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Historical Methods

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SAGER, Fritz, and Christian ROSSER (2015). “Historical Methods”, in Mark BEVIR und R.A.W. RHODES
(Hrsg.). The Routledge Handbook of Interpretive Political Science. London / New York: Routledge.

Historical Methods

Fritz Sager, and Christian Rosser

Social scientific approaches usually perceive the historical method only as a preparatory method
providing evidence for the subsequent “secondary methods” such as causal narratives, process tracing
and pattern matching (Lange 2013: 43-55). From that perspective, the former deliver a descriptive
“data base”, while the latter focus on drawing inferences and, ideally, extracting and explaining alleged
causal relationships (Lange 2013: 42). According to this view, “researchers employ historical narrative
for descriptive purposes, that is, to document what happened and what the characteristics of a
phenomenon were” (Lange 2013: 56). This chapter supports the argument that historical methods can
contribute more to political studies than series of past events or attempts to describe past persons and
institutions. They can take an important stance in interpretivist approaches to political science because
interpretation has always constituted a key element of the historical discipline, where the inquirer
needs to accord meaning to actions and occurrences on a strongly individual and contextualized basis.
Before the rise of the behavioralist approach in the first half of the 20th century, the human sciences,
and especially history, already provided a constitutive epistemological ground for the study of politics
(Bevir and Rhodes 2002: 132; Oren 2006).

In the first section of the chapter, the foundations of the interpretive approach in history are illustrated
by outlining the decisive contributions of several nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians and
philosophers of history to the development of interpretive approaches. Most publications on historical
methods actually cover issues of methodology, including epistemological discussions of how sound
knowledge of the past can be acquired. However, “Methodology”, i.e. the science of methods, is not
quite the same as “method” (Daniel and Aroma 2011: 38-39). In what follows, the term method refers
to the historian’s handicraft, i.e. the techniques historians apply in collecting, evaluating, validating
and interpreting historical evidence to gain knowledge of the past. Historical methods in that sense
consist for the most part in groundwork for the interpretive act and are as such indispensable. In the
second section of the chapter, we consequently aim to introduce the reader to five major methodical
steps of historical inquiry (Sager et al. 2012: 139; Bowen and Bowen 2008) and highlight how they can
be of use to interpretive political scientists.

Historical Foundations of Interpretivism

Bevir and Rhodes (2002: 132) draw attention to the fact that there are two main philosophical
foundations which influenced interpretivism in its present forms. First, it took important parts of its
epistemological and methodical postulations from the humanities. Within this context, much of the
interpretive approach can only be understood against the background of the philosophical premises
of idealism essentially coined in 19th century Germany. The tracing of the perception of thoughts on
history by philosophers such as Wilhelm Dilthey, Benedetto Croce and Robin G. Collingwood reveals
notably the modernist German philosopher and later idealist Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel as a common
denominator.

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German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey made decisive contributions to the philosophical foundations of
a “human science” (Geisteswissenschaften), their salient historical and hermeneutical orientation and
their rejection of empiricism. For Dilthey, only the studies of human action and mind allow for historical
understanding (Verstehen), because “their mode of understanding presupposes an inner and
underived mental structure which is present to the individual in experience and reflection on
experience” (Linge 1973: 540). The individual’s principal constraint in quest of historical insight is his
historicity and thus his inevitably temporally determinate perspectivism.

