CIAO DATE: 8/00
Case Study Methods in International Political Economy
The Party Politics of Decentralization: Theory, Definitions, Research Design, and Methods
- First Online: 06 July 2018
Cite this chapter
- Linda Basile 5
Part of the book series: Comparative Territorial Politics ((COMPTPOL))
203 Accesses
In this chapter, the author introduces the main research questions addressed by the volume, framed within the existing literature, and a summary of the study’s main concepts and terminological choices to define and narrow its objective. The chapter devotes itself to the measurement of party strategies based on a coding scheme devised for the content analysis of party manifestos. It also describes the research design adopted and the advantages (as well as the limits) of the case study. The last section outlines the integrated theoretical model adopted in this study to analyze party strategies on decentralization.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
- Available as EPUB and PDF
- Read on any device
- Instant download
- Own it forever
- Compact, lightweight edition
- Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
- Free shipping worldwide - see info
- Durable hardcover edition
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Institutional subscriptions
Similarly, Toubeau and Massetti ( 2013 , 301) argue that “the party politics of territorial reforms refers to the way in which statewide parties and regionalist parties position themselves and strategize on the territorial dimension during their competitive interactions, and to the way in which this process of interaction affects the substance of territorial reforms.”
An earlier version of this section, based on manifesto data from 1963 to 2013, appeared in Basile ( 2016 ).
The electoral manifestos of political parties have been established as useful instruments for providing information concerning party stances on specific issues. Among the advantages they offer: they are all delivered in the same period, ensuring consistency of data for all the parties included in the analysis; they represent a somewhat official source; and they are present in all democratic countries, thus paving the way for future cross-national comparisons. Of course, manifestos show the “official” positions adopted by parties for general elections, while they fail to capture the intraparty divisions. For a good synthesis of the debate on the use of manifestos, including their advantages and shortcomings, see Ruedin and Morales ( 2017 , 2).
This coding scheme follows the general rules for the division of documents into quasi-sentences laid out by the CMP group (Volkens 2001 ). The QS should be a unit of significance by itself: once a statement has been split, it should still be understandable and express a meaningful concept.
For a complete list of the coded documents, see the appendix to this volume.
Short for Territorial Issues Dataset.
The coded documents usually refer to party manifestos . In some cases, however, parties did not issue manifestos on their own; in these cases, the coalition manifesto has been coded. In other cases, both the single party and the coalition manifestos were coded. However, in those cases, at least for some analyses, only one document (usually the coalition manifesto) was considered. Information about the use of party vs. coalition manifestos is included in the appendix, and they are specified, when relevant, in the analyses.
The CMP categories measuring the territorial dimension are Per301 and Per302. For their definitions, consult Codebook version 2017a, available at https://manifestoproject.wzb.eu/datasets (last accessed on October 17, 2017).
In some cases, the TERRISS Dataset used original manifestos that were retrieved directly by the author from the archives of political parties or libraries and were thus coded for the first time.
The number of statements dealing with territorial issues has been derived by comparing the percentages provided by variables Per301 and Per302 with the variable accounting for the total number of QSs coded in the entire document. The numbers thus obtained have been used according to the same formula to calculate directional certainty .
The lower n for this correlation is due to the higher number of documents with no statements coded as territorial in the CMP compared to the TERRISS Dataset .
Alonso, Sonia. 2012. Challenging the State: Devolution and the Battle for Partisan Credibility: A Comparison of Belgium, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Basile, Linda. 2016. Measuring Party Strategies on the Territorial Dimension: A Method Based on Content Analysis. Regional & Federal Studies 26 (1): 1–23.
Article Google Scholar
Benoit, Kenneth, and Michael Laver. 2006. Party Policy in Modern Democracies . 1st ed. London: Routledge.
Google Scholar
Caramani, Daniele. 2004. The Nationalization of Politics: The Formation of National Electorates and Party Systems in Western Europe . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chaney, Paul. 2013. An Electoral Discourse Approach to State Decentralisation: State-Wide Parties’ Manifesto Proposals on Scottish and Welsh Devolution, 1945–2010. British Politics 8 (3): 333–356.
Collier, David. 1993. The Comparative Method. In Political Science: The State of Discipline II , ed. Ada W. Finifter. Rochester: Social Science Research Network.
De Winter, Lieven, and Huri Türsan. 1998. Regionalist Parties in Western Europe . London: Routledge.
