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ABSTRACT
This article maps the methodological debate on process tracing and discusses the diverse variants of process tracing in order to highlight the commonalities beyond diversity and disagreements. Today most authors agree that process tracing is aimed at unpacking causal and temporal mechanisms. The article distinguishes two main types of use for process tracing. Some are more inductive, aimed at theory building (i.e. at uncovering and specifying causal mechanisms) while others are more deductive, aimed at theory testing (and refining). The paper summarizes the main added value and drawbacks of process tracing. It ends by providing ten guidelines for when and how to apply process tracing.
Acknowledgements
Our very special thanks go to Marcus Kreuzer who helped us to distil the methodological identities of Bayesian process tracers. However, any caveats of our lexical grouping should address us and not Marcus. In addition, we thank Tulia Falleti and Derek Beach as well as the other participants to our panels on process tracing at the CES (Council for European Studies) Conference at Amsterdam in June 2013 for their useful remarks. We are also grateful for the comments by Marek Naczyk on an earlier version of this paper. Last but not least we gained a lot of insight during a workshop on process tracing held in Paris in May 2014 and thank all participants to this workshop.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Christine Trampusch is professor of international comparative political economy and economic sociology at the Cologne Center for Comparative Politics (CCCP) at the University of Cologne. Her professorship is also Liaison Chair to the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (Brückenprofessur). Her current research projects cover the political economy of skill formation regimes, of welfare states, of industrial relations as well as of financial market regulation and of public finance. Her research has been published in various international and national peer-reviewed journals. Her co-edited volumes have been published by Oxford University Press and Routledge.
Bruno Palier is CNRS Research Director at Sciences Po, Centre d'études européennes. He is studying welfare reforms in Europe. He is co-director of LIEPP (Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Evaluation of Public Policies). He has published numerous articles on welfare reforms in France and in Europe. In 2012, he co-edited The Age of Dualization: The Changing Face of Inequality in Deindustrializing Societies (with Emmenegger, Patrick, Häusermann, Silja, and Seeleib-Kaiser, Martin), Oxford University Press, and Towards a social investment welfare state? Ideas, Policies and Challenges (with Morel, Nathalie and Palme, Joakim), Bristol: Policy Press. In 2010, he edited A long Good Bye to Bismarck? The Politics of Welfare Reforms in Continental Europe, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Notes
1. In accordance with Hall (Citation2003: 373), we ‘use the term “methodology” to refer to the means scholars employ to increase confidence that the inferences they make about the social and political world are valid’.
2. Due to word restrictions our symposium cannot include this debate on process and variance research in organisation studies but Van der Ven and Pool (Citation2005) gives a good overview.
3. We thank Yves Surel for this term.
4. While Bennett and Checkel (Citation2015: 16) distinguish set theoretical from Bayesian process tracing, we will argue that there are set-theory based and non-set theory based Bayesian process tracers.
5. Concerning explanatory strategies, Mahoney and Goertz (Citation2006) distinguish between the causes-of-effects strategy followed in qualitative studies and the effects-of-causes strategy applied in quantitative research. We agree with this differentiation, however, we also acknowledge that under certain conditions within-cases analysis may also investigate effects-of-causes but in a slightly different manner than quantitative studies do. Process tracers are not able to estimate and quantify any causal effect. What some process tracers do is assessing the ‘reality fit' of causal hypotheses, see Beach and Kreuzer in this symposium.
6. Falleti adds to the analysis of intensive processes, the variant of ‘extensive process' tracing which may be used for testing theory. However, Falleti also argues that ‘the greatest potential and comparative advantage of process tracing as a social science method lies in the analysis of intensive processes … '. While extensive processes include the cause and the outcome and mobilize the notion of intervening variables (which may also be analysed by statistical methods), intensive processes only work after a cause and they end before the outcome (see Falleti in this symposium).
7. They may also use quantitative data as long as they help to trace processes. On the different types of evidence (among them are also statistical patterns) used in process tracing see Beach in this symposium.
8. While in causal sequential arguments the ‘events in a sequence are understood to be causally connected to one another', ‘strictly temporal sequential arguments' do not assume that events are causally connected but that the ‘temporality of these events (their duration, order, pace, or timing) is causally consequential for the outcome' (Falleti and Mahoney Citation2015: 216, 218).
9. Bennett and Checkel (Citation2015: 12) define causal mechanisms as:
ultimately unobservable physical, social, or psychological processes through which agents with causal capacities operate, but only in specific contexts or conditions, to transfer energy, information, or matter to other entities. In doing so, the causal agent changes the affected entities’ characteristics, capacities, or propensities in ways that persist until subsequent causal mechanisms act upon them.
10. In agreement with Eckstein (Citation1975[1992]: 130), with theory we mean in
a minimal sense that it must state a presumed regularity in observations that is susceptible to reliability and validity tests, permits the deduction of some unknowns, and is parsimonious enough to prevent the deduction of so many that virtually any occurrence can be held to bear it out.
11. We have to note that George and Bennett (Citation2005), Blatter and Haverland (Citation2012) and Beach and Pedersen (Citation2013) strongly distinguish between process tracing and the congruence method while Gerring (Citation2007: 173, fn. 2) notes that the congruence method is synonymous to process tracing.
12. Again, these are the tests promoted by Van Evera: hoop test, the smoking gun test, the straw in the wind test and the double decisive test (e.g. Collier Citation2011).
13. With regard to process tracing in multi-method research, see also Dunning (Citation2015) who demonstrates the benefits of process tracing in experimental studies.
14. Renate Mayntz (Citation2004: 245) rightly claims that as long as ‘we look at the whole process and recognize that “inputs” and “outputs” can vary, making outcomes contingent on variable initial conditions' it does not matter whether we have a generic or mechanismic understanding of mechanisms. But as scholars of the Bayesian version of process tracing just view their deterministic handling of process tracing as an alternative to conception of causality based on probabilism, the definition of causal mechanism does decisively matter.
15. We thank Marcus Kreuzer for this insight.
16. On guidelines for best practices, see also Beach and Pedersen (Citation2013); Bennett and Checkel (Citation2015); Waldner (Citation2015).
17. We thank Dennis C. Spies for this number. The structure of the data (e.g. time series, multi-level) break into further subtypes which, however, are sons and daughters of these three types.