MET103 – «Strå i vinden og rykende pistoler» – sammendrag av pensumartikkel
Understanding Process Tracing
David Collier, University of California, Berkeley
ABSTRACT Process tracing is a fundamental tool of qualitative analysis. This method is often invoked by scholars who carry out within-case analysis based on qualitative data, yet frequently it is neither adequately understood nor rigorously applied. This deficit moti-vates this article, which offers a new framework for carrying out process tracing. The refor-mulation integrates discussions of process tracing and causal-process observations, gives greater attention to description as a key contribution, and emphasizes the causal sequence in which process-tracing observations can be situated. In the current period of major inno-vation in quantitative tools for causal inference, this reformulation is part of a wider, par-allel effort to achieve greater systematization of qualitative methods. A key point here is that these methods can add inferential leverage that is often lacking in quantitative anal-ysis. This article is accompanied by online teaching exercises, focused on four examples from American politics, two from comparative politics, three from international relations, and one from public health/epidemiology.