QCA paradigm in political science and its practical application
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69821/rer.v2i2.19Keywords:
QCA, political science, paradigmatic alignment, post-positivismAbstract
Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) in political science faces persistent debate regarding its paradigmatic affiliation, leading to inconsistent applications that compromise its validity. This essay clarifies its paradigmatic focus and practical implications through a systematic review of 25 empirical studies (2019–2024), using QCA as a methodology to assess alignments with positivism, post-positivism, interpretivism, and critical theory. The results reveal that QCA is essentially post-positivist, validating contextual patterns through consistency and coverage (e.g., Sun et al., 2023, with 0.89 for consistency and 0.75 for coverage). Only 28% of the studies met optimal thresholds, while positivist applications showed low coverage (0.40), and critical applications omitted power variables. The main contribution is the first model that uses QCA to assess paradigmatic affiliations, offering practical guidelines: for small-N studies, use fsQCA with cross-validation; in policy analysis, integrate qualitative methods; In critical research, power dynamics should be included. It is concluded that QCA reaches its full potential under post-positivism, with limited connections to interpretivism, but structural incompatibility with critical theory.
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