Process-tracing Methodology II – Evidence and Empirical Testing in Practice

Short Bio Derek Beach (Author) is an associate professor of Political Science at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, where he teaches international relations and methodology. He has authored articles, chapters, and books on international negotiations, referendums, and European integration, and co-authored the book Process-tracing Methods: Foundations and Guidelines (University of Michigan Press), and currently is engaged in writing a book together with Rasmus Brun Pedersen on Causal Case Study Methods (contracted with University of Michigan Press).He has taught qualitative case study methods at ECPR and IPSA summer and winter schools, and held numerous workshops and seminars on qualitative methods throughout the world. He is also one of the academic co-convenors of the ECPR Methods School. Requested prior knowledge The course requires that one has already had some form of introduction to Process-tracing, either by taking the week 1 ECPR Summer School course, the course in PT at the ECPR Winter School, or another introductory course on Process-tracing. Short outline This course is a more practical, hands-on course in using Process Tracing (PT) methods in one’s own research, complementing the more theoretical PT I ECPR Summer School course held in the first week, which focuses on the research design aspects of the method. The course requires that one has already had some form of introduction to PT, either by taking the week 1 course, the course at the ECPR Winter School, or another introductory course on PT. This course focuses on how we can use within-case evidence to make causal inferences about mechanisms. The course starts with an introduction to how we can make causal inferences using Bayesian logic, i.e. when we have no variation upon which to make inferences. We then turn to the practicalities of empirical testing and making causal inferences in days 2 and 3, focusing on how we can strengthen the inferences we can make by improving the empirical tests that we employ in our research. We will work on this topic using a combination of analysis of existing work and tests developed based on your own research. Day 4 discusses inductive theory-building using PT. The final day discusses how we can utilize PT in practical case study research. The course requires active participation. It is expected that participants are able to use parts of their own research in the exercises and group work during the course.