Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences - Alexander L. George [216]
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Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, trans. Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1949); Paul Lazarsfeld, “Some Remarks on the Typological Procedures in Social Research,” Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung, Vol. 6 (1937), pp. 119-139. This chapter also draws upon discussions of typological theory in Alexander L. George, “Case Studies and Theory Development: The Method of Structured, Focused Comparison,” in Paul Gordon Lauren, ed., Diplomacy: New Approaches in History, Theory, and Policy (New York: Free Press, 1979), pp. 58-60; and 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. 28-29. For an excellent review of typological theorizing and its application to the study of international relations, see Colin Elman, “Explanatory Typologies in the Qualitative Study of International Politics,” in International Organization (Spring 2005).
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Kenneth Bailey identifies most of these advantages in Typologies and Taxonomies: An Introduction to Classification Techniques (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1994), pp. 11-14. Bailey also notes (and in most instances debunks) common critiques of typological theorizing (pp. 14-16); the most important critique, which we address, is that such theorizing can become unmanageably complex.
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For similar notions, see Paul Diesing, Patterns of Discovery in the Social Sciences (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1971); Charles C. Ragin, The Comparative Method: Moving Beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); and Daniel Little, “Causal Explanation in the Social Sciences,” Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 34 Supplement (1995), pp. 31-56. Note that the categories of the variables for which the cases are to be measured could be nominal (such as democracy or nondemocracy), ordinal (such as high, medium, or low ranking of states in their protection of human rights), or interval (such as ranking percentiles of states by GNP per capita). One trade-off here is that simplifying continuous variables into nominal or other categories reduces the complexity of the theory, but also decreases the precision when placing cases in summary tables. The actual measurement of the variables in the case studies and narrative write-up of each case can convey a particular case’s measurements on the continuous variables with greater precision.
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Conversely, the researcher may be interested in how a particular manipulable variable, such as a specified change in interest rates, can lead to different outcomes depending on the values of other variables.
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Alexander L. George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974).
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Indeed, as discussed below, deductive theorizing about the conjunctive effects of variables can provide some basis for predicting the dynamics of a type of case even if no historical case has yet occurred that fits this type.
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In this regard, there is much confusion over Weber’s notion of an “ideal type.” Weber described an ideal type as one that accentuates the elements that constitute the type. He notes that “in its conceptual purity … [it] cannot be found empirically anywhere in reality.” Weber, Methodology of the Social Sciences, p. 90. Bailey persuasively reads this to mean that cases close to an ideal type can