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Political Concepts
A Working Paper Series of the Committee on Concepts and Methods
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| Leiv Marsteintredet, "Graded Conceptual Membership: Linking Radial Concepts and Fuzzy Sets in the Study of Democracy," October 2007 |
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| Abstract | The paper deals with classical concepts, family resemblance and (one type of) radial concepts
and how they relate to gradation. This paper argues that the radial concept is the only one of
these three conceptual understandings that allows for graded memberships in concepts. We
link the two different linguistic logics of classical concepts and radial concepts to two
interrelated methods used in the social sciences: Boolean and Fuzzy Set, respectively. By
linking explicitly radial conceptualisation to fuzzy set methods and using the example of the
concept of democracy, the paper aims to improve what is considered to be a problem in Fuzzy
set: arbitrary value-setting of variables. Furthermore, the paper seeks to find solutions to one
problem in the early writing on radial concepts in our field, to set boundaries for the extension
of the concept. Thirdly, the paper seeks to present a method of combining features within
radial concepts to create a composite complex concept both qualitatively and quantitatively.
The examples we will use is that of democracy through a data set that was originally
developed by Bowman et al. (2005). |
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C&M
The Committee on Concepts and Methods
International Political Science Association (IPSA)
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Copyright (c) 2005 Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas.
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