LFU:online

The learning outcome would be for participants to have a working understanding of process tracing as a case study method. They should be able to understand what types of causal claims are being investigated, what type of empirical material enables causal inferences, and how to combine process tracing with other methods.

The course explores the three core elements of process tracing, focusing first on the theory-side of what we are actually 'tracing' (i.e. causal processes, aka mechanisms). In this section, we will discuss what constitutes a mechanistic explanation and how we can theorize them in practice, unpacking causal processes into parts composed of entities engaging in activities. In the second section, we turn to how we can make evidence-based causal inferences using within-case, 'mechanistic' evidence, defined as the traces left by the operation of causal processes. Finally, we will deal with case selection and how process tracing studies can be combined with comparative methods, including QCA