Advance Access publication June 7, 2006

Political Analysis (2006) 14:250267 doi:10.1093/pan/mpj020

Complex Causal Relations and Case Study Methods: The Example of Path Dependence
Andrew Bennett
Department of Government, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057 e-mail: bennetta@georgetown.edu

Colin Elman
Department of Political Science, Arizona State University, Box 873902, Tempe, AZ 85287-3902 e-mail: colin.elman@asu.edu (corresponding author)

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.

Because life is complicated. T-shirt epigram for the 2006 Arizona State University Institute on Qualitative Research Methods

1 Introduction

Methodological choices must take into account the characteristics of the phenomena we seek to understand.1 We need to heed Peter Halls warning that as we have sought to understand and explain complexity in social and political life, our ontologies have outrun both our methodologies and standard views of explanation (Hall 2003, 387). Hall argues that political scientists have moved toward theories, such as those based on path dependence or strategic interaction, whose conceptions of the causal structures underlying outcomes are at odds with the assumptions required for standard regression techniques and conventional comparative method to provide valid causal inferences (Hall 2003, 375).
Authors note: We thank John Gerring, Gary Goertz, James Mahoney, Paul Pierson, and three anonymous reviewers, for helpful comments on earlier versions of this essay. 1 Although this implies that ontology should precede methodology, we realize that the relationship is likely to be more complicated. Epistemological and methodological choices make it much more likely that scholars will see the social world in a particular way (see Pierson 2004, 910, citing R. L. Jepperson, unpublished data).
The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

250

Complex Causal Relations and Case Study Methods

251

This requires that we adapt and develop our methods, whether formal, statistical, or qualitative, to address the kinds of complexity that our theories increasingly entail. This essay deals with the methodological challenges that complexity raises for the study of politics and the means through which qualitative methods can help address these challenges even if they cannot fully resolve them. There are several different phenomena that exhibit causal complexity, including tipping points, high-order interaction effects, strategic interaction, two-directional causality or feedback loops, equinality (many different paths to the same outcome), and multinality (many different outcomes from the same value of an independent variable depending on context). The possible presence of these kinds of complexity affects how knowledge statements can be most usefully constructed and veried. We conclude, as Hall does, that qualitative methods, particularly the combination of within-case analysis and cross-case comparisons, are useful approaches toward assessing these kinds of complex causation even when scholars study only one or a few cases. We do not attempt to review case study methods relevant to all these kinds of complexity or all the possible combinations of different kinds of complexity. Rather, we focus on the contributions that process tracing and systematic case comparisons can make, especially together, to address issues of path dependence. Arthur (1994), an economist who helped to develop and popularize the concept of path dependence before its importation into political science, suggested that his work was driven by the view that the world is messy, organic, and complicated. In the context of path dependence, these complexities mean that, as Pierson (2004, 189) has argued:
specic patterns of timing and sequence matter; starting from similar conditions a range of social outcomes is often possible; large consequences may result from relatively small or contingent events; particular courses of action, once introduced, can be virtually impossible to reverse; and, consequently, political development is often punctuated by critical moments or junctures that shape the basic contours of social life.

In the next section of the essay we unpack the concept of path dependence before proceeding to discuss how case study methods provide leverage over explaining and understanding this particular characteristic of a complex social world. There are several excellent discussions of path dependence in the social sciences (including Thelen 1999; Mahoney 2000, 2006; Pierson 2000, 2004; I. Greener 2005; Kay 2005; Page 2006; Mahoney and Schensul 2006; Boas forthcoming), and our purpose is not to reproduce these efforts.2 Rather we provide a brief overview of some of the central elements of path dependence in order to facilitate a discussion of the benets of using case study methods to analyze them. These benets include the detailed study of particular cases with sensitivity to sequencing, the use of process tracing to gain inferential leverage on rare or unique events, the opportunity to study cases inductively to help identify omitted variables, and the ability to study interaction effects in the context of particular cases.
2 Path Dependence

The concept of path dependence has been readily imported into the different subelds of political science (see, e.g., Krasner 1988; Kato 1996; Ikenberry 1999; Thelen 1999). There is, however, substantial disagreement among political scientists on how best to dene and apply path dependence (I. Greener 2005; Mahoney and Schensul 2006). Part of the disagreement arises from the different combinations of literatures on which political scientists have relied. Some have drawn on literature in economics, which focuses on functional
2

See also Aminzade (1992) and Abbott (2001).

252

Andrew Bennett and Colin Elman

considerations such as the efciency of technologies or institutions in achieving public or private goods (see David 1985, 2001; Arthur 1989, 1994).3 Scholars have also drawn on other sources, including institutional sociology, which places emphasis on how institutions interact with the ideas and identities of actors and on how the distributional consequences of institutions affect the power and legitimacy of actors hoping to maintain the status quo and those seeking change (Thelen 1999, 386, referencing Meyer and Rowan 1991; Powell and DiMaggio 199l; Zucker 1991). Some of the variations in how political scientists approach path dependence may also be due to subeld divisions in the discipline. As Jervis (2000) notes, scholars from different subelds often work in relative isolation from each other. As path dependence has been imported and integrated, this tendency is likely to have produced some redundancy but also some differences. We argue that dissimilarities among political scientists on the concept of path dependence can be represented in terms of the different content scholars give to, and emphasis they place on, four elements common to most accounts: causal possibility, contingency, closure, and constraint. First, causal possibility suggests that more than one path might have been taken. Over the length of the entire history, there has to be some space for different possible outcomes. That is, for path dependence to be pertinent, there need to be some different feasible histories. It would not be applicable if, regardless of how many times or in how many ways we started from the beginning, the same outcome would inevitably be reached. For most scholars who use path-dependent arguments, this causal possibility occurs earlier rather than later in the history. Second, contingency implies that the causal story is inuenced by a random or unaccounted factor. There needs to be some contingent element that intervenes in the causal narrative: one or more of the factors that inuences the direction of events needs to be random or (by some readings) exogenous to the main theory of interest. In most accounts, the path that results must be not only contingent but also highly contingent. It may be one among many possible outcomes or an unlikely or inefcient outcome compared to one or more alternative paths. Third, closure connotes that as a result of that inuence, some causal paths become less possible or impossible. There needs to be some degree of narrowing, a closure of some previously feasible paths. As a result, some causal pathways become more and some less likely. Finally, once a path is selected, there needs to be some degree of constraint, some processes that operate to keep actors on it. Constraint suggests that the actors are tied to the path that is chosen or would face high costs in moving off this path once it is established. Although the same mechanism may be implicated in both closing alternative paths and constraining actors to the contemporary path, this need not be so. For example, as noted below, an institution may be selected over other feasible alternatives for reasons that are unrelated to the factors that explain the subsequent longevity of the chosen institution. As shown in Fig. 1 (adapted from Mahoney and Schensul forthcoming), the four elements can be represented pictorially: a time during which there are a number of plausible alternatives (t0t1), followed by a critical juncture, where contingent events lead one of these alternatives to emerge (t1t2), after which actors are constrained to remain on that path (t2tn).
3

