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The Role of Case Study Research in Political Science: Evidence for Causal Claims

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Sharon Crasnow
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Abstract

Political science research, particularly in international relations and comparative politics, has increasingly become dominated by statistical and formal approaches. The promise of these approaches shifted the methodological emphasis away from case study research. In response, supporters of case study research argue that case studies provide evidence for causal claims that is not available through statistical and formal research methods, and many have advocated multimethod research. I propose a way of understanding the integration of multiple methodologies in which the causes sought in case studies are treated as singular causation and contingent on a theoretical framework.

Type
Case Studies
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 79 , Issue 5 , December 2012 , pp. 655 - 666
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I am grateful to the other participants in the symposium (Mary Morgan, Rachel Ankeny, and Carlo Gabbani) for comments. Comments from participants at the “Reasoning with Cases in the Social Sciences” workshop at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh in November 2011 also helped shape the article.

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