Lucerne Cluster for Configurational Methods (LUCCS)
Commitment and Major Contributions
The Department of Political Science at the University of Lucerne unites a group of scholars who make major contributions to social science methodology at the crossroads between quantitative and qualitative research. What these scholars share is a commitment to “configurational thinking” and the application of such thinking to the formation of concepts and to empirical research. With this focus and concentration of competencies, LUCCS is internationally unique.
- On the epistemological level, we develop research designs that do justice to configurational thinking
- On the methodological level, we present and develop methods for configurational cross-case analysis and for configurational within-case analysis
- On the conceptual level, we apply configurational thinking in order to reflect on fuzzy boundaries of concepts and on the aggregation of divergent dimensions
- On the technical level, we develop algorithms, measures and procedures for performing configurational research
- In our teaching, we seek to raise awareness of configurational thinking, and how it differs from other logics of description and inference