See Liebowitz and Margolis (1990, 1995) for skeptical readings of whether (and if so how often) path dependence conicts with neoclassical economics. See Mahoney (2006) for the argument that the critique of Liebowitz and Margolis is less compelling in nonmarket contexts.

Complex Causal Relations and Case Study Methods

253

Fig. 1 Path dependency: the example of Luebberts theory of regime type.

We use as an example here Gregory Luebberts theory on the origins of liberal democracy, fascism, social democracy, and traditional authoritarianism in interwar Europe. In Luebberts view, European countries all faced the challenge of reconciling political institutions and coalitions with the new class structures that emerged as a result of industrialization. In Britain, France, and Switzerland, middle classes emerged early on and established political dominance prior to World War I, allowing a strong liberal-labor coalition that forestalled radicalization of the working classes. In late-industrializing countries, however, preindustrial cleavages such as urban-rural and religious tensions prevented liberal communities from becoming powerful partners of workers undergoing mobilization in the 1920s and 1930s. This made middle peasants a key coalition partner in struggles among liberal, socialist, and reactionary groups. Socialists, Luebbert argues, were able to make a red-green coalition with middle peasants wherever the agrarian proletariat had rst been mobilized by other groups, leading to social democracy in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Otherwise, socialists were tempted to mobilize the agrarian proletariat themselves for their own more radical ends, thereby alienating the middle peasants and leading to a brown green coalition and fascism, as happened in Germany, Italy, and Spain. Finally, in cases where liberal groups allied with middle peasants, traditional dictatorships, lacking the institutional innovations of fascism, emerged. Luebberts argument represents one particular combination of contingency and constraint. In his view, the necessity of reformulating political coalitions in the face of industrialization was common to all European states, the possible coalitions that might emerge were limited, and the particular preindustrial cleavages that led to one kind of coalition or another were highly contingent. Luebbert does not focus on the mechanisms

254

Andrew Bennett and Colin Elman

that constrained each of these polities on their selected paths through the interwar years, but he seems to share Piersons sentiment that once established, basic outlooks on politics, ranging from ideologies to . . . orientations toward political groups or parties, are generally tenacious (Pierson 2000, 260). Of course, a subsequent contingent event the outcome of World War IIbrought an end to the fascist and authoritarian regimes of Western Europe but allowed for continuity in the governance of the liberal and social democracies Luebbert studied. As noted above, the different elements of path dependence have been the subject of considerable disagreement and debate. We revisit below the discussion of two of them: contingency and constraint.
2.1 Contingency and Path Dependence

The narrowest reading of contingency is that it involves a stochastic process, something that is irreducibly unexplainable. Depending on the unfolding of chance events, a different path could have been selected. A different reading of contingency is that it requires something out of left eld, something unexpected in the context of the main theory under investigation. This understanding of contingency is included in the broad approach taken by Mahoney (2000, 513), who suggests that it is the inability of theory to predict or explain, either deterministically or probabilistically, the occurrence of a specic outcome. Mahoney argues that:
In the actual practice of research, social analysts will consider an event to be contingent when its explanation appears to fall outside of existing scientic theory. For example, most sociologists will treat as contingent both small events that are too specic to be accommodated by prevailing social theories, such as the assassination of a political leader or the specic choices and agency of particular individuals, and large, seemingly random processes such as natural disasters or sudden market uctuations.

The phenomenon could be potentially explainable but nevertheless exogenous to the main causal story up to that point. One possible example of an exogenous but explainable argument is the thesis that the K-T boundary extinction was caused by a meteor (Dessler 2003, 395). Astronomers have a fairly good understanding of the factors inuencing the trajectories of heavenly bodies and of the amounts of energy released when they occasionally collide. Until Luis and Walter Alvarez suggested the connection in 1980, however, it is unlikely that these would have been closely followed by paleontologists investigating the disappearance of the dinosaurs. An alternative category of arguments that are exogenous to the main explanation are those that cannot currently be addressed from this or other disciplines. This may be simply because no theories have yet been developed that cover the gaps. For example, for much of the history of the eld of evolutionary biology, genetic mutations were treated as exogenous and contingent events because the instruments and theories necessary to observe and understand mutations at the microbiological level did not exist until relatively recently. In addition, we may have good theories covering the gaps but either no data or insufciently sophisticated methodologies to handle them. The meteors we cannot yet observe with extant instruments are in some sense contingent, even though we could explain their trajectories fairly well if we could observe them. As an example of contingency arising from methodological limitations, high-order interaction effects may make the events that precede the selection of a constrained path appear inexplicable. Interaction effects take place when the effect of one independent

