Interaction Models: Specification and Interpretation

William Roberts Clark · Matt Golder

Oct 2023 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

The radical interdependence between humans who live together makes virtually all human behavior conditional. The behavior of individuals is conditional upon the expectations of those around them, and those expectations are conditional upon the rules (institutions) and norms (culture) constructed to monitor, reward, and punish different behaviors. As a result, nearly all hypotheses about humans are conditional – conditional upon the resources they possess, the institutions they inhabit, or the cultural practices that tell them how to behave. Interaction Models provides a stand-alone, accessible overview of how interaction models, which are frequently used across the social and natural sciences, capture the intuition behind conditional claims and context dependence. It also addresses the simple specification and interpretation errors that are, unfortunately, commonplace. By providing a comprehensive and unified introduction to the use and critical evaluation of interaction models, this book shows how they can be used to test theoretically-derived claims of conditionality.

About the author

William Roberts Clark is the author of Capitalism, Not Globalism; Principles of Comparative Politics; and numerous journal articles. With Sona and Matt Golder he was awarded the Brian Barry Prize by the British Academy. He has taught at six leading research universities and is currently President of the European Political Science Association.

Matt Golder is in the top 2 per cent of the most cited scientists worldwide, and his article with William Clark, 'Understanding Interaction Models: Improving Empirical Analyses' is in the top 10 most cited articles in political science (http://charlesbreton.ca/assets/PS_Top10_2020.pdf). He is the winner of the GESIS Klingemann Prize and the Brian Barry Prize from the British Academy.