Anecdotal Evidence: The Role of Narrative in Process Tracing

American Political Science Association, Annual Meeting,

September 2-5, 2010, Washington, DC

by

Peter Starke

University of Bremen

Collaborative Research Center 597 ‘Transformations of the State’

Bremen, Germany

peter.starke@sfb597.uni-bremen.de

First draft, please do not quote without permission

1
Abstract

This paper critically discusses the status of narrative in political science methods. After

reviewing the literature for existing definitions of the concept of narrative, it provides a new

definition that serves as the background for the subsequent discussion of the merits of

narrative as a presentational mode for process tracing analyses. It is argued that narrative is

particularly suitable because of its temporality and flexibility. While there is no agreement in

the literature about the attributes of a ‘good’ process tracing narrative, a number of standards

can be formulated. A process tracing narrative should be judged in terms of theory-

guidedness, precision, adequacy, depth and closure. There are, however, at least four

weaknesses of the narrative form, namely, the problem of temporal vs. causal order, agency

bias and the problem of emplotment. While there are no serious alternative to narrative when

it comes to presenting process tracing analyses, some presentational forms can complement

narrative and help to mitigate its weaknesses.

2
1. Introduction

Within the literature on case study methods in political science, the question of narrative is

notable for its absence. Apart from a few counterexamples (Büthe 2002; Ruback 2011),

political scientists seem to take the fact that case studied are usually presented in narrative

form simply as a given. ‘Writing up’ a case study is superficially thought of as a matter of

good style. Students are advised to consult writing style guides such as Strunk and White’s

Elements of Style (1999 [1918]) or emulate ‘good’ case study writers (Van Evera 1997: 108;

Trachtenberg 2006: 197).

This stands in stark contrast with other scientific disciplines.1 In sociology, the issue of

narrative has been intensely discussed from at least two angles: first, from the point of view of

historical sociology, as part of a larger debate on the merits and limitations of historical

sociology compared to history or sociology tout court (Kiser 1996; Aminzade 1992); and,

secondly, from sociologists who claimed that the issues of temporality, sequencing and event

should be reflected in the methods of sociology (Abbott 1995; Abell 2004; Griffin 1993).

Moreover, there has been a huge debate about narrative in history. From the 1960s onwards,

several waves of discussion around the concept of narrative have taken place among

historians, to a large extent in the journal History and Theory (see Roberts 2001b, for an

excellent overview).2 The debate has revolved around issues such as narrative and causal

explanation, narrative and identity, narrative and human nature, and narrative and truth.

Neither debate, however, has had a discernible impact on political science. Here, narrative is

not a methodological issue. Despite its programmatic label, even the Analytic Narratives
1
On ‘archaeological narratives’, see Pluciennik (1999).
2
While the association of historiography with narrative seems obvious, it is not a necessary condition. W.H.
Dray, for example, points to the existence of a largely cross-sectional or ‘portrait of an age’ type of
historiography (2001 [1971]: 26).

3
project does not deal extensively with the methodological implications of the narrative form

(Bates et al. 1998). When reading the methodological parts of the book, one does not learn

much on what narrative is and why it should be used by political scientists. Analytic

Narratives is arguably much stronger on its theoretical aspects and the empirical content than

on methods.

A partial exception to this state of affairs is interpretivist political science (Patterson and

Monroe 1998; van Eeten 2007; Yanow and Schwartz-Shea 2006; see also Kohler Riessman

2007). Scholars from this camp often start out from the notion that narratives are ubiquitous

and that humans tend to think and perceive the world in narrative terms. Yet interpretivists

have studied narratives more as an object of research – for example, the role of narrative in

the formation of collective identities (Polletta 1998) – and not as a presentational mode of

their own research. This literature is therefore less relevant for the questions asked in this

paper.

Why has there been no ‘revival of narrative’ (Stone 1979) in mainstream political science?

Perhaps this has to do with the scienticist culture of the discipline compared to, for instance,

history:

‘[N]arrative analysis is not something easily assimilated into the social-science

research agenda. With its long association with the humanities and the “story-
telling” methods of historians, the concept of narrative, after all, has long fulfilled
the role of social science’s “epistemological other” – a mode of representation that
was, apparently, discursive, rather than quantitative; non-explanatory, rather than
conditionally propositional; and non-theoretical, rather than one of the
theoretically-driven social sciences’ (Somers 1994).

I argue, however, that the characterization of narrative as ‘non-explanatory’ and somehow

‘unscientific’ is unfounded that it is time for qualitative political scientists to take narrative

seriously as a tool for explanatory (and not only interpretivist) analysis.

