Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences - Alexander L. George [170]
In his brief summation of this rich study, Drezner states that its main contribution is a demonstration that “the range and utility of economic coercion is more varied than previously thought… . Economic coercion between adversaries is likely to be … less successful at forcing concessions “than economic coercion between allies,” for reasons consistent with the expectations of his model and supported by the various methodologies he has employed.679
PAUL K. HUTH, EXTENDED DETERRENCE AND THE PREVENTION OF WAR. NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1988.
The objective of this study is to identify political and military conditions that affect the success or failure of a deterrence commitment by a strong power in support of an ally. Huth’s research strategy combines large-N statistical analysis with a more detailed examination of a smaller number of cases. He regards the integration of these two methods as “the most productive method for deriving generalizations about political behavior. The two approaches are essential to the development and verification of theories in social science research.”680
His procedure is to formulate and then empirically test a set of hypotheses about factors that influence deterrence outcomes. The theoretical focus of the study is on how the balance of military capabilities, alternative strategies of bargaining, past behavior, and issues at stake affect the credibility and/or stability of the defender’s deterrent posture and actions.681
Huth identified fifty-eight cases of attempted extended deterrence between 1885 and 1984. He believes this comprises the entire universe of cases during the period, thereby avoiding questions of case selection bias for the large-N component of the study. Twenty-four of these cases were coded as deterrence failures; thirty-four as successes. 682
The research objective and the statistical analysis of this study require cases that provide variance in the outcome of deterrence efforts—cases of both deterrence success and deterrence failure. Huth broadly defines successful deterrence as instances “in which the potential attacker [either] refrains from using military force or engages in small-scale combat with the protégé (fewer than 200 combined fatalities among the regular armed forces of both sides) and fails to force the defender to capitulate to its demands under the threat of force.” Huth recognized that it can be difficult to identify cases of successful deterrence, and he closely surveyed secondary sources and consulted with country experts and diplomatic historians in coding the cases. The counterpart to the definition of successful deterrence was used to code cases of deterrence failure.683
Ten cases were examined in more detail in order to evaluate generalizations suggested by the statistical analysis of the fifty-six overall cases. Several criteria were employed for choosing cases for more detailed analysis: cases must be recognized by experts as the most important; cases must provide diversity in geographic regions and time periods; and perhaps more interestingly, cases must “deviate from the expected results to illustrate some possible limitations and necessary refinements in the generalizations” that were suggested by the statistical analysis.684
The qualitative analysis of the ten cases distinguishes between those in which military calculations were particularly important