Сравнение на методи

	Critical Junctures Analysis	Historical Process Tracing
Област	Historical Institutionalism	Historical Institutionalism
Семейство	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Година на възникване	1991	2005
Създател	Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier	Alexander George and Andrew Bennett
Тип	causal-framework	causal-framework
Основополагащ източник	Collier, R. B., & Collier, D. (1991). Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America. Princeton University Press. ISBN: 9780691078304	George, A. L., & Bennett, A. (2005). Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. MIT Press. ISBN: 9780262572224
Други названия	Critical juncture framework, Formative-moment analysis, Branch-point analysis, Junctures-and-legacies approach	Causal-process tracing, Within-case mechanism tracing, Historical mechanism analysis, Causal-process observation method
Свързани	3	3
Резюме	Critical junctures analysis explains long-run institutional divergence by locating brief, formative periods in which the structural constraints on action loosen and actors' choices can set societies onto durable, contrasting trajectories. Developed most influentially by Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier in their study of labor incorporation in Latin America, the framework couples a moment of heightened contingency, the critical juncture, with the lasting legacy it produces and the reactive sequences that reproduce that legacy over time. The approach is comparative by design: it examines several cases sharing similar antecedent conditions, shows how different choices at the juncture generated different legacies, and traces how each legacy was carried forward through subsequent reactions and counter-reactions. By distinguishing the rare windows when agency is decisive from the long stretches when structures dominate, critical-junctures analysis reconciles contingency with durable patterning and supplies the formative moment that path-dependence accounts require.	Historical process tracing is a within-case method for establishing causation by following a hypothesized mechanism step by step through the sequence of events that links a cause to an outcome. Systematized for the social sciences by Alexander George and Andrew Bennett and refined by James Mahoney, the approach treats history not as a source of correlations across cases but as a chain of intervening steps whose presence or absence can confirm or refute rival explanations. Instead of asking whether a cause covaries with an outcome across many units, process tracing asks whether the connecting mechanism actually operated in the case at hand, examining diagnostic pieces of evidence, causal-process observations, against the predictions of competing hypotheses. Drawing on the logic of Bayesian updating and on tests such as the hoop test and the smoking-gun test, it offers a disciplined way to leverage rich qualitative detail for strong causal inference in single cases and small comparisons typical of historical institutionalism.