From the traces Dilthey left on his philosophical posterity, the effect his writing had on R.G.
Collingwood might be depicted as one of the most pivotal for the apprehension of historical thought
in interpretivism. In his seminal work The Idea of History (1993 [1946]), for instance, Collingwood
(1993: 215) particularized that “[a]ll history is the history of thought” and, therefore, historical
processes are not “processes of mere events but processes of actions which have an inner side,
consisting of processes of thought […]”. These processes of thought are, accordingly, what the
historical researcher should aim to unfold when approaching a subject. This basic idea of Collingwood’s
position followed his fragmentation of perceivable human actions in two distinct categories: the
outside and the inside of an event, in other words, its “observable physical properties” and its “thought
processes” (Boucher 1993: 705; cf. Collingwood 1993: 118). It is essentially towards the inside of an
event that the researcher needs to address his questions and thus exercise historical interpretation if
he is “able to re-enact in his own mind the thought he is studying” (Collingwood 1993: 312). As such,
historical understanding constructs interpretations and concurring narratives, according to one’s
ability to comprehend the inside of a human action. Finally, Collingwood’s two-sided conception of
events provides an explanatory basis for the impossibility of objectively recognizable facts in the past:
Attempts to define historical processes objectively can at the most comprehend the outside of an
event and thus fail due to negligence of the inside of the event – the subjective thought processes of
an individual (Collingwood 1993: 190).

The second philosophical strand identified as influential to the interpretivist approach is generally
apprehended as post-structuralism and postmodernism (Bevir and Rhodes 2002: 132). Some authors,
like F.R. Ankersmit, stated clearly in which ways the postmodern perspective needed to be received by
the discipline of history: “The modernist historian follows a line of reasoning from his sources and
evidence to a historical reality hidden behind the sources. However, in the postmodernist view,
evidence does not point towards the past but to other interpretations of the past; for that is what we
in fact use evidence for” (Ankersmit 1994: 172).

Others, like the philosopher of history Hayden White, disapproved of the postmodern labelling while
still contributing substantively to the entrance of these approaches to the field of history. White is
usually being perceived as responsible for introducing the linguistic turn to the field of history (Rossi
1987: 15). In 1973, notably at the same time that the Bielefeld School in Germany promoted the
establishment of history as an analytic and systematic social science, Hayden White published his
seminal work Metahistory. He analyses historical texts on the basis of literary categories and
characterizes historiographical work as fundamentally poetic and fictional constructions of narratives
(Iggers 2001: 328). If a narrative is “a sequential account–or story–of an event or series of events which
organizes material chronologically” (Lange 2013: 44), there is general agreement that historians will
assert their “freedom to give greater attention to some things than others and thus to depart from
strict chronology; the license to connect things disconnected in space, and thus to rearrange
geography” (Gaddis 2002: 20). White, however, extends this thought by maintaining that “it can be
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argued that interpretation in history consists of the provisions of a plot-structure for a sequence of
events so that their nature as a comprehensible process is revealed by their figuration as a story of a
particular kind” (White 1973: 291).

Since its institutionalization as a scholarly discipline in the 19th century (Wang and Iggers 2002: 4), the
academic discipline of history not only witnessed thematic fragmentation, but also the integration of
a great many subject matters that went beyond state policy and the destiny of great men (Howell and
Prevenier 2001: 110ff.). At the same time, other disciplines – such as the study of politics – have also
become increasingly interested in shedding a historical perspective on their own subject areas. Like its
historical predecessors, the interpretative approach to political science needs solid empiric material to
interpret. The process of collecting this material in a reliable manner is a question of craftsmanship
rather than epistemology. In the next section, we therefore present five consecutive methodical steps
that allow the researcher to gain evidence that meets this requirement.

Five Methodical Steps of Historical Inquiry

The five methodical steps presented in this section can be summarized as follows: First, it will be
discussed that any definition of a subject depends on the interest and value-judgments of the inquirer
(Sellin 2008: 44). Accordingly, historians have to be self-critical, reflecting on the reasons for choosing
one subject over another. Second, it will be illustrated that identifying an appropriate body of sources
depends on both our research interest and the availability of evidence. When choosing our sources we
should constantly ask ourselves whether they can ‘answer the questions we ask them’. The third
section will demonstrate the crucial importance of reviewing the state of the art before, during, and
after selecting our body of primary sources as secondary literature serves as an information shortcut
to contextualize our research. In a fourth step, we proceed to source criticism in order to determine
the authenticity and credibility of the evidence. Once the evidence is authenticated through this
process of classifying and verifying the body of primary sources, one can address potential biases the
source may contain. Finally, the fifth step is concerned with drawing inferences from the patterns
identified in the overall body. It addresses questions of how historians may formulate concrete
hypotheses (or research questions) and subsequently verify or falsify them by arranging their
interpretations in a meaningful narrative.

