Is There a (Viable) Crucial-Case Method?
Abstract
Case study researchers use diverse methods to select their cases, a matter that has elicited considerable comment and no little consternation. Of all these methods, perhaps the most controversial is the crucial-case method, first proposed by Harry Eckstein several decades ago. Since Eckstein’s influential essay, the crucial-case approach has been used in a multitude of studies across several social science disciplines and has come to be recognized as a staple of the case study method. Yet the idea of any single case playing a crucial (or critical) role is not widely accepted. In this article, the method of the crucial case is explored, and a limited defense (somewhat less expansive than that envisioned by Eckstein) of that method is undertaken. A second method of case-selection, closely associated with the logic of the crucial case, is introduced: the pathway case.
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1.
1. For present purposes, no important distinction is made among the following near synonyms: confirm, corroborate, demonstrate, prove, and verify. Similarly, I do not distinguish between disconfirm and falsify.
2.
2. A third position, which purports to be neither Popperian or Bayesian, has been articulated by Mayo (1996, chapter 6). From this perspective, the same idea is articulated as a matter of “severe tests.”
3.
3. It should be noted that Tsai’s (2007) conclusions do not rest solely on this crucial case. Indeed, she uses a broad range of methodological tools, encompassing case-study and cross-case methods.
4.
4. Also see the discussion in Eckstein (1975) and Lijphart (1969). (For additional examples of case studies disconfirming general propositions of a deterministic nature, see Allen, 1965; Dion, 1998; Lipset, Trow, and Coleman, 1956; Njolstad, 1990; Reilly, 2000; and Rogowski, 1995).
5.
5. Granted, insofar as case-study analysis provides a window into causal mechanisms and causal mechanisms are integral to a given theory, a single case may be enlisted to confirm or disconfirm a proposition. However, if the case study upholds a posited pattern of X and Y covariation and finds fault only with the stipulated causal mechanism, it would be more accurate to say that the study forces a reformulation of a given theory rather than its confirmation or disconfirmation.
6.
6. This portion of the article dovetails with other efforts to situate case-selection procedures within a large N cross-case sample (Coppedge, 2002; Lieberman, 2005; Seawright & Gerring, 2006).
7.
7. This may be known as a unidirectional or asymmetric cause (Clark, 2006).
8.
8. Qualitative Comparative Analysis (Ragin, 2000), for example, presumes causal sufficiency for each of the designated causal paths.
9.
9. An INUS condition refers to an Insufficient but Necessary part of a condition, which is itself Unnecessary but Sufficient for a particular result. Thus, when one identifies a short-circuit as the cause of a fire, one is saying, in effect, that the fire was caused by a short-circuit in conjunction with some other background factors (e.g., oxygen) that were also necessary to that outcome. But one is not implying that a short-circuit was necessary to that fire, which might have been (under different circumstances) caused by other factors. See Mackie (1965/1993).
10.
10. Ross tests these various causal mechanisms with cross-country data, using various proxies for these concepts in the benchmark model and observing the effect of these—presumably intermediary—effects on the main variable of interest (oil resources). This is a good example of how cross-case evidence can be mustered to shed light on causal mechanisms; one is not limited to case-study formats. Still, as Ross notes (2001), these tests are by no means definitive. Indeed, the coefficient on the key oil variable remains fairly constant, except in circumstances in which the sample is severely constrained.
11.
11. GDPpc data are from World Bank (2003). Muslims and European languages are coded by the author. Ethnic fractionalization is drawn from Alesina, Devleeschauwer, Easterly, Kurlat, and Wacziarg (2003).
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