Quantitative Empirical Methods of Political Science
Term: UMich - Spring 2026
Course Overview
The field of political science has always concerned itself with finding more precise, more meaningful ways to measure and explain political phenomena. Since the 1970s, this effort has increasingly taken the form of using statistical methods to tell a story about data. Reliable political and economic data has become more and more available thanks to data collection efforts by governments, transnational organizations, and scholars. As data becomes better and bigger, political scientists have adapted and employed increasingly complex quantitative methods to help prove their theories. This course takes a deep dive into this quantitative mode of thinking in political science. In particular, it focuses on understanding the relationships between variables, the principles of probability and causality, and the ways that data can be used to tell stories about politics.