Process Tracing: From Metaphor to Analytic Tool (Strategies for Social Inquiry) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1107044529 ISBN 13: 9781107044524

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2014

Synopsis

Advances in qualitative methods and recent developments in the philosophy of science have led to an emphasis on explanation via reference to causal mechanisms. This book argues that the method known as process tracing is particularly well suited to developing and assessing theories about such mechanisms. The editors begin by establishing a philosophical basis for process tracing - one that captures mainstream uses while simultaneously being open to applications by interpretive scholars. Equally important, they go on to establish best practices for individual process-tracing accounts - how micro to go, when to start (and stop), and how to deal with the problem of equifinality. The contributors then explore the application of process tracing across a range of subfields and theories in political science. This is an applied methods book which seeks to shrink the gap between the broad assertion that 'process tracing is good' and the precise claim 'this is an instance of good process tracing'.

About this title

Book Description

There are a growing number of scholars who study politics by conducting rich empirical case studies. This book highlights process tracing - a method that plays a central role in organizing and measuring these empirics. Drawing upon numerous examples, it provides grounded, practical advice on conducting process tracing well.

About the Author

Andrew Bennett is Professor of Government at Georgetown University. He is also President of the Consortium on Qualitative Research Methods, which sponsors the annual Institute on Qualitative and Multi-Method Research at Syracuse University. He is the co-author, with Alexander L. George, of Case Studies and Theory Development (2005), which won the Giovanni Sartori Prize in 2005 for the best book on qualitative methods.

Jeffrey T. Checkel is Professor of International Studies and Simons Chair in International Law and Human Security at Simon Fraser University. He is also a Global Research Fellow at the Peace Research Institute Oslo. He has published extensively in leading European and North American journals, and is the author of Ideas and International Political Change: Soviet/Russian Behavior and the End of the Cold War (1997), editor of International Institutions and Socialization in Europe (Cambridge, 2007), co-editor (with Peter J. Katzenstein) of European Identity (Cambridge, 2009), and editor of Transnational Dynamics of Civil War (Cambridge, 2013).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1107044529
• ISBN 13: 9781107044524
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 344
• Editor: Bennett Andrew, Checkel Jeffrey T.