Complex Causal Relations and Case Study Methods

255

variable on the outcome of interest varies depending on the value of one or more other independent variables. The forms of such interactions can be as many and varied as causal relations in general; they can be linear (i.e., the effect of a given variable increases or decreases in a linear fashion as the value of the variable with which it interacts increases) or nonlinear. Interactions can also be sideways: the interaction of two variables can produce a qualitatively different outcome rather than an increase or decrease of one dimension of the outcome of interest (Jervis 1997, 1289). Moreover, interactions can involve only two interacting variables or they may involve interactions among a conguration of many variables (Ragin [1987] terms the latter multiple conjunctural causation). The various kinds of contingency are summarized in Fig. 2. The use of contingent events in case study narratives places them at risk of being viewed as just-so stories. We should also acknowledge that, to the extent that the relevant contingencies are truly random and not just current lacunae for known or potential theories and/ or methods, social sciences confront an irreducible gap in the causal narrative. Even under these circumstances, however, case studies can still help maximize our understanding of events. By process tracing the causal narrative up through the random contingencies and by showing how these (albeit unexplainable) events interact with other more tractable parts of the account, analysts can clarify which parts of the account are contingent and which are explicable and the respective roles of each in subsequent events. Also, even when the contingent period remains largely inexplicable, case studies can help identify and test the mechanisms that maintain an equilibrium in the constrained period that follows.

Fig. 2 Types of contingency.

256

Andrew Bennett and Colin Elman

Circumstances are somewhat different where contingencies are potentially knowable rather than stochastic, even though explanations for them are either exogenous or undeveloped. There is a much stronger argument in these situations for researchers either to trace out the missing links or to justify why they do not. Here case studies can guide analysts to look for theories in other elds or to try to develop explanations where no such theories are found. On a practical note, we acknowledge that it will often be unclear which types of contingency analysts are dealing with. It may only be after the rst iteration of the case study has been completed that the researcher will have a better view on whether, and if so how, to explicate the rst, as-yet unexplained development that denes the critical juncture in question.4 Scholars vary in the emphasis they place on contingency as a necessary element of path-dependent explanations and on its meaning. Pierson (2004) argues that contingency is a possible feature but stops short of including it as a required element for path dependence (see Collier and Collier 1991; Thelen 1999, 2003, for similar positions). By contrast, Mahoney and Schensul (2006) argue that only by including some form of contingency in the denition of path dependency will some of the most interesting and unexpected phenomena associated with this type of explanation be captured.
2.2 Constraints and Path Dependence

The nature of the constraints that keep events to the single path are also understood differently by different authors. For example, one reading, adopted by Pierson (2004, 20), is that the crucial feature of a historical process that generates path dependence is positive feedback (or self-reinforcement).5 Each successive step down the path increases the likelihood that a particular event or choice will be repeated and/or the magnitude of its subsequent manifestations. Positive feedback is often associated with a tipping point, where the causal pathway becomes xed after the causal variable increases past a given point.6 Prominent examples of technological choices that were reinforced by their increasingly dominant market share (as opposed to their intrinsic superiority) include the VHS (and not Betamax) taping systems, the Intel/Microsoft (and not Motorola/IBM/ Apple) computer chip-software combinations, and the widespread adoption of the QWERTY keyboard (Jervis 1997, 158, 165). Pierson (2004, 2244) suggests that these types of explanation for path dependence travel easily to the study of politics. Perhaps the best-known example in international relations is the domino effect argument that as a state increases its territory and strength; other states are more likely to acquiesce in its rise or to be defeated if they do not (Jervis 1997, 16575).7 For economists, much of what is interesting about path dependence is its ability to help explain the persistence of suboptimal or inefcient outcomes like the QWERTY keyboard.8 In political life, however, the question of efciency is less clear cut, as distributional issues loom large and the relevant question is often not whether an institution is efcient but for whom it is efcient or benecial. In addition, although positive returns to scale are an important mechanism behind one form of path dependence, we draw upon
4

See Gorges (2001, 141) for a critique of the role of exogenous factors in institutionalist accounts. See also M. J. Greener (2002, 164) on the implications for policy limitations of an analytical approach that requires unexpected or uncontrollable factors to explain change. 5 For a discussion of some problems with Piersons use of increasing returns see Gains, John, and Stoker (2005, 279). 6 On tipping points, see Schelling (1978, 1012); Lohmann (1994); Jervis (1997, 1502). 7 See also Jervis (1991). 8 Though see Liebowitz and Margolis (1990, 1995) for a different view of the paradigmatic examples.

Complex Causal Relations and Case Study Methods

257

a range of political scientists and economists who include a wider set of mechanisms behind path dependence. These include negative feedback and positive and negative externalities as well as positive feedback. When these mechanisms operate in various combinations, the result can be not only one stable long-run path but also cyclical sequences and sequential but nonrepeating sequences (Mahoney terms the last of these reactive sequences). Although this group of mechanisms broadens out the notion of path dependence, they are nevertheless specic enough to distinguish path dependence from overly vague arguments that history matters. In the view taken by Kathleen Thelen, for example, the QWERTY case is both too contingent and too deterministic to be a general model of path dependence (Thelen 1999, 385). It is too contingent in that the initial choice is wide open and easily tipped, whereas few political processes start with a tabula rasa of open options, and it is too deterministic in that once the initial choice is made it is quickly and irrevocably locked-in. In politics, as Thelen notes, those who lose one round of a battle often adapt and bide their time instead of disappearing in the manner of Betamax. In Thelens (1999, 387) view, the key is to focus not only on the mechanisms through which institutions are created but also on the ongoing mechanisms of reproduction that sustain institutions, as the latter provide insights into how institutions change and break down after a period of being seemingly locked-in. Similarly, Crouch and Farrell (2004) argue that sophisticated versions of path dependence eschew deterministic notions of lockin, and they point out that social actors can use past or redundant institutions, transfer experiences or ideas from other social units, or tap into the capabilities of other agents or networks to break out of established equilibria. Thelen (1999, 3929) adds that with regard to political institutions, mechanisms involving power and legitimacy as well as functionality become important sources of institutional creation and change. New institutions, for example, are reinforced when they have distributional consequences that enhance the power of actors interested in maintaining these institutions. Mahoney notes that the mechanisms behind the creation of institutions may be different from the mechanisms of its reproduction (Mahoney 2000), and it is important to add that one kind of mechanism can be undermined by another. Institutions based on power, for example, can be undermined by a drop in the power or legitimacy of the actors that maintain them or in a reduction of these institutions functionality in the context of other changing institutions. Thus, whether an institution becomes locked-in and whether it is impervious or vulnerable to particular kinds of shocks depend on a whole constellation of mechanisms that support or undermine the institution and its alternatives, rather than just relying upon positive feedback regarding the institution itself. Along similar lines, Scott Page, a professor of complex systems, political science, and economics, is concerned that the paradigmatic QWERTY case has been both misunderstood and overextended. Page focuses on issues of functionality and argues that increasing returns is only one of several mechanisms that can lead to path dependency. In Pages (2006, 24) view, increasing returns are neither necessary nor sufcient to bring about path dependency. Page argues that the dominance of the QWERTY keyboard was driven not only by its own positive externalities and increasing returns but also by the negative externalities that the QWERTY keyboard imposed on the users of alternative keyboards, whose typing skills became less valuable as the QWERTY keyboard gained in market share (Page 2006, 236). Accordingly, the QWERTY case combines several different, but by no means all of the possible, mechanisms by which history can matter. Selfreinforcement or the creation of complementary institutions (such as the development of gas stations and roadways to complement gas-powered automobiles) can also contribute to lock-in.

