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Case Study and Theoretical Science

The status of case study research in the social sciences could be considered somewhat ambiguous. The social sciences are theoretical sciences, and theoretical science, by definition, seeks to generalize. Nevertheless, political and social events and phenomena occur only within unique, concrete cases, contexts, and events. This makes the relationship between the generalizing spirit of theoretical science and the uniqueness of case studies problematic.

Case studies, though unique by definition, are implicitly theoretical. They are theoretical since they are done, not out of interest in the uniqueness of selected cases, but because these particular cases are assumed to be typical. Researchers employing case study methodology assume that what is learned from particular cases will be typical, hence generalizable. It is for this reason that case studies, though dealing with unique situations, carry theoretical pretensions. To be sure, case studies are sometimes undertaken explicitly for the uniqueness of the case, and only for descriptive purposes. However, these case studies form a basis for subsequent further exploration and theorizing. Case studies are also undertaken to understand the “outlier” case—that very unique event, organization, group, etcetera, in order to understand what is missing from our more generalized theorizing. These studies also have as their end the intent of developing or modifying theory.

Case study researchers cannot simply take for granted that a given case is typical. The typical character of a case must somehow be established. At the most basic level, informal argument is presented to establish the typical character of a single case. This is done routinely in everyday discourse, throughout the social sciences, and even in the advanced natural sciences. However, in research that aspires to scientific status, something more than informal argument is often required.

Case Study and Experimental Science

The experimental sciences often serve as an exemplar for case study research, particularly for positivistically oriented researchers. In the experimental sciences, hypotheses are tested in controlled experiments. Certain aspects of an experimental situation, the initial conditions or independent variables, are specified together with a hypothesis stating the expected outcome. Since the experimenter strives to recreate identical initial conditions for each repetition of an experiment, initial conditions may appear to be generalizations by definition. It is easy to overlook the fact that each experiment is actually a unique case. No two repetitions can be precisely identical. Although experimenters strive to make sure that each repetition is sufficiently identical, they can never be sure of what constitutes sufficient identity. Experimenters are often befuddled by unexpected outcomes due to something unnoticed in the initial conditions of a repeated experiment, or to problems in conceptualization of the experiment.

In the experimental sciences, flaws in initial conditions can be discovered and independent variables revised, while variables in case study research can only rarely be artificially manipulated. Although the focus of interest of a case study can be redefined, as can the variables thought to be relevant, the situation studied, in all its richness and complexity, is beyond the researcher's control. The researcher may be able to choose variables but, unlike the experimental researcher, cannot manipulate them. Moreover, in experimental situations, variables can usually be isolated; that is, stripped of much complexity. In case study research, while the researcher may decide not to count features of a given situation as relevant, they can only rarely be removed from the situation. Even then, the removal of a feature will impact other features in the situation, some of which the researcher may not even be aware. The impossibility of artificially excluding everything but a predetermined set of independent variables makes intellectual work with given situations unavoidable in case study research.

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