The Use of in Vivo and Laboratory Experiments in the Study of Elections

Abstract

This article introduces the present issue of the IPSR and is a review of the use of experi ments in political science since the pioneering studies of Gosnell in the 1920s and of Hartman in the 1930s. The review shows a marked though declining reluctance of the discipline to adopt the experimental mode of analysis. That reluctance is attributed to an overriding concern with the sociological rather than the psychological, as well as to a constraining conception of the "real" world where territorial, institutional, and social boundaries play the dominant role. However, the evidence indicates that the experimental method can be easily and usefully added to the battery of techniques by which political processes are studied, particularly so in the field of election research.