258

Andrew Bennett and Colin Elman

Page identies and differentiates several different history-dependent processes that are not path dependent. Some of these are phat rather than path dependent, in that their equilibria depend on what happened in preceding periods but not on the order of those events. In other processes, long-run equilibria are not dependent on earlier outcomes or their order. The ultimate triumph of the internal combustion engine, for example, was probably not dependent on whether the horse and buggy or the steam engine came rst or whether they existed at all. In some processes, the early moves are critical to subsequent equilibria, whereas in others, more recent events are key. Of the dynamics Page discusses, one of the most important for political analysis is balancing processes, where after a period of increasing returns negative feedback effects work to bring a system back to equilibrium. The dynamic here is not the amplication of what comes before but reactions against it. One example often mentioned in the international relations literature is the dominance of the nation-state. Spruyt (1994) argues that one of the factors that allowed the nation-state to win out over other plausible institutional forms, such as city-states, was their comparative advantage in co-opting military power. But scholars have also often argued that the persistence of the anarchic Westphalian state system necessary for this continuing dominance is due to balancing against attempts at hegemony (Vasquez and Elman 2003). That is, the state system is sustained by reactions against attempts to overturn it (Jervis 1997, 1314). A related dynamic is that a critical juncture may result in cycling between two (or more) alternatives. As Page (2006, 13) notes, successes by one constituency may result in the mustering of greater political forces by the other. The Roe v. Wade decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, for example, was a critical juncture that institutionally locked-in a right to abortion but politically it provided mobilizational resources to the opponents of abortion, allowing them to successively narrow abortion rights through subsequent legislation (Rosenberg 1991). Should Roe v. Wade be overturned, it might well mobilize proponents of a right to choose, leading to a turn back toward legislative rather than judicial protections of abortion rights. Similar long-term policy cycles are evident in the symmetrical versus asymmetrical approaches to containment (Gaddis 1982), limited war versus overwhelming force military doctrines (Gacek 1994), national versus territorial conceptions of sovereignty (Barkin and Cronin 1994), and rehabilitation versus criminalization approaches to abuses of drugs and alcohol. Finally, some authors allow for the possibility of path dependence without the kinds of feedback mentioned above. Mahoney (2000, 5267) differentiates systemic dynamics from reactive sequences, a series of closely bound causal links. As Mahoney (2006) notes each event in the sequence is both a reaction to antecedent events and a cause of subsequent events. Mahoney gives the example of how the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. led to the failure of the Poor Peoples Campaign, which in turn contributed to massive riots, which heightened welfare militancy and increased Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) applications, bringing about court rulings that led to an explosion in AFDC rolls in the 1960s (citing Isaac, Street, and Knapp 1994). Although the links between the events in this kind of path dependence must have some special characteristics (otherwise any casual story would qualify), it is not yet clear what those features must be. One possibility is that the causal links are characterized by a high degree of sufciency, that is, once the rst step on the path is taken the nal outcome is very likely to happen. This would capture the why actors stay on the path part of the story. Another possibility would be to characterize the links as necessary conditions, without which the next step in the chain would not have been possible. Mahoneys notion of reactive sequences is similar to stage theories common in developmental psychology and international political economy, in which individuals or

Complex Causal Relations and Case Study Methods

259

Fig. 3 Mechanisms and types of path dependency.

states pass through stages of development in a set sequence at different rates (Abbott 1995). The difference is that Mahoney envisions a contingent period that determines which of several possible developmental sequences will be followed, whereas many stage theories, such as Marxism, have a more deterministic quality, in which all units converge at different rates and to different degrees on one single-staged process. The mechanisms and processes of path dependence discussed above can be diagrammed as in Fig. 3.
3 Value Added from Using Case Studies To Study Path Dependence

Because path dependence invokes causal possibility, contingency, closure, and constraint, case study methods are well suited to analyze these kinds of arguments. Methodological choices involve trade-offs among criteria that are individually desirable but that often conict with one another (Gerring 2001). Our argument is not that statistical methods are incapable of addressing path dependency or other kinds of complexity. Indeed, several statistical methodologists have risen to the ontological challenge Hall outlines by rening statistical techniques for addressing issues such as strategic interaction and selection effects (Signorino 1998), interaction effects (Brambor, Clark, and Golder 2006), and equinality (Braumoeller 2003). Although our impression is that there are as yet few statistical studies of path-dependent processes in political science, we in no way rule out statistical methods as one means of investigating such processes.9 Rather, our argument is that qualitative methods face different trade-offs from those of statistical methods and thus provide some relative advantages in addressing path dependency and high-order interactions that may be one source of contingency. Case studies can utilize within-case analysis and/or cross-case comparison of the detailed sequential events within one or a few cases to provide inferential leverage on complex causation even when only a few relevant cases are available for analysis. In particular, case studies offer four advantages for the analysis of path dependencies and interactions: they allow for detailed and holistic analysis of sequences in historical cases, they are suited to the study of rare events, they can facilitate the search for omitted variables that might lie behind contingent events, and they allow for the study of interaction effects within one or a few cases.
9

