Historical Process Tracing
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.
Source record
Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.
- George, A. L., & Bennett, A. (2005). Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. MIT Press. · ISBN 9780262572224
- Mahoney, J., & Rueschemeyer, D. (Eds.). (2003). Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press. · ISBN 9780521016452
Curated claims
Claims persisted in the evidence ledger, each with its own assessment.
This view does not invent a claim assessment when the ledger has none.
Related methods
Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.