Qualitative Comparative Analysis and Analytical Induction

Abstract

This article bridges two research traditions, analytical induction (AI) and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) in the context of a study of early welfare state formation. First, the article differentiates classical AI from neoanalytical induction (NAI), tracing the latter to the former and identifying some problems with NAI. Next, it outlines QCA and identifies some problems with it. Third, it sketches two bridges, along with solutions that they offer for some limitations of NAI and QCA. One bridge links NAI's method, in essence a logical implementation of the idea of the working hypothesis, to QCA's powerful Boolean technology. The second bridge joins AI's stress on the reformulation of hypotheses in the face of negative evidence to QCA's capacities for complex inductive and logical specifications of the relations of explanatory to dependent variables. Following that, the article summarizes portions of a study of early 20th-century welfare state formation and uses them to illustrate the bridges. It concludes with a discussion of the analytical promise of a variant of QCA that stresses theory building in the AI tradition.