One possible approach for applying statistical analysis to path-dependent processes would be to include a timebound interaction term. A variable X might have a causal impact from time periods 1 to 3, for example, but zero impact thereafter. Similarly, sequencing hypotheses suggest that Xt * Zt1 is not the same as Xt1 * Zt. We thank Gary Goertz for these suggestions.

260

Andrew Bennett and Colin Elman

Before considering these strengths, however, we should note that, as suggested by the term trade-offs, there are costs as well as benets to using case studies. First, case studies are unsuited to drawing strong conclusions about how much an increment in a particular cause will affect the outcome (George and Bennett 2005, 25). Second, where there are reasons to believe unit homogeneity holds, case studies will be less able than statistical methods to generalize with condence to broader populations. Finally, case study methods are weaker than statistical methods at systematically identifying which cases are outliers or deviant cases with respect to a specied population.10 Our list of potential drawbacks is perhaps shorter than some readers might expect. We do not, for example, believe that case studies have an inherent degrees of freedom problem. Cases may provide a variety of different evidence of the operation of causal mechanisms, none of which is directly comparable, some of which may be more important than other pieces, and all of which taken together may allow analysts to draw conclusions about the (in)adequacy of an explanation (Bennett and Elman 2006). For similar reasons, to the extent that case studies rely on process tracing or process observations, small-n case studies are not susceptible to standard selection bias critiques derived from a frequentist template. Selection bias critiques do not apply in the same way to inferences drawn from within-case process tracing or causal process observations (Collier and Mahoney 1996).11 As George and Bennett (2005, 207) note, process tracing is fundamentally different from methods that rely on covariation. The methods contribution to causal inference arises from its evidence that a process connects the cause and the outcome.12 Because the method does not rely on intuitive regression, it is not susceptible to selection bias (Collier, Mahoney, and Seawright 2004, 96). We now turn to consider the advantages of using case studies to analyze path dependence: holistic and detailed analysis, the analysis of rare or singular events, discovering left-out variables, and investigating high-order interactions.
3.1 Case Study Methods Offer a Holistic and Detailed Analysis and Help Elucidate

How Causal Mechanisms Operate in Context Perhaps one of the most important contributions of case study methods to the study of path dependence is that they allow for both a holistic view of the story and a detailed view of events. As Arrow (1994, x) notes in his preface to a volume of Arthurs collected works on path dependence, the object of study is a history. Taking a holistic view allows for appropriate distinctions to be made between different parts of the story. For example, it will often be the case in path-dependent accounts that constraints increase as time goes by. This means that events are more likely to shift a sequence off of a path the earlier in the story they happen. The further into a constrained period, ceteris paribus, the larger a change is needed to move off of that particular path (Pierson 2004, 19). By the same token, the nature of explanations in open and contingent time periods will differ from those in constrained periods. For example, often the critical juncture period is explicable in terms of agent-centered theories, whereas the equilibrium period is more amenable to structural explanations. Thus, theorists often differentiate between accounts of how institutions are
10 11

Note that we expect the second and third concerns to be less pressing here, since path-dependent cases are likely to have highly individualized trajectories. On process tracing or causal process observations as a distinct form of drawing causal inferences, see Collier, Brady, and Seawright (2004, 2525) and George and Bennett (2005, 20532). 12 Strictly speaking, the process itself is not directly observable. The process and its associated mechanisms are believed to exist because of the observable implications of their operations.

Complex Causal Relations and Case Study Methods

261

created and those of how they are sustained, and case studies can help to identify and explain the mechanisms involved in both periods (Mahoney 2000, 5112). James Mahoneys (2001) study of the rise of liberal elites to power in Central America in the 19th century illustrates these points. In Mahoneys view, liberal elites throughout the region sought to weaken the role of the Church and other traditional groups and expand the role of the state, but they did so in different ways that had profound and lasting effects. In Guatemala and El Salvador, liberals undercut traditional communal landholding and encouraged capitalist commercial agriculture but provided no protection to peasants and small producers. This led to agrarian polarization and militarization of the state. In contrast, in Costa Rica, liberals worked to preserve small farms even as they commercialized agriculture, limiting the polarization of the countryside and the role of the military. What makes Mahoneys explanation compelling is the within-case analysis that supplements his cross-case comparisons. Mahoney demonstrates in detail, for example, how the Guatemalan leader Justo Runo Barrios bureaucratized the state and professionalized the military to keep himself in power while pursuing land reforms that had the effect (though not necessarily the intent) of empowering large coffee producers at the expense of the peasantry. This set in motion mutually reinforcing dynamics in which a heavy military presence stimulated rural polarization, and that polarization then perpetuated leaders felt need for a coercive military apparatus. By 1890, the military oversaw a forced labor market in the countryside and consumed 60% of the coffeedependent state budget (Mahoney 2001, 131). This pattern of politics persisted for nearly a century, culminating with a succession of military governments from 1954 to 1986 that brutally repressed a rural guerilla movement before nally relinquishing some of the militarys power to an elected civilian government. In contrast, Costa Ricas liberal reformers, facing fewer security threats and lacking a large preexisting commercial agricultural sector, pursued reforms in the 19th century that encouraged small farmers and thus did not need a large military sector. A century later, Costa Rica still lacked any institutionalized military force.
3.2 Case Study Methods, and Especially Process Tracing, Are Suited To

Explanations of Rare Events There are likely to be only a small number of cases, perhaps only a single case, which follows any given particular path. As Goldstone (1998, 843) notes:
if one is concerned to explain a particular unique event that has occurred only once and then perhaps diffused or spread but did not repeat, despite similar initial conditions being found elsewhere, then one has most likely identied a path-dependent system in which the unique outcome was produced by some contingent conditions or choices that separated the outcome in that particular system from outcomes in other systems that started from similar conditions.

