Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences - Alexander L. George [35]
Fourth, researchers can look at the origins of democratic norms and institutions and assess whether differing origins lead to different foreign policy behaviors. For example, do the foreign policies of democracies established through domestic revolutions against monarchs (France) differ from those created through anti-colonial uprisings (the United States), or those established through defeat in war and occupation by other democracies (Germany and Japan)? Does one democracy treat another differently depending on the origins of their respective norms and institutions?
Fifth, researchers might move beyond statistical, case study, and formal research to use surveys and other techniques to study the democratic peace. In particular, researchers might undertake surveys of the attitudes that elites and mass publics in democracies hold toward the use of force vis-à-vis other democracies and other types of regimes. Although recent research like that by Schultz and Lipson has focused on institutional and informational dynamics, one possible data bias regarding cases prior to the 1940s is that no systematic survey data exists on public and elite opinion. Moreover, although standard surveys indicate that citizens of contemporary democracies generally feel more warmly toward other democracies than toward other kinds of states, little dedicated survey work has been done on attitudes toward the possible use of force in ongoing disputes between democracies. There is thus a danger that the role of democratic values in promoting peace among democracies has been understated in works that emphasize institutions and information, although surveys might also help validate the role of institutions and information as well.
Sixth, researchers can look more assiduously for closely matched pairs of democratic and mixed dyads that might be amenable to most similar research designs like Ray’s study of the Spanish-American War and the Fashoda Crisis. One possibility here is to undertake longitudinal studies of particular dyads, as John Owen has done in the case of U.S.-British relations. This allows a before-after comparison of dyadic relations after domestic developments that make one partner in the dyad more democratic.150 Statistical methods can also carry out or augment such longitudinal comparisons.
Seventh, researchers might focus on the cases that pose anomalies to Schultz’s theory that democracies find it hard to make convincing bluffs but easy to issue credible threats. This can help set the theory’s scope conditions and perhaps uncover additional causal mechanisms that explain Schultz’s anomalies.
Finally, researchers should look for relationships between democracies that have varying levels of power imbalances. This can test whether democratic norms function to the point of altruism or whether democracies are willing to exploit materially weaker democracies through the use or threat of force short of war.
In sum, the interdemocratic peace literature amply demonstrates the complementary nature of alternative methods and the value of combining them or using them sequentially for the research tasks to which they are best suited. We turn now to a detailed examination of the methods that have allowed case study researchers to contribute to the cumulation of knowledge in this and many other research programs.
A Pedagogical Note to Parts II and III
Readers of this book who are or will be teaching Ph.D.-level courses on qualitative methods may be interested in how the materials presented in Part II were developed. The origins