Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences - Alexander L. George [210]
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Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992); Vinod Aggarwal, Liberal Protectionism (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1985); and David Yoffie, Power and Protectionism: Strategies of the Newly Industrializing Countries (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). We may recall also Bruce Russett’s discussion many years ago of the utility of case studies for assessing the causal status of statistical correlations. Russett recommended that for this purpose investigators make greater use of an iterative research strategy, one that alternates statistical-correlational studies of large numbers of cases with intensive single case analysis. Bruce Russett, “International Behavior Research: Case Studies and Cumulation,” in Michael Haas and Henry S. Kariel, eds., Approaches to the Study of Political Science (Scranton, Penn.: Chandler Publishing Co., 1970), pp. 425-443. The strategy of combining large-N statistical study with a few intensive case studies was followed by Russett’s student, Paul Huth, in Extended Deterrence and the Prevention of War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988).
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Daniel Little, “Causal Explanation in the Social Sciences,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 34 Supplement (1995), pp. 31-56.
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Richard Miller, Fact and Method (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987); and David Dessler, “The Architecture of Causal Analysis,” unpublished manuscript, 1992.
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Andrew Bennett, Condemned to Repetition? The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military Interventionism, 1973-1996 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999).
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Diego Cordovez and Selig Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 245-246.
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Jack Snyder, “Richness, Rigor, and Relevance in the Study of Soviet Foreign Policy,”
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Justification for this view may be found in Bayesian decision theory. For a discussion, see Alexander L. George and Timothy J. McKeown, “Case Studies and Theories of Organizational Decision Making,” in Robert F. Coulam and Richard A. Smith, eds., Advances in Information Processing in Organizations, Vol. 2 (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1985), pp. 31-32.
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Similarly, if the investigator wishes to assess whether the condition in question qualifies as a “sufficient” one for the occurrence of the type of outcome in question, it would be necessary to look for other cases in which that condition was always coupled with that type of outcome. A single case in which it was not, of course, would negate its status as a sufficient condition. In any event, failure to negate the condition as being either a necessary or sufficient condition would remain a provisional finding subject to rejection if negative cases were encountered in the future.
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The requirements for disciplined, effective use of counterfactual analysis are discussed in Chapters 8 and 10.
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Of course, even if a plausible claim can be advanced that the independent variable is probably or possibly a necessary condition for the occurrence of a given type of outcome, it is not thereby also a sufficient condition for that outcome.
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Deductive theories are more useful if they are capable of making specific predictions of discrete outcomes rather than highly generalized predictions that can be equally met by a number of quite different outcomes. Structural-realist theory, for example, suffers from this limitation. Not only is it capable of making only probabilistic predictions (that, in addition, are not quantified), even its correct predictions are often of a very general character. For example, although it is true that during World War II structural realist theory would have successfully predicted conflict developing between the United States and the Soviet Union after their cooperation in defeating Nazi Germany, the theory could not predict whether postwar U.S.-Soviet conflict would result