Because there are only one or a few cases, and many plausible outcomes, there may not be sufcient data to allow for inferences drawn from the standard effects-of-causes template followed by conventional quantitative approaches (Bennett and Elman 2006). Users of quantitative methods commonly direct their investigations to inferring systematically how much a cause contributes on average to an outcome within a given population. This is also the template that animates the well-known interpretation of qualitative methods of King, Keohane, and Verba (1994), which gives priority to identifying causal effects rather than causal mechanisms. Mainstream qualitative methodologists in political science, by contrast, tend to marry a complex view of the social world with a mechanisms and capacities approach to

262

Andrew Bennett and Colin Elman

causation. This nexus of commitments results in a coherent and distinct set of methodological choices, nicely captured by the notion of causes-of-effects (Brady 2003; Goertz and Mahoney 2006; though cf. King, Keohane, and Verba 1994). Qualitative methodologists do not look for the net effect of a cause over a large number of cases but rather for how causes interact in the context of a particular case or a few cases to produce an outcome. In particular, process tracing (George and Bennett 2005) and causal process observations (Collier, Brady, and Seawright 2004, 2525) allow inferences about causal mechanisms within the connes of a single case or a few cases. Causation is not established through small-n comparison alone (what Collier, Mahoney, and Seawright [2004, 945] call intuitive regression) but through uncovering traces of a hypothesized casual mechanism within the context of a historical case or cases. As a consequence, within-case methods may provide evidence that bears on multiple testable implications of a theory within a single case (George and Bennett 2005, 289; see also Campbell 1975). What is indeterminate for an effects-of-causes quantitative design will not necessarily be indeterminate for a causes-of-effects process-tracing research design. A single smoking gun piece of evidence may strongly validate one explanation and rule out many others. Conversely, numerous within-case observations may fail to identify which of two incommensurable explanations is more accurate if there is no evidence on key steps in the hypothesized processes on which they differ. In this sense, process tracing can be characterized as following a Bayesian logic rather than a frequentist logic (Bennett 2006).
3.3 Case Study Methods, and Especially Process Tracing, Are Suited To

Discover Left-out Variables As noted above, part of the causal sequence in path dependence is contingent occurrences that cannot be explained on the basis of prior historical conditions (Mahoney 2000, 5078). Causal possibilities may well be closed off by unlikely and hitherto unlooked for factors. Open-ended case studies are well suited to uncover these, though as we note above, perhaps not explain them. In a sense, the contingency period in a path-dependent argument is analogous to a deviant or outlier case, or a case that does not t expectations or that has a large unexplained error term. The contingent outcome could be the result of stochastic processes (or measurement error), but a combination of inductive and deductive process tracing can explore the possibility that the outcome is instead the result of an omitted variable (and/or interaction effects, discussed below). This is analogous to detective work, in which the researcher identies suspects (omitted variables) that might explain the contingency and clues (observable process-tracing implications of the hypothesized variable) and examines the evidence to rule out some variables and to instantiate other variables or interactions as explanations of the contingent event. For example, Thomas Ertman uses process tracing to test and substantiate his argument that differences in the timing of the onset of geopolitical competition help explain much of the variation in European state institutions. Ertman theorizes that polities that were pushed by early (pre-1450) geopolitical competition to undertake state building became locked-in to patrimonial institutions, whereas those not pressed by competitors until later periods were able to draw upon more advanced models of governance and more educated elites to develop professionalized rather than patrimonial bureaucracies. Ertman uses process tracing to uncover explanations for the anomalous cases that do not t his framework. In the case of England, the early development of strong representative institutions (parliament) accompanied the onset of geopolitical competition and counteracted the tendency toward proprietary ofceholding. In Hungary and Poland, meanwhile, parliamentary bodies allied

Complex Causal Relations and Case Study Methods

263

themselves with the nobility before foreign competition created a stimulus for modernization, enabling them to block professionalization of the state even to the point of making these states vulnerable to neighbors with more modernized military organizations (Ertman 1997, 312). Ertman (1997, 33) also uses process-tracing evidence to argue that powerful contingent events intervened to prevent the cases of Denmark and Sweden from tting his general argument. There is of course always a danger of regressively explaining away such anomalies through just-so stories. Ertmans account gains credibility, however, through his detailed demonstration that his hypothesized mechanisms were indeed in operation in the many states that t his theory, as well as his ability to identify plausible mechanisms that explain his anomalies. In addition, Ertman is careful to distinguish between the mechanisms and interactions that he considers generalizable and those which, as in the cases of Denmark and Sweden, he considers to be one of a kind. Similarly, in his explanation of interwar regimes in Europe, Luebbert combines his case comparisons with process tracing of how the general phenomena of class mobilization and coalition making played out in individual cases. In the case of Czechoslovakia, for example, Luebbert notes that a series of crosscutting cleavages catapulted the Communist Party to 13% of the vote in 1925. The communists failed to mobilize agrarian workers, however, because the middle peasants had already assuaged some of these workers demands with land reform. Thus, the working class movement remained urban and had the exibility to collaborate with middle peasants (Luebbert 1991).
3.4 Case Study Methods Can Help Study Interaction Effects (if any) in

the Contingent Period As noted above, one possible form of contingency is high-order interaction effects. Our interest here is in the particular value added that qualitative methods can offer in understanding interaction effects in the context of a path-dependent explanation. Qualitative methods address possible interaction effects in a very different way from quantitative approaches, resulting in a different set of methodological and theoretical trade-offs. As Goertz and Mahoney (2006) note, qualitative researchers seek explanations of individual cases and of potentially recurring types of cases or congurations of variables (see also Ragin 1987). They often proceed from a working assumption that homogeneity holds only for particular congurations of variables rather than for broad populations and that multivariate interaction effects are common and important. The inductive use of process tracing is particularly effective when a researcher anticipates that the potential interaction terms would be difcult or impossible to theorize upon deductively before developing intimate knowledge of a critical juncture. In such instances, the researcher can begin with a preliminary understanding of the possible causes that selected one path over another, but as the researcher proceeds, whether through general soaking and poking in secondary accounts or primary research through interviews and archival work, she/he should work to be attentive to variables or interactions that she/he had failed to anticipate.13
13

