Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences - Alexander L. George [4]
The aim was to identify more specific, differentiated causal patterns of successful and ineffective ways of employing each strategy. These patterns would initially consist of generalizations of quite limited scope. Such middle-range theories on deterrence, coercive diplomacy, and crisis management would consist of a variety of conditional, contingent generalizations (for a discussion of our use of middle-range theory, see Chapters 11 and 12).
For this purpose, George adapted methods of historical explanation to convert descriptive explanations of case outcomes into analytic explanations comprised of variables.2 This procedure made use of an inductive approach for theory-building, but it was analytic induction, not raw empiricism. The black boxes of decision-making and strategic interaction were opened up and efforts were made to study actual processes of decision-making and of strategic interaction insofar as available data permitted.
In this research, George and his colleagues were not interested in—and indeed their methods did not permit—using the findings of a few cases that were not necessarily representative to project a probability distribution of different patterns discovered for the entire universe of instances of, for example, deterrence. Rather, contingent generalizations were intended to help policy specialists first to diagnose and then to prescribe for new situations, much as medical doctors do in clinical settings. This theme runs through all of the publications of George’s research program over the years and finds its latest, most detailed statement in Chapter 12 of his 1993 book on Bridging the Gap between scholarly research and policymaking.
Another early step in George’s development of what he later termed the method of “structured, focused comparison” was his codification of Nathan Leites’ concept of “operational code beliefs.” George converted Leites’ analysis into a set of general questions that could be asked in studying the operational code beliefs of other elites and individual leaders. He called attention to the potential use of the set of philosophical and instrumental beliefs embraced by an operational code in comparative studies of leaders.3 A large number of these types of studies were done after the publication of George’s codification of operational code beliefs.
George’s comparative work on deterrence led to the further development of the structured, focused method.4 He published an early version of this method in 1979, greatly elaborating on the brief description of it in his 1974 book on deterrence.5 Also in 1979, George published a companion piece that addressed more detailed aspects of the method.6 This second article provided the first detailed statement about process-tracing in case studies and the congruence method, both of which receive detailed treatment in the present book.
George also introduced the structured, focused method into a course he team-taught with several historians. This collaboration resulted in a book co-authored with Gordon Craig, Force and Statecraft, which has been updated several times since first published by Oxford University Press in 1983. George also taught a Ph.D. level seminar on structured, focused comparison through the 1980s that became a required course at Stanford for graduate students in comparative politics. Many international relations students took it as well, and it led to the completion of many theses and to the publication of numerous books using the structured, focused method.
Andrew Bennett’s interest and training in case study methods began when he was one of George’s undergraduate students at Stanford University in the early 1980s. Bennett then used qualitative methods in books on Soviet and Russian military interventions and burden-sharing in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.7 Bennett has taught a graduate seminar in case study methods at Georgetown since 1997.
This book is very much a product of close co-authorship, and each of us has contributed to every