Social Inquiry and Bayesian Inference: An "Objective" Vision for Mixed Method Research?

Social Inquiry and Bayesian Inference takes as its premise the idea that Bayesian inference has the power to redefine methodology in political science. Putting itself in the company of works like Rethinking Social Inquiry (Brady and Collier 2010), Fairfield and Charman (2022) position the book as an intervention into the reified divide between qualitative and quantitative research, seeking to elevate Bayesian inference as the unifying framework through which to reposition qualitative research on par with quantitative approaches. The specter of “subjectivity,” however, haunts the project throughout, both limiting its capacity to achieve its goals of defining a unifying framework for social scientific analysis, and leaving fundamental questions about research best practices in a Bayesian approach largely unaddressed.