4
The method of process tracing is currently the most widely shared description of what

explanatory case studies in political science amount to. Process tracing was developed first by

Alexander L. George in the late 1970s and 1980s (George 1979; George and McKeown 1985)

and then formulated in a more comprehensive way together with Andrew Bennett in 2005

(George and Bennett 2005).3 While, ironically, George and Bennett themselves do not offer a

comprehensive definition of process tracing, one could define the method as follows: ‘Process

tracing is a method of causal assessment with the aim of generating or testing theories. Its

inferences are based on empirical traces of causal mechanisms and on within-case evidence

of processes and events. It makes use of a variety of often non-standardized data and is

presented by means of narrative’ (Starke 2010: 3). In this definition, the narrative mode of

presentation is seen as an essential part of the method of process tracing. Doing process

tracing is to tell a story (or several connected stories). Yet while case study research is in fact

mostly narrative, this empirical association is almost never problematized. It is thought of as a

natural affinity, not a conscious choice. And ‘good writing’ is treated more like a question of

taste and not like one of methodological quality.

In this paper I aim to show that the empirical association between the process tracing method

of analysis and the narrative form is not merely accidental but is due to the temporal and

causal nature and the high degree of flexibility of narratives. There are, furthermore, ways to

distinguish good from bad process tracing narratives. While the use of narratives is not risk-

free, there are no viable alternatives available for the presentation of a dense process tracing

analysis.

3
A large body of literature has emerged in recent years dealing with process tracing and related case study
methods (George and Bennett 2005; Gerring 2007, 2006; Mahoney 2010, 2003; Bennett 2008; Bennett and
Elman 2006; Levy 2008; Hall 2006).

5
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 surveys the literature for existing definitions of

the concept of narrative and then provides a new definition. The advantages of the narrative

form for process tracing analyses are subject of Section 3. Section 4 then tries to characterize

the central features of a good (process tracing) narrative. However, there are also costs and

risks associated with using narratives in political science. These will be dealt with in Section

5. Very few alternatives are available and their possibilities are significantly limited compared

to narrative (Section 6). The last section sums up the main methodological lessons.

2. What do we mean by narrative?

A variety of definitions of narrative are used in the social sciences and history. In his

influential piece on the debate in historiography, for instance, Lawrence Stone offers a

relatively narrow definition that has also been cited in the context of case study research in

political science (Levy 2001):

‘Narrrative is taken to mean the organization of material in a chronologically

sequential order and the focusing of the content into a single coherent story, albeit
with sub-plots. The two essential ways in which narrative history differs from
structural history is that its arrangement is descriptive rather than analytical and
that its central focus is on man not circumstances’ (Stone 1979: 3).

While Stone’s definition is certainly not uncontroversial – it must be seen in the context of a

debate between a ‘structuralist’ school in the tradition of the French ‘Annales’ and advocates

of more conventional political historiography – it builds on a number of central concepts in

this debate such as chronology, story, plot, coherence, structure and agency, description and

analysis. Some of these, I argue below, are necessary to narrative while others are not (but

often associated with narrative approaches).

To take another example, here is Margaret Levi’s explanation of the ‘analytic narrative’

which is less cautious when it comes to structural explanatory factors:

6
 ‘The narrative of analytic narratives establishes the actual and principal players,
their goals, and their preferences while also illuminating the effective rules of the
game, constraints, and incentives. Narrative is the story being told but as a
detailed and textured account of context and process, with concern for both
sequence and temporality. It is not used in the post-modern sense of a master- or
meta-narrative. Rather, it refers to research grounded in traditional historical
methods’ (Levi 2002: 112).

To make matters even more confusing, the specialist literature on narratology in the

humanities offers many more versions of the concept (Herman 2009, 2007; Bal 1997; Barthes

1975 [1966]). Fortunately, however, the Cambridge Introduction to Narrative provides a

helpful ‘bare minimum’ definition according to which narrative is ‘the representation of an

event or series of events’ (Abbott 2008: 13). Since this definition does not include typical

‘literary’ ingredients such as main characters and a narrator, it can be used as the basic

building block in order to understand narrative in social science methodology, particularly in

process tracing. In what follows, I will apply this minimum definition to process tracing and

add a number of further attributes.

The first, and probably most basic, element is the event or the series of events. This is where

temporality comes in.4 Every story is temporal, it unfolds over time. And events become

visible only against the background of time. Even with only one event (e.g. “I fell down”), we

can think of a before-after sequence. Narratives in process tracing usually depict a series of

several events, however.

The second element is that of representation. Most importantly, it implies that narrative and

story are not the same. Rather the story is the object, it is what is represented through the

narrative discourse (Abbott 2008: 15). The narrative discourse concerns the organization of

4
Of course, a story consists not just of events but also of various entities, including actors, actions, objects, that
make up the raw material of events (Abbott 2008: 19). Events cannot happen without entities. In literary studies,
the entities are the ‘characters’ of a story.

