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.