On October 31 and November 1, I participated in the first MethodsNET Conference at UC Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Founded in late 2021, MethodsNET is a network and community of methods experts and practitioners that hosts and supports methods training and development, including the Summer School in Social Sciences Methods at the Università della Svizzera italiana, among others. I presented two papers: “Uncovering Causal Symptoms: Combining Process Tracing and Qualitative Comparative Analysis in Case Study Research”, co-authored with Hilde van Meegdenburg (Universiteit Leiden) and “Counterfactuals and Qualitative Comparative Analysis” co-authored with Gizem Kadıoğlu and Michael Gibbert (both Università della Svizzera italiana). Thanks to the organizing team led by Benoît Rihoux (UC Louvain) and to the participants at our panels for the fruitful discussions and constructive feedback.

Am 10./11. Oktober habe ich im Konferenzzentrum des Bundesnachrichtendienstes (BND) an einem Workshop zum Thema “Integrierte Sicherheit für Deutschland? Die Nationale Sicherheitsstrategie der Bundesrepublik Deutschland” teilgenommen. Die Veranstaltung wurde von Holger Janusch und Thomas Dörfler von der Hochschule des Bundes für Öffentliche Verwaltung (HS Bund) organisiert. Die Beiträge des Workshops sollen im kommenden Jahr in einem Sonderheft der Zeitschrift für Politik erscheinen. In meinem Beitrag “Sicherheitspolitik in der Zeitenwende: Die Nationale Sicherheitsstrategie als Ausdruck außenpolitischen Wandels” ordne ich die Nationale Sicherheitsstrategie (NSS) in den Kontext außenpolitischer Kontinuitätslinien ein und gehe der Frage nach, inwiefern die NSS einen grundlegenden außenpolitischen Wandel markiert. Eine Besonderheit des Workshops war die Verbindung von Praxis und Wissenschaft, da zu jedem Beitrag “Impulse aus der Praxis” von Vertreter:innen verschiedener Bundesministerien und Ämter formuliert wurden (AA, BMVg, BMI, BMWK, BND, BPA, GIZ). Im Rahmen des Workshops fand auch eine öffentliche Podiumsdiskussion statt zum Thema “Politische Hochglanzbroschüre oder strategischer Goldstandard? Die Nationale Sicherheitsstrategie der Bundesrepublik Deutschland”, bei der ich die Moderation übernommen habe. Im Panel waren dabei: Sylvia Veit (HSU Hamburg), Pia Fuhrhop (SWP), Holger Janusch (HS Bund) und Jan Eckendorf (Auswärtiges Amt). Herzlichen Dank an die Organisatoren und das lokale Team für die gelungene Veranstaltung!

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During the week of August 19-23, 2024, I returned to the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano, to teach Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) at the 28th Summer School in Social Science Methods. The intensive course covers the foundations and advanced uses of QCA and its application in R, based on my book Qualitative Comparative Analysis: An Introduction to Research Design and Application (Georgetown University Press, 2021) and the accompanying R Manual (R Script and PDF freely available here). Workshop sessions are split into lectures and exercises, with dedicated time for individual consultation and feedback (see also the course description on the USI website). For impressions from previous years, see here. Thanks to the team at USI with Benedetto Lepori, Agata Lambrechts, and Eleonora Vicari for the smooth organization, including a wonderful reception on top of Monte Bré, and to all course participants for the constructive sessions!

The course program for 2025 will be decided upon in December this year, with registrations opening in January/February 2025. If you’re interested in participating in the QCA workshop and would like to be informed please let me know.

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Registration has opened for the 28th Summer School in Social Science Methods at the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, Switzerland. As in previous years (see impressions here), I am offering a week-long in-presence workshop on Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), taking place August 19-23, 2024.

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Throughout the workshop, participants are introduced to the foundations and advanced functions of QCA, while the course structure follows an ideal-typical research process. Starting with empirical illustrations that show how and for what purposes QCA is being used in the social sciences, the workshop proceeds with presenting the method’s core characteristics. This is followed by sessions on causation, causal complexity, and research design, to provide a basis for thinking about empirical applications. The ensuing sessions engage with QCA as an analytical approach, starting with set theory and concepts like necessary and sufficient conditions, Boolean algebra, truth tables, and fuzzy sets. In calibrating sets, we look into approaches to transform empirical raw data into crisp and fuzzy sets. Next, the course examines various measures of fit that help in evaluating QCA results. The sessions on set-theoretic analysis put all the elements together and show how empirical data is analyzed and interpreted with QCA. During the second half of the workshop we explore advanced topics, which can be tailored based on participants’ background and research interests. Potential topics include multi-method research design, QCA variants, robustness tests in QCA, addressing critiques, and recent developments. Participants also have the opportunity to present and discuss their own work within the group. The workshop sessions are complemented by illustrations and exercises from the social sciences, using the R Software environment and relevant R Packages. The workshop includes dedicated timeslots for individual consultation with the lecturer, group discussions, and networking opportunities. Further details can be found here.

