1. Understanding Process-tracing

2. Essay Question
What are the major elements and usages of Process-Tracing?
What are the advantages and limits of it?
Please expain with at least two existing exemplary researches that utilized Process-Tracing.

3. Process-Tracing in Political Science
A method of within-case analysis to evaluate causal processes (Alexander George and Timothy McKeown)
Attempts to draw descriptive and causal inferences from diagnostic pieces of evidence
part of a temporal sequence of events or phenomena
Each decision in a sequence, each set of measurable perceptions
The level of the individual actors, written records

4. Major Elements and Usages
Oberservations within each sequence of events
(each political unit, individual attitudes, or behaviors)
Increasing relevant observations : evaluate the theory
Focusing on the unfolding of events or situations over time
Requires finding diagnostic evidence that provides the basis for descriptive and causal inference.

5. Advantages Help to overcome the dilemma of the small-n
Provide a test of hypotheses and observations
Can add leverage in quantitative analysis
Enable the researcher to develop a descriptive generalization
Increase confidence in the findings of social science

6. Limits Extensions of the more fundamental logic of analysis
Confrontation of the full set of issues in causal inference
Focusing on particular set of motivations and perceptions
(accurate reasons to show the independece of the outcome)
Should provide more opportunities to refute a theory

7. Exemplary Research (1-1)
Nina Tannenwald’s work
“Stigmatizing the Bomb: Origins of the Nuclear Taboo,” International Security (2005)
The existence of nuclear taboo is a cause of the nonuse of nuclear weapons by the U.S. since 1945
Nuclear taboo strongly influenced later U.S. nuclear policy

8. Exemplary Research (1-2)
Crucial task in her study: the sequence of event
Horrified reaction did in fact occur
How widespread it was
The elements of this reaction did indeed add up to a nuclear taboo
Focusing on decision-makers actions and intentions
(Data: official documents, memoirs, and biographies)
DV: the nuclear taboo

9. Exemplary Research (2-1)
Daniel Lerner’s work
“The Passing of Traditional Society”
Illustrate a dominant paradigm in the field of development and focusing on a particular approach to the modernization of the Middle Eastern region specifically.
the intensive description of a Turkish village
Focusing on specific observations of social attributes/interactions

10. Exemplary Research (2-2)
‘Rapid modernization’ is driven by the election of a new national governing party and infrastructure
DV: Modernization of the village
IV: Electoral shift and the building new infrastructure
Focusing on the field research
(data: intensive interviewing by field assistants)
Rich and detailed description of variables

11. Q&A