To add some empirical meat to the theoretical bone, we use the political historical example of the Red
Army Faction (RAF). For many of the women and men who formed the 1968 movement in West-
Germany, the National Socialist history of their past generation, the Vietnam War, and the student
unrest in Europe and the United States were only three examples which held up the mirror of social
disintegration to them. The RAF, which Harald Uetz (1999: 23; authors’ transl.) called a “decay product
of the student movement,” tried to change social conditions in the Federal Republic of Germany both
by verbal means and extremely violent actions. The group, whose aim was to engage in armed
resistance against what they considered a fascist state, defined itself as communist and anti-
imperialist. The RAF committed numerous operations that were classified as terrorism by the
contemporary German government, including the killing of several politicians and many collateral
victims (Aust 1998). The RAF case will serve us to exemplify how the choices made in following the five
methodological steps impact the outcome of the research.

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Definition of a Subject

In the process of refining the subject for inquiry, the researcher should consider some issues of
practicability: First, the problem of source availability can impose notable constraints on the inquirer,
as “no historian can create raw data” (Smith and Lux 1993: 599). A second point concerns the
delimitation of a broad topic to a narrower segment thereof. Bloch (2008: 128) asserts that “in order
to remain true to life in its intertwining actions and reactions, we need not pretend to seize it as a
whole.” This can be a difficult task, as the methodical approach of history differs from the typical
reductionist stance of social sciences which detects a set of dependent and independent variables in
the quest for explanations of causal chains and possible establishment of nomothetic insight (Gaddis
2002: 54-55). Historical research methods “emphasize complexity rather than simplicity” (Smith and
Lux 1993: 595), starting from the premise that “so much depends upon so much else” (Gaddis 2002:
55) and yet, at the same time, we need to reduce and circumscribe our research intents due to reasons
of feasibility.

A further point of methodological controversy among historians concerns aspects of temporality:

Traditionally, the work of historians is viewed as fundamentally coined by their temporal distance from
their subject (Gaddis 2002: 14). A distinction is often made between the “past” and the “present” as
two separate categories which are used to overcome the complexity of temporal interrelationships.
This raises the question of how historical methods can be useful in examining how contemporary
phenomena took their present form. Within political science, historical institutionalism and several
approaches to modelling history such as path dependency, process tracing or causal narrative
demonstrate the aim of explaining causes and effects over time from a contemporary perspective
(Howlett and Rayner 2006; Mahoney 2000; cf. Lange 2013: 42ff.). However, as it has already been
stated, some scholars such as Dilthey have emphasized the historian’s own historicity, arguing that our
view on the past can only be a contemporary one. This “inexorableness of historicity” (Brieler 1998: 1,
authors’ transl.) leads to an unavoidable perspectivism (Sellin 2008: 214; Furrer 2006: 29) forcing the
researcher to take into account that historical analysis is based on contemporary questions and
insights attained through historical methods are utilized from a present point of view (Sellin 2008:
177). This also corresponds with the postmodernist stance stating that historical evidence points to
other interpretations of the past rather than towards the past.

Finally, when choosing a specific subject, we attribute some sort of contextual relevance to it – be it
for the explanation of a time period or any social, political, cultural or economic development, be it
because we believe the subject to be important for historiography itself. As Dray (1993: 39) maintains,
“[n]o scientist can study everything in a given field; some particular aspect or problem must always be
selected for treatment. And in making their selections, scientists, like historians, follow their interests
and betray their values.”

As may be exemplified with the RAF case, we need to assess why and to what extent we ascribe
significance to a subject: When choosing to examine the influence of the German women’s movement
on the RAF’s internal structures, for instance, we not only place the subject in the general context of
the anti-authoritarian student movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s, but also in the context of the
women’s movement which intensified its protest at the same time (Rossi 1993: 14ff.; Peters 2004:
81ff.). This sort of contextualization is necessary, but must be made transparent on the basis of
plausibility. The connections that we establish between all the events, processes, ideas and institutions

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which necessarily interfere in and surround our subject eventually determine our characterization of
the research problem.