I’m honored to have joined the editorial board of International Studies Quarterly (ISQ), under the new lead editors Sam R. Bell, Elena McLean, and Jeffrey Pickering, and their team of associate editors, who picked up the reigns of ISQ from former lead editors Brandon Prins and Krista Wiegand at the start of 2024. ISQ remains the flagship journal of the International Studies Association (ISA) and I look forward to participating in the editorial board meetings and to working with the new team.

On January 18/19, I gave a workshop on Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) in Large-Scale Educational Assessment at the University of Oslo, Norway. The two-day workshop was organized by Associate Professor Nani Teig for members of the research group “Large-Scale Educational Assessment” (LEA) at the Faculty of Educational Sciences. Besides providing a thorough introduction to QCA and its application in R, based on my QCA book, the workshop further engaged with published QCA examples from the field of education, to explore the specific requirements of research designs based on LEA data. Many thanks to Nani Teig and her colleagues for the kind invitation to freezing cold but beautiful Oslo!

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In December 2023, Chikura Publishing issued a Japanese edition of Qualitative Comparative Analysis: An Introduction to Research Design and Application, originally published by Georgetown University Press in 2021. The book was translated by Professors Nobukazu Azuma of Aoyama Gakuin University and Narimasa Yokoyama of Hosei University. Many thanks to the people at Georgetown University Press and Chikura Publishing for facilitating and implementing this translation. It was a pleasure to meet with everyone during my stay in Tokyo in May 2023. My heartfelt gratitude goes to Nobukazu Azuma and Narimasa Yokoyama for their thorough and timely work on the translation!

The book is available for orders on honto.jp, and amazon.co.jp, among others. More information about the book is available here (including open access online material). Japanese translations of the online material will also be made available through the publisher’s website.

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Against the backdrop of my recent Politics and Governance article “Zeitenwende: German Foreign Policy Change in the Wake of Russia’s War against Ukraine” I was interviewed for an episode of the Let’s Talk About podcast series by Cogitatio Press. The episode was moderated by Rodrigo Silva. The video is available on YouTube. The publisher’s website also features an audio version. In the interview I speak about the main findings of my research on German foreign policy, which indicate that the country has undergone an international orientation change, based on Chuck Hermann’s criteria for this classic concept of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). That said, due to the ongoing and incomplete nature of the policy processes (and domestic decisions, including the recent constitutional ruling on the federal budget), it is uncertain whether the initiated changes will be permanently implemented.

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I contributed a book chapter to The Handbook of Teaching Qualitative and Mixed Research Methods: A Step-by-Step Guide for Instructors, co-edited by Alissa Ruth, Amber Wutich, and H. Russell Bernard and recently published by Routledge. My chapter, entitled “Uncovering Causal Complexity with Qualitative Comparative Analysis” provides material for instructors to teach causal complexity and QCA usage through a combination of interactive lectures, homework materials, and in-class discussions. Overall, the Handbook presents a collection of 71 concise chapters on qualitative and mixed methods, covering diverse topics such as research ethics, sampling techniques for qualitative research, visual and participatory methods, linguistic analysis, network analysis, and six chapters on modeling and comparative analyses, which include my QCA chapter and, among others, a chapter on comparative ethnography by Raul Pacheco-Vega and a chapter on effective calibration practices by Claude Rubinson and Roel Rutten. The complete contents and further information on the Handbook can be found here.

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On December 12-14, the QCA Paper Development Workshop and the QCA Expert Workshop took place in Antwerp at the Antwerp Management School (AMS), hosted by Bart Cambré (AMS) and Benoît Rihoux (UCLouvain) and the co-organizers of the Paper Development Workshop Julia Leib (Uni Leipzig), Christoph Niessen (Universiteit Leiden), and Christian Rupietta (Queen’s University Belfast). The workshops brought together a group of about 50 experts and practitioners from around the globe to discuss methodological innovations and empirical applications. Together with Benoît Rihoux, I co-chaired a paper development roundtable, where we discussed and commented upon four empirical applications.