Seminar on QCA in Policy-oriented and Public Administration Research

Location : Louvain-La-Neuve (Belgium)

Organizers : Joint seminar of K.U.Leuven and UCLouvain, with the
support of the CMAP, CESPOL, COMPASSS, Instituut voor de Overheid, VPW,
and the ABSP

Topic : Twenty five years after the publication of Charles Ragin's seminar work (1987) in which he presents a strategy that bridges the classic case-oriented v/s variable-oriented cleavage, the use of configurational comparative methods (QCA) can be considered still rather limited in policy-oriented research and especially in public administration. This may surprise if we consider the potentials that QCA
methods (MSDO/MDSO; crisp set QCA, multi value QCA and fuzzy set QCA) offer for rigorous comparison of a medium number of cases. The approach is particularly attractive as it conceptualizes cases as combinations of attributes and departs from the assumption that it is these very combinations that give social phenomena their unique nature. Besides providing a systematic approach for data-exploration and summarizing data; the technique can also be utmost fruitful for typology-building, theory-testing and inductive theory-formulation (Rihoux and Ragin, 2009). The purpose of this seminar is to take stock of applications of QCA in comparative public administration and policy oriented research.
We will particularly examine why scholars in public administration have generally been rather hesitant to applying configurational comparative methods, especially in comparison with their colleagues in political
science. The discussion should enable us to explore future prospects of the QCA approach and related techniques for policy-oriented and public administration research.

Programme :

• 8h40 : Registration and morning coffee
• 9h10 – 9h35 : Introduction to QCA for Policy-oriented & Public administration research (power point) by Prof. Benoit Rihoux, UCLouvain
• 9h35 – 10h00 : Comparative Public Administration: State of the art and potentials for configurational comparative methods (power point) by Prof. Marleen Brans & Valérie Pattyn, KU Leuven
• 10h00 – 10h15 : Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis as a Complexity-Informed Tool to Evaluate Public Policy (power point) by Stefan Verweij & Dr. Lasse M. Gerrits, Erasmus University Rotterdam
• 10h15 – 10h30 : The issue of limited diversity in public policy (power point) by Dr. Alessia Damonte, Università degli Studi di Milano
• 10h30 -11h00 :  Discussant: Prof. Maarten Peter Vink, Maastricht University
• 11h00 – 11h20 : Coffee break
• 11h20 – 11h35 : How actor-related strategies and political context matter: a fuzzy-set QCA analysis of structural reforms in continental welfare states (power point) by Dr. Sabina Stiller, Wageningen University
• 11h35 – 11h50 Policy networks and policy outputs: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis (power point) by Manuel Fischer, University of Geneva - (Download here the draft version)
• 11h50 – 12h20 Discussant: Prof. Barbara Vis, VU University Amsterdam
• 12h20 – 13h10 Roundtable: taking stock and avenues for further developments – Profs. Marleen Brans, Benoit Rihoux and Ingo Rohlfing Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences
• 13h10 – 14h00 Lunch offered by the organizers

Organizing team :
Marleen Brans & Valérie Pattyn (KU Leuven), Benoît Rihoux & François Randour (UCLouvain)

Contact persons :

Valérie Pattyn () & François Randour ()