Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-g4j75 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-07T17:09:03.009Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Complex Causal Relations and Case Study Methods: The Example of Path Dependence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Andrew Bennett  and
Colin Elman
Andrew Bennett
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Arizona State University, Box 873902, Tempe, AZ 85287-3902. e-mail: [email protected]
Colin Elman
Affiliation:
Department of Government, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057. e-mail: [email protected] (corresponding author)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article discusses the application of qualitative methods in analyzing causal complexity. In particular, the essay reviews how process tracing and systematic case comparisons can address path-dependent explanations. The article unpacks the concept of path dependence and its component elements of causal possibility, contingency, closure of alternatives, and constraints to the current path. The article then reviews four strengths that case studies bring to the study of path dependence: offering a detailed and holistic analysis of sequences in historical cases, being suitable for the study of rare events, facilitating the search for omitted variables that might lie behind contingent events, and allowing for the study of interaction effects within one or a few cases.

Type
Research Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 14 , Issue 3: Special Issue on Causal Complexity and Qualitative Methods , Summer 2006 , pp. 250 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbott, Andrew. 1995. Sequence analysis: New methods for old ideas. Annual Review of Sociology 21: 93–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abbott, Andrew. 2001. Time matters: On theory and method. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Aminzade, Ronald. 1992. Historical sociology and time. Sociological Methods and Research 20: 456–80.Google Scholar
Arthur, W. Brian. 1989. Competing technologies and lock-in by historical small events. The Economic Journal 99: 116–31.Google Scholar
Arthur, W. Brian. 1994. Increasing returns and path dependency in the economy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Arrow, Kenneth J. 1994. Foreword to Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy by W. Brian Arthur. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Barkin, Samuel, and Cronin, Bruce. 1994. Changing norms and the rules of sovereignty. International Organization 48: 107–30.Google Scholar
Bennett, Andrew. 2006. Stirring the frequentist pot with a dash of Bayes. Political Analysis 10.1093/pan/mpj011.Google Scholar
Bennett, Andrew, and Elman, Colin. 2006. Qualitative research: Recent developments in case study methods. Annual Review of Political Science, pp. 455–76.Google Scholar
Boas, Taylor C. Forthcoming. Conceptualizing Continuity and Change: The Composite-Standard Model of Path Dependence. Journal of Theoretical Politics.Google Scholar
Brady, Henry E. 2003. Models of causal inference: Going beyond the Neymen-Rubin-Holland theory. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL.Google Scholar
Brambor, Thomas, Clark, William Roberts, and Golder, Matt. 2006. Understanding interaction models: Improving empirical analyses. Political Analysis 14: 63–82.Google Scholar
Braumoeller, Bear. 2003. Causal complexity and the study of politics. Political Analysis 11: 209–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Donald. 1975. Degrees of freedom and the case study. Comparative Political Studies 8: 178–93.Google Scholar
Collier, David, Brady, Henry E., and Seawright, Jason. 2004. Sources of leverage in causal inference: Toward an alternative view of methodology. In Rethinking social inquiry: Diverse tools, shared standards, ed. Brady, Henry E. and Collier, David, 229–71. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Collier, David A., and Collier, Ruth. 1991. Shaping the political arena: Critical junctures, the labor movement, and regime dynamics in Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Collier, David, and Mahoney, James. 1996. Insights and pitfalls: Selection bias in qualitative research. World Politics 49: 56–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collier, David, Mahoney, James, and Seawright, Jason. 2004. Claiming too much: Warnings about selection bias. In Rethinking social inquiry: Diverse tools, shared standards, ed. Brady, Henry E. and Collier, David, 85–102. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Crouch, Colin, and Farrell, Henry. 2004. Breaking the path of institutional development: Alternatives to the new determinism in political economy. Rationality and Society 16: 5–43.Google Scholar
David, Paul A. 1985. Clio and the economics of QWERTY. American Economic Review 75: 332–7.Google Scholar
David, Paul A. 2001. Path dependence, its critics, and the quest for ‘historical economics.’ In Evolution and path dependence in economic ideas: Past and present, ed. Garrouste, Pierre and Ioannides, Stavros, 15–40. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dessler, David. 2003. Explanation and scientific progress. In Progress in international relations theory: Appraising the field, ed. Elman, Colin and Fendius Elman, Miriam, 381–404. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Elman, Colin. 2005. Explanatory typologies in qualitative studies of international politics. International Organization 59: 293–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ertmann, Thomas. 1997. Birth of the Leviathan: Building states and regimes in medieval and early modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Esping-Andersen, Gosta. 1990. The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Gacek, Christopher. 1994. The logic of force: The dilemma of limited war in American foreign policy. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Gaddis, John Lewis. 1982. Strategies of containment: A critical appraisal of postwar American national security policy. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gains, Francesca, John, Peter C., and Stoker, Gerry. 2005. Path dependency and the reform of English local government. Public Administration 83: 25–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