Duchacek, Ivo D. 1970. Comparative Federalism: The Territorial Dimension of Politics . New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Elias, Anwen, Edina Szöcsik, and Christina Isabel Zuber. 2015. Position, Selective Emphasis and Framing: How Parties Deal with a Second Dimension in Competition. Party Politics 21 (6): 839–850.
Green-Pedersen, Christoffer. 2007. The Conflict of Conflicts in Comparative Perspective: Euthanasia as a Political Issue in Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Comparative Politics 39 (3): 273–291.
Hooghe, Liesbet, Gary Marks, and Arjan H. Schakel. 2010. The Rise of Regional Authority: A Comparative Study of 42 Democracies . Abingdon: Routledge.
Hopkin, Jonathan. 2003. Political Decentralization, Electoral Change and Party Organizational Adaptation: A Framework for Analysis. European Urban and Regional Studies 10 (3): 227–237.
———. 2009. Party Matters: Devolution and Party Politics in Britain and Spain. Party Politics 15 (2): 179–198.
Hopkin, Jonathan, and Pieter van Houten. 2009. Decentralization and State-Wide Parties: Introduction. Party Politics 15 (2): 131–135.
Huysseune, Michel. 2002. Federalism and the Extreme Right in Italy. Fédéralisme Régionalisme 2, January.
Jeffery, Charlie, and Dan Hough. 2009. Understanding Post-Devolution Elections in Scotland and Wales in Comparative Perspective. Party Politics 15 (2): 219–240.
Keating, Michael. 2008. Thirty Years of Territorial Politics. West European Politics 31 (1–2): 60–81.
King, Gary, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research . STU—Student ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Krippendorff, Klaus. 2004. Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology . Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Laffin, Martin, Eric Shaw, and Gerald Taylor. 2007. The New Sub-National Politics of the British Labour Party. Party Politics 13 (1): 88–108.
Leonardi, Robert, Raffaella Y. Nanetti, and Robert D. Putnam. 1987. Italy—Territorial Politics in the Post-War Years: The Case of Regional Reform. West European Politics 10 (4): 88–107.
Libbrecht, Liselotte, Bart Maddens, and Wilfried Swenden. 2013. Party Competition in Regional Elections: The Strategies of State-Wide Parties in Spain and the United Kingdom. Party Politics 19 (4): 624–640.
Lijphart, Arend. 1971. Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method. The American Political Science Review 65 (3): 682–693.
Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Stein Rokkan. 1967. Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives . New York: Free Press.
Maddens, Bart, and Liselotte Libbrecht. 2009. How Statewide Parties Cope with the Regionalist Issue: The Case of Spain; A Directional Approach. In Territorial Party Politics in Western Europe , 204–228. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Chapter Google Scholar
Marks, Gary, Liesbet Hooghe, and Arjan H. Schakel. 2008a. Measuring Regional Authority. Regional & Federal Studies 18 (2–3): 111–121.
———. 2008b. Patterns of Regional Authority. Regional & Federal Studies 18 (2–3): 167–181.
Massetti, Emanuele, and Simon Toubeau. 2013. Sailing with Northern Winds: Party Politics and Federal Reforms in Italy. West European Politics 36 (2): 359–381.
Mazzoleni, Martino. 2009a. The Saliency of Regionalization in Party Systems: A Comparative Analysis of Regional Decentralization in Party Manifestos. Party Politics 15 (2): 199–218.
———. 2009b. The Italian Regionalisation: A Story of Partisan Logics. Modern Italy 14 (2): 135–150.
Meguid, Bonnie M. 2008. Party Competition Between Unequals: Strategies and Electoral Fortunes in Western Europe . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2009. Institutional Change as Strategy: The Role of Decentralization in Party Competition . Toronto: Social Science Research Network.
Protsyk, Oleh, and Stela Garaz. 2013. Politicization of Ethnicity in Party Manifestos. Party Politics 19 (2): 296–318.
Rhodes, R.A.W., and Vincent Wright. 1987. Introduction. West European Politics 10 (4): 1–20.
Rifondazione Comunista. 2001. Un voto utile per il paese per costruire una sinistra di alternativa e una sinistra plurale . Roma: Rifondazione Comunista.
Rokkan, Stein, and Derek W. Urwin. 1983. Economy, Territory, Identity: Politics of West European Peripheries . London/Beverly Hills: Sage.
Rovny, Jan. 2013. Where Do Radical Right Parties Stand? Position Blurring in Multidimensional Competition. European Political Science Review 5 (1): 1–26.
Ruedin, Didier, and Laura Morales. 2017. Estimating Party Positions on Immigration: Assessing the Reliability and Validity of Different Methods. Party Politics , First published online June 16, 2017.
