Empirical Research and Writing is designed to help you produce a very specific kind of scholarly output: an empirical research paper centered on a causal argument. As our discussion of research question types suggested, however, this is not the only type of research we can do. We can do systematic reviews and meta-analyses of existing literature to understand patterns in findings across studies. We can create and analyze mathematically-based formal models of a phenomenon to develop deeper insights into those interactions. Bils and Smith (2025), for example, consider the phenomenon of secret alliances. Alliances can only deter potential enemies if the enemy knows about them, so why do states sign secret alliances? What benefits can they gain from doing that?
We can also do various forms of empirical research – research about how the world actually is – that do not rely on a causal theory. Such research is often exploratory, looking for patterns of associations even where we do not have strong causal expectations. For example, Jarvis (2026) takes a deep dive into the language of government travel warnings to identify the various ways that the government constructs the threat of terrorism to citizens abroad, finding that the types of terrorism it warns about are focused on Islamic threats, hypotheticals, and generalized risks but exclude right-wing and government-sponsored terrorism. Taking a different angle, Parthasarathy et al. (2019) theorize what deliberative democracy might look like, operationalize it on a large corpus of transcripts from village council meetings in India, and demonstrate that these circumstances – while far from democratic ideals – can still produce meaningful deliberation.
Many journals now publish short article or “letter” format items that explore an empirical pattern without necessarily theorizing about causal mechanisms. After all, establishing a puzzling empirical regularity is a necessary first step to creating a theory of it. Sato (2025) collects new data on Japanese Supreme Court nominations and identifies an unexpected pattern of variation that, we assume, will be the focus of future work. Myrick and Marble (2026) evaluate competing claims about the effect of US withdrawal from Afghanistan on perceptions of the US abroad. They don’t offer a new explanation, but they do offer a new empirical test of existing claims. Canes-Wrone et al. (2026) identify an important empirical difference between donors and non-donors about the role of nominations to the Supreme Court in US politics.
Bils, Peter, and Bradley C. Smith 2025. “ The logic of secret alliances.” American Journal of Political Science 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12997
Canes-Wrone, Brandice, Jonathan P. Kastellec, and Nicolas Studen. 2026. “Mass Versus Donor Attitudes on the Importance of Supreme Court Nominations.” American Political Science Review 120(1): 381–88. doi: 10.1017/S0003055425000139.
Jarvis, Lee. 2026. “Beware! Here (Might) Be Terrorists: Constructing the Threat of Terrorism in Foreign Travel Advice.” European Journal of International Security: 1–21. doi: 10.1017/eis.2026.10040.
Myrick, Rachel, and William Marble. 2026. “Foreign Policy Failures and Global Attitudes Towards Great Powers: Evidence from the US Withdrawal from Afghanistan.” British Journal of Political Science 56: e3. doi: 10.1017/S0007123425101233.
Parthasarathy, Ramya, Vijayendra Rao, and Nethra Palaniswamy. 2019. “Deliberative Democracy in an Unequal World: A Text-As-Data Study of South India’s Village Assemblies.” American Political Science Review 113(3): 623–40. doi: 10.1017/S0003055419000182.
Sato, Shunsuke. 2025. “Cabinet Rejection of Supreme Court Candidates in Japan.” Japanese Journal of Political Science 26(4): 247–65. doi: 10.1017/S1468109925100145.