Interview Method in State Capitalism Literature: Main Issues and Suggestions

Abstract

Interview technique is one of the widely used methods in social sciences. This article examines how the interview method is applied in state capitalism literature. First, using the ISI Web of Science (WoS) database, it identifies 25 articles (among 177) that used the interview method in their analyses on state capitalism. The keyword “state capitalism” is searched in all SSCI articles (titles, abstracts, keywords, etc.) to find contributions on state capitalism (WoS categories of Political Science, Public Administration, Economics, International Relations, and Sociology). Then, the article investigates how the method is applied in these works. It highlights that practitioners of the interview method seldom engage with the related methodological literature. Despite intriguing debates and valuable contributions, how the interview method is drawn on to support analyses and drive main arguments are not generally clear. Thus, more engagement with the methodological literature would be useful in more explicitly and systematically describing (i) the execution of the method (date, length, mode, etc.), (ii) elaboration of saturation, and (iii) how the interview data are analyzed and presented to the readers, including coding, use of software, and use of direct quotations.