Time-Series QCA:

Studying Temporal Change through Boolean Analysis

Abstract

     Recent years have witnessed increasing interests in integrating temporality into Boolean analysis or Qualitative Comparative Analysis (hereafter QCA). Despite the rapid development of the Boolean method and the extensive application, QCA had been often criticized for its static nature and limitations in analyzing a dynamic process of temporal changes. This article joins the recent efforts in the literature and argues that temporal changes can be analyzed using the existing QCA methods. The article first reviews the existing work on temporal QCA (hereafter TQCA) in a broader context of analyzing temporality in the Boolean method. It then proposes different techniques to analyze dynamic processes of temporal changes through Boolean analysis by incorporating time-series variations into QCA (hereafter TS/QCA), which take sub-forms of Pooled QCA, Fixed Effects QCA, and Time Differencing QCA. Lastly, it maps various types of “QCA families“ in a typological framework and discusses the challenges that TQCA and TS/QCA face and suggest future directions of methodological innovations.