Process Tracing Methods

This hands-on course gives you the methodological tools to refine your use of process-tracing methods in your own substantive research. It will also enable you to embed process-tracing case studies in mixed-methods research design. The course requires very active participation.

Morning sessions will involve lectures and discussions about key methodological issues. In the afternoons, we will discuss aspects of participants' projects, including theories of causal mechanisms and how we can develop testable predictions about evidence that the activities associated with parts of mechanisms might leave in a given case.

The promise of process tracing as a methodological tool is that it enables the researcher to study more-or-less directly the causal mechanism(s) linking a cause (or set of causes) and an outcome, allowing us to open up the ‘black box’ of causality itself. By unpacking causal mechanisms into their constituent parts, composed of entities engaging in activities, and then tracing the empirical manifestations these activities leave in actual cases, we are able to collect what has been termed mechanistic evidence upon which we can make causal inferences about how causal mechanisms actually work (Craver and Darden, 2013; Machamer, Darden and Craver, 2000; Machamer, 2004). Strong causal inferences about the effect a cause has on an outcome are naturally only possible when we use evidence of difference-making that is produced through experimental manipulation across cases (Woodward, 2003). However, when we use mechanistic evidence to make causal inferences, we are using observational, within-case evidence to make causal inferences about the actual operation of mechanisms in real world cases (Russo and Williamson, 2007; Illari, 2011; Waskan, 2011). In other words, instead of studying causal effects we are studying how things work.

In the first morning session, we discuss how to differentiate proces tracing from other methods; including large-n quantitative methods, but also other small-n methods such as analytical narratives and comparative case studies. Here we define process tracing by the interest in studying causal mechanisms within single cases in ways that enable within-case causal inferences to be made. We discuss the four variants of process tracing: theory-testing, theory-building, theoretical revision, and explaining outcome process tracing. This is followed by an in-depth discussion of the ontological underpinnings of process tracing in the second session of Day 1, and the full session of Day 2, focusing on how to understand causal mechanisms and how they differ from other types of causal theorisation.

On the morning of Day 3, we discuss how inferences can be made using mechanistic evidence, focusing on how to operationalise theories of mechanisms using informal Bayesian logic. On Day 4 we discuss challenges relating to the evaluation of evidence in a joint session with the Historical Methods course. The final session on day 5 turns to questions of case selection and mixed/multi-methods.

The afternoons of Days 1 & 2 will be devoted to presentation and discussion of theories of causal mechanisms prepared by each participant. In the afternoon sessions on Days 3 & 4, we turn to presentation and discussion of observable manifestations of the activities of parts of mechanisms of each participant, followed on Day 5 by a discussion of why participants chose particular cases.

You must be using in-depth case study methods in your current research project (PhD, postdoc or other), and be advanced enough in your research that you have clear theoretical conjectures and ideas about potential empirical observations that we can work with during the course.

You must be familiar with the recent literature on case study methods (post 2010), and I assume familiarity with basic concepts related to process tracing. In particular, you should have basic knowledge about debates about causal mechanisms and empirical tests and how they are used in case studies.

I require submission before the course of a theorised causal mechanism and empirical proposition. I will provide information about this well in advance.