Gary Goertz - Multimethod Research, Causal Mechanisms, and Case Studies: An Integrated Approach

MULTIMETHOD RESEARCH, CAUSAL MECHANISMS, AND CASE STUDIES

MULTIMETHOD RESEARCH, CAUSAL MECHANISMS, AND CASE STUDIES

An Integrated Approach

GARY GOERTZ

Princeton University Press

Princeton and Oxford

Copyright 2017 by Princeton University Press

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ISBN 978-0-691-17411-2

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CONTENTS

TABLES

FIGURES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

F IRST I would like to acknowledge Charles Ragin, friend and colleague. Without QCA (qualitative comparative analysis) this book would not have been conceivable. I could have (and maybe should have) cited his work many more times than I have. His influence runs throughout the book in countless ways. Thanks Charles.

Similarly, Harvey Starrs work on the opportunity and willingness framework underlies much of . While I have used somewhat different terminology, the core is linked to the opportunity and willingness framework. Also, his classic, Most and Starr (1989), Inquiry, logic, and international politics, is one of the few books to think seriously about the larger issues of theory, logic, and research design, and certainly helped me when starting on the research path.

Thanks also go to many students of the IQMR (Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research) and Notre Dame qualitative methods and research design classes. Over the years they have suffered and contributed greatly, as a single paper grew to become this book.

Steve Samford did a massive amount of work systematically surveying and analyzing journal articles 20052016 that used case studies. The discussions of research practice were significantly influenced by his reflections and thoughts.

The discussions of causal mechanisms, and notably the figures, were inspired by the work of a number of great scholars. In addition, without extensive discussions about their work, the figures you will see would not have been possible. So thanks to Anna Grzymala-Busse, Patrick Mello, and Dan Slater.

Special thanks go to Steph Haggard, Bob Kaufmann, and Marc Trachtenberg. Extensive email exchanges fundamentally shaped .

Several people read the whole manuscript and deserve special acknowledgment: Jim Mahoney, Steph Haggard, Benot Rihoux, Hillel Soiffer (heroic work reading the whole manuscript twice), and one anonymous Princeton reviewer.

IQMR organized an authors workshop in June 2015 that proved invaluable. Without the unison about the importance of causal mechanisms, would probably not have been written. So thanks to all participants in the workshop.

Other people and workshops deserve thanks as well, including Jrgen Mller, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Carsten Schneider, David Waldner, and the University of Michigan Social Movement Workshop.

Sean Branff did much copyediting work on a couple of versions of the manuscript. There would be many more errors without his detailed checking.

Thanks to Eric Crahan and his staff at Princeton University Press. Eric was a sounding board for many aspects of the book, and came up with the final title.

MULTIMETHOD RESEARCH, CAUSAL MECHANISMS, AND CASE STUDIES

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Singular causal claims are primary. This is true in two senses. First, they are a necessary ingredient in the methods we use to establish generic causal claims. Even the methods that test causal laws by looking for regularities will not work unless some singular causal information is filled in first. Second, the regularities themselves play a secondary role in establishing a causal law. They are just evidenceand only one kind of evidence at thatthat certain kinds of singular causal fact have happened.

Nancy Cartwright

T HIS book addresses some of the core issues in doing (1) multimethod research, (2) causal mechanism analysis, and (3) case studies. Multimethod research has become very popular and almost a requirement for book-length studies. Multimethod can mean many things, but here it means combining case studies with statistics, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), experiments, or game theory models. The purpose of case studies is to explore causal mechanisms at the heart of theories. One does case studies because cross-case methods give little purchase on the causal mechanisms (Mi) by which X produces Y. For multimethod researchers, showing a significant causal effect in a cross-case analysis is not sufficient; one needs to provide a causal mechanism and evidence for it. Demonstrating a causal effect is only half the job; the second half involves specifying the causal mechanism and empirically examining it, usually through case studies.

Causal mechanisms, cross-case analyses, and case studies form the research triad; see . This volume rests on the proposition that commitment to multimethod research is commitment to the research triad. Multimethod research typically is conceptualized as qualitativewithin-case inferencealong with quantitative cross-case inference. The research triad adds a third dimension to that, i.e., causal mechanisms. The research triad is an integrated approach because a commitment to multimethod research is also a commitment to a causal mechanism approach to explanation and social science research.

Figure 1.1: The research triad: causal mechanism, cross-case inference, and within-case causal inference.

One way to see the integration is by looking at research that focuses, e.g., 90 percent of the research effort, on just one corner of the triad. For many experimentalists most of the effort is devoted to determining the treatment effect. They usually do not talk about causal mechanisms per se. While they usually have theories and hypotheses, these all boil down to the one treatment effect. Game theorists provide an nice example of those who focus a lot of attention on the model, i.e., causal mechanism. It is quite possible to publish articles where essentially the whole article is the model (this is very true in economics). Often historians focus on single events and the whole focus of the article is explaining some individual historical event. They are not interested in generalization and maybe only very implicitly interested in causal mechanisms.

The integrated approach rests on a central claim:

As you move away from one-corner-only research you embrace the research triad.

For example, as a game theorist moves away from exclusive interest in the model, she begins to be involved in multimethod research, cross-case analyses, and within-case analyses. As soon as a case study researcher moves from one case to more cases, he is asking about generalization. Finally, as the Cartwright epigraph forcefully states, all statistical, experimental analyses and generalization imply individual case causal inference.

Good multimethod and causal mechanism research means a relative balance between the three corners of the research triad. If 90 percent of the effort is in demonstrating significant causal effects via cross-case analysis then the research is not serious multimethod or serious about the investigation of the causal mechanism. If the case studies are only illustrations, then there is little commitment to multimethod research. Conversely, research using case studiese.g., the popular paired comparisonis weak on generalization. Doing five or six case studiesas is common in security studies booksdeals poorly with cross-case analysis and generalization. The ideal is a fairly balanced effort on all three points of the triangle.