Identifying an Appropriate Body of Sources

The material object of historical research gets usually referred to with the term “sources” or “primary
sources”. Sources hold a key position and are a necessary condition for any historical insight, as no
situation, no idea, no circumstance and no “fact” can be made historiographically relevant in the
absence of sources able to provide evidence for it (Ritter 1986: 143; Seiffert 2006: 89). The narrative
presented to the readership of a historical study constitutes merely a “black box” if they cannot trace
its materialization, that is, on which sources the narrative is based and how the historian used them
(Seiffert 2006: 73). The whole world, all its attributes and objects, values and institutions bearing
witness to its evolution are historical sources. They are so potentially, as any source is dependent on
the inquirer’s aim to gain historical insight, which consists of a steady, dialogic confrontation between
researcher and sources (Sellin 2008: 45-47).

The diversity of historical evidence is thus almost inexhaustible; at the same time, the identification of
a body of sources is limited by its availability (Sellin 2008: 54; Howell and Prevenier 2001: 86). For
example, some of the strategy documents defining governmental action against the RAF remain
classified until today. Alternatively, a lot of potential historical evidence may have been destroyed for
personal or political motives or because of wars, environmental damages, burnings, and other
incidents (Bloch 2008: 61; Sellin 2008: 55). Historians must therefore keep in mind that their chosen
body of sources may already have gone through some kind of “natural” selective process.

The process of identifying an appropriate body of primary sources is induced by considering what
sources are most likely to answer specific research questions (Sellin 2008: 83; Seiffert 2006: 99).
Questions constitute the point of departure from which we will infer the utility of a specific source for
our research; but while studying specific sources, new questions might emerge which may be
answered only by consulting additional, perhaps totally different sources (Sellin 2008: 47). Hence, it is
important to attest certain flexibility to research questions and epistemological interests. Marc Bloch
(2008: 54) insists that even when the historian has “settled his itinerary, the explorer is well aware that
he will not follow it exactly. Without it, however, he would risk wandering perpetually at random.” At
the same time, the researcher must keep in mind that a piece of evidence is basically open to any
question, since sources are not being created with regard to a specific research aim. For instance, a
single document might at the same time be able to generate insight about the mental status of
imprisoned RAF members and the conditions in German prisons in the 1970’s – the focus depends
entirely on the formulated research questions.

As Shafer et al. (1974: 38-39) put it, “a system of values, usually implicit rather than explicit, always
dictates the historian’s selection of materials.” Researchers will consider a certain piece of evidence
relevant for their analysis as they position it in relation to other sources and the topic as a whole. This
is necessarily a subjective choice and, as we may explain with R.G. Collingwood, also brings with itself
the risk of what he called ‘scissors and paste’ history, that is, “history constructed by excerpting and
combining the testimonies of different authorities” (Collingwood 1993: 257).

In the RAF case a first review of the state of the art and source material could lead us to the assumption
that the German women’s movement had a considerable impact on the way the female RAF members
positioned themselves in the group. For instance, we might detect a letter written in October 1968 by
5
Ulrike Meinhof to Rudi Dutschke, a prominent leader of the German student movement, in which she
expresses interest in the activities carried out at that time by female members of the socialist student
association (Sozialistischer Studentenverbund). In that letter, Meinhof appreciates the fact that these
women publicly defend their cause and adds that she is planning to “work on these women’s things”
during winter (Meinhof 1968; authors’ transl.). Generally, it is uncontested that women had a strong
hold on the RAF’s actions as they took leading positions in the internal hierarchy. Rossi (1993: 53)
assumes that women such as Ensslin and Meinhof wanted to be leaders because they were influenced
by both the emancipatory efforts of the women’s movement and their own self-determination which
they intended to exercise through their anti-authoritarian fight.

