fuzzy sets ... too fuzzy to study women's representation in parliament!

In this rebuttal piece to Buche et al, I reiterate my criticism of fuzzy set analysis as a method that is poorly suited to study women's representation in parliament and other rather complex phenomena. The use of fuzzy set analysis is problematic from the onset, because this method asks the researchers to distinguish meaningful from non-meaningful variation and set benchmarks for high women's representation, the cross-over point and low or non-high representation. Yet, in the study of women's representation, the distinction between meaningful and non-meaningful variation and the setup of these benchmarks is problematic if not impossible, even with case-specific knowledge. For example, in Asia and Latin America can we talk about high women's representation if there are 30 per cent women deputies, 35 per cent women deputies or 40 per cent women deputies? Neither the literature nor Buche et al give an answer to this question. This problem of arbitrarily setting benchmarks is magnified by the non-robust findings and low coverage of this method. It is disturbing if we get a completely different combination of conditions, if we slightly change the benchmark for high women's representation and/or that of some of the conditions or independent variables. Because of these reasons, researchers should refrain from using fuzzy set analysis, when explaining variation in the number of deputies in parliament.