Doing Archival Research in Political Science By Scott A. Frisch, ...

Reason One: It Will Improve Research

The chapters in the volume are intended both to instruct and to demonstrate that archival research makes a valuable contribution to political science research. In the spirit of methodological pluralism, we focus on both qualitative and quantitative examples. There are qualitative data and quantitative data to exploit in these collections, and new data sources can naturally improve the quality of one’s research.

Where archival research takes the researcher beyond simply some new data is in the degree to which the archival research process exposes one to important aspects of process, context, sequence, and timing that are important for theory building, data collection, and hypothesis testing. To be brief (since the chapters illustrate this better than we can here), working through archival records provides a look “behind the curtain” of political processes. Most of political science focuses on behaviors, on outcomes, that are usually the result of a more complex process. Peeking into that ordinarily opaque process can help to build theories of political behavior that are more reflective of the actual political process. Although this may seem to some to be mere description, good theorizing depends on accurate descriptions of political processes.

Wading through the archival record also makes one more aware of the context within which politics happen. Decisions are not made in a vacuum, and decision makers are not singular actors. Researchers often, for good reasons, treat behaviors as if this were the case. They say things like “member X voted this way” or “the president decided to do X,” but these decisions were made in a particular context—with a certain understanding of policy choices, political conditions, staff advice, and the like—that produced a unique outcome. Archival research makes one sensitive to variables that may be useful in explaining what produced a particular political outcome. To put it in the terms of quantitative research, knowledge of process and context can improve model specification.