Other analyses maintain that the simple correlation between the German women’s movement and
women’s role in the RAF is inadequate. Lenz (2010: 266) points out that although the women’s
movement and the RAF grew out of the anti-authoritarian student movement, only the RAF chose to
fight the fallacies of the system through the use of violence. Hence, discrepancies regarding the goals
as well as the means to attain them would lead us to question our initial assumption. In searching
further source material, we would thus have to consider varying evidence which adequately depicts
the complexity of our research problem.

State of the Art

The emphasis on sources as “raw material” of historical research should not conceal that the adequate
use of secondary literature is equally decisive. The review of the work of other scholars is
interconnected with the whole research process, from the definition of the subject, where we study
what has been done so far on the broader topic, to the final synthesis of our findings, where we
estimate and reevaluate the conclusions other scholars have drawn from the same sources (Shafer et
al 1974: 178).

During the literature review, a critical perspective is in order, not only towards the research questions,
hypotheses, methodical approaches and inferences resulting from a specific study, but also towards
classifications and categorizations created by some authors and usually reproduced by others. In this
regard, the issue of periodization and sequencing is important. According to Ritter (1986: 313),
periodization “is a common historical response to the problem of time”. It brings the idea of continuity
into a set of events and processes; at the same time, the definition of a period is made ex negativo
through its dissociation from another period (Furrer 2006: 40). In historical narratives, periodization
occurs on both the macro level (large scale developments) and on the micro level (single incidents and
specific phenomena). Obviously, the same remark applies for topical and geographical divisions that
historians apply to reduce the complexity of their subject (e.g. Sager and Rosser 2009: 1144; Rosser
2010: 548). Mastering the use of secondary literature then constitutes a means of questioning
established patterns of interpretation, keeping in mind that “[t]he initial definition of a pattern has
profound consequences for everything that follows. […] This initial finding of form organizes history by
establishing a basic sense of figure and ground” (Clemens 2005: 493).

Secondary literature on the RAF usually explains their presence in Germany on the basis of three
generations (Peters 2004: 32; Rossi 1993: 54): The first generation of the RAF was coined by the
establishment of the group’s revolutionary project and the proclamation of the anti-imperialistic and
anti-fascist fight. After the imprisonment of the RAF founders Baader, Meinhof, Ensslin and Mahler in
1972, the sudden absence of the leaders disorientated the whole group and led to a first

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fragmentation. It was only in 1977, now under the command of the new leading figure Brigitte
Mohnhaupt, that a consolidated group launched the most violent phase of RAF history and marked
the beginning of the second generation. In this phase, ideological purposes receded to the background,
while the liberation of the imprisoned group members came to the fore. Finally, the beginning of a
third generation is usually discerned in the first half of the 1980’s, after the group had experienced a
setback due to several successful operations by police forces. The RAF at the same time began to
neglect the objective of liberating the prisoners and started prioritizing the military fight against US
soldiers in Germany who the RAF regarded as individual representatives of the imperialistic arm.

This periodization thus relies principally on the presence of individual persons having impact on the
group as well as major changes in the group’s focus on terroristic activities. Such definition of phases
is artificial, as it has not been proclaimed by the RAF protagonists themselves. While this periodization
has been established on the basis of plausible historical narratives, the historian nevertheless needs to
question its background. For the analysis of a more specific subject like the women’s role in the RAF,
different turning points and changes might be of larger importance than the indicators used for the
general periodization of the group’s activities.

Classifying and Verifying the Body of Sources

The aim of source criticism is to verify sources. This objective is usually split into two separate
methodical stages which follow different rationales, but are still necessarily inter-twined: Trough
external criticism, we examine the authenticity of a source; through internal criticism, we question its
credibility (Seiffert 2006: 91). In current practice of historical research, the status of source criticism is
difficult to determine. The rules of the critical examination of sources are often considered axiomatic
and therefore neglected in the teaching of historical methods. Some scholars even propose, based on
arguments of efficiency, to focus on gaining historical insight through a controlled “method” of textual
analysis of secondary literature (Trachtenberg 2006). Lange (2013: 56) notes with regard to
comparative-historical research as a methodical approach of social sciences that “[a]t times,
comparative-historical researchers use historical methods to gather and assess data. More frequently,
however, they simply use the historical narratives of others – usually historians – as sources of data
and insight.”

