Relationships Among Rivals (RAR): A Framework for Analyzing Contending Hypotheses in Process Tracing

Methodologists and substantive scholars alike agree that one of process tracing’s foremost contributions to qualitative research is its capacity to adjudicate among competing explanations of a phenomenon. Existing approaches, however, only provide explicit guidance on dealing with mutually exclusive explanations, which are exceedingly rare in social science research. I develop a tripartite solution to this problem. The Relationships among Rivals (RAR) framework (1) introduces a typology of relationships between alternative hypotheses, (2) develops specific guidelines for identifying which relationship is present between two hypotheses, and (3) maps out the varied implications for evidence collection and inference. I then integrate the RAR framework into each of the main process-tracing approaches and demonstrate how it affects the inferential process. Finally, I illustrate the purchase of the RAR framework by reanalyzing a seminal example of process-tracing research: Schultz’s (2001) analysis of the Fashoda Crisis. I show that the same evidence can yield new and sometimes contradictory inferences once scholars approach comparative hypothesis testing with this more nuanced framework.