Other qualitative methods for exploring interaction effects, though less relevant to interactions in the contingent period of path-dependent arguments, include deductive process tracing and typological theorizing (Elman 2005; George and Bennett 2005). Like all methods of causal inference, these tools are imperfect and open to possible inferential errors, but they offer a different set of methodological trade-offs from that involved in statistical analysis. Generally, this combination of qualitative methods for addressing interaction effects gives up considerable parsimony relative to statistical models, but it reduces the risks of omitting relevant variables or interaction terms.

264

Andrew Bennett and Colin Elman

For example, Gosta Esping-Andersen used descriptive data and several OLS regressions (without interaction terms) to identify three types of welfare capitalism: the liberal, conservative, and social democratic regime types. These types represent different combinations of social stratication, employment policies, and de-commodication strategies allowing workers a standard of living independent of their work. Esping-Andersen hypothesizes that the type of welfare state that emerges in a particular case is a function of the nature of class mobilization, class-political coalition structures, and the historical legacy of regime institutionalization. To examine the interactions among these factors, Esping-Andersen used case studies of the United States, Sweden, and Germany. He nds that in Sweden a red-green coalition of workers and farmers put in place generous benets for workers and subsidies for farmers, whereas in the United States a similar coalition was less powerful because the labor-intensive South blocked more generous welfare-state benets. In Germany, labor-intensive agriculture and conservative social and religious forces prevented the emergence of a red-green coalition, leading to highly stratied and only modestly redistributive welfare policies (Esping-Andersen 1990). It is hard to imagine that Esping-Andersen could have deductively theorized a priori all the particular variables and interactions that constituted the contingencies leading to these path-dependent outcomes. In sum, as case study methods allow inferences on complex events and interactions even when only one or a few cases exist, they are useful tools for analyzing path dependency. This is particularly true for the contingent period in path-dependency arguments, as this period is by denition difcult to explain in terms of established theories. Case studies can also be valuable in providing a clearer understanding of the causal mechanisms that lie behind the creation and reproduction of institutions and of the interactions among these mechanisms that lead to either the lock-in or breakdown of these institutions.

4 Conclusion

Complex causal relations are difcult to study with traditional statistical and qualitative methods. We have focused in this essay on the contributions that case study methods can make to the analysis of complex causal relationships, building on Halls assertion that small-n research methods can help narrow the gap between our ontologies and our methodologies (Hall 2003, 375). But these are observations of a work in progress, and we anticipate that over time both qualitative and quantitative methodologists will further develop tools for addressing causal complexity. There are many kinds of potential complexity in social life, including path dependence, interaction effects, tipping points, strategic interaction, two-directional causality or feedback loops, equinality, and multinality. We have focused here on case study methods for addressing path dependence, arguing that process tracing and detailed comparisons of a small number of cases, especially when used together, can help to unravel these kinds of complexity. The challenge of developing and testing theories about complex phenomena is still more daunting when various combinations of kinds of complexity may be present, but even here case study methods, because they allow for detailed study of individual cases, can be helpful. As the social sciences attempt to grapple with ever more sophisticated forms of complexity, both statistical and qualitative methodologists will need to continue innovating so that our methodologies do not fall behind our ontologies.

Complex Causal Relations and Case Study Methods

265

References
Abbott, Andrew. 1995. Sequence analysis: New methods for old ideas. Annual Review of Sociology 21:93113. . 2001. Time matters: On theory and method. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Aminzade, Ronald. 1992. Historical sociology and time. Sociological Methods and Research 20:45680. Arthur, W. Brian. 1989. Competing technologies and lock-in by historical small events. The Economic Journal 99:11631. . 1994. Increasing returns and path dependency in the economy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Arrow, Kenneth J. 1994. Foreword to Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy by W. Brian Arthur. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Barkin, Samuel, and Bruce Cronin. 1994. Changing norms and the rules of sovereignty. International Organization 48:10730. Bennett, Andrew. 2006. Stirring the frequentist pot with a dash of Bayes. Political Analysis 10.1093/pan/ mpj011. Bennett, Andrew, and Colin Elman. 2006. Qualitative research: Recent developments in case study methods. Annual Review of Political Science, pp. 45576. Boas, Taylor C. Forthcoming. Conceptualizing Continuity and Change: The Composite-Standard Model of Path Dependence. Journal of Theoretical Politics. 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. Brambor, Thomas, William Roberts Clark, and Matt Golder. 2006. Understanding interaction models: Improving empirical analyses. Political Analysis 14:6382. Braumoeller, Bear. 2003. Causal complexity and the study of politics. Political Analysis 11:20933. Campbell, Donald. 1975. Degrees of freedom and the case study. Comparative Political Studies 8:17893. Collier, David, Henry E. Brady, and Jason Seawright. 2004. Sources of leverage in causal inference: Toward an alternative view of methodology. In Rethinking social inquiry: Diverse tools, shared standards, ed. Henry E. Brady and David Collier, 22971. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleeld. Collier, David A., and Ruth Collier. 1991. Shaping the political arena: Critical junctures, the labor movement, and regime dynamics in Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Collier, David, and James Mahoney. 1996. Insights and pitfalls: Selection bias in qualitative research. World Politics 49:5691. Collier, David, James Mahoney, and Jason Seawright. 2004. Claiming too much: Warnings about selection bias. In Rethinking social inquiry: Diverse tools, shared standards, ed. Henry E. Brady and David Collier, 85102. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleeld. Crouch, Colin, and Henry Farrell. 2004. Breaking the path of institutional development: Alternatives to the new determinism in political economy. Rationality and Society 16:543. David, Paul A. 1985. Clio and the economics of QWERTY. American Economic Review 75:3327. . 2001. Path dependence, its critics, and the quest for historical economics. In Evolution and path dependence in economic ideas: Past and present, ed. Pierre Garrouste and Stavros Ioannides, 1540. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. Dessler, David. 2003. Explanation and scientic progress. In Progress in international relations theory: Appraising the eld, ed. Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman, 381404. Cambridge: MIT Press. Elman, Colin. 2005. Explanatory typologies in qualitative studies of international politics. International Organization 59:293326. Ertmann, Thomas. 1997. Birth of the Leviathan: Building states and regimes in medieval and early modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Esping-Andersen, Gosta. 1990. The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gacek, Christopher. 1994. The logic of force: The dilemma of limited war in American foreign policy. New York: Columbia University Press. Gaddis, John Lewis. 1982. Strategies of containment: A critical appraisal of postwar American national security policy. New York: Oxford University Press. Gains, Francesca, Peter C. John, and Gerry Stoker. 2005. Path dependency and the reform of English local government. Public Administration 83:2545. George, Alexander L., and Andrew Bennett. 2005. Case studies and theory development in the social sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gerring, John. 2001. Social science methodology: A criterial framework. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

