Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences - Alexander L. George [5]
Organization of the Book
It may be helpful to steer readers toward the chapters that are likely to meet their interests.
Chapter 1 surveys the developments over a period of years that have improved the direction and quality of case study research and its contributions to theory development. Readers will note that our objective in this book, as in our previous works, is to raise the standards for case studies and explicate procedures for improving their value.
Chapter 2 provides a concrete demonstration of how case studies combined with quantitative methods have contributed to the development of research on democratic peace theory. It illustrates of one of the major themes of the book, namely the purposes best served by different research methods, and how knowledge cumulates within a research agenda.
These two chapters should satisfy general readers who want to understand the role and contribution of case studies for the development of theories but have no plans for doing such research themselves.
For readers who are undertaking Ph.D. dissertations and for instructors who offer course work and guidance on case study methods, we present a manual in Part II and Part III of the book. A detailed Note to Parts Two and Three provides additional information on the development of the manual for doing case study research. We have also included an Appendix, “Studies That Illustrate Research Design,” which briefly reviews the research designs of numerous books. We expect these ingenious and varied research designs to be helpful to Ph.D. students contemplating such research and to professors in designing instruction on case methods.
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the support of many programs and individuals. We wish to thank the MacArthur Foundation for funding a conference that helped launch the book project; the Carnegie Corporation of New York for additional research funding; and the Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation and Columbia University’s History and Political Science Departments for sponsoring workshops on our book.
We want to give special thanks to David Dessler, Jack Levy, David Collier, Colin Elman, Miriam Fendius Elman, James Mahoney, Gary Goertz, and Bear Braumoeller for insightful suggestions on major portions of the manuscript. We want to thank many other colleagues as well for their useful suggestions on various chapters, including Hayward Alker, Robert Art, Pierre Atlas, Aaron Belkin, Aaron Boosehecker, Henry Brady, Lynn Eden, Leslie Eliason, Mary Jane Fox, David Friedman, John Lewis Gaddis, John Gerring, Emily Goldman, Jack Goldstone, Stuart Gottlieb, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Ronald Jepperson, Chaim Kaufmann, Jane Kellett-Cramer, Charles Kiami, Deborah Larson, Jeff Legro, Roy Licklider, Dan Lindley, Daniel Little, Andy Loomis, Timothy McKeown, Ron Mitchell, Andrew Moravcsik, Gerry Munck, Dan Nexon, Charles Ragin, Volker Rittberger, Scott Sagan, Steve Saideman, Daniel Schwartz, Jack Snyder, Detlef Sprinz, Brian Taylor, Charles Tilly, Stephen Van Evera, David Waldner, Steve Walt, and Yael Wolinsky.
Michael Boyle provided excellent suggestions for improving the entire manuscript to make it more accessible to Ph.D. students contemplating case study research. Eliana Vasquez provided much essential support in a cheerful and efficient manner.
We wish to thank Sean Lynn-Jones and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and MIT Press for hosting a conference on our book and for outstanding help at every stage of the publishing process. Miriam Avins did an excellent job as copyeditor in streamlining and clarifying a complex manuscript. Alex George expresses deep appreciation to Belinda Yeomans for her years