George, Alexander L., and Bennett, Andrew. 2005. Case studies and theory development in the social sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Gerring, John. 2001. Social science methodology: A criterial framework. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goertz, Gary, and Mahoney, James. 2006. A tale of two cultures: Contrasting quantitative and qualitative research. Political Analysis 10.1093/pan/mpj017.Google Scholar
Goldstone, Jack A. 1998. Initial conditions, general laws, path dependence, and explanation in historical sociology. The American Journal of Sociology 104: 829–45.Google Scholar
Gorges, Michael J. 2001. New institutionalist explanations for institutional change: A note of caution. Politics 21: 137–45.Google Scholar
Greener, Ian. 2005. The potential of path dependence in political studies. Politics 25: 62–72.Google Scholar
Greener, Michael J. 2002. Understanding NHS reform: The policy-transfer, social learning and path-dependency perspectives. Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration and Institutions 15: 161–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Peter. 2003. Aligning ontology and methodology in comparative research. In Comparative-historical analysis in the social sciences, ed. Mahoney, James and Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, 373–404. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ikenberry, John. 1999. Institutions, strategic restraint, and the persistence of American postwar order. International Security 23: 43–78.Google Scholar
Isaac, Larry W., Street, Debra A., and Knapp, Stan J. 1994. Analyzing historical contingency with formal methods: The case of the ‘relief explosion’ and 1968. Sociological Methods and Research 23: 114–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jervis, Robert. 1991. Domino beliefs and strategic behavior. In Dominoes and bandwagons: Strategic beliefs and great power competition in the Eurasian rimland, ed. Jervis, Robert and Snyder, Jack, 20–50. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jervis, Robert. 1997. System effects: Complexity in political and social life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Jervis, Robert. 2000. Timing and interaction in politics: A comment on Pierson. Studies in American Political Development 14: 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kato, Junko. 1996. Review article: Institutions and rationality in politics: Three varieties of neo-institutionalists. British Journal of Political Science 26: 553–82.Google Scholar
Kay, Adrian. 2005. A critique of the use of path dependency in policy studies. Public Administration 83: 553–71.Google Scholar
King, Gary, Keohane, Robert O., and Verba, Sidney. 1994. Designing social inquiry: Scientific inference in qualitative research. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krasner, Stephen D. 1988. Sovereignty: An institutional perspective. Comparative Political Studies 21: 66–94.Google Scholar
Liebowitz, S. J., and Margolis, Stephen. 1990. The fable of the keys. Journal of Law and Economics 33: 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liebowitz, S. J., and Margolis, Stephen. 1995. Path dependence, lock-in and history. Journal of Law, Economics and Organization 11: 205–26.Google Scholar
Lohmann, Suzanne. 1994. Dynamics of informational cascades: The Monday demonstrations in Leipzig, East Germany, 1989–1991. World Politics 47: 42–101.Google Scholar
Luebbert, Gregory. 1991. Liberalism, fascism, or social democracy: Social classes and the political origins of regimes in interwar Europe. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mahoney, James. 2000. Path dependence in historical sociology. Theory and Society 29: 507–48.Google Scholar
Mahoney, James. 2001. The legacies of liberalism: Path dependence and political regimes in Central America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Mahoney, James. 2006. Analyzing path dependence: Lessons from the social sciences. In Understanding change: Models, methodologies, and metaphors, ed. Wimmer, A. and Kössler, R., 129–39. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Mahoney, James, and Schensul, Daniel. 2006. Historical context and path dependence. In Oxford handbook of contextual political analysis, ed. Goodin, R. E. and Tilly, C., 454–71. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Meyer, John W., and Rowan, Brian. 1991. Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. In The new institutionalism in organizational analysis, ed. Powell, W. and DiMaggio, P., 41–62. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Page, Scott E. 2006. Path dependence. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 1: 87–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierson, Paul. 2000. Increasing returns, path dependence, and the study of politics. American Political Science Review 94: 251–67.Google Scholar
Pierson, Paul. 2004. Politics in time: History, institutions, and social analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, Walter W., and DiMaggio, Paul J., eds. 1991. The new institutionalism in organizational analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ragin, Charles. 1987. The comparative method: Moving beyond qualitative and quantitative strategies. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Gerald N. 1991. The hollow hope: Can courts bring about social change? Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Schelling, Thomas. 1978. Micromotives and macrobehavior. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Signorino, Curtis. 1998. Strategic interaction and the statistical analysis of international conflict. American Political Science Review 93: 279–97.Google Scholar
Spruyt, Hendrik. 1994. The sovereign state and its competitors: An analysis of systems change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Thelen, Kathleen. 1999. Historical institutionalism in comparative politics. Annual Review of Political Science 2: 369–404.Google Scholar
Thelen, Kathleen. 2003. How institutions evolve: Insights from comparative-historical analysis. In Comparative-historical analysis in the social sciences, ed. Mahoney, James and Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, 208–40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Vasquez, John A., and Elman, Colin, eds. 2003. Realism and the balancing of power: A new debate. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Zucker, Lynne G. 1991. The role of institutionalization in cultural persistence. In The new institutionalism in organizational analysis, ed. Powell, Walter W. and DiMaggio, Paul J., 83–107. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar