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in recent years among specialists in comparative politics regarding the utility of Mill’s methods for research in their field. A proponent is Theda Skocpol, who strongly asserted their value for comparative historical analysis and stated that was the approach taken in her book States and Social Revolutions. There is no reference in her book to Mill’s own sober cautions regarding the difficulty of applying these methods in research on most social phenomena. However, Skocpol did make passing reference to the “inevitable difficulties in applying the method according to its given logic” since “often it is impossible to find exactly the historical cases that one needs for the logic of a certain comparison.” Recognizing this and other difficulties, she concluded: “Still, comparative historical analysis does provide a valuable check, or anchor, for theoretical speculation.” And, continuing, she came close to recognizing that she had supplemented use of Mill’s methods with what we call process-tracing, which is employed in within-case analysis. As Skocpol noted, comparative historical analysis making use of Mill’s methods “encourages one to spell out the actual causal arguments suggested by grand theoretical perspectives.” In the book itself, however, and in a subsequent essay on comparative methodology, she did not regard historical case analysis as making up for the limitations of Mill’s methods.309 In an essay with Margaret Somers, Skocpol recognized that Mill himself “despaired of the possibility of effectively applying the analytic methods he discussed to socio-historical phenomena,” but she wrote that “complete retreat in the face of difficulties is surely unnecessary.” 310

Skocpol’s understanding and use of Mill’s methods was sharply challenged by a number of other scholars, including Elizabeth Nichols. Nichols, however, did not call attention to the importance of process-tracing as a method of compensating for the limitations of Mill’s methods or recognize the ancillary role it played in Skocpol’s study. This was left to Jack Goldstone, who explicitly notes the importance of process-tracing in Skocpol’s study and, more generally, in comparative history, writing that “History in this sense is the heart of comparative case-study methods… . The key to comparative case-studies in macro sociology is this unraveling of historical narratives.” He called the procedure “process-tracing.” In his commentary on Skocpol’s study, William Sewell observed that she relied more on process-tracing than on quasicontrolled comparison. Similarly, Charles Tilly has bluntly stated that John Stuart Mill’s own warnings rule out the application of his experimental methods to social processes and has called for more emphasis on the role of causal mechanisms in causal analysis.311 Stephen Van Evera, however, frequently refers to the usefulness of Mill’s methods, usually adding that they can be adapted for various purposes. It is not entirely clear, however, what this entails.312

The controversy over the utility of Mill’s methods is part of a much broader debate among specialists in comparative politics over approaches to theory and methodology. Adherents of rational choice theory, cultural analysis, and structural approaches have also participated in this debate. We will not summarize the voluminous literature this debate has engendered here, but merely reemphasize our contention that process-tracing is an essential supplement to all forms of case comparisons to reduce the dangers of false positives and false negatives.313

The Implications of Equifinality for Theory Building

We are particularly concerned about the inability of Mill’s methods to accommodate equifinality. The fact that different causal patterns can lead to similar outcomes has profound implications for efforts to develop empirical theory (or general laws). Robert Jervis states that equifinality offers “a real problem” for political scientists because “it constitutes a menace to one of [their] prime methodologies.”314

Equifinality challenges and undermines the common assumption