However, a recent example may show that the meticulous verification of source material is
indispensable: After a renowned news magazine had presented diaries of Adolf Hitler as authentic
documents, it was discovered in 1983 that the diaries had actually been forged. This discovery led to a
major media scandal which could have been avoided if the diaries had been subjected to genuine
source criticism. As long as we can discern reasons – be it personal or political motives, be it
carelessness or simple ignorance – for faking historical sources, there is no convincing argument that
the elements of source criticism have become obsolete.

Basic Principles of External Criticism

In the typical case of a written document, external criticism aims to establish by whom, when, where,
how and in what situation the source was created (Milligan 1979: 178). External criticism depends in
large parts on the researcher’s ability to discern anachronisms. As a basic principle of the historical
discipline, the notion of anachronism denominates the “[a]wareness that the past differs in
fundamental respects from the present” (Ritter 1986: 9). From this follows the conception of
anachronism as the erroneous classification of events, ideas or objects in time. The appearance of
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anachronisms in source material gives the researcher important leads towards the discernment of
forgeries; for instance, when a document refers to a situation which had not yet taken place at the
alleged date of creation of that document.

If the author, the date and the place are given by the source, the researcher needs to examine their
reliability; otherwise, this information needs to be established through analysis of the material nature
of the source as well as the contextualization of its content. External criticism is sometimes referred to
as the “negative” dimension of source criticism, insofar as it aims at excluding “false evidence” (Shafer
et al. 1974: 118; Milligan 1979: 178). However, we have to think of this dimension of “falseness” in
relative terms, because “[a]ny object is, in itself, authentic” (Howell and Prevenier 2001: 58).

Besides Hitler’s alleged diaries, let us discuss another example of source authenticity: The RAF
repeatedly upheld that state authorities had circularized fake pamphlets and letters in which RAF
members seemingly claimed responsibility for certain activities (RAF 1972; Strassner 2008: 221). In the
group’s eyes, this was a political strategy to destabilize the RAF. Let us assume, for illustrative purposes,
that some alleged RAF statements stem from somebody else’s pen. They would necessarily have been
created with a specific intention potentially ranging from personal pleasure over political aspirations
to some ideological conviction. Against the background of this example it may be concluded with
Bloch’s (2008: 77) words that “to establish the fact of forgery is not enough. It is further necessary to
discover its motivations […]. Above all, a fraud is, in its way, a piece of evidence.” Hence, as forgeries
may bear testimony to past occurrences, historians would eventually give up valuable insights if they
decided to exclude forgeries prematurely from their analysis.

Internal Criticism and the Issue of Historical Facts

Through internal criticism, we establish hypotheses about the credibility of a source or, in other words,
the reliability of its information (Milligan 1979: 181). The quality of inferences with regard to a subject
matter eventually hinges upon this important part of historical method. It is, first, induced by the
seemingly simple undertaking of understanding the wording of a document (Shafer et al. 1974: 142).
Again, the researcher might face practical problems such as foreign languages and technical jargon.
Furthermore, the meaning of words changes with time and place and the investigator must therefore
stick to the contextualization of the chosen subject (Shafer et al. 1974: 142). Most importantly, the
initial analysis of a text must take into account possible differences between the literal meaning and
other semantic notions such as irony, cynicism, or metaphor (Shafer et al. 1974: 142-144). Ambiguous
meanings thus require historian’s ability to read between the lines (Milligan 1979: 182).

