By Dr. Muhammad Arfan

At DSA 2025, Jayati Ghosh and Diego Sánchez-Ancochea engaged in a compelling discussion on the epistemological contestation between mainstream economists and development studies scholars regarding how development should be conceptualised and interpreted. Jayati critically highlighted the methodological limitations of mainstream economics, which tends to assess policy success or failure primarily through quantitative indicators. She emphasised how this numerical focus often overlooks the socio-historical and political contexts that shape these numbers—contexts that are essential for interpreting the actual relationship between policy interventions and their outcomes. This debate is particularly significant as it calls into question the dominance of positivist methods in policy evaluation and invites reflection on whose knowledge counts in development discourse. In this light, this blog aims to unpack this epistemic divide and explore how a methodological fusion—bridging statistical analysis with historical and political economy perspectives—might offer deeper insights for designing more effective and context-sensitive public policies.

This brings us to a fundamental and enduring question: What is reality, and how should it be understood? Should we rely on quantitative metrics to explain development processes, or are qualitative, context-rich approaches better suited to capture their complexity? These methodological questions are at the heart of a long-standing academic debate between proponents of quantitative and qualitative research traditions—a debate that began decades ago and remains vibrant today. Both sides continue to critique the assumptions, tools, and epistemological claims of the other, challenging us to reconsider the relative strengths and limitations of their approaches.

The philosophical divergence between quantitative and qualitative research stems from differing assumptions about social reality, basis of knowledge, and its transmissivity. Quantitative research assumes that reality is objective—external and measurable, while qualitative research views reality as subjective and socially constructed on individual basis. Similarly, quantitative approaches treat knowledge as universal, generalisable and transferable, whereas qualitative approaches view it as context-specific and shaped by personal interpretation. Researchers who view the social reality as a system of interrelated, structured layers often adopt quantitative methods to understand patterns and causal relationships among variables. In contrast, qualitative researchers believe in the existence of multiple, equally valid realities—each emerging from unique social interactions— employ qualitative methods. Their aim is to understand lived experiences within specific socio-historical contexts and researcher’s own subjectivity is a part of this contextuality. The choice between these methodologies is thus rooted in the researcher’s underlying epistemological stance regarding how society and its interactions are understood. Ultimately, both objective and subjective realities serve as metaphors selected by the researcher to theorise social phenomena and both approaches have their own limitations.

In development economics the dominant methodological approach has historically been quantitative.  However, qualitative methods are increasingly competing for space, and there is now a growing recognition that both approaches offer valuable insights for understanding development realities. As always it is difficult to maintain the attitude of objective observer, just as it is also not possible to immerse oneself into the situation easily. Thus, the mixed method approach appears more robust because qualitative methods are helpful for theory generation, and quantitative methods are helpful to test the theory. The use of one approach exclusively for both purposes (i.e., theory generation and its testing) can be problematic.

The fusion of these two approaches can be helpful in the bridging of the development economics and development studies fields. Quantitative methods provide ways to test the reliability of any policy intervention and its latent theory of change, whereas qualitative methods provide ways to trim the policy interventions under the specific socio-historical contextual realities. This exercise requires a balance between both methods because an emphasis exclusively on one over the other tends to disregard the reliability and validity issues in public policy design.

The fusion of methods, therefore, does more than just bridge disciplines. It has the potential to deepen our understanding of development itself—allowing us to move beyond rigid binaries and toward more inclusive, effective, and context-aware policymaking.

Blog by Muhammad Arfan, PhD in Integrated Water Resources Management at the US-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Water. Working with Mott MacDonald Pakistan Pvt Ltd for Monitoring and Evaluation of the World Bank Funded Project in Pakistan