266

Andrew Bennett and Colin Elman

Goertz, Gary, and James Mahoney. 2006. A tale of two cultures: Contrasting quantitative and qualitative research. Political Analysis 10.1093/pan/mpj017. Goldstone, Jack A. 1998. Initial conditions, general laws, path dependence, and explanation in historical sociology. The American Journal of Sociology 104:82945. Gorges, Michael J. 2001. New institutionalist explanations for institutional change: A note of caution. Politics 21:13745. Greener, Ian. 2005. The potential of path dependence in political studies. Politics 25:6272. 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 15:16183. Hall, Peter. 2003. Aligning ontology and methodology in comparative research. In Comparative-historical analysis in the social sciences, ed. James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, 373404. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ikenberry, John. 1999. Institutions, strategic restraint, and the persistence of American postwar order. International Security 23:4378. Isaac, Larry W, Debra A. Street, and Stan J. Knapp. 1994. Analyzing historical contingency with formal methods: The case of the relief explosion and 1968. Sociological Methods and Research 23:11441. Jervis, Robert. 1991. Domino beliefs and strategic behavior. In Dominoes and bandwagons: Strategic beliefs and great power competition in the Eurasian rimland, ed. Robert Jervis and Jack Snyder, 2050. New York: Oxford University Press. . 1997. System effects: Complexity in political and social life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. . 2000. Timing and interaction in politics: A comment on Pierson. Studies in American Political Development 14:1. Kato, Junko. 1996. Review article: Institutions and rationality in politics: Three varieties of neo-institutionalists. British Journal of Political Science 26:55382. Kay, Adrian. 2005. A critique of the use of path dependency in policy studies. Public Administration 83:55371. King, Gary, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba. 1994. Designing social inquiry: Scientic inference in qualitative research. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Krasner, Stephen D. 1988. Sovereignty: An institutional perspective. Comparative Political Studies 21:6694. Liebowitz, S. J., and Stephen Margolis. 1990. The fable of the keys. Journal of Law and Economics 33:125. . 1995. Path dependence, lock-in and history. Journal of Law, Economics and Organization 11: 20526. Lohmann, Suzanne. 1994. Dynamics of informational cascades: The Monday demonstrations in Leipzig, East Germany, 19891991. World Politics 47:42101. Luebbert, Gregory. 1991. Liberalism, fascism, or social democracy: Social classes and the political origins of regimes in interwar Europe. New York: Oxford University Press. Mahoney, James. 2000. Path dependence in historical sociology. Theory and Society 29:50748. . 2001. The legacies of liberalism: Path dependence and political regimes in Central America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. . 2006. Analyzing path dependence: Lessons from the social sciences. In Understanding change: Models, methodologies, and metaphors, ed. A. Wimmer and R. Ko ssler, 12939. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Mahoney, James, and Daniel Schensul. 2006. Historical context and path dependence. In Oxford handbook of contextual political analysis, ed. R. E. Goodin and C. Tilly, 45471. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Meyer, John W., and Brian Rowan. 1991. Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. In The new institutionalism in organizational analysis, ed. W. Powell and P. DiMaggio, 4162. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Page, Scott E. 2006. Path dependence. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 1:87115. Pierson, Paul. 2000. Increasing returns, path dependence, and the study of politics. American Political Science Review 94:25167. . 2004. Politics in time: History, institutions, and social analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Powell, Walter W., and Paul J. DiMaggio, eds. 1991. The new institutionalism in organizational analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ragin, Charles. 1987. The comparative method: Moving beyond qualitative and quantitative strategies. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rosenberg, Gerald N. 1991. The hollow hope: Can courts bring about social change? Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Schelling, Thomas. 1978. Micromotives and macrobehavior. New York: Norton.

Complex Causal Relations and Case Study Methods

267

Signorino, Curtis. 1998. Strategic interaction and the statistical analysis of international conict. American Political Science Review 93:27997. Spruyt, Hendrik. 1994. The sovereign state and its competitors: An analysis of systems change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Thelen, Kathleen. 1999. Historical institutionalism in comparative politics. Annual Review of Political Science 2:369404. . 2003. How institutions evolve: Insights from comparative-historical analysis. In Comparative-historical analysis in the social sciences, ed. James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, 20840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vasquez, John A., and Colin Elman, eds. 2003. Realism and the balancing of power: A new debate. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Zucker, Lynne G. 1991. The role of institutionalization in cultural persistence. In The new institutionalism in organizational analysis, ed. Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio, 83107. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.