A Guide to Political Research

The book under review is an import- ant contribution to political research in India for two reasons. The first is about the structuring of the discipline of political science in Indian universities. To a large extent, the discipline of political science in India is what Yogendra Yadav mentions in his foreword to the book, ‘methodologically illiterate’ and as a result has not been able to develop a robust body of evidence based research. A related problem is about the hierarchical internal structuring of the discipline of political science in particular and of the Indian social sciences in general. In the context of these hierarchies, doing quantitative research is always looked down upon and such bias further contributes to the methodological illiteracy mentioned above. Without engaging in these controversies, the authors of this book have put together a very useful guide to doing voting behaviour studies in the Indian context which will definitely contribute to necessary awareness about doing technical, evidence based and methodologically sound political science in India.