7
the material, not the material itself. This basic distinction – going back to the early days of

narratology in the 1960s (Herman et al. 2005: 566-568) – can hardly be overstated since the

many possibilities of narrative follow directly from it:

‘[N]arrative discourse is infinitely malleable. It can expand and contract, leap

backward and forward, but as we take in information from the discourse we sort it
out in our minds, reconstructing an order of events that we call the story. The
story can take a day, a minute, a lifetime, or eons. It can be true or false, historical
or fictional. But insofar as it is a story, it has its own length of time and an order
of events that proceeds chronologically from the earliest to the latest. The order of
events and the length of time they are understood to take in the story are often
quite different from the time and order of events in the narrative discourse’
(Abbott 2008: 17).

This distinction also contributes to the much greater flexibility of an historical narrative

compared to a ‘chronicle’. In the latter there is a much closer link between the story (the

historical facts and their sequence) and the narrative discourse (i.e. the chronicle). A chronicle

does not diverge from the chronological order of the historical material: ‘At its purest, the

chronicle is really no more than a list, under each year, of supposedly major events’ (Elton

1967: 121).5 Most historians therefore regard the chronicle as a lesser form of historiography.

Nonetheless, as trivial as it may sound, stories always have a beginning, a middle and an end.

This points towards another important element of narratives. They build upon a world held

together by causal relations (Richardson 1997). A mere detailed description of a situation or

place is not a narrative, nor is a purely enumerative description of events. What is needed is a

cause-and-effect relationship that links at least some of the elements of the story and, by

doing that, creates the story. The temporal sequence of events alone is not sufficient.6 The

sequence must be, at least partly, consequential. This is what sometimes underlies the

distinction between the story and the ‘plot’. While the story comprises the whole sequence of

5
To take an extreme example, narratives can even go backwards from the end of the story to the beginning
(Abbott 2008: 16-20) as did the 2001 movie Memento.
6
Causality is not existent in micro-narratives such as “I fell down”. However, this is an extreme example and
certainly irrelevant for process tracing narratives.

8
events represented, the plot is more narrowly confined to those elements that are causally

linked (Forster 2005 [1927]: 87).

Moreover, a narrative does not include all observable events that have taken place between

the defined beginning and the end. It is highly selective – many, in fact, most events are left

out of the particular story – and it emphasizes some events over others (Franzosi 2006). This

selectivity and selective emphasis associated with narrative discourse also show a closeness to

rhetoric. This poses both an opportunity and a risk, a matter that will be dealt with below.

A more debatable element is the setting. It is part of many classical definitions of narrative but

may not be a necessary part of the concept (Abbott 2008: 20). However, in political science, it

makes sense to include the setting or context within which the story unfolds. Falleti and

Lynch have recently claimed that causal mechanisms – the central subject of process tracing

analyses – always depend on context and that context should therefore be taken more

seriously (Falleti and Lynch 2009).

Finally, narrative in the social sciences is verbal. While narratology is also concerned with

largely non-verbal narrative forms, most importantly film but also dance and comics, the

social sciences are primarily based on language (as well as numerical information, although

these usually need verbal explanation and interpretation).

To sum up, for our purposes, we can define narrative as the verbal representation of a series

of selected events taking place within a context and of which at least some are causally

related. Note that this definition – in line with the state of the art in narratology – does not

9
equate narrative with the story or plot. This is by no means consensual in the social sciences.7

Yet the story-narrative-distinction is crucial in order to avoid a great deal of confusion and

misunderstanding. I would argue, for instance, that the debate among historians is at least as

much a debate about stories (e.g. modes of historical explanation, data and theory) as it is a

debate about narrative (i.e. the presentation of that story). Therefore, the term ‘narrative

explanation’ (Roth 1988; see also Bevir 2006) also confuses more than it clarifies.8 Yet the

definition of narrative just presented is, as we will see, particularly well suited for the

discussion of the method of process tracing.

3. Why use the narrative form for process tracing?

Process tracing attempts to empirically elucidate the causal pathways underlying an

explanation by looking at the empirical within-case implications of (alternative) causal

mechanisms linking one or a few independent variables with an outcome. The data used is

often heterogeneous and non-standardized (Gerring 2007). Process tracing analysts mix and

match standardized statistical data with archival primary sources and expert interview

evidence gathered through fieldwork. In the manner of a detective, they then combine these

pieces of evidence and weigh their importance with respect to different theories and the

underlying causal mechanisms (Bennett 2008). Process tracing analysts finally ‘write up’ their

results in the form of a narrative or several connected narratives. Why? What makes the

narrative form particularly suitable?

7
For instance, the first sentence in Patterson and Monroe’s review article ‘Narrative in Political Science’ reads:
‘A narrative is essentially a story, a term more often associated with fiction than with political science’ (1998:
315).
8
Many historians, however, explicitly deny the separability of explanation and narrative by arguing that ‘the
explanatory content is not readily detachable from the narrative. The story is the explanation and the validation
of the explanation is embedded in the very structure of the narrative’ (Roberts 2001a: 3).

