Causal mechanisms and process tracing. An introduction

Abstract

Based on contemporary debates in political sciences methodology, this paper presents two issues: the concept of causal mechanism and the technique of process tracing, and thus contribute to the widening of the methodological toolbox. The starting point is the consideration that these two issues combined can help to inform research designs that seek to approach complex causal arguments among a case study research. In order to achieve that goal, we propose a way to operationalize causal mechanisms in order to allow them to be empirically tested by process tracing.