Application Process & Financial Support
Substantive Units to be Covered
1. Institutions, Bureaucratic Performance, & Political Behavior2. Complex-systems, Agent-based, & Computational Models
3. Theoretical & Empirical Models in International Relations
Faculty Affiliates (2001-2004 EITM I-IV)Contact: eitm@umich.edu Please direct further inquiries to the EITM coordinator (e-mail address above) at the Center for Political Studies of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.
(15 June - 12 July , 2003)
Design of Instruction:
EITM institutes concentrate on areas of political science where research integrating both theory and methods already exists. Following the successful format of the 2002 (EITM I) institute, 2003 EITM II will again cover three such areas. Each unit surveys its substantive area, stressing key previous theoretical and empirical developments. It explicates the steps needed to construct "tests" of models in that area by, e.g., considering basic-assumption validity or drawing testable conjectures from comparative statics and other deductions from the model. And it discusses appropriate empirical methods for evaluating whether and how data confirm or reject the model, developing more-fully any highly specialized techniques required. These empirical-modeling considerations could involve specifying test equations with the proper control variables and functional forms, deriving statistical estimators, designing an experiment, or framing a simulation.
The first three weeks of each institute typically involve morning and afternoon sessions, occasional early-evening sessions as needed or at participant request, and often a concluding Saturday-morning session. A very full week might, for example, have lead lecturers survey theory and empirics in their area Monday and Tuesday morning and afternoon; guest lecturers would demonstrate state-of-the-art EITM in that area Wednesday and Thursday. Faculty and students would present current research or research-ideas Friday, leaving Saturday morning to review exercises and wrap-up. Evening lab-time would be reserved for exercises.
Each teaching team features a lead and a partner lecturer, who survey their area, its theory, its empirics, and the state of its EITM, plus two guest lecturers, who present completed research exemplifying current integration of formal theory and empirical methods. Guests present after lead and partner have introduced the area's substance sufficiently for participants to appreciate and to evaluate the work critically. To integrate the teaching of combined formal-theory and empirical-methods with research presentation and interaction, the fourth week of the institute provides intense mentoring, offering participants the opportunity to obtain comments, suggestions, and criticisms from the institute's full battery of partners, leads, and guests. Week 4 also aims to help germinate new research ideas in the EITM mould.
