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This paper aims to clarify the meaning, and explain the utility, of the case study method, a method often practiced but little understood. A "case study," I argue, is best defined as an intensive study of a single unit with an aim to generalize across a larger set of units. Case studies rely on the same sort of Co variational evidence utilized in non-case study research. Thus, the case study method is correctly understood as a particular way of defining cases, not a way of analyzing cases or a way of modeling causal relations. I show that this understanding of the subject illuminates some of the persistent ambiguities of case study work, ambiguities that are, to some extent, intrinsic to the enterprise. The travails of the case study within the discipline of political science are also rooted in an insufficient appreciation of the methodological tradeoffs that this method calls forth. This paper presents the familiar contrast between case study and non-case study work as a series of characteristic strengths and weaknesses--affinities--rather than as antagonistic approaches to the empirical world. In the end, the perceived hostility between case study and non-case study research is largely unjustified and, perhaps, deserves to be regarded as a misconception. Indeed, the strongest conclusion to arise from this methodological examination concerns the complementarity of single-unit and cross-unit research designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of cause-and-effect relationships plays an indispensable role in policy research, both for applied problem solving and for building theories of policy processes. Historical process tracing has emerged as a promising method for revealing causal mechanisms at a level of precision unattainable through statistical techniques. Yet historical analyses often produce dauntingly complex causal explanations, with numerous factors emerging as necessary but insufficient causes of an outcome. This article describes an approach that renders complex causal narratives more analytically tractable by establishing measurement criteria for ranking the relative importance of component causes. By focusing on subjectively useful measurement attributes, the approach is well suited to the policy sciences' unique combination of explicitly normative aspirations and a commitment to the systematic assessment of causal claims. KEY WORDS: causation, causal importance, process tracing, policy analysis, qualitative research methods, Central to the aims of public policies, and the political constituencies supporting them, is the hope of having a causal impact on some aspect of the world. It is hoped [...]

Claims for the inherent authority of the executive over issues of national security imply that the adopters of the Constitution relied on prior British definitions equating executive power and royal prerogative. These claims cannot survive the scrutiny of key sources, including Locke's treatment of the federative power in his Second Treatise, the Federal Convention's debates over the presidency, and the famous 1793 exchange between Hamilton and Madison over the nature and sources of presidential power. When Hamilton relied on the Vesting Clause to stake his claim, he was engaging in interpretive innovatio, not providing a historically faithful account of how the presidency had been contrived., On Bastille Day, 2005, the Personnel Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee held hearings on the subject of 'Military Justice and Detention Policy in the War on Terror.' Senator [...]