Transformations in Scientificity and the Inferential Adjustment in Political Science: Argument and Evidence in the Publications with High Impact Factor

Abstract

This paper analyses transformations in the scientific status of Political Science in the two last decades. The analysis provides evidence corroborating the hypothesis about the high impact production has been adjusting to the rules of inference. This adjustment brings about a characteristic condition called Inferential Pluralism in which coexist multiple logics of causation to produce valid inferences. Empirically, the paper develops an original methodology, based in text analysis and mining data analysis, to measure Inferential Pluralism and test the argument in a population of 2331 articles published in five high impact journals in period 2005-2015.

KEYWORDS:
Political Science; Research Design; Methodology; Causation; Causal Inference