Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Agenda-setting work
- Part III Tools for temporal analysis
- Part IV Issues of method
- 8 The comparative sequential method
- 9 Nested analysis: toward the integration of comparative-historical analysis with other social science methods
- Epilogue: comparative-historical analysis: past, present, future
- Index
- References
8 - The comparative sequential method
from Part IV - Issues of method
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2015
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Agenda-setting work
- Part III Tools for temporal analysis
- Part IV Issues of method
- 8 The comparative sequential method
- 9 Nested analysis: toward the integration of comparative-historical analysis with other social science methods
- Epilogue: comparative-historical analysis: past, present, future
- Index
- References
Summary
Although comparative-historical analysis (CHA) is often understood to entail the comparison of a small to medium number of cases (usually countries or other macro units), we argue in this chapter that it may be more informative to say that this field involves the systematic comparison of sequences (Rueschemeyer and Stephens 1997). We suggest that a principal overarching methodology of comparative-historical analysis is the comparative sequential method (see Falleti 2010, 20–4). This method is defined by the systematic comparison of two or more historical sequences. In CHA, the “cases” studied nearly always are decomposed into sequences of events, and CHA causal claims rest upon the inferences derived from the analysis and comparison of those sequences. To take a classic example, Barrington Moore's (1966) main cases in Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy include countries such as England, France, the United States, and Germany. But these cases are studied as types of sequences of events that unfold over time. These sequences are the central units of comparison, and they provide the main basis for Moore's inferences about the causes of dictatorship and democracy.
The comparative sequential method is an overarching methodology in the sense that it can and must encompass more specific methods of cross-case analysis and within-case analysis. The main cross-case methods include simple matching tools such as J. S. Mill's methods of agreement and difference as well as more complex tools such as statistical analysis and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). The within-case methods include inductive process tracing and modes of hypothesis testing such as hoop tests and counterfactual analysis. In this chapter, we show how cross-case (in particular, Millian) methods and within-case (specifically, process tracing) are put to use to analyze and compare sequences of events in CHA. We argue that, depending on the kind of sequential argument, contrasting sets of methods are more or less appropriate – and more or less useful – as tools for analyzing sequences and carrying out causal assessment.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Advances in Comparative-Historical Analysis , pp. 211 - 239Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015
References
. 2013. Democracy and the Politics of Electoral System Choice: Engineering Electoral Dominance. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 1992. “Historical Sociology and Time.” Sociological Methods and Research 20:456–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 1994. Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and . Forthcoming. “Historical Institutionalism in Democratization Studies.” In The Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism, edited by O. Fioretos, T. G. Falleti, and A. Sheingate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
, and . 2013. Process Tracing Methods: Foundations and Guidelines. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2008. “Process Tracing: A Bayesian Perspective.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology, edited by , , and , 217–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
, and , eds. 2015. Process Tracing: From Metaphor to Analytic Tool. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
, and . 2006. “Complex Causal Relations and Case Study Methods: The Example of Path Dependence.” Political Analysis 14:250–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1975. “‘Degrees of Freedom’ and the Case Study.” Comparative Political Studies 8:178–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2004. “Inclusion and Democratization: Class, Gender, Race, and the Extension of Suffrage.” Comparative Politics 36 (4): 443–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2014. “Paths to Welfare: Class Coalitions, Ideas, and Party Politics in Chile and Uruguay.” Paper presented at the REPAL Annual Conference, Instituto de Ciencia Política, Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
. 2003. Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
. 1993. “The Comparative Method.” In Political Science: The State of the Discipline II, edited by , 105–19. Washington, DC: American Political Science Association.Google Scholar
2011. “Understanding Process Tracing.” PS: Political Science and Politics 44 (4): 823–30.Google Scholar
, , and . 2010. “Sources of Leverage in Causal Inference: Toward an Alternative View of Methodology.” In Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards, 2nd ed., edited by and , 161–99. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
, and . 1991. Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
. 1997. Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2010. Decentralization and Subnational Politics in Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
., and . 2009. “Context and Causation in Political Analysis.” Comparative Political Studies 49 (9): 1143–66.Google Scholar
, and . 2005. Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
. 2007. Case Study Research: Principles and Practices. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 1998. “The Problem of the ‘Early Modern’ World.” Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 41:249–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 1992. “Temporality, Events, and Explanation in Historical Sociology: An Introduction.” Sociological Methods and Research 20:403–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2011. “Time Will Tell? Temporality and the Analysis of Causal Mechanisms and Processes.” Comparative Political Studies 44:1267–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 1998. “The Historical Logic of National Health Insurance: Structure and Sequence in the Development of British, Canadian, and U.S. Medical Policy.” Studies in American Political Development 12 (1): 57–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2002. The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2013. “Tracing the Progress of Process Tracing.” European Political Science 12:20–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and . 2013. “Mixing Methods: A Bayesian Integration of Qualitative and Quantitative Inferences.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago.
