Patrick A. Mello

International Politics, Security, and Methods

Latest Updates

  • Parliamentary debates and decision-making on Afghanistan

    The January 2022 issue of Orient: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Politik, Wirtschaft und Kultur des Orients/ German Journal for Politics, Economics and Culture of the Middle East features my article on “German Parliamentary Debates and Decision-Making on Afghanistan”. The piece reviews German engagement in Afghanistan with a focus on parliamentary involvement. The article can be accessed here.

    Abstract: The fall of Kabul in August 2021 marked the end of 20 years of German civilian and military engagement in Afghanistan. Over this time, more than 90,000 Bundeswehr soldiers were deployed in Afghanistan, 59 of whom died there. At a cost of about EUR 12.3 bn, the engagement in the Afghanistan missions amounted to the largest and most costly military operation in the history of the Bundeswehr. This contribution reflects upon parliamentary involvement throughout this period, placing emphasis on the initial political decisions and turning points of the Afghanistan engagement.

  • 9th International QCA Expert Workshop at ETH Zurich

    On December 13-15, I took part virtually in the 9th International QCA Expert Workshop and 5th International QCA Paper Development Workshop at ETH Zurich (organized by Manuel Fischer, Julia Leib, Johannes Meuer, Sofia Pagliarin, Ryan Rumble, and Christian Rupietta). The main workshop brought together a group of about 30 QCA experts from around the globe, most of whom participated online to discuss methodological innovations, the diffusion of QCA, and new measures of validity and robustness. The preceding paper development workshop included more than a dozen roundtables with about 50 applied QCA papers that were presented and discussed. I co-chaired roundtables with Sofia Pagliarin (Erasmus University Rotterdam) and Nena Oana (European University Institute), presented my recent QCA textbook Qualitative Comparative Analysis: An Introduction to Research Design and Application (Georgetown University Press), and took part in the jury for the QCA Best Paper Award (together with Yunzhou Du, Peer Fiss, Benoît Rihoux, Carsten Schneider, and Eva Thomann).

  • QCA Book Published with Georgetown University Press

    Georgetown University Press has just published my QCA textbook Qualitative Comparative Analysis: An Introduction to Research Design and Application. Following an ideal-typical research cycle, the book’s ten chapters cover the methodological basis and analytical routine of QCA, as well as matters of research design, causation and causal complexity, and QCA variants. A comprehensive glossary helps to clarify frequently used terms. The book is complemented by an accessible online R manual to help new users practice QCA’s analytical steps on sample data and then implement those steps with their own findings. The book further contains boxes by other authors from across the social sciences, who are reflecting on their own QCA applications and their use of specific variants of the method. For more information, reviews, and online material, please click the button below.

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