A Case Study — Belgium

Abstract

Case studies can serve a number of purposes. They can be purely descriptive outlining a political system or a series of events in great detail. By contrast, they also can be theory-generating or theory-testing in order to arrive at broader patterns and generalizations comprising a larger number of cases (see, e.g., Lijphart 1975). In the words of John Gerring (2007: 96): “The case study approach to research is most usefully defined as the intensive study of a single unit or a small number of units (the cases) for the purpose of understanding a larger class of similar units (a population of cases).” In order to do this, they have to follow a common structure and have to be focused around a common research problem (George and Bennett 2005). On this basis then systematic comparisons can be carried out.