10
Above all, narrative makes it possible to represent the essentially temporal character of causal

mechanisms and their empirical implications (Checkel 2006; on mechanisms, see Hedström

and Swedberg 1998; Tilly 2001; Mahoney 2003; Mayntz 2004; Hedström and Ylikoski 2010).

Causal mechanisms can be thought of as a ‘series of events’ linking cause and effect (Little

1991: 15). While not all events may be directly observable, some are or, at the least, they

should leave some empirical ‘traces’. What is more, a particular series of events should have a

specific sequence which can be empirically traced to assess the validity of the theory. In other

words, not just what happens is important but when it happens (Pierson 2004; Abbott 1995).

In a causal sequence, at a minimum, the cause must precede the effect in the story. It should

be evident by now that the means of narrative is suitable to represent exactly these kinds of

‘stories’: events, unfolding in time and in a particular sequence. Narrative can present the

temporal story from beginning to end, jump back and forth or even tell the story backwards

(as in a detective story where the narrative starts with the crime and only then, following the

detective’s search, reports the earlier events leading to that crime). This is an advantage

especially for the Y-centered, or ‘causes-of-effects’ explanations that dominate qualitative

research (Mahoney and Goertz 2006) and where the outcome to be explained – often a puzzle

or anomalous event or state of affairs – can stand at the beginning of the narrative but at the

end of the story.

One further advantageous attribute of narrative in this respect is its flexibility. Narratives

allow to incorporate a large number of diverse pieces of evidence about actors and context

without necessarily overburdening the reader with details. This can be achieved by using

various means of emphasis or de-emphasis. For instance, one can speed up or slow down the

narrative, focus in on details of the story, repeat certain important events several times during

the narrative and use stark contrasts to make a point. In addition, one can relatively easily

capture causal complexity and interaction by employing relational language, by changing

11
between the points of view of different actors or between broad overviews of the context and

detailed descriptions of the processes that led to an outcome. In short, case study writers can

use ‘focalization’, as it is called in narratology (Genette 1980 [1972]). Even rhetorical figures

such as metaphors can be used to make complex elements of the theory intelligible (Tilly

2008: 72-76). Much of this can probably be learned by reading fiction. After all, classical

novelist like Tolstoy managed to incorporate a large cast of characters and many sub-plots in

order to portray – though perhaps not ‘explain’ – larger historical and social developments.

And gifted case study writers in political science have probably always implicitly used the

diverse means of ‘storytelling’ to make their case.

Finally, narrative allows to distinguish between the expected (theoretically explainable) and

the unexpected or historically contingent. It is possible to qualify pieces of evidence as

‘exceptions to the rule’ without destabilizing the whole explanatory story. This is particularly

important in small-N research since we cannot expect to explain every single detail or event

with reference to very general theories. Büthe writes that ‘narratives allow for the

incorporation of nuanced detail and sensitivity to unique events, which may be necessary to

understand the particular manifestation of an element of the model but which are beyond the

model’ (2002: 486). The flipside of this flexibility is the danger of introducing too many ad

hoc explanations of disconfirming data.

Generally, the narrative form therefore appears particularly suitable for process tracing

because of its temporal character and its flexibility. Not every narrative, however, is equally

good when it comes to process tracing.

12
4. What makes a good (process tracing) narrative?

There are many ways to tell a story. For example, in Raymond Queneau’s famous book

Exercices de style (Exercises in Style) (1947, published in English in 1958), the author tells 99

different versions of the same simple fictional story of a man who gets on a bus, observes the

other passengers and then encounters one of them two hours later at a train station (see also

Ginzburg 1993). Which of these narratives is the ‘correct one’? While some postmodern

authors would argue that all narratives are equally valuable, this claim seems unconvincing. It

is obvious that one can tell stories in better and worse ways. This is also true for process

tracing narratives. The goal is to ‘tell a good story’. But what is a story well told?

Unfortunately, there are virtually no evaluative standards for process tracing narratives. Book

reviewers usually mention when a case study is well written but hardly ever go beyond this

general statement. Instead, most prefer to talk about good or bad theory, methods and data.9

Moreover, when talking about good narratives, most political scientists tend to mix attributes

of the explanation – the story or plot – and the narrative. In other words, they tend to ignore

the basic story-narrative distinction.

For example, in the introduction to Analytic Narratives, Bates et al. do include a few pages on

how to ‘evaluate’ a narrative (1998: 14-18). They formulate a set of evaluative questions their

chapters are supposed to respond to. However, these questions – e.g. ‘Do the assumptions fit

the facts, as they are known?’, ‘Do its [i.e. the model’s, P.S.] implications find confirmation

in the data?’ – all aim at the empirical analysis itself, for instance, the logical coherence of the

9
In this sense, political scientists seem to differ from historians who, according to one author ‘most of the time
think and write narrative’ (Roberts 2001a: 2). It seems that political scientists rather think and write theory, data,
concepts and variables while leaving the problem of narrative until the ‘writing-up stage’ of research.

