discussions during the workshop: Why did we do it this way
and not in a different way? What practical restrictions did we encounter and
how did we deal with them? How did we circumvent that specific challenge
to inferential leverage or validity? Hence, the aim of the book would be to
discuss the confrontation of scientific principles with actual practices. The
book in your hands is the final result of this collective endeavor. We hope
that it meets these aims and that it will become a useful addition to the
existing literature on experimental political science.
We thank the rector of the HWK, Reto Weiler, for making Rebecca B.
Morton’s stay and the workshop possible as well as for his famous Swiss
hospitality; the scientific advisory board of the HWK, for supporting the
application; and Wolfgang Stenzel, research manager at the HWK, for his
invaluable support in preparation of and during the stay. We also thank
Tanja Sluiter for copyediting the manuscript and Liz Holwell, our editor at
Palgrave Macmillan, for her continuing and patient support. Benoît Rihoux,
Bernhard Kittel’s co-editor of the ECPR Research Methods Series, has been
encouraging and supportive of this project from the very beginning. In
particular, we thank the anonymous reviewer for his or her critical and
invaluable comments on the initial proposal as well as on the final outline
that have helped to push the project forward.
The workshop has been co-sponsored by HWK and the Center for Social
Science Methodology (MSW) at the University of Oldenburg, partly investing
funds that have been allocated to the MSW by the Ministry of Science and
Culture of Lower Saxony in the framework of the ‘Niedersachsen Vorab’
of the Volkswagen Foundation. We thank all of these institutions for their
support.
ix