Sartori, Giovanni. 1970. Concept Misinformation in Comparative Politics. The American Political Science Review 64 (4): 1033–1053.
Schakel, Arjan H. 2009. Explaining Policy Allocation over Governmental Tiers by Identity and Functionality. Acta Politica 44 (4): 385–409.
Sinardet, Dave, and Niels Morsink. 2011. Contamination or Containment? Sub-State Nationalism in Belgian Political Parties’ Electoral Manifestos (not published). Paper Presented at the ECPR General Conference Reykjavik, August 25–27.
Somer-Topcu, Zeynep. 2015. Everything to Everyone: The Electoral Consequences of the Broad-Appeal Strategy in Europe. American Journal of Political Science 59 (4): 841–854.
Sorens, Jason. 2009. The Partisan Logic of Decentralization in Europe. Regional & Federal Studies 19 (2): 255–272.
Strøm, Kaare. 1990. A Behavioral Theory of Competitive Political Parties. American Journal of Political Science 34 (2): 565–598.
Thorlakson, Lori. 2009. Patterns of Party Integration, Influence and Autonomy in Seven Federations. Party Politics 15 (2): 157–177.
Toubeau, Simon, and Emanuele Massetti. 2013. The Party Politics of Territorial Reforms in Europe. West European Politics 36 (2): 297–316.
Toubeau, Simon, and Markus Wagner. 2015. Explaining Party Positions on Decentralization. British Journal of Political Science 45 (1): 97–119.
Tronconi, Filippo. 2009. I partiti etnoregionalisti. La politica dell’identità territoriale in Europa occidentale . Bologna: Il Mulino.
Tronconi, Filippo, and Christophe Roux. 2009. The Political Systems of Italian Regions Between State-Wide Logics and Increasing Differentiation. Modern Italy 14 (2): 151–166.
Urwin, Derek W. 1983. Harbinger, Fossil or Fleabite? ‘Regionalism’ and the West European Party Mosaic. In Western European Party Systems: Continuity and Change , ed. Hans Daalder and Peter Mair, 221–256. Beverly Hills/London: SAGE Publications.
Van Houten, Pieter. 2009. Multi-Level Relations in Political Parties: A Delegation Approach. Party Politics 15 (2): 137–156.
Verge, Tània. 2013. Party Strategies on Territorial Reform: State-Wide Parties and the State of Autonomies in Spain. West European Politics 36 (2): 317–337.
Volkens, Andrea. 2001. Manifesto Coding Instructions , 1st ed. Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Sozialforschung. https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu/down/papers/handbook_2001_version_1.pdf
Download references
Author information
Authors and affiliations.
University of Siena, Siena, Italy
Linda Basile
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar
Rights and permissions
Reprints and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Basile, L. (2019). The Party Politics of Decentralization: Theory, Definitions, Research Design, and Methods. In: The Party Politics of Decentralization. Comparative Territorial Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75853-4_1
Download citation
DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75853-4_1
Published : 06 July 2018
Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN : 978-3-319-75852-7
Online ISBN : 978-3-319-75853-4
eBook Packages : Political Science and International Studies Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Share this chapter
Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:
Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.
Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative
- Publish with us
Policies and ethics
- Find a journal
- Track your research
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
First, the article explores the use of case studies in theory development. Then, it turns to the logics of paired comparison and their implications for theory building. ... In Lijphart (1971, 692)'s view, theories should not necessarily be accepted or rejected on the basis of a single theory-confirming or theory-infirming case, ...
particular case); hypothesis-generating studies; theoryconfirming case studies; theory-infirming studies (that, although they Cannot by themselves disconfirm a theory, can raise doubts about it); and deviant case analyses (that seek to elaborate and refine theory through a close examination of a case that departs from the predictions Of an ...
the theoretical purposes of case studies and the case selection strategies or research de. signs used to advance those objectives. I construct a typology of case studies based on their purposes: idiographic (inductive and theory-guided), hypothesis-generating, hypothesis-testing, and plausibility probe case studies.
The first is a roadmap for build- ing theories from case study research. This roadmap synthesizes previous work on qualita- tive methods (e.g., Miles & Huberman, 1984), the design of case study research (e.g., Yin, 1981, 532 1984), and grounded theory building (e.g., Gla- ser & Strauss, 1967) and extends that work in areas such as a priori ...