13
theory, the accuracy of the empirical test and so on (see also Levi 2002). In other words, they

primarily evaluate the story, not the narrative.

To my knowledge, the only piece which gives some methodologically grounded advice on

what makes a good process tracing narrative is Ruback’s paper (2011). He argues that

‘“good” process-tracing prose mirrors a narrative voice found in Victorian fiction, most

notably in George Eliot’s Middlemarch’ (Ruback 2011). This type of narrative, for example,

refers to ‘covering laws’ in order to explain actions, strives for coherence and establishes a

‘standpoint outside history, beyond politics, and prior to language that can speak a singular

interpretation of the historical record’ (2011: 19). According to Ruback, this style is also, inter

alia, associated with a clear beginning and endpoint, an uninterrupted causal chain,

generalizable conclusions and a univocal narrative voice. Yet, in the same article – through a

‘second reading’ of Middlemarch – Ruback questions the very epistemological basis of this

kind of process-tracing narrative. It is argued that ‘such as style of writing is itself a practice

of power, insisting on a version of history that fixes identities, meaning, and language in the

service of generalisation’ (2011: 24). Practices such as ‘disruptive writing’ are presented as an

alternative to the mainstream approach.

However, if we follow the broad epistemological assumptions of process tracing – that there

is a mind-independent reality which is, to some extent, observable, that causal explanation of

social phenomena is possible, that somewhat general theories can be assessed through careful

case study analysis and so on – we can still formulate a number of attributes of good narrative

presentation. My attributes, however, diverge from those presented by Bates et al. as well as

from Ruback’s to the extent that they strictly follow the distinction between story and

narrative. Therefore, pieces of advice that centre on ‘good explanations’ – while certainly

important in themselves – are not considered criteria for good narratives.

14
There are, in my view, at least five criteria for what makes a good process tracing narrative,

namely, theory-guidedness, precision, adequacy, depth and closure.

First, process tracing is a theory-guided endeavor, and its narrative should have explicit links

with the relevant theory or theories. A theoretical model is used ‘to discipline the narrative’

(Büthe 2002: 487). In process tracing, theories can be tested or developed (George and

Bennett 2005). In contrast to purely cross-case methods, specifying causal mechanisms is a

necessary part. Radically instrumentalist, prediction-oriented models (Friedman 1953) do not

suffice. Therefore, the elements in the narrative are disciplined by the causal mechanisms

specified or developed in the explanation. This does not fully exclude a degree of historical

contingency but this should be made explicit in the narrative in order to avoid ad hoc

explanations.

Secondly, the narrative should aim for a high degree of precision. That is, the logical

relationship between the different events and actors should be made clear and expressions

such as ‘therefore’, ‘because’, ‘despite’, ‘if…then’ should be used with care. Moreover, one

should avoid vague expressions such as ‘is connected with’, ‘contributes to’, ‘relates to’ etc. if

possible, that is, if the theory is well-specified and logically coherent.

The next criterion could be called adequacy. The narrative should be adequate in the light of

the explanation presented. It should not simply tell everything the author knows about a

particular case without any weighting but should rather highlight those elements that are most

central to the explanation. A way to achieve this sort of emphasis is to follow what

Trachtenberg calls the ‘principle of concentration’:

15
 ‘The “principle of concentration” was originally one of the old “principles of
war.” The idea was that forces were not to be scattered all over the battlefield but
were to be concentrated in places where they would be most effective. In
historical writing it also makes sense to concentrate your firepower at the key
points in the text. If you pull related points together, you will have a simpler,
leaner structure, and your core argument will be stronger because the pillars on
which it rests will be stronger’ (Trachtenberg 2006: 190).

Moreover, the various rhetorical means of emphasis and focalization mentioned in the

preceding section can help to construct an adequate narrative. Adequacy also requires that

those parts of the explanation that rest at the macro-level are also narrated at the macro-level

and that micro-level links in the story are narrated closer to the relevant actors, by

emphasizing information about actors’ intentions, decisions and evaluations. Note that

adequacy is first and foremost about how empirical information and theoretical explanation

are presented, which parts are stressed and which are de-emphasized or ignored and less about

the explanation per se.

At the same time, a good process tracing narrative should have depth.10 This means that the

shortest and most condensed narrative is not necessarily the best one. While focusing

exclusively on the elements that drive the plot may be adequate in the above sense of the

word, it leaves the reader often wondering whether the case study writer has something to

hide. Gerring notes that most case studies tend to ‘overreport’ (2004: 346), that they include

many aspects of a case which do not have a direct bearing on the causal story being told. But

he does not really explain why this is so. In order to understand this overreporting, the

distinction between ‘constituent’ and ‘supplementary events’ in narratology is helpful:

Constituent events make up the plot, they are the skeletal structure underlying the narrative.

