Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences - Alexander L. George [225]
546
Stern and Druckman, eds., International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War.
547
See, for example, Daniel C. Esty et al., Working Papers: State Failure Task Force Report (McLean, Va.: Science Applications International Corporation, 1995); Daniel C. Esty et al., The State Failure Task Force Report: Phase II Findings (McLean, Va.: Science Applications International Corporation, 1998); Daniel C. Esty, Jack Goldstone, and Ted Robert Gurr, eds., Preventive Measures: Building Risk Assessment and Crisis Early Warning Systems (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998); and Daniel C. Esty et al., “The State Failure Report: Phase II Findings,” Environmental Change and Security Project Report, Vol. 5, (Summer 1999). A detailed analytical summary and evaluation of the Task Force’s work was published by Gary King and Langche Zeng, “Improving Forecasts of State Failure,” World Politics, Vol. 53, No. 4 (July 2001), pp. 623-658.
548
Problems that affect the quality of phases two and three are discussed in Chapters 5 and 6.
549
Specifically, Jeffrey M. Paige, Agrarian Revolution: Social Movements and Export Agriculture in the Underdeveloped World (New York: Free Press, 1975); D. Michael Shafer, Deadly Paradigms: The Failure of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988); and the study by Khong referred to in Chapter 9.
550
An exception is the study by Evans, Putnam, and Jacobson, whose research objective required selecting widely different cases. Peter B. Evans, Harold K. Jacobson, and Robert D. Putnam, eds., Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
551
The importance of developing sub-classes of a more general phenomenon in order to produce middle-range theories and conditional generalizations is noted in several of Charles Ragin’s publications. See his discussion of “casing” in Charles Ragin and Howard Becker, What Is A Case? (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), and Fuzzy-Set Social Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 36, 61. Robert Keohane also emphasizes that it is useful to focus research on smaller subclasses of a phenomenon: “the larger the domain of a theory, the less accuracy of detail… . Even if a large-scale theory can be developed and appropriately tested, its predictions will be rather gross. To achieve a more finely-tuned [theory] … one needs to specify the policy contingency framework more precisely.” Robert O. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 188. For additional discussion of the utility of middle-range theories, see Chapter 12.
552
These include Fenno, Levite, et al., Walt, Goldstone, Vertzberger, and Owen.
553
Additional case studies in American politics are referred to in Hugh Heclo, “Review Article: Policy Analysis,” British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 2, No. 1 (January 1972), pp. 83-108.
554
John S. Odell, “Case Study Methods in International Political Economy,” International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 2 (2001), pp. 161-176; quoted material from p. 161.
555
Fenno, Congressmen in Committees, p. xiv.
556
Ibid., p. xv.
557
Ibid., p. xvi.
558
Ibid., p. 276.
559
Fiorina, Congress, p. 3.
560
Ibid., pp. 29-30.
561
Ibid., p. 35.
562
Ibid., p. 37.
563
Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, Figure A-3, p. 230.
564
Ibid., p. 230.
565
Clayton Roberts, The Logic of Historical Explanation (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1996), pp. 31-32.
566
Max Weber’s study is cited as an example of the “endogenity problem” and attention is called to David Laitin’s critical commentary on Weber’s study in Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 186-187. John Odell, too, calls attention to critiques