Project Summary
Intellectual Merit: The scientific study of politics requires extensive contact and interaction between theoretical models and empirical research. In practice, however, many theories are produced without sufficient reference to empirical knowledge to motivate their assumptions or to evaluate their logical implications. Similarly, empirical results are often interpreted as having clear substantive implications despite the absence of well specified theories to ground such interpretative claims. In short, many gaps persist between theory and empirical research in Political Science. These gaps impair scientific progress and may prohibit the accumulation of scientific knowledge (Granato and Scioli 2004). The discipline has, however, seen significant progress in the range of relationships that scholars are able to examine via theoretical modeling and empirical inference, with increasingly high quality work taking seriously the interface between the two.
The central motivating question of this proposal is: How much more can be learned if increasing numbers of young scholars can be systematically trained to view theoretical and empirical methods as complements rather than substitutes? EITM Summer Institutes seek to build such a bridge by offering younger scholars an opportunity to obtain such skills by working with senior scholars who are leaders in advancing theoretical and empirical research. The focus is on areas where appreciable research integrating theory and methods already exists, so that the content of Institute activities pertains to the development and expansion of best practices. Institute activities transcend passive receipt of lecture material. A critical part of Institute activities is to advance participants’ research by employing their newly gained knowledge about the integration of theory and method into their own research designs
EITM’s central goal is to improve scholars’ ability to leverage interactions between theoretical models that clarify complex logical relationships and empirical work that clarify important properties of data generating processes. The purpose of this proposal is to seek funding for five EITM Summer Institutes, one of the central means by which scholars seek to accomplish this goal. To date, the set of EITM Summer Institutes that rotates across universities have trained over 200 of the best young scholars in the discipline to think more effectively about how to increase the social and scientific value of theoretical modeling through more effective communication and more rigorous collaboration with statistical inference.
This proposal is led by a new team of PIs. Together, they offer a plan for pursuing greater EITM contributions to a growing range of substantive literatures and for institutionalizing the values of EITM as core concepts in the discipline’s perception of normal science. In an effort to expand the pool of students who can benefit from EITM institutes, this proposal also includes the continuation of mentoring programs that include help junior faculty better develop EITM content at their home institutions ? and introduces a new concept, the EITM Certification program, that can provide new opportunities for students who, at present, may feel inadequately prepared to participate.

Broader Impacts Training at each institute includes significant teaching and research components, providing students a high degree of individualized interaction with a far wider and deeper array of EITM mentors than are available at any individual institution. Mentoring opportunities and interaction with advanced researchers have been repeatedly cited in student evaluations as a primary strength of the EITM Summer Institute. Together, the proposed institutes will create a direct positive impact for over 125 students and 75 junior and senior faculty, their current research, the generation of new research agendas, and human resources, increasing the intellectual capital of the scho