‘The supplementary events […] are not necessary for the story. They don’t lead anywhere.

They can be removed and the story will still be recognizably the story that it is’ (Abbott 2008:

10
The depth of a narrative differs from the depth of a proposition, as e.g. Gerring understands it (2001: 104-106).

16
22-23). So why include them nonetheless? In fictional narratives, supplementary events

provide ambiance and help to better understand the main characters’ actions in the plot. In

process tracing, these supplementary events can have two different functions. On the one

hand, they convey the context in which the main story takes place. Case studies usually aim at

what George and Bennett call ‘contingent generalization’ (George and Bennett 2005: 112-

114), that is, explanations located halfway between singular historical accounts and highly

general explanations. Contingent generalizations are generalizations within a certain type of

case or within a historically contingent context (Falleti and Lynch 2009). Hence, information

on the particular context of a case is important in order to understand the story being told. On

the other hand, supplementary events can provide information about potential alternative

explanations. Hence, narratives often include descriptions of events that did also take place

but which are outside the main explanatory storyline that led to the outcome of interest and

not causally linked to that outcome. These descriptions allow the reader to cross-check the

explanation presented by the author. The depth of a narrative therefore contributes to the

reliability of a case study since some of the events necessary to construct an alternative

storyline are also presented to the reader.11 This is why excessively lean and parsimonious

case studies often appear shallow and unconvincing.

Finally, at a very general level, a narrative should provide a sense of closure. Closure,

according to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, ‘refers to the satisfaction of

expectations and the answering of questions raised over the course of any narrative’ (Herman

et al. 2005: 65-66; see also Abbott 2008: 55-66). Central events in the storyline should not be

left hanging in the air but be tied to the outcome to be explained or to the next step in the

causal chain. While complete closure is probably impossible to achieve, the narrative should

11
Büthe is sceptical with regard to the possibility of including alternative explanations in a narrative. He claims
that ‘alternative narratives by the same author serve primarily as a rhetorical device in support of the primary,
favored explanation’ (2002: 489).

17
reveal at least the main elements of the explanation. Like detective fiction, an explanatory

case study should provide satisfactory answers to the questions asked (e.g. ‘Whodunit?’).

While the burden of proof rests mostly on the plot or causal explanation itself, the narrative

also contributes to closure. A bad narrative only roughly sketches the causal plot and the

available evidence and leaves many important causal links implicit. It remains inconclusive.

Some further criteria such as intelligibility, good organization, elegance etc. could also be

mentioned but, in my view, do not pertain particularly to process tracing narratives but to

scientific writing per se. They are relevant to all political scientists, irrespective of the

methods they use.

5. The downsides

The use of the narrative form of presentation is not without weaknesses, however. Three are

worth mentioning: the problem of temporal vs. causal order, agency bias and the problem of

emplotment.

When writing up a case study, it is important to be clear about which steps in a chronology are

causal and which are purely temporal. However, misunderstandings can arise because

temporal sequence in a narrative often implicitly suggests causation. The so-called post hoc,

ergo propter hoc fallacy is probably particularly important for narrative forms of presentation

(Griffin 1993: 1100):

‘In a classic study of the novel E. M. Forster argued that there is a major
difference between a narrative like “The king died and then the queen died” and
one like “The kind died and then the queen died of grief.” Nevertheless […], the
sequencing of narrative works on us so suggestively that we often don’t need the
explicit assignment of cause to be encouraged to think causally’ (Abbott 2008: 42;
see also Forster 1964 [1927]; Barthes 1975 [1966]: 248).

18
A way out of this problem is to be highly explicit not just about the links in the temporal

sequence which are, in fact, causal but also – perhaps even more so – about those which are

not. Diagrams and other devices may help to in this respect (see below).

The second problem is the implicit agency bias of many narratives. In a contribution titled

‘The Trouble with Stories’, Charles Tilly emphasized the tendency of humans to think and

communicate by means of ‘standard stories’ (1999, 2008). Standard stories are based on a

limited number of characters, unambiguous motivations and clear interactions between

characters. They portray deliberate, intentional human action within a limited setting. People

use standard stories to explain their own actions and make sense of their everyday lives. This

is why social scientists are often tempted also to uncritically use the format of standard stories

to explain social phenomena. Unfortunately, the social sciences also deal with phenomena

which are subject to ‘indirect, incremental, interactive, unintended, collective, and/or

environmentally mediated causal links’ (Tilly 1999: 270). Here, ‘standard stories’ are likely to

be misleading or even plain wrong. The challenge therefore is to construct what could be

