Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences - Alexander L. George [171]
D. MICHAEL SHAFER, DEADLY PARADIGMS: THE FAILURE OF U.S. COUNTERINSURGENCY POLICY. PRINCETON, N.J.:PRINCETON UNIVERSITYPRESS, 1988.
The puzzle that motivated this study was Shafer’s observation that “despite changes in the international distribution of power, presidential administrations, bureaucratic coalitions and capabilities, the locale of the conflict and nature of the insurgencies, and the governments they threaten,” there existed a continuity in U.S. policymakers’ assessments of the sources of insurgency and prescriptions for assisting governments threatened by it during the period from 1945 to 1965. Explaining this continuity is the major research objective of this study.685 Accordingly, the subclass of all counterinsurgency efforts singled out for the study is appropriately limited to U.S. efforts during the period; this, of course, limits the scope of the findings, though it generates important hypotheses for consideration in other studies.
A complex research strategy is developed that makes explicit use of the method of structured, focused comparison and relies on process-tracing in the case studies to supplement use of the congruence method.
Shafer assesses the contribution of four theories—realism, presidential politics, bureaucratic politics, and “American exceptionalism”—to the explanation of the puzzle. The argument he develops is that while these approaches indeed contribute to understanding the problem, they are insufficient for explaining the puzzle. This makes necessary a fifth approach that focuses on cognitive variables—U.S. policymakers’ strategic codes, assumptions about American interests in the world, perceptions of political threats, and feasible responses.
To test and support his argument for the fifth approach, Shafer selects several cases that provide tough tests. The cases chosen “had to be ‘critical cases,’ those in which my explanation was either least or most likely to hold. By this logic, if the explanation applied where [it was] least likely, then it had promise; conversely, if it could be disproved where most likely to fit, then it offered little [promise].”686
Two cases of U.S.-supported counterinsurgency efforts, in Greece and the Philippines, constitute the most-likely “type of tough test in that since they constitute counterinsurgency successes they were most likely to give support to the reliance and effectiveness of American counterinsurgency doctrine.”687 Thus, to be able to claim, as Shafer does, that U.S. counterinsurgency policy was “irrelevant or counterproductive [in these cases] … constitutes the strongest possible test of my explanation” and supports it.688
The Vietnam case does not serve as a tough test and has a different purpose. Shafer’s argument is that because the failure of U.S. counterinsurgency in Vietnam is so often attributed to the cognitive model he advances, “it is essential to demonstrate that other models do not offer better explanations and that mine applies.”689
Shafer ’s book is marked by an unusual degree of methodological self-consciousness. He remarks on why reliance on Mill’s methods is unsatisfactory, which makes it necessary to undertake process-tracing in each case.
Also interesting is the similarity of his research design in some respects to Graham Allison’s three accounts of the Cuban Missile Crisis in Essence of Decision. Shafer presents “three very different, equally plausible accounts … by asking different questions of different kinds of evidence” that allow analysts to reach very different conclusions.690 Also noteworthy is Shafer’s methodology, which combines the congruence method with process-tracing.
DAN CALDWELL, AMERICAN-SOVIET RELATIONS: FROM 1947 TO THE NIXON-KISSINGER GRAND DESIGN. WESTPORT, CONN.: GREENWOOD PRESS, 1981.
A major objective of this study was to analyze U.S.-Soviet interactions from 1947 through 1976. Caldwell divided this era into three periods: