The goal of any social science is to explain social phenomena; in our case, we are trying to explain those socio-political phenomena— things to do with government, the actions of voters or the actions of legislators.
What we are trying to explain are (typically) events of some kind.
For example:
–“Why did (x) legislative districts shift towards the Republican party in 2016?”
–“Why did (x) legislative districts shift towards the Democratic party in 2018?”
–“Why did legislator (x) disagree with his own party on a particular issue?”
The first step is simple but crucial—you have to identify the particular event or events that you are trying to explain.
The process of explanation in general (taken from Jon Elster, Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.)
(These steps will be explained in more detail below.)
Choose a theory—set of interrelated causal propositions. (e.g. The Identity Crisis theory of the 2016 Presidential Election: President Trump’s election in 2016 was caused by his strategic appeal to ‘white identity,’ which mobilized crucial subsets of the voting public on the basis of Islamophobia and ethno-cultural opposition to immigration.)
Specify a hypothesis, such that the explanandum (“that which is to be explained”) follows logically from the hypothesis A hypothesis is just an initial guess about what is likely to be the case, in light of the broader theory (e.g. shifts towards the GOP in the 2016 will be concentrated in counties with high levels of white voters who only have a high-school education.)