Abstract

In political science the use of mathematics has mainly been seen as only feasible if it was possible to make quantitative measurement. However, until the 1960’s the metric status of direct observations of individual human behaviour was highly uncertain and mathematics was mostly used for statistical description of frequencies of qualitative categories. This all changed with the invention of probability measurement models for individual responses borrowed from psychometrics and with the adoption of theories and statistical methods from econometrics. In my talk I will present some of my favourite examples of this development.