Globalisation, Interdisciplinarity and Methodology in the Humanities, History and Legal History
A Plea for Quantitative Comparative Methods
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60923/issn.2724-6299/24400Keywords:
legal history, quantitative methods, comparative methods, humanities, globalisation, interdisciplinaryAbstract
This paper explores the relationship between globalisation, internationalisation and methodological choices in the humanities, history and legal history. In particular, it analyses and discusses the use and role of quantitative comparative methods in the field of legal history. While globalisation generally would seem to make such research more relevant, the paper shows that it is still very rare in many legal history journals. This is unfortunate, since quantitative comparative analyses can have many benefits, especially when combined with qualitative analyses. Quantitative methods can help researchers reveal patterns that might not be visible in qualitative analyses, analyse complex phenomena involving many variables and offer valuable overviews. There could be many reasons behind this lack of quantitative research, but three factors are stressed here: 1) misconceptions about quantitative methods and a certain bias in the methodological debate, 2) overemphasis of the differences between quantitative and qualitative methods, and 3) systems for research evaluation and funding that are badly suited for quantitative comparative research. Given these impediments, what is needed, it is argued, is development of new quantitative methods adapted to legal history, further debate about methodological choices, increased methodological transparency as well as discussions about the consequences of current funding and evaluation practices.
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