Focusing on the Case

1. Focusing on the Case David Byrne Durham University

2. ‘... a practice of social and historical explanation, sensitive to structure but aware of contingency, is not yet at hand. We must build it as we go along, by reconstructing the available tools of social science and social theory. Its absence denies us a credible account of how transformation happens.’ (Unger, R.M. (1998) Democracy Realized London: Verso 24)

3. What is a case? • An entity belonging to one or more ensembles of entities - i.e. categories - but capable of changing category membership • A configuration – comprised of an interacting set of causal elements • A complex system • A dynamic entity • An entity capable of undergoing metamorphosis – phase-shift

4. Cases as Complex Systems In the 1958 Annual Report of the Rockefeller Foundation, Weaver distinguished carefully among problems involving a limited number of variables with no interaction – the simple – the domain of classical mechanics; problems involving massive numbers of variables with no interaction – the disorganized complex – the domain of statistical mechanics; and problems involving relatively large numbers of variables which were interrelated (interact in conventional statistical terminology) – the domain of organized complexity – a domain in need of a methodological programme. If we think if cases as complex systems then we need methods which recognize that complexity understood in Weaver’s terms.

5. A Rationale Implicit in most social scientific notions of case analysis is the idea that the objects of investigation are similar enough and separate enough to permit treating them as comparable instances of the same general phenomenon. At a minimum, most social scientists believe that their methods are powerful enough to overwhelm the uniqueness inherent in objects and events in the social world. …. The audience for social science expect the results of social scientific investigation to be based on systematic appraisal of empirical evidence. Use of evidence that is repetitious and extensive in form, as when it is based on observations of many cases or of varied cases, has proved to be a dependable way for social scientists to substantiate their arguments. C.C. Ragin Introduction to What is a case? London: Sage 1992 1

6. Ragin Fuzzy-Set Social Science 2000 ‘For causation, the main contrast is between the conventional view of causation as a contest between individual variables to explain variation in an outcome and the diversity-oriented view that causation is both conjunctural and multiple. In the conventional view, each single causal condition, conceived as an analytically distinct variable, has an independent impact on the outcome. In the diversity-oriented view, causes combine in different and sometimes contradictory ways to produce the same outcome, revealing different paths.’ (2000 15) In other words there is more than one way to skin a cat.

7. Policy research. The concerns of policy researchers sometimes diverge from those of academic researchers. For example, policy researchers, especially those concerned with social as opposed to economic policy, are often more interested in different kinds of cases and their different fates than they are in the estimation of the net causal effect of a variable across a large, encompassing population of observations. After all, a common goal of social policy is to make decisive interventions, not to move average levels or rates up or down by some minuscule fraction. Rihoux and Ragin ‘QCA – State of the Art and Prospects’ 2004 18 http://www.asu.edu/clas/polisci/cqrm/APSA2004/RihouxRagin.pdf

8. Workshop Programme • Numerical taxonomy through time – exploring trajectories of cases and classifications. • Qualitative Comparative Analysis and Related Techniques • Moving from the Qualitative to the Quantitative and back again – NVIVO in combination with QCA • The Qualitative Case Study

9. Key Themes emerging from the Workshop • The nature of meaningful evidence when dealing with complex systems. • The need for a politics of methodology. • The relationship between research and pedagogy.