We may now turn our attention to the credibility of information contained in the source in relation to
our research questions. Internal criticism then consists of procedures to disclose the historical facts
with respect to the investigated subject, but the notion of “fact” and thus the determination of a
“factual basis” for answers to research questions bring several difficulties with it. First, an isolated fact
is not necessarily of great significance for historical insight: “If a fact is a true statement about past
events, then there is no practicable limit to the number of facts which are relevant to even the smallest
historical problem” (Fischer 1970: 5). The researcher needs to accord a specific meaning to the fact in
a broader context and place it in relation to other facts. A popular opinion maintains that it is the
historian who, through a methodically controlled interpretation, determines the status, role and value
of a fact in the course of history (Goldstein 1976: 66; Sellin 2008: 25). Because the context and point
of departure of historical research – the “present” – evolves constantly, the angle from which we view

8
the past changes too, “so that history is constantly being reinterpreted” (Shafer et al. 1974: 37). This,
however, does not diminish the value of historical research but only does justice to the profound
contingency inherent to the subject of historical research.

Second, the idea of a fact is often connected with the idea of certainty. However, in historical research,
the content of sources cannot be interpreted as absolute truth or certain proof; rather, “the judgment
is one of varying degrees of probability – probably true, probably accurate, probably untrue, probably
inaccurate” (Shafer et al. 1974: 41). For instance, in her letter to Rudi Dutschke, Ulrike Meinhof (1968)
describes her living together with her divorced husband Klaus Röhl as being penetrated by certain
authoritarian structures. Subsequently, she links the need to support the cause of the female wing of
the student movement to the need to discuss “relations of production” in the realm of domestic
privacy. One may thus ask to what extent Meinhof’s former husband had influenced her perspective
towards the women’s cause. In other words, do her statements indicate that her stance towards the
women’s movement originated in personal experiences rather than the adherence to a greater
ideological cause? When we are confronted with a testimony or account from a person, we can never
be ultimately sure if that person gives us completely accurate information, be it because of an intention
to conceal information or exaggerate, be it because of an erroneous observation (Shafer et al. 1974:
40) or because the witness becomes a “prisoner of his own perceptions” (Milligan 1979: 190).

Drawing Inferences from the Patterns Identified in the Overall Body

Traditionally, historical research has been averse to broad generalizations and rather resistant to grand
theories of social change (Howell and Prevenier 2001: 127; Dray 1957: 80). This reluctance is, on the
one hand, rooted in the 19th century historicist view which pointed out the fundamental uniqueness
of every historical event, situation or object and, hence, the need to interpret every one of them on its
own merits (Seiffert 2006: 66). On the other hand, it reflects some basic premises regarding to what
extent we are able to reach historical knowledge which are represented in the thoughts of the authors
introduced at the beginning of this chapter. In that tradition of thought, models of general law as they
have been promoted by the natural sciences and, from there, adapted by the social sciences, are not
apt to explain historical situations framed by unique contexts in which human action takes place. The
attempt to explain historical situations through their subsumption under a covering law thus fails to
consider the mindsets and emotional reservations which may shape fragments of the past. Clearly
referring to Collingwoods conception of the understanding of human actions in history, William Dray
suggests that “[the historian] must revive, re-enact, re-think, re-experience the hopes, fears, plans,
desires, views, intentions […] of those he seeks to understand. To explain action in terms of covering
law would be to achieve, at most, an external kind of understanding” (Dray 1957: 119). Collingwood
himself pointed to the futility of the quest for generalizations in history, as the highest form of
historical knowledge is “the discerning of the thought which is the inner side of the event”
(Collingwood 1993: 222) and thus “nothing of value is left for generalisation to do” (Collingwood 1993:
223).

The social scientific perspective on historical methods usually views its advantages in the
determination of within-case complexity. According to that view, historical methods are hardly able to
provide nomothetic explanations as “their insight is limited to particular cases, as historical methods
analyze particular phenomena in particular places at particular times” (Lange 2013: 13). Historians
recognize that their research objective cannot consist of producing laws which apply throughout
comparable phenomena. Historical methods aim at explanation of complexity, not its reduction. They
9
are not primarily designed to look for common denominators of phenomena and deduce forecasts:
“[Historians] derive processes from surviving structures; but because [they] understand that a shift in
those processes at any point could have produced a different structure, [they] make few if any claims
about the future” (Gaddis 2002: 66).

