Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences - Alexander L. George [155]
The authors had a very good reason for not delimiting the study to a narrowly circumscribed subclass. Their research objective addressed two basic questions: first, whether the insights and hypotheses that Robert Putnam had advanced in an earlier study applied also to non-Western countries; and second, whether they were applicable to negotiations other than the economic ones that had been the focus of the earlier study. A related objective was “to explore the extent to which Putnam’s [two-level bargaining] metaphor or model could be developed, enhanced, and expanded.”
The selection of case studies covered an appropriately wide spectrum. Altogether, eleven cases were taken from the diplomacy of dictators, democracies, developed countries, and developing countries. The case selection was not intended to constitute a representative sample of what is surely an enormous number and variety of negotiations. The question of possible selection bias in choosing cases may arise in some readers’ view. But it should be noted that a conscientious effort was made to include cases that constitute tough tests for the Putnam model. For example, the cases included instances of highly conflictual negotiations, whereas Putnam’s theory had looked largely at negotiations aimed at producing cooperative results.
The research was designed along the lines of a structured, focused comparison—one that was clearly theory-driven, made use of a set of general questions to ask of each case, and relied heavily on process-tracing. At the same time, the authors recognized that they were not engaged in formal hypothesis testing, but were conducting a plausibility probe.
DIETRICH RUESCHEMEYER, EVELYNE HUBER STEPHENS, AND JOHN D. STEPHENS, CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT AND DEMOCRACY. CAMBRIDGE, MASS: POLITY PRESS, 1992.
This book reexamines the relationship between capitalism and democracy, a question that has engaged the interest of many scholars. The authors review past research and offer a new theoretical framework that they believe “can account for the apparent contradictions of earlier findings.”578 Their theoretical framework is tested in three sets of broad historical comparisons of countries in the advanced stages of capitalist development in Central and South America and in the Caribbean Islands.
They note that quantitative cross-national comparisons of many countries have consistently found a positive general correlation between development and democracy. On the other hand, comparative historical studies that examine complex sequences of development trace the rise of democracy to the presence of a favorable historical constellation of conditions in early phases of capitalism. Therefore, the conclusions of these small-n studies are more pessimistic about today’s developing countries than the large-N correlational studies, which are relatively optimistic about the chances for democracy in the developing countries of today.
The authors regard the task of reconciling these contradictory results as a difficult one, precisely because they derive from different methodologies. Their own study builds on both research approaches and seeks to reconcile their methodological and substantive differences. The authors do not challenge the main findings of the large-N cross-national work, but they emphasize that such a correlation does not constitute an explanation: “It does not identify the causal sequences accounting for this persistent relation, not to mention the reasons why many cases are at odds with it.”
As we do in the present work, the authors emphasize that the statistical-correlational mode of analysis is not sufficiently sensitive to the possibility that the phenomenon in question is subject to equifinality: that is, it cannot account “for how the same end can be reached by different historical routes. The repeated statistical finding has a peculiar ‘black box’ character that can be overcome only by theoretically well grounded empirical analysis.”579 The authors