Notes on the process tracing method in Political Science and International Relations
Keywords:
process tracing, Causal mechanisms, Research methodology, ConstructivismCopyright (c) 2022 Alberto Castillo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Most of the academic literature on the process tracing method has been developed in English. This paper aims to provide a detailed description and reflection, in Spanish, of the most relevant scientific literature on the process tracing method with an application to Political Science and International Relations. To achieve this objective, the article establishes a theoretical framework of analysis of the process tracing method from social constructivism to articulate its applicability to different scientific work.
This paper is relevant as an input for the various kinds of social research which use the process tracing method as a qualitative technique. Increasingly, it has had a greater impact among researchers of Political Science and International Relations due to its sensitivity in the analysis of the complexity of historical events, although it should be clarified that this method had its origins in cognitive psychology. Here it has been used to detect the intermediate steps in the mental cognitive processes of human beings' decision making.
The article starts from the contextualization of the method, with a reductionist vision to understand the decision making of the agents, until reaching an understanding and extension of the structure with the aim of theorizing (developing theories) and explaining individual cases. Therefore, the first part of the text deals with the conceptualization of the process tracing method from the different definitions to extract and identify the essential features of the method: processes, mechanisms, and evidence. Firstly, the causal process that intervenes or connects the independent variables and the outcome of the dependent variable is addressed. The method is predominantly descriptive and qualitative, thus implying several causal chains that may be overlapping. However, it also requires a detailed description process. The applicability of the method is implicitly linked to the need to understand the necessary conditions that will produce a specific result. Therefore, the type of research may generate types of variants focused on theory or case studies. Secondly, causal mechanisms cannot be dissected into specific events, but rather must be analyzed from their own interaction and dynamics. Thus, they should not be confused with intervening variables. Thirdly, finding the relevant evidence for the object of study and its relationship with the hypothesis is the most important part of process tracing. From here, different types of evidence must be addressed to assess the probative value of the evidence and its relevance.
The process tracing method allows the researcher to choose, according to the resources available, between adopting a deductive or inductive input. That said, it is generally carried out through the combination of deductive and inductive elements at different stages of the research.
From the social constructivist side, the use of the process tracing method is more common because of the interpretive component, especially with regards to the structure and agency debate. It is with information from historical archives and secondary sources that process tracing is intended to be carried out. However, specialized interviews to collect detailed information from elites can also be useful for understanding case studies of the political and international phenomena to be studied. The success of the process depends on having as much information as possible to understand the different causal mechanisms, and conducting the interviews allows corroborating the information obtained from different sources and finally reconstructing a series of events. In other words, process tracing allows a triangulation of different sources to achieve maximum accuracy in the understanding of the events.
The method, like any other, has strengths and weaknesses, which, depending on the researcher's decision, must be weighed for its correct use. Some of the positive aspects of the method are the possibilities of broadening the explanatory perspective of causal mechanisms, the ability to have sufficient and necessary information to test the hypothesis, the greater emphasis on understanding rather than on the solution, and finally, how this allows an eclectic approach to build bridges between different schools of thought. As for the weaknesses of the method, some of these can be related to its qualitative orientation, and because of which it is not possible to have total certainty of the facts that are studied. Therefore, we resort to representations that are extracted from different sources of information, which requires a lot of time and a large amount of information. It also requires establishing up to what level of analysis to reach; it does not allow theoretical generalization since the results would end up simplifying the reality. Finally, the barriers that the researcher must overcome with the process tracing method are fundamentally the promotion of a pluralistic methodology and epistemology, and the normative and ethical elements of the case study, since losing the contextual element leaves the causal mechanisms without explanatory elements.
Thus, this paper intends to bring together some of the most relevant contributions from different authors to deepen the different variants that can be assumed in the process tracing method, and in accordance with the objectives and research questions. Likewise, the guiding thread of this paper is found in the understanding of the causal mechanism, the theoretical and empirical variants, the testing of evidence, and the deductive and inductive inputs that will allow articulating the objectives and answering the research questions. Undoubtedly, the causal mechanism is the fundamental basis of the process tracing method in both its theoretical and empirical variants, the evidence tests that can be performed and the deductive or inductive inputs.
The researcher is encouraged to extract the empirical manifestations or testing of the theory from each of the parts of the causal mechanism that is presented in the case study, either through events or study events. In this way it will be possible to contextualize or conceptualize the causal mechanism, carry out the operationalization of the causal mechanism to verify the theory, and finally, collect the empirical evidence to carry out causal inferences and verify the causal mechanism and its parts as predicted according to the sequence of historical events.
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