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Models-As-Fables: An Alternative to the Standard Rationale for Using Formal Models in Political Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2020

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Abstract

Political scientists invoke the standard rationale to justify making and using formal models. It goes like this: (1) we rely on formal models to generate predictions, (2) we treat these predictions as empirical hypotheses, and (3) we seek to test these hypotheses against evidence derived from the “real world.” I show that this interpretation of formal models as directly empirical is inadequate just insofar as it fails to capture the way we actually use them. I then offer an alternative rationale for making and using formal models. Specifically, I argue that we use models, like we use fables, for conceptual purposes.

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Article
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Perspectives on Politics , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , September 2021 , pp. 874 - 889
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

This paper has had an extremely long gestation. In 2016 I presented an initial, half-baked version at the Department of Political Science. University of Geneva (April). I presented a revised version in 2017 on a panel at the Midwest Political Science Association meetings (April) and at a workshop: “What to Make of Highly Unrealistic Models?” at the University of Helsinki (October). In 2018 I presented re-revised versions at the Departments of Political Science, Trinity College, Dublin. (April) and University of California, San Diego (June) and then in the Blalock Lecture Series, at the ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research (July). The folks who arranged all of those events know who they are and how grateful I am for the opportunities they afforded me. To everyone who criticized and questioned my views during one of these events, thank you.

Starting in the fall of 2018 the manuscript was desk rejected by editors at several journals. Those folks know who they are too. No hard feelings. Here at Perspectives on Politics, I want to thank Michael Bernhard for his willingness to take an intellectual risk, for his patience with my glacial revision pace, and for coordinating a rigorous review process. I also want to thank four referees for their frank, skeptical comments. In particular I want to thank Referee #3 for their deep, abiding disagreement. I really do hope you will argue back.

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