2008. “The Politics of When: Redistribution, Investment, and the Politics of the Long Term.” British Journal of Political Science 38 (2): 193–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2010. “Policymaking as Political Constraint: Institutional Development in the U.S. Social Security Program.” In Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power, edited by and , 94–131. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 2004. State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2005. “Nested Analysis as a Mixed-Method Strategy for Comparative Research.” American Political Science Review 99 (3): 435–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 1991. Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy: Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
. 1999. “Nominal, Ordinal, and Narrative Appraisal in Macrocausal Analysis.” American Journal of Sociology 104 (4): 1154–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2000. “Path Dependence in Historical Sociology.” Theory and Society 29:507–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2010. Colonialism and Postcolonial Development: Spanish America in Comparative Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2012. “The Logic of Process Tracing Tests in the Social Sciences.” Sociological Methods and Research 41:566–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 1999. “Case Studies and the Statistical Worldview: Review of King, Keohane, and Verba's Designing Social Inquiry.” International Organization 53:161–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
. 2010. “The Contradictory Potential of Institutions: The Rise and Decline of Land Documentation in Kenya.” In Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power, edited by and , 63–93. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 2000. “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics.” American Political Science Review 94:251–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2004. Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2012. The Land of Too Much: American Abundance and the Paradox of Poverty. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2008. Redesigning Social Inquiry: Fuzzy Sets and Beyond. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2014. “Contesting Extraction: State-Making, Democracy and Large Scale Mining in Ecuador.” PhD diss., Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
. 2014. “Comparative Hypothesis Testing via Process Tracing.” Sociological Methods and Research, 43 (4): 606–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2013. “How to Party? Static and Dynamic Party Survival in Latin American Consolidated Democracies.” PhD diss., Instituto de Ciencia Política, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
. 2003. “Can One or a Few Cases Yield Theoretical Gains?” In Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences, edited by and , 305–36. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
, and . 1997. “Comparing Historical Sequences – A Powerful Tool for Causal Analysis.” Comparative Social Research 17:55–72.Google Scholar
, , and . 1992. Capitalist Development and Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
. 1970. “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model.” Comparative Politics 2 (3): 337–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 1996. “Three Temporalities: Toward an Eventful Sociology.” In The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences, edited by , 245–80. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
. 1979. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1999. “Why I Am a Historical Social Scientist.” Extensions: Journal of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center, pp. 16–19.Google Scholar
. 2007. Hard Times in the Lands of Plenty: Oil Politics in Iran and Indonesia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
. 2012. “The Causal Logic of Critical Junctures.” Comparative Political Studies 45:1572–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 1994. The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
. 2008. The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 1999. “Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics.” Annual Review of Political Science 2:369–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2003. “How Institutions Evolve: Insights from Comparative-Historical Analysis.” In Comparative-Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences, edited by and , 208–40. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 1997. Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
. 2000. Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
- 84
- Cited by