Qualitative Comparative Analysis

The growing interest in the configurational perspective to understand causal complexity has brought the spotlight on qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). However, despite that QCA was introduced more than three decades ago and predominantly has been used in the fields of political science and international relations, the prospect of using QCA as a research technique to understand international organizations (IOs) just recently has emerged in the literature. Specifically, the two works of Federo and Saz-Carranza (2018a; 2018b) on IO governance are currently the only existing studies that employed this technique to research IOs. This chapter aims to shed light on the nature and specificities of QCA in order to encourage IO scholars to adopt the technique for their future research endeavors