called ‘non-standard’ or ‘academic stories’ which are open to other types of causes. After all,

narrative is not inimical to structural explanations per se. As long as a sequential chain can be

constructed in which structural causation runs through one or several events, a narrative

presentation of such an explanation is indeed possible. In fact, Paul Ricœur, in volume one of

his three-volume Temps et récit (Time and Narrative) (Ricœur 1984 [1983]), meticulously

shows that even the historians of the Annales school like Fernand Braudel, who argued

strongly against old-fashioned actor-based narrative history, implicitly followed very similar

narrative structures as the historians from whom they wished to distance themselves. The only

difference is the kind of events and factors – i.e. structures instead of single political actors –

they put at the center of their historical accounts. In a similar vein, economists have used

19
narrative case studies to explore the institutional causes of long-term economic growth

(Rodrik 2003). So the association between simple agency-based explanations and narrative is

perhaps weaker than assumed by Tilly and others.

Hayden White’s famous critique of historiography is somewhat similar to Tilly’s but more

radical as it goes beyond the format of the ‘standard story’. In a series of books (White 1975,

1985, 1987), he claimed, on the basis of a meta-analysis of famous historical works by Ranke,

Michelet, Tocqueville and Burckhardt, that the narrative structure – or ‘emplotment’ – used to

tell history drives our understanding and explanations of historical developments. Emplotment

is based on the idea that facts do not speak for themselves, they rather need to be ordered and

put into a meaningful context. By doing so, historical writers tend to follow one of four basic

narrative ‘tropes’ or archetypal structures: romance, tragedy, satire and comedy. And often,

the same known historical facts can be written down as either romance or tragedy. According

to White, these four tropes –reproduced over and over in the Western fictional canon – are

entrenched in our cultural memory. By portraying historical facts through the lens of one of

the four tropes, ‘facts’ can take on completely different meanings. In other words, form does

not follow function but form rather determines function. The risk is to ‘get carried away’ by

narrative. White’s thesis has been highly controversial in historiography and there is no

research about the extent to which classic political science narratives also explicitly or

implicitly follow the basic tropes learned through fictional accounts. One could speculate that

the problem of emplotment is much more pertinent in the ‘grand narratives’ of nineteenth-

century national history – which were often written during times of national soul-searching –

than in the much more limited process tracing narratives of contemporary political science.12

Again, as with Tilly’s warning about ‘standard stories’ one can only try to be self-critical and

12
What is more, it is far from clear that modernist, fractured, multidimensional and self-referential literary styles
have had no bearing on our narrative vocabulary (Ginzburg 1993: 23).

20
use non-narrative ‘robustness checks’ such as diagrams, timelines and so on to avoid the traps

of ‘literary’ writing.

6. Alternatives to narrative?

Are there alternatives to narrative? Can process tracing analyses be represented in other ways

than through story-telling? Several qualitative alternative are plausible the most basic of

which is certainly the arrow diagram or flowchart.13 It represents processes by connecting

events through arrows (see also Machamer et al. 2000). It is also possible to represent more

complex relationships and conditionalities with the help of project management methods such

as the Critical Path Method. These methods, however, were used for planning tasks, not for

analyzing historical events.

One method which has been used in sociology is event-structure analysis (ESA) (Heise 1991;

Griffin 1993, 2007). ‘Event-structure analysis (ESA) is a member of a family of formal

analytic procedures designed to analyze and interpret text, in particular the temporal

sequences constituting the narrative of an event’ (Griffin 2007: 4). In fact, ESA is a

sophisticated version of the arrow diagram, supported by a special software called ETHNO

(Heise 1991). The application of ESA follows relatively simple procedure: First, a selection of

crucial events and their temporal sequence are defined. Afterwards, the researcher must

specify the causal relationships between the different events. The software ‘does this by quite

literally transforming the chronology into a series of “yes/no” questions where the

analyst/expert is asked if a temporal antecedent […] is required for the occurrence of a

subsequent action’ (Griffin 2007: 5). The software then condenses this information and

13
As process tracing is a qualitative method, quantitative techniques of sequence analysis are not reviewed here
(Abbott and Tsay 2000).

21
produces an arrow diagram representing the induced causal structure linking the events.14

ESA also allows to compare in a more abstract way causal configurations of several

sequences of events.

However, while ESA and other types of flowcharts may help to clarify the logical links

between different events (in order to understand or explain a specific causal chain), they do

not seem to be a good alternative in terms of presenting that process tracing analysis.

Presenting a diagram with arrows and boxes is usually not enough. The author typically needs

to redescribe – i.e. narrate – the course of action, emphasize and de-emphasize certain links in

the sequence and spell out the consequences for theory. Hence, what seems to be a good

instrument at inductively teasing out the causal relationships between events/variables is

much less suited as a means of presenting them.

