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This article explores the relationship between the method of process
tracing and the data collection technique of elite interviewing. The
process tracing method has become an increasingly used and cited
tool in qualitative research, a trend that has recently accelerated
with the publication of Alexander George and Andrew Bennett's text
(2005), Case Studies and
Theory Development in the Social Sciences. That book
outlines and explores the process tracing method in detail,
highlighting its advantages for exploring causal processes and
analyzing complex decision-making. Yet while the book presents a
rigorous and compelling account of the process tracing method and
its critical importance to case study research, the value of the
method itself remains contested in some quarters, and there are
aspects of George and Bennett's treatment of it that require further
exploration.

This article discusses process tracing as a methodology for testing hypotheses in the social sciences. With process tracing tests, the analyst combines preexisting generalizations with specific observations from within a single case to make causal inferences about that case. Process tracing tests can be used to help establish that (1) an initial event or process took place, (2) a subsequent outcome also occurred, and (3) the former was a cause of the latter. The article focuses on the logic of different process tracing tests, including hoop tests, smoking gun tests, and straw in the wind tests. New criteria for judging the strength of these tests are developed using ideas concerning the relative importance of necessary and sufficient conditions. Similarities and differences between process tracing and the deductive-nomological model of explanation are explored.

"Dynamic Process Tracing Methods in the Study of Political Decision Making" published on by Oxford University Press.

If inclusive business is to realise wide and sustained development impacts, it is likely to depend on crowding in of other public and private actors. Assessing the contribution of inclusive business to crowding in is difficult because the phenomenon usually only manifests after project completion, and the complex operating environment complicates the process of evidencing a link between intervention and outcome. With donors placing increasing emphasis on demonstrating impact, innovative approaches to assess crowding in are needed. This article presents an adapted form of process tracing to assess the contribution of inclusive business to crowding in. It reports on the contribution of CREATE, an inclusive agribusiness project, to the crowding in of malting companies in Ethiopia's barley value chain. Though predominantly focusing on demonstrating a programme's contributions to crowding in, the article offers suggestions for how this process tracing-based exercise may support the fostering of inclusive agribusiness practices more broadly.

This article introduces comparative process tracing (CPT) as a two-step methodological approach that combines theory, chronology, and comparison. For each studied case, the processes leading "from A to B" are reconstructed and analyzed in terms of ideal-type social mechanisms and then compared by making use of the identified mechanisms and ideal-type periodization. Central elements of CPT are path dependence, critical junctures and focal points, social mechanisms, context, periodization, and counterfactual analysis. The CPT approach is described, discussed, and compared with more formal and deterministic forms of process tracing, which are found to be less fruitful for systematic comparison.

This article discusses the potential of case study and process-tracing methods for studying lobbying and framing in the European Union (EU). It argues that case studies and process tracing allow us to explore different sets of questions than large-N and quantitative approaches and to shed light on the mechanisms that contribute to policy change. Through these methods it is possible to study long-term processes and under-researched areas, to analyse the social construction of frames and to single out the conditions that lead to successful framing. In order to show the advantages of case studies and process tracing, illustrative examples drawn from the case study of EU foreign policy towards the Israeli–Palestinian conflict are provided.

Este artigo objetiva discorrer sobre as capacidades do método de rastre-amento de processos (process tracing) de produzir explicações causais válidas. Nesse sentido, o presente trabalho propõe colaborar com as discussões sobre Metodologia de Pesquisa, em específico nas áreas da Ciência Política e Relações Internacionais. Procura-se abordar os objetivos do artigo pela observância dos seguintes pontos: a) as características e potencialidades do process tracing em desenho de pesquisa; b) as suas capacidades de produção de inferências causais válidas; e c) os testes empíricos que permitem maior alavancagem inferencial através do rastreamento de processos. Conclui-se que o método apresenta capacidades robustas de auxiliar pesquisadores em suas pesquisas nos campos de Ciências Sociais e Relações Internacionais.

AbstractEvaluators who take a complexity‐aware approach must consider tradeoffs related to theoretical parsimony, falsifiability, and measurement validity. These tradeoffs may be particularly pronounced with ex‐post evaluation designs in which program theory development and monitoring frameworks are often completed before the evaluator is engaged. In this chapter, we argue that theory‐based evaluation (TBE) approaches can address unique ex‐post evaluation challenges that complexity‐aware evaluation (CAE) alone cannot, and that these two sets of approaches are complimentary. We will outline strategies that evaluators may use to conduct rigorous ex‐post evaluations of democracy, human rights, and governance (DRG) interventions that merge CAE's inductive approaches with a theory‐testing structure. It will illustrate these strategies with two case studies of ex‐post evaluation using process tracing (PT).

Resume Cet article compare deux recherches menées en Amérique latine sur des transformations de politiques publiques. Dans un cas l'entrée fut déductive, dans l'autre inductive. Malgré ces différences initiales, les résultats finaux de ces recherches – des explications historiques stylisées, jugées minimalement suffisantes – ont un statut épistémologique similaire. Comparer ces recherches permet de contribuer de deux manières à la discussion sur les méthodes qualitatives et historiques en science politique. La première est de donner à voir l'aptitude particulière du process tracing à articuler, dans le cours d'une même étude de cas, des moments de raisonnement inductifs et déductifs, au-delà de l'opposition d'inspiration positiviste entre les deux démarches. La seconde est de montrer que cette articulation permet d'expliciter au maximum les critères mobilisés par le chercheur lorsqu'il est amené à juger, en pratique, de la suffisance de son explication historique.

This thesis examines urban partition in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, and how its changing roles and shifting perceptions in a post-conflict setting reflect power relations, and their constant renegotiation. Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, was officially divided in 1974 in the aftermath of an eighteen-year-long conflict between the island's Turkish- and Greek-Cypriot communities. As a result, a heavily militarized Buffer Zone, established as an emergency measure against perpetuation of intercommunal violence, has been cutting through its historic centre ever since. This thesis departs from a genuine interest in the material and ideational dimensions of urban partition. How is it constructed, not merely in physical terms but in the minds of the societies affected by conflict? How is it established in official and everyday discourses? What kinds of mechanisms have been developed to maintain it, and make an inseparable part of the urban experience? Moreover, taking into account the consensus in relevant literature pertaining to the imperative for its removal, this thesis is inquiring into the relevance of peace agreements to overcoming urban partition. For this purpose, it also looks at narratives and practices that have attempted to contest it. The examples examined in this thesis offer pregnant analytical moments to understand Nicosia's Buffer Zone as a dynamic social construct, accommodating multiple visions of and for the city. Its space 'in-between' facilitates encounters between various actors, accommodates new meanings, socio-spatial practices and diverse imaginaries. In this sense, urban partition is explored in this thesis as a phenomenon that transcends scales as well as temporalities, entwining past, present, and future.