Abstract
Though the experimental research in political science has a long history, much experimental studies seem to have been ignored. However, by the rise of experimental / behavioral economics and experimental psychology and the interest in causality, political scientists are refocusing on the value of experimentation. Based on the seminal work of Kinder and Palfrey (1993), Lupia (2002), McDermott (2002), Druckman, Green, Kuklinski, and Lupia (2006, 2011), Morton and Williams (2010), this paper discusses several aspects of the experimental approach in political science: the history and interdisciplinarity of political experimental researches, the types of experimentation in social sciences, the problems of internal validity and external validity, the topics of political experimental researches, and experimental researches conducted by Japanese political scientists.
