| name | wp-research-design |
| description | Use when defending the research design of a World Politics manuscript — comparative-historical and case selection, quantitative cross-national identification, qualitative process tracing, experiments, or formal-empirical linkage for cross-case questions. World Politics expects explicit research design and appropriate methods, judged on each tradition's own terms. Strengthens the design; it does not write code. |
Research Design (wp-research-design)
World Politics asks every article to "be explicit about its research design and use appropriate
methods," and applies separate expectations to quantitative and qualitative work. Because the journal
values arguments that travel across cases, the design must connect a portable argument
(wp-theory-building) to evidence in a way that rules out the strongest cross-case rival. This
skill is mode-aware: pick the section that matches your work.
When to trigger
- Specifying case selection, identification, or experimental design for a cross-case question
- A reviewer questioned causal claims, case choice, external validity, or a confound
- Justifying why your design adjudicates the rival account from
wp-literature-positioning
Comparative-historical & case-based (a World Politics staple)
- Case selection by design logic — typical, deviant, most/least-likely, paired/structured-focused
comparison, or set-theoretic (QCA). Say what each case is a case of and why the comparison
identifies the argument. Convenience is not a design.
- Process tracing with explicit tests (hoop, smoking-gun, straw-in-the-wind); state what evidence
would have disconfirmed the argument in each case.
- Travel. Show the comparison licenses a claim beyond the cases studied (scope conditions), not
just a within-case story.
Quantitative / cross-national
