Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences - Alexander L. George [53]
One way to avoid the risk of relying on a single historical analysis would be to follow the practice of Richard Smoke, who at the outset of his research, asked several historians to help him identify the best available accounts of each of the cases he planned to study. Later, Smoke obtained reviews of the first drafts of his cases from eight historians and made appropriate changes.196
Second, social scientists making use of even the best available historical studies of a case should not assume that they will provide answers to the questions they are asking. As emphasized in Chapter 3 on “The Method of Structured, Focused Comparison,” the political scientist’s research objectives determine the general questions to be asked of each case. The historian’s research objectives and the questions addressed in his or her study may not adequately reflect those of subsequent researchers. 197 We may recall that historians have often stated that if history is approached from a utilitarian perspective, then it has to be rewritten for each generation. History does not speak for itself to all successive generations. When new problems and interests are brought to a study of history by later generations, the meaning and significance of earlier historical events to the present may have to be studied anew and reevaluated. Hence, the study of relevant historical experience very much depends on the specific questions one asks of historical cases.
One of the key tasks during the “soaking and poking” process is to identify the gaps in existing historical accounts. These gaps may include archival or interview evidence that has not been examined or that had previously been unavailable. They may also include the measurement of variables the researcher identified in phase one that historians have not measured or have not measured as systematically as the explanatory goals of subsequent researchers require. It is also possible that researchers can make use of technologies, such as computer-assisted content analysis, that were not available to scholars writing earlier historical accounts.
Third, having identified possible gaps in existing accounts, the re-searcher must reckon with the possibility that good answers to his or her questions about each case can be obtained only by going to original sources—archival materials, memoirs, oral histories, newspapers, and new interviews. In fact, political scientists studying international politics are increasingly undertaking this task. In doing so, however, they face the challenging task of weighing the evidentiary value of such primary sources.
Fourth, the researcher should not assume that going to primary sources and declassified government documents alone will be sufficient to find the answers to his or her research questions. The task of assessing the significance and evidentiary worth of such sources often requires a careful examination of contemporary public sources, such as daily media accounts of the developments of a case unfolding over time. Contemporary public accounts are certainly not a substitute for analysis of archival sources, but they often are an important part of contextual developments to which policymakers are sensitive, to which they are responding, or which they are attempting to influence. Classified accounts of the process of policymaking cannot be properly evaluated by scholars unless the public context in which policymakers operate is taken into account.198 We have at times found students who have