Guest edited by Hilde van Meegdenburg, Sandra Plumer & Johanna Kuhlmann
We are excited to publish this introductory article to a new themed section on Interpretive Process Tracing (IPT). This article lays out the conceptual and methodological foundations for a growing strand of policy research, while also making a substantial standalone contribution to debates on causal mechanisms and process tracing. In doing so, it both frames the research articles in the themed section and advances IPT as a coherent research approach in its own right.
The article begins from a familiar starting point: the increasing prominence of process tracing (PT) in policy research, particularly as a tool for uncovering causal mechanisms—the “cogs and wheels” linking causes to outcomes. However, the authors identify an important tension. Much existing PT adopts a regularity-oriented, moderately positivist stance, assuming that mechanisms generate recurring patterns and can be studied through relatively objective observation. This sits uneasily with interpretive traditions in policy studies, which emphasise context, contingency, and the situated meanings actors attach to policy processes.
IPT is proposed as a way to bridge this divide. Rather than rejecting mechanism-based explanation, the article reworks it on explicitly interpretive foundations. Ontologically, IPT is grounded in social constructivism, treating policymaking as a socially constructed process shaped by actors’ interpretations, beliefs, and interactions. Epistemologically, it embraces a double hermeneutic: researchers interpret a world that is already interpreted by policy actors. Knowledge, therefore, is not discovered as objective fact but constructed through systematic, reflexive engagement with empirical material.
These foundations have important methodological implications. IPT retains PT’s commitment to tracing mechanisms over time but reconceptualises what mechanisms are and how they operate. Rather than deterministic, generalisable sequences, mechanisms in IPT are understood as contextually embedded, meaning-oriented processes. They may be theorised as modular combinations of elementary action orientations (such as norm-following or strategic calculation) or as ideal-typical constructs that “travel” across cases while taking different concrete forms. Causation, in turn, is treated as constitutive and open-ended, with outcomes shaped through interaction between mechanisms and context rather than produced in a law-like fashion.
Methodologically, the article underscores IPT’s flexibility. Researchers can draw on diverse sources—documents, interviews, ethnography—and employ a range of qualitative techniques, from discourse analysis to narrative reconstruction. However, this openness is paired with two key requirements: transparency in how evidence supports interpretive claims, and reflexivity regarding the researcher’s own role in knowledge construction. The emphasis on “palpable evidence”—rich, concrete illustration of interpretations—highlights the importance of making interpretive claims empirically convincing.
As an introduction to the themed section, the article also situates three accompanying empirical research articles that demonstrate IPT in practice. (See links below to all articles in the themed section). These studies show how IPT can be used to analyse policy diffusion as a meaning-making process, trace the emergence of poverty as a recognised policy problem in Germany, and further refine IPT’s analytical logic through an “analyticist” approach. Together, they illustrate how IPT enables empirically rich, context-sensitive explanations of policy processes.
The article concludes by positioning IPT as complementary to, rather than in competition with, regularity-oriented process tracing. By foregrounding meaning, agency, and context, it expands the methodological repertoire of policy research and opens space for productive dialogue across epistemological traditions.
Table of contents for Themed Section blog series on Advancing Interpretive Process Tracing in Policy Research
Interpretive Process Tracing in Policy Research (Introduction to the themed section)
by Hilde van Meegdenburg, Sandra Plümer and Johanna Kuhlmann
How social reporting put poverty on the agenda in Germany: an interpretive process tracing analysis
By Christopher Smith Ochoa
The Role of Causal Mechanisms in Policy Diffusion: Assisted Voluntary Return Policies in Germany
By Sybille Münch
Interpretive Process Tracing? How PT Can Become Amenable to Interpretive Research
by Hilde van Meegdenburg
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