Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences - Alexander L. George [217]
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See, respectively, Alexander L. George and William E. Simons, eds., The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy, 2nd ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994); Jack Snyder and Thomas Christensen, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity,” International Organization, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Spring 1990), pp. 137-168; and Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). The burden-sharing example is discussed below.
470
Diesing, Patterns of Discovery in the Social Sciences.
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Arthur Stinchcombe, Constructing Social Theories (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1968), pp. 43-45.
472
In practice, unless types are so finely grained that each case is its own type, some qualitative, ordinal, or interval variation will remain within types. Some approaches, including fuzzy-set theories, also explicitly allow for variance within type, and use degrees of membership rather than exclusive nominal categories. Types in which cases are nearly or exactly the same on the attributes measured are termed “monothetic,” while those with varying degrees of membership are called “polythetic.” Bailey, Typologies and Taxonomies, pp. 7-8.
473
Andrew Bennett, Condemned to Repetition? The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military Interventionism, 1973-1996 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999). For an example of such a complex typology on the comparative politics of labor movements, see Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991).
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Diesing, Patterns of Discovery in the Social Sciences, p. 189. See also Christopher Achen and Duncan Snidal, “Rational Deterrence Theory and Comparative Case Studies” World Politics, Vol. 41, No. 2 (January 1989), p. 157; and Stinchcombe, Constructing Social Theories, pp. 44-45.
475
We use here the standard definition of deviant cases as those whose outcomes depart substantially from the predictions of all leading theories. This is different from what might be called extreme cases, where one variable is at such an extreme value that it far outweighs other variables in determining the outcome, which may also be at an extreme value. An extreme case may allow a researcher to attribute the outcome to the extreme variable and further study that variable’s effects. In still other cases where all the variables reinforce one another’s effects and overdetermine the outcome, the outcome may be at an extreme but not unexpected level.
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One standard for judging whether to include inductively derived variables in a theory is that such variables should not only explain the events or anomalies that spawned them, but offer insights into new cases, or into previously unexamined evidence from the cases from which they were derived. See Imre Lakatos, “Falsification and the Growth of Scientific Research Programs,” in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (London: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 91-180. For clarification and critiques of this aspect of Lakatos’ thought, see Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman, eds., Progress in International Relations Theory: Appraising the Field (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003).
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Most efforts to do systematic empirical research on the efficacy of deterrence have recognized the difficulty of making a valid determination of instances of successful deterrence. George and Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy, pp. 516-517.
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David Dessler, “Beyond Correlations: Toward a Causal Theory of War,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 3 (September 1991), p. 343, citing Richard Miller, Fact and Method: Explanation, Confirmation, and Reality in the Natural and the Social Sciences (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987).
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George