Theory confirming/infirming case studies have the advantage over theory-informed descriptive studies that they explicitly entail a conclusion about whether the case, or which parts of the case, are explained or not explained by the theory. Further analysis reveals however that 14 out of the 22 theory confirming/infirming case studies employ ...
Six types of case studies (the atheoretical, interpretative, hypothesis-generating, theory-confirming, theory-infirming, and deviant case analyses) are distinguished, and their theoretical value ...
13 Causal mechanisms are central to scientific realist epistemology, which is often invoked by case study researchers to validate their approach (George & Bennett, 2005: Chapter 7). 14. 14 A similar logic could apply to the role of plausibility probes in theory-driven idiographic studies. 15.
Six types of case studies (the atheoretical, interpretative, hypothesis-generating, theory-confirming, theory-infirming, and deviant case analyses) are distinguished, and their theoretical value ...
theory-infirming case studies and; deviant case studies. The nature of these types of case study in obvious from their labels. Hypothesis-generating case studies are characteristic of an exploratory approach, resulting in hypotheses or theory. The next two are characteristic of a testing approach.
Six types of case studies (the atheoretical, interpretative, hypothesis-generating, theory-confirming, theory-infirming, and deviant case analyses) are distinguished, and their theoretical value ...
The most-likely (theory infirming) case study. If a theory is invalid, the most powerful single case to show that would be one that disconfirms it even though conditions seem to make the case unusually favorable for the theory. If the theory failed even in a most-likely case, this evidence would provide strong support for the expectation that ...
Theory-confirming/infirming case study Crucial, most likely, least likely test cases. 84 TABLE 1. Criteria for High Quality QER Research Criteria Question Construct validity Does the collected empirical information accurately capture the concepts or variables contained in the theoretical model or
studies by Arend Lijphart.9 He argued that theory-confirming or theory-infirming case studies (the first of which strengthens and the second weakens the generalizations being tested) have little value for scientific discovery by comparison with hypothesis-generating case studies and the analysis of deviant case analyses (that is, theory ...
It is argued that the case study method is closely related to the comparative method. Six types of case studies (the atheoretical, interpretative, hypothesis-generating, theory-confirming, theory-infirming, and deviant case analyses) are distinguished, and their theoretical value is analyzed.
A theory of the case is perhaps a neglected aspect in discussions of case study and theory. The "case" does not just exist as a "case" in itself but has to be constructed as a case for study. This entails the researcher conceptualizing what the "bounded system" of the case is; what constitutes the case; what it includes and excludes ...
For this, scholars would carefully design their studies as theory-infirming, theory-confirming, or theory-producing crucial case studies, utilize temporal and cross-sectional comparisons, and pay special attention to causal mechanisms, sequences, and processes. By using evidence from publications that draw on the Turkish case, the article shows ...
This article tests a COVID-19 critical juncture hypothesis by conducting a theory-infirming case study of recent multilingual developments in the United States. Process tracing of federal and state multilingual trajectories reveal that two of the hypothesis' observable implications are absent: there is no evidence of radical institutional ...
In Phase 1 the design and structure of the study are formulated. In Phase 2 the individual case studies are carried out in accord with the design. In Phase 3 the investigator draws upon results of the case studies in order to assess, reformulate, or elaborate the initial theory stated in Phase 1.
It is argued that the case study method is closely related to the comparative method. Six types of case studies (the atheoretical, interpretative, hypothesis-generating, theory-confirming, theory-infirming, and deviant case analyses) are distinguished, and their theoretical value is analyzed.
theory-confirming case studies; theory-infirming case studies (that, although they cannot by themselves disconfirm a theory, can raise· doubts about it); and
The "theory confirming or infirming case stud[ies]" are developed "within the framework of established generalizations" (ibid., 692), which are then tested in the case under scrutiny . The present study introduces several tentative, preliminary hypotheses to explain the dynamics of party competition in the territorial dimension ...
different studies that employ different measures of human rights produce conflicting results. Such is the nature of theory testing in the social sciences. All studies of this sort fall victim to what Morton Winston has termed the "aggregation problem."24 Both my study and Smith et al.'s research point to overall international
About the Case Study Authors. Edited By Frances K. Stage , Steven M. Hubbard. Abstract. Framed by an overview of theories that guide student affairs practice, the cases in this book present a challenging array of problems that student affairs and.
We stated our belief that, as is the case with employment discrimination complaints generally, concerns regarding the provision of employee health benefits are best resolved by our Federal partners. ... (iv) accordingly. Clinical research is the comprehensive study of the safety and effectiveness of the most promising advances in patient care, ...