Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences - Alexander L. George [157]
The author explains that he does not attempt to compose a full case history of each crisis, but emphasizes common elements across cases.591 As with the method of structured, focused comparison, Goldstone is interested in selective aspects of the cases rather than in a complete description of each case. He recognizes that his characterization of the cases will be regarded as incomplete by historians who are specialists on each case.
Goldstone develops “a simple theory” which posits that revolution “is likely to occur only when a society simultaneously experiences three kinds of difficulties.” These are a state financial crisis; severe elite divisions; and a high potential for mobilizing popular groups. He adds that the conjunction of these three conditions “generally produces a fourth difficulty: an increase in the salience of heterodox cultural and religious ideas; heterodox groups then provide both leadership and an organizational focus for opposition to the state.”592
We do not discuss how these findings are developed, except to note that Goldstone alerts the reader to two major disadvantages of his approach—the complexity and unfamiliarity of the mathematical models implemented, and the danger that readers will mistakenly assume that the study espouses demographic determinism—as well as its major advantage, which is that since it deals with measurable quantities (unlike so many other theories), it can be tested and hence is falsifiable.593
JEFFREY M. PAIGE, AGRARIAN REVOLUTION: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND EXPORT AGRICULTURE IN THE UNDERDEVELOPED WORLD. NEW YORK: FREE PRESS, 1975.
This study exemplifies a complex research design and strategy that has been employed by other investigators. Paige, a sociologist, starts with a deductive theory, undertakes a large-N statistical analysis, and adds a small number of intensive case studies that employ process-tracing.594
Paige’s research objective is to determine the effect of the agricultural export economy on social movements of cultivators in plantations and farms in the developing world. His research strategy begins with the formulation of a deductive theory of rural class conflict designed to show how and why different modes of production in export agriculture generate different rural social movements. He then attempts to test this deductive theory with a large-N study of the world population of export agricultural sectors and their accompanying rural social movements. Finally, he assesses the deductive theory a second time, and elaborates and refines it with several detailed studies of cases in Peru, Angola, and Vietnam. The study raises fundamental questions about U.S. involvement in the developing world, where it generally has sided with landlords and plantation owners against the peasants, sharecroppers, and agricultural laborers who took up arms against them.
Paige is critical of a number of existing theories drawn from political sociology and formulates a complex theory of his own. The large-N study and the case studies use fundamentally the same kind of data in a similar format. The three case studies are well chosen to enable Paige to demonstrate the workings of his theory via the congruence method and some process-tracing that looks for a direct causal relationship between agrarian structures and social movements.
The three case studies are not used to create an analytic inductive theory through controlled comparison. Nor are they used as crucial or tough tests to provide a rigorous assessment of his deductive theory. Rather, Paige uses the three cases as a tool of the “parallel demonstration of theory,” described earlier by Somers and Skocpol.595 That is, the three cases are used