Abstract
The choice of methods for the collection and analyses of data is guided by the analytical approach of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), the state of the literature on the politics of caveats, and influenced by caveats be regarded as sensitive information. Research collaboration with military colleges and military scholars is likely to benefit not only the gathering of data but also the interpretation of the empirical material. For theory developing purposes, inductive use of plausibility probing, deviating and “practice”-tracing single case-designs are likely to give epistemological traction. For theory testing, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) in combination with structured, focused comparison and single-case process tracing designs are promising routes to knowledge in a nascent field of research such as the politics of caveats.
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Notes
- 1.
Robert E. Stake makes a similar, if not identical distinction in assigning the term “intrinsic” for case study undertaken “because that case, in particular, is of interest” (idiographic), and “instrumental” case study to indicate that the case/s “throw light on matters beyond the case/s studied” (nomothetic) (1995: xi).
- 2.
We will subsequently discuss case selection as a means of making causal inferences in single and multiple case studies.
- 3.
J. Clyde Mitchell defines logical inference as the “the process by which the analyst draws conclusions about the essential linkage between two or more characteristics in terms of some systematic explanatory scheme – some set of theoretical propositions” (1983: 199–200). It follows from this that detailed knowledge of the context is a crucial element in the case study researcher’s capacity to construct generic implications from a case.
- 4.
Such formulated it also becomes evident why we may use the deviant case procedure both for theory-developing and theory-testing purposes. Recall that juxtaposing theoretical constructs and facts is an epistemological two-way street (Moses and Knutsen 2012: 143), which also the plausibility probe and process tracing procedures discussed below are capable of traveling.
- 5.
In addition to the CFP strand of FPA, the other two strands include the study of institutional and psychological mechanisms involved in foreign policy decision-making (Smith et al. 2008: 3–4). More recently, efforts have been made to bridge the gap between IR and FPA (Thies and Breuning 2012; Rynning and Guzzini 2002; Rose 1998; Fearon 1998).
- 6.
Aptly, Jack S. Levy terms the inferential logic of the least-likely case the «Sinatra inference». As fittingly, the logic of the most-likely case is conceptualized the «inverse Sinatra inference» (2002: 442).
- 7.
Note that in the subsequent discussion, we emphasize comparative methods as means of testing theoretical arguments and empirical propositions that can explain patterns and regularities in the social world. Central to such a realist (or naturalist) epistemological position is that we are interested in comparative methods in relation to how case selection and choice of data can contribute to the validation of causal explanations in a nomothetic sense. This is in considerable contrast to the constructivist approach to comparative methods, where the focus is not so much on comparative control for third variables “as for how to preserve and exploit the qualities associated with thickly descriptive narrative” (Moses and Knutsen 2012: 231). The constructivist approach to comparative methods would include emphasizing the “uniqueness, particularity and complexity of social and political phenomena,” and how comparisons can be used “in a less formal sense to challenge existing explanations and to explore possibilities” (ibid.: 245). Finally, constructivist approaches to the social and political world also engage in how meanings are embodied in agency rather than taking material facts at their face value. Hence, constructivist comparative methodology rest on a hermeneutic epistemology, draws on narratives and representations of meaning, and is closer to the idiographic research ambition than the nomothetic. We acknowledge that the constructivist approach to comparative methodology is certain to offer insights as to how we usefully can research the politics of caveats. However, while the epistemological foundation of the empirical research program does not a priori exclude any middle-ground constructivist approach capable of being integrated into an empirical research program (Adler 1997), we dedicate the remainder of the methodology discussion to the uncovering of causal relationships between variables rather than to how the construction of meaning be empirically researched.
- 8.
Everything else being equal, a diachronic extension of cases increases the inferential power of the study and increases the degrees of freedom. However, a diachronic extension of cases also introduces the problem of non-independent observations (autocorrelation).
- 9.
A crisp-set of data implies that data is dichotomized and thus that data is at the nominal level of measurement.
- 10.
The Joint Method of Agreement and Difference (JMAD) has also been referred to by Mill as the Indirect Method of Difference (IMD).
- 11.
An INUS condition is a causal condition that is “an insufficient but necessary part of a condition which is itself unnecessary but sufficient for the result” (Mackie 1965: 245).
- 12.
- 13.
Recall that there is a theory building side to process tracing as well. Applied for theory-developing purposes, the process-tracing case study is geared toward the inductive “practice tracing” of real-life decision-making processes (Pouliot 2015). Here, the effort is to generalize case-specific empirical observations of “many mechanisms linked in causal processes” (Mjøset 2009: 58), develop “analytical narratives” to better understand why certain inputs are associated with certain outputs (Bates et al. 1998), and use “evidence from within a case to develop hypotheses that might explain the case” (Bennett and Checkel 2015: 8).
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Fermann, G. (2019). Considerations and Recommendations for the Gathering and Analyses of Data. In: Coping with Caveats in Coalition Warfare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92519-6_11
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