Chapter 1 Introduction
1.4 Methodology
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1.4 Methodology
This research will be conducted in a bid to find an answer to one particular question; what are the factors that contributed to the success and failure of
economic sanctions threats that the European Commission used against seven countries in Asia during the course of nine years from 2010-2019? In this study, I will employ two research methods to find the answer to the said question; the comparative methods and the case study methods, mainly process tracing.
However, before we dive into the details on the research design, I would first like to introduce readers to the cases that I will examine in this study. There are seven cases in total. The first case (Case 1) is the case of economic sanctions that the EU imposed on Sri Lanka for its lack of commitment in addressing the issue of IUU fishing that began in November 2012 and ended in June 2016. The second case (Case 2) is the case of economic sanctions that the EU imposed on Cambodia for its lack of commitment in addressing the issue of IUU fishing that began in November 2012 and has yet to end. The third case (Case 3) is the case of an economic sanctions threat that the EU made against South Korea for its lack of commitment in addressing the issue of IUU fishing that began in November 2013 and ended in April 2015. The fourth case (Case 4) is the case of an economic sanctions threat that the EU made against the Philippines for its lack of
commitment in addressing the issue of IUU fishing that began in June 2014 and ended in April 2015. The fifth case (Case 5) is the case of an economic sanctions threat that the EU made against Thailand for its lack of commitment in addressing the issue of IUU fishing that began in April 2015 and ended in January 2019. The sixth case (Case 6) is the case of an economic sanctions threat that the EU made against Taiwan for its lack of commitment in addressing the issue of IUU fishing that began in October 2015 and ended in June 2019. Finally, the seventh case (Case 7) is the case of an economic sanctions threat that the EU made against Vietnam for its lack of commitment in addressing the issue of IUU fishing that began in October 2017 and has yet to end.
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These seven cases will be divided into three different groups. The first group shall be called Group A. This group consists of cases in which the target states did not comply with the EC’s demands during the threat stage of their sanctions episodes and were later given red cards by the EC. There are two cases that belong in this group; the case of Cambodia and the case of Sri Lanka. The second group shall be called Group B. This group consists of cases in which the target states chose to comply with the EC’s demands in the threat stage of their sanctions episodes. There are four cases that belong in this group; the cases of South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand and Taiwan. Finally, the last group, which shall not be given a name, consists of the case in which the sanction episode has yet to end. There is only one case in this group, which is the case of Vietnam. The case of Vietnam will not be discussed in detail in the following four chapters of the thesis. However, the case of Vietnam will still be briefly discussed in the last chapter; the conclusion of the research.
Now that all the cases are given, I shall explain my research design. In this comparative case study, I will use Mill’s method of agreement and Mill’s method of difference to find all variables that may be associated with the success and failure of economic sanctions threats that were made by the EU against seven countries in Asia. According to George and Bennett (2005, p. 153), the method of agreement is generally used to identify the independent variables associated with a common outcome in two or more cases. In the method of agreement, the investigator will employ the logic of elimination to exclude the candidate causes (independent variables) that are not present in all cases with similar outcome. Any cause (independent variable) that can survive this elimination can be considered as possibly associated with those cases’ common outcome (dependent variable) (George & Bennett, 2005, p. 155).
Meanwhile, the method of difference allows the investigator to identify the independent variables that contribute to the difference in outcomes of all the cases under examination. In the method of difference, the investigator uses the logic of elimination to exclude candidate causes (independent variables) that are
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present in all cases that are being compared (two or more) (George & Bennett, 2005, p. 156). According to George and Bennett (2005, p. 156), a condition present in all cases cannot “account for the difference in case outcomes”. Thus, only conditions (independent variables) that survive the elimination process and are not present in all cases that are being compared can be regarded as possibly associated with the variance in the outcomes of the cases.
In the first phase of the study, I will compare the cases in Group B against each other via the method of agreement. Since all cases in Group B share a common outcome (the success of sanction threats), I will use the logic of elimination to exclude all the conditions (independent variables) that are not present in all cases in group B and single out only those that are present in all cases. All the conditions that are present in all cases in group B can then be regarded as the independent variables that may be associated with the success of sanction threats. For example, if all countries in Group B are democracies, I may be able to conclude that “a high degree of democracy in the target state” may be one of the factors that contribute to the success of sanction threats.
Then, I will use a tool for within-case analysis called “process tracing” to seek for explanations why those independent variables lead to the outcome shared by all the cases in Group A. According George and Bennett (2005, p. 206), process tracing is a method which “attempts to identify the intervening causal process – the causal chain and causal mechanism – between an independent variable (or variables) and the outcome of the dependent variable”. I can use process tracing to either 1) develop a new hypothesis to why a certain
independent variable caused the outcome to occur or 2) test an existing hypothesis by seeing whether there is any alternative causal path that links the independent variable to the outcome (aside from the path that has been given by the scholar who came up with that particular hypothesis).
Next, in the second phase of the study, I will use the method of agreement to find all the independent variables that lead to the failure of the sanction threats.
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For this second phase, I will do the same process all over again, except with the cases in Group A instead of Group B. Basically, I will compare the two cases in group A against each other to find the independent variables that are present in all cases. Those independent variables will be identified as the factors that contribute to the failure of sanction threats. Then I will use process tracing to find the causal chains/causal mechanisms that link those independent variables with the outcome shared by all cases in Group A.
Finally, in the last and final phase of the study, I will conduct a case comparison between Group A and group B to find the factors that caused the two groups to act differently in response to the sanctions threats from the EU. In this phase of the study, the variables that are present in both groups can be discarded and the variables that are not present in both cases can be regarded as the possible factors that contribute to the difference in outcomes between the two groups.
In conclusion, this study will be divided into three phases. In the first phase of the study, I will employ “Mill’s method of agreement” to compare all the cases in Group B against each other to find the variables that are associated with the “success” of the EU’s sanction threats. In the second phase of the study, I will, again, employ “Mill’s method of agreement” to compare all the cases in Group A against each other to find the variables that are associated with the “failure” of the EU’s sanction threats. After each phase of the study is finished, I will also use process tracing to find the causal chains and mechanisms that link the variables to the outcomes of the cases. Finally, in the final phase of the study, I will employ
“Mill’s method of difference” to find the factors that contributed to the difference in outcomes between the two groups.