Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences - Alexander L. George [191]
his Organizing for Foreign Policy Crisis (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1997). Haney develops ways of surveying cases that are capable of combining the advantages of structured, focused comparison with large-N analysis. He suggests that the findings of a number of studies that address the same problem can be combined and the results averaged—i.e., a form of what statisticians refer to as “meta-analysis.” This particular case survey method was proposed earlier by Robert Yin and Karen A. Heald, “Using the Case Survey Method to Analyze Policy Studies,” Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 3 (September 1975), pp. 371-381. The rather obvious limitations of the case survey approach are noted by Yin and Heald.
A cogent statement of key research steps in small-n research is provided by Ronald Mitchell and Thomas Bernauer in “Empirical Research in International Environmental Policy: Designing Qualitative Case Studies,” Journal of Environment and Development, Vol. 7, No. 1 (March 1998), pp. 4-31.
Dwaine Medford outlines a way of extending and generalizing structured, focused comparisons that focus on the actor’s cognitive processes in Charles F. Hermann, Charles W. Kegley, Jr., and James N. Rosenau, eds., New Directions in the Study of Foreign Policy (Boston, Mass.: Allen & Unwin, 1987).
See also our commentary on the important work by Thomas Homer-Dixon in the Appendix, “Studies That Illustrate Research Design.”
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Of course, as noted in Chapter 10, well-researched case studies that are largely descriptive and atheoretical are useful in providing a form of vicarious experience for students and others interested in a particular phenomenon, and sometimes they provide data that can be of some use in case studies devoted to theory development.
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James N. Rosenau, “Moral Fervor, Systematic Analysis, and Scientific Consciousness in Foreign Policy Research,” in Austin Ranney, ed., Political Science and Public Policy (Chicago, Ill.: Markham, 1968), pp. 197-238.
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Roy C. Macridis and Bernard E. Brown, eds., Comparative Politics: Notes and Readings (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1955); Herbert Kaufmann, “The Next Step in Case Studies,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 18 (Winter 1958), pp. 52-59; and Theodore J. Lowi, “American Business, Public Policy, Case-Studies and Political Theory,” World Politics, Vol. 16, No. 1 (July 1964), pp. 671-715.
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Robert A. Dahl, Political Oppositions in Western Democracies (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966). As Sidney Verba notes in his detailed commentary on this book, it “highlights a problem that arises in the multiauthored book. There are great advantages in having a large number of country specialists, but specialists are hard to discipline. In Political Oppositions, the major theoretical chapters that attempt to tie together the individual country chapters are found at the end of the book… . If we want to have as collaborators men of the stature of the authors of this book, we must let them go their own way.” Sidney Verba, “Some Dilemmas in Comparative Research,” World Politics, Vol. 20, No. 1 (October 1967), pp. 116-118).
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Michael Krepon and Dan Caldwell, eds., The Politics of Arms Control Treaty Ratification (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991). We are indebted to Michael Krepon for providing us with a detailed account of how he and Caldwell accomplished this difficult task.
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The procedure of organizing such studies on the basis of these three phases was introduced by Alexander L. George and Richard Smoke in their book Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974). It has proven to be a useful organizing device in subsequent studies and has also provided a framework for reviewing and evaluating existing studies. We are omitting here a fourth phase, presentation of the results of the study, that was mentioned in Alexander L. George and Timothy J. McKeown, “Case Studies and Theories of Organizational Decision Making,” in Robert F. Coulam and Richard A.