Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences - Alexander L. George [182]
27
King, Keohane, and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry, p. 14.
28
Ibid., pp. 85-87.
29
Ibid., p. 48.
30
Ibid., pp. 129-132, 210-211.
31
Ibid., p. 221; and Giovanni Sartori, “Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 64, No. 4 (December 1970), pp. 1033-1053.
32
Five earlier publications by Gary King are listed in the bibliographical references, but the single reference to “King” in the index refers to one of his large-N statistical studies, described on page 189. Only one article by Sidney Verba is listed in the bibliographical references (“Some Dilemmas of Political Research,” World Politics, Vol. 20, No. 1 (October 1967), pp. 111-127), and the only references under “Verba” in the index refer to a large-N statistical study later published as Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Harry Brady, Voices and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995). It is referred to briefly in the text to indicate that parsing an explanatory variable can avoid the problem of bias due to endogeneity (pp. 193-195), and later to provide “an example of seeking additional observable implications of one’s hypotheses” by working with subunits of a national state (pp. 220-221).
Five earlier publications by Robert Keohane are listed in the bibliographical references at the end of the book, but there is no discussion of these works in the DSI text as examples of the methods recommended in the book. Keohane’s detailed introductory essay for a subsequent collaborative small-n study he coedited (Robert O. Keohane and Marc A. Levy, eds., Institutions for Environmental Aid: Pitfalls and Promise (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996)), published two years after Designing Social Inquiry, makes no reference to identifying “observable implications” of the theories examined in the book. This small-n study employs procedures closely resembling those of the method of structured, focused comparison and process-tracing. Thus, Keohane writes, the case studies in the book “are written according to a common analytical format to ensure consistency and a comparability across cases… . We have insisted on such a systematic approach for two reasons: (1) to ensure that each chapter [reporting a case study] systematically considers the sequence of action relevant to the effectiveness of financial transfers, from explanatory and evaluative standpoints as well as descriptively, and (2) to facilitate a process of drawing out generalizations across cases, about conditions for success and failure of financial transfers and mechanisms” (pp. 16-17; emphasis added).
In correspondence with Alexander L. George (April 8, 2003), Robert Keohane acknowledged that two students whose dissertations he supervised, Vinod Aggarwal and Lisa Martin, both employed process-tracing to establish the possibility of a causal chain linking independent and dependent variables. (Aggarwal’s use of process-tracing is described in Chapter 9; Lisa Martin’s in the Appendix, “Studies That Illustrate Research Design.”) Keohane graciously added that he recognized the importance of process-tracing used for this purpose.
33
The impact DSI has had on qualitative research in the social sciences since its publication in 1994 has not, so far as we know, been systematically assessed. Certainly the book has been widely read and consulted. In response to a question concerning DSI’s impact (letter to Alexander L. George, April 27, 2003), Robert Keohane notes that the book’s advice about observable implications has caught on in much of the field. He cites a number of specific papers by Mark Pollock and Erica Gould who have cited DSI’s emphasis on observable implications. Dan Nielson and Michael Tierney, “Delegation to International Organizations: Agency Theory and World Bank Environmental Reform,” International Organization, Vol. 57, No. 2 (April 2003),