Another possibility to depict causal processes is to use the extensive-form game of game

theoretical approaches. The closeness to narrative forms is highlighted by Bates et al. in

Analytic Narratives: ‘The structure of extensive-form games […] readily accommodates the

narrative form. To distil the essential properties of a narrative, we seek to construct the game

that provides the link between the prominent features of the narrative and its outcome’ (Bates

et al. 1998: 14). However, this method of visualization is limited in theoretical terms.

The main problem with all these potential alternatives is that they are static. Arrow diagrams,

for example, display all the parts of the process simultaneously which often makes them

overly complicated and even unreadable. They do not capture the temporality of historical

processes in the same way as narrative does. It is difficult to introduce notions of duration and

14
It could be argued that ESA does formally what a good case study researcher does anyway in a non-formal
way, that is, try to specify the causal links between the events under study. This is perhaps the reason why ESA
has not become widespread, not even in sociology (but see Griffin 2007: 12).

22
once the causal process gets too complex, graphical depictions become confusing. They often

cannot easily account for the difference in importance of various events, either. Nor can they

cope with complex descriptions of context. In other words, they are much less flexible than

narrative. One way out would be to introduce temporality in a direct way, for example, by

using animated flowcharts. This, however, is difficult to accommodate with the dominant

distribution channels in the social sciences, namely, books and journals.

So while these means of representation are no alternative to story-telling, they are excellent

means to complement narrative accounts. Arrow diagrams discipline the case study writer to

be precise about particular causal sequences and causal relationships between the constituent

events of the story. Diagrams can also supplement purely narrative case studies by providing

robustness checks for readers (and authors) in terms of the reliability of the narrative offered.

Sometimes graphical means that highlight the causal links are helpful but sometimes it is also

important to include events which are not causally linked. For example, a timeline that

includes important events of which some are not part of the causal plot that is being

corroborated by the author may help the reader to easily construct alternative stories against

which to assess the value of the case study.15

Graphical means can also be used as a remedy against the ‘literary bias’ of case study work.

For example, Tilly advises to use diagrams and mathematical formalization in order to resist

the tendency to revert to ‘standard stories’ (Tilly 1999). And White, on the basis of his

criticism of narrative history and ‘emplotment’, praises the virtues of simple chronicles

(White 1987: 25). Hence, while narrative is still the best way to represent process-oriented,

theory-guided case studies in political science, supplementing narrative with alternative ways

15
Note, again, the element of ‘overreporting’ which can have methodological functions.

23
to represent the story will make them even better. These devices perform a methodological

function and not just a presentational one.

7. Conclusion

In this paper, I have tried to show that narrative in case study research is not natural or self-

explanatory. Nor is it just a question of good writing and style. It can and should be

problematized and discussed not only in stylistic terms but with a view to methodological

aims and standards.

In order to understand and be able to discuss narrative it is necessary to be clear about what

narrative is. I have proposed a definition of narrative as the verbal representation of a series

of selected events taking place within a context and of which at least some are causally

related. The definition starts from the basic but often ignored story-narrative distinction. This

distinction helps to focus more clearly on the characteristics, possibilities and problems of

narrative and to separate these from other characteristics of qualitative case-study research.

The temporality and flexibility of narrative make it the best presentational form of process

tracing case studies. The empirical affinity is therefore no accident. Yet there are many ways

to tell a story and not all of them are equally good. Good process tracing narrative manages to

achieve five aims: theory-guidedness, precision, adequacy, depth and closure. While these

criteria are distinct from the usual standards of explanatory research (e.g. Gerring 2001), they

are much more than tips for good writing. They are situated at a level that is often ignored

when talking about political science methods.

24
However, the risks of narrative presentation must also be mentioned. Three risks seem

particularly important: the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy, the agency bias of standard

narrative forms and the problem of emplotment. I have tried to show that these risks can be

minimized by being explicit about theories and by using supplementary presentational devices

such as arrow diagrams and timelines. While, overall, these devices suffer from important

limitations compared to narrative they can nonetheless be a means to discipline the narrative

and point to potential alternative accounts to the story being told in the case study.

One final limitation of narrative, however, lies outside the methodological or stylistic realm

and cannot easily be remedied. Good process tracing case studies – i.e. those that fulfill the

standards mentioned above – are often very long. Therefore, they fit the book format much

better than that of a scientific journal article with its 8,000 or 10,000-words limit. The current

difficulties of academic publishing and the shift in attention away from monographs towards

journal articles is therefore problematic for case study researchers. Some may abandon

narrative process tracing projects and opt for either relatively shallow but easier-to-publish

small-N qualitative comparisons or purely large-N statistical work. There is nothing wrong

with quantitative analysis per se but crowding out in-depth narrative work may prove

detrimental in the long run. After all, many (if not most) all-time classics of political science

belong to this type of research.

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