Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences - Alexander L. George [150]
To achieve his objective, Fenno employed a theoretical framework that enabled him to pinpoint the similarities and differences between committees. Five variables were employed for this purpose: member goals, environmental constraints, strategic premises, decision-making processes, and decisions.556 Six committees of the House of Representatives, as they functioned from 1955 to 1966, were singled out for study; Fenno explicitly disclaimed that these committees were a representative sample of all committees. In other words, the study makes heuristic use of case studies, and the author limits his claim to its being what Harry Eckstein calls a plausibility probe: “sufficient to support an initial foray into comparative analysis.”557
The findings of the study are clearly stated and carefully circumscribed. Only a brief indication of the results can be given here: “A committee’s decisions are explainable in terms of its members’ goals, the constraints of its environment, its decision strategies, and—to a lesser, refining degree, perhaps—by its decision-making processes… . We have not, of course, proven anything, for we have not tried very determinedly to muster a contrary body of evidence.”558 The study makes considerable use of what we refer to as process-tracing but, as this quotation suggests, process-tracing is not fully used to assess the hypotheses developed.
MORRIS P. FIORINA, CONGRESS: KEYSTONE OF THE WASHINGTON ESTABLISHMENT. NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1977.
This study is an interesting example of how specialists in American politics can use comparative case studies as a component of a more complex research strategy. The author ’s objective was to ascertain whether a Washington “establishment” exists, and, if it exists, to discern its nature and workings. In Eckstein’s terms, the study is best characterized as a plausibility probe.
Fiorina develops the thesis that the Washington establishment is a hydra-headed phenomenon, whose three parts are congressional representatives, government bureaucracies, and organized subgroups of the citizenry, each seeking to achieve its own goals. Further, he regards Congress as “the key” to the establishment.559 The author’s research strategy evolves from an analysis of the reasons for the marked decline in “marginal” (or “swing”) congressional districts, defined by political scientists as those districts not firmly in the camp of one party or the other. Fiorina reviews various explanations for the decline of marginal districts that provide some clues for this trend, but then considers it useful to undertake a carefully constructed case comparison of two congressional districts, one a “vanishing” marginal and the other what might be regarded as a robust marginal in which highly competitive elections had occurred since the end of World War II.
The two districts were chosen to resemble each other closely in every other important respect. In effect, therefore, Fiorina’s study approximates Mill’s method of difference. The two districts were from the same region and from the same state and had reasonably similar demographic profiles. Each district contained a medium-sized city and an important agricultural sector. Their occupational, educational, and income profiles were quite similar. Neither district contained a large minority population. The religious breakdowns were also similar. “In short,” Fiorina concludes, “a gross look at the characteristics of the two districts does not reveal