Teaching Process Tracing: Exercises and Examples

Process-tracing has grown in popularity with qualitative researchers. However, unlike statistical models and estimators – or even other topics in qualitative methods – process-tracing is largely bereft of guidelines, especially when it comes to teaching. We address this shortcoming by providing a step-by-step checklist for developing a research design to use process-tracing as a valid and substantial tool for hypothesis-testing. This practical guide should be of interest for both research application and instructional purposes. An online appendix containing multiple examples can facilitate in teaching the method.

2015

Recent years have seen an increasing focus in political science and international relations (IR) research on longer-term causal processes and the internal dynamics of single cases, through a method commonly referred to as process tracing. Discussions regarding standards for ensuring reliable process tracing have been dominated by an emphasis on deductive styles of inquiry, Bayesian procedures for formulating and testing well-defined hypotheses, and attempts to characterize process tracing as a complement to large-N studies. Many of these efforts are praiseworthy, not least for pushing researchers to justify more explicitly their methodological choices. However, they have also been associated with certain costs. In particular, they tend to exclude context sensitive modes of inquiry that characterize interpretive research. 1 Contrary to this tendency, I suggest several reasons why process tracing would be enriched by efforts to more clearly incorporate interpretive elements. Process tracing is highly consonant with the interpretivist tradition of providing inductive and contextually thick accounts of meaning making, as well as attending to the dynamics of social institutions. Interpretive process tracing (IPT) combines the study of intersubjective meanings with causal explanations of particular outcomes. 2 It is thus able to identify a broader range of causal mechanisms than those commonly studied in political science. By being attentive to mechanisms that capture non-intentional, habitual action, and the importance of social identities for such actions, IPT can generate more nuanced and more accurate explanations. There are also integrative gains to be reaped in the other direction. Interpretive scholarship can benefit from using process tracing to identify and theorize mechanisms that account

New Political Economy, 2016

University of Michigan Press, 2013

Derek Beach and Rasmus Brun Pedersen have written the fi rst practical guide for using process- tracing in social science research. Th ey begin by introducing a more refi ned defi nition of process- tracing, diff erentiating it into three distinct variants, and explaining the applications for and limitations of each. Th e authors develop the underlying logic of process- tracing, including how one should understand causal mechanisms and how Bayesian logic enables strong within- case inferences. Th ey provide instructions for identifying the variant of process- tracing most appropri-ate for the research question at hand and a set of guidelines for each stage of the research process (i.e., working with theories, developing empiri-cal tests, working with evidence, selecting case studies, and nesting case studies in mixed- method designs). Th is book makes three major contributions to the methodological lit-erature on case studies. First, it develops the underlying logic of process- tracing methods in a level of detail that has not been presented previously and thus establishes a standard for their use. Second, by explaining the application of Bayesian logic to process- tracing methods, it provides a coherent framework for drawing strong inferences within cases. Finally, it off ers the fi rst coherent set of tools and standards for graduate students as well as scholars eager to use process- tracing methods in their research.

Narrative Science

Process tracing is a familiar analytical tool in a number of sciences. Successful process tracing pulls together what is already known, believed or assumed and the various events, activities and entities in a case study in order to construct a narrative of the case. Several chapters in this volume offer accounts of narrative science that are explored through process tracing. These examples are analysed to reveal how various aspects of process tracing inform narrative and how narrative, in turn, aids process tracing in an iterative process of interpretation and reinterpretation of evidence, testing, development and revision of hypotheses, and the explanation of singular events.

2011

2015

In this thesis I investigate causal inquiry in the social sciences, drawing on examples from various disciplines and in particular from conflict studies. In a backlash against the pervasiveness of statistical methods, in the last decade certain social scientists have focused on finding the causal mechanisms behind observed correlations. To provide evidence for such mechanisms, researchers increasingly rely on ‘process tracing’, a method which attempts to give evidence for causal relations by specifying the chain of events connecting a putative cause and effect of interest. I will ask whether the causal claims process tracers make are defensible, and where they are not defensible I will ask how we can improve the method. Throughout these investigations, I show that the conclusions of process tracing (and indeed ofthe social sciences more generally) are constrained both by the causal structure ofthe social world and by social scientists’ aims and values. My central argument is this: a...

2011

Qualitative Inquiry, 2009

This article introduces a qualitative research method called discourse tracing. Discourse tracing draws from contributions made by ethnographers, discourse critics, case study scholars, and process tracers. The approach offers new insights and an attendant language about how we engage in research designed specifically for the critical-interpretive and applied analysis of discourse. More specifically, discourse tracing analyzes the formation, interpretation, and appropriation of discursive practices across micro, meso, and macro levels. In doing so, the method provides a language for studying social processes, including the facilitation of change and the institution of new routines. The article describes the current theoretical and political landscape of qualitative methods and how discourse tracing can provide a particularly helpful methodological tool at this time. Then, drawing from a qualitative study on of school lunch policy, the authors explain how to practice discourse tracing in a step-by-step manner.

Taking Terminology and Timing Seriously: On Ontological and Epistemological Foundations of Causal-Process Tracing, 2012

In recent years we have seen an explosion of methodological reflections on case study research. These reflections have challenged the co-variational orthodoxy that dominated the literature on case study methodology in Political Science since the 1970s. Alternative understandings of case study methodology have been presented mostly under the heading of “causal process tracing (CPT)”. In contributions to the methodological debate (Blatter and Blume 2008a, 2008b) and in our text book (Blatter and Haverland 2012), we try to make the point that we gain a lot when we realize that there are two alternatives to the co-variational template and not just one. Adding “congruence analysis (CON)” to “co-variational analysis (COV)” and “causal-process tracing (CPT)” as a third distinct approach for designing case studies has three major advantages: • it broadens the available toolkit for drawing causal inferences in small-N research; • it allows to develop internally coherent research approaches; and • it leads to more precise definitions of major terms like “causal-process tracing” and “causal mechanisms.”