Process Tracing

This book provides empirically grounded conceptual, design and practical advice on conducting process tracing, a key method of qualitative research.

There are a growing number of scholars who study politics by conducting rich empirical case studies. This book highlights process tracing - a method that plays a central role in organizing and measuring these empirics. Drawing upon numerous examples, it provides grounded, practical advice on conducting process tracing well.Advances in qualitative methods and recent developments in the philosophy of science have led to an emphasis on explanation via reference to causal mechanisms. This book argues that the method known as process tracing is particularly well suited to developing and assessing theories about such mechanisms. The editors begin by establishing a philosophical basis for process tracing - one that captures mainstream uses while simultaneously being open to applications by interpretive scholars. Equally important, they go on to establish best practices for individual process-tracing accounts - how micro to go, when to start (and stop), and how to deal with the problem of equifinality. The contributors then explore the application of process tracing across a range of subfields and theories in political science. This is an applied methods book which seeks to shrink the gap between the broad assertion that 'process tracing is good' and the precise claim 'this is an instance of good process tracing'.