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When case studies employing process-tracing cannot test theories that are underspecified, they can play an important role in development of theories.421 Case studies can do so for the democratic peace theory, for example, by identifying one or more causal processes that explain how the fact that two states are both democratic enables them to avoid war-threatening disputes or to resolve disputes without engaging in war or threats of it.

The first part of this chapter briefly discusses several kinds of process-tracing and several kinds of causal processes. Various techniques of process-tracing can be employed for different purposes in different phases and approaches to theory development and testing. The second part of the chapter discusses a variety of uses of process-tracing, emphasizing its use in theory building and development. We also indicate how process-tracing can be an effective tool for testing theories that are well enough specified to make predictions about processes and causal mechanisms. 422 The chapter concludes by considering the similarities and differences between process-tracing and historical explanation.

Varieties of Process-Tracing

DETAILED NARRATIVE

The simplest variety of process-tracing takes the form of a detailed narrative or story presented in the form of a chronicle that purports to throw light on how an event came about. Such a narrative is highly specific and makes no explicit use of theory or theory-related variables. It may be supportable to some extent by explanatory hypotheses, but these remain tacit. Historical chronicles are a familiar example of what is at best an implicit, atheoretical type of process-tracing.423

It should be noted, however, that narrative accounts are not without value. Such atheoretical narratives may be necessary or useful steps toward the development of more theoretically oriented types of process-tracing. A well-constructed detailed narrative may suggest enough about the possible causal processes in a case so that a researcher can determine what type of process-tracing would be relevant for a more theoretically oriented explanation.

Some philosophers of history who have tried to clarify the “logic” of historical explanation reject the view that historical explanation requires no more than a description of a sequence of events. They maintain that each step or link in a causal process should be supported by an appropriate law—i.e., a statement of regularity (posited as either universalistic or probabilistic). At the same time, they acknowledge that such “laws” in microcausal explanations are usually so numerous and so platitudinous that historians do not bother to list them in the interest of maintaining the flow of the narrative, unless the explanation offered is controversial.424

USE OF HYPOTHESES AND GENERALIZATIONS

In a more analytical form of process-tracing, at least parts of the narrative are accompanied with explicit causal hypotheses highly specific to the case without, however, employing theoretical variables for this purpose or attempting to extrapolate the case’s explanation into a generalization.

A still stronger form of explanation employs some generalizations—laws either of a deterministic or probabilistic character—in support of the explanation for the outcome; or it suggests that the specific historical explanation falls under a generalization or exemplifies a general pattern.

ANALYTIC EXPLANATION

A substantially different variety of process-tracing converts a historical narrative into an analytical causal explanation couched in explicit theoretical forms. The extent to which a historical narrative is transformed into a theoretical explanation can vary. The explanation may be deliberately selective, focusing on what are thought to be particularly important parts of an adequate or parsimonious explanation; or the partial character of the explanation may reflect the investigator’s inability to specify or theoretically ground all steps in a hypothesized process, or to find