Nevertheless, methodical approaches of history certainly allow it to discern analogies, tendencies,

recurring patterns and “similarities of circumstance” (Howell and Prevenier 2001: 84). Scholars
applying historical methods are usually keen to recognize certain evidence, points of references, or
patterns which might enable them to draw valuable inferences through an interpretative process.
Interpretation of evidence is then generally perceived as comprising the researcher’s verdict about the
“facts” which have been verified through source criticism (Sellin 2008: 36-37; Seiffert 2006: 123). The
term “verdict” is not to be understood as a moral judgment, but as the allotment of a certain meaning
of that fact in the context of a chronologically, spatially and socially defined historical situation (White
1987: 59; Seiffert 2006: 123). Neither is the researcher’s verdict final since in historical research “all
inferences are probabilistic. An inference may even be thought of as a hypothesis; that is, a suggestion
as to relationships between facts” (Shafer et al. 1974: 182). As Howell and Prevenier (2001: 84) note,
even when “a piece of evidence available […] has passed the necessary tests of authenticity and
reliability, that ‘fact’ does not necessarily play a significant role in the historian’s interpretation.” The
researcher engages once again in a selective process, weighing up some pieces of secured evidence
against others and making valid choices regarding the relevance of a particular piece of evidence for
his research problem.

In that final step of historical inquiry, historians thus abstract their findings from source criticism and
arrange them in a narrative as the proper form for historical explanation. Bequeathed testimonies to
the past allow for constant reconsideration and re-interpretation, thus producing possibly infinite
concurring narratives. According to White (1973: 294), “by a specific arrangement of these events
reported in the documents, and without offense to the truth value of the facts selected, a given
sequence of events can be emplotted in a number of different ways.” This means that concurring
narratives are a necessary feature of historical research to the extent that different interpreters of the
same events and actions, conditioned by their own historical context and understanding of social
phenomena, attribute contrasting meanings and significance to these events and actions. However, it
also means that these events which need to be interpreted actually occurred and thus, in order to be
made accessible for interpretation, need to be considered under the methodical approach presented
in this chapter. Turning our attention once again towards the RAF movement we can state that there
are facts such as the deaths of first generation RAF leaders Baader and Ensslin in the night of October
18, 1977. The circumstances which led to their demise, however, might not be as easily ascertainable:
How did they get weapons into Stammheim’s high-security wing? How obvious is the alleged
correlation between the imprisoned leaders’ suicide and the RAF’s failed attempt to hijack a Lufthansa
plane? Several plausible answers to these questions may be found. They may all rely on internal
criticism of the same material but nevertheless differ in their conclusions.

Conclusion

Considering political science an interpretive discipline implies the hermeneutic treatment of empirical
material (Bevir and Rhodes 2004: 157-158). The interpretive approach, however, does not only include
the art of interpretation but also necessitates reliable material to interpret. In this chapter, we have
argued that historical methods (in the sense of "handicraft") are a controlled way of preparing sources
10
in a way as to unpack meanings, beliefs, and preferences of actors in order to make sense of actions,
practices, and institutions.

They open the door for interpretations as through them we make traditions and materials of the past
accessible. However, at the same time, historical methods also indicate the limitations of
interpretations of a historical situation or phenomenon, because their application requires, at least to
a certain extent, the ‘right of veto of a source’ (Koselleck 1977: 45). According to this conceived idea
of historical research, the critical analysis of testimonies to the past must, on the one hand, hinder the
admittance of obviously unreliable sources to historical interpretation. On the other hand, historical
methods allow for the active determination of past events whose identification, although giving way
to perhaps numerous concurring interpretations, also limit the possibilities of narrative construction
(Iggers 2001: 337-338).

Acknowledgment

The authors wish to thank Anna Frey for her substantial assistance in drafting this chapter.

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