Hilde Van Meegdenburg
Biographic Data
| ID | 4097187 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hilde Van Meegdenburg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hilde |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Meegdenburg |
| SIGNATURE | VAN MEEGDENBURG H |
| AFFILIATIONS | https://dx.doi.org/https://ror.org/027bh9e22Leiden University, The Netherlands |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0011-588X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 8 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Interpretive Process Tracing in policy research
The goal of this article – which also functions as the introduction to a themed section – is to establish and further develop an interpretive variant of Process Tracing (PT) for policy research: Interpretive Process Tracing (IPT). Inspired by the turn towards mechanism-based explanations, policy scholars started studying the causal mechanisms that shape policy making. However, the dominant understanding of PT establishes the method as largely pos…
Interpretive process tracing? How PT can become amenable to interpretive research
Process tracing (PT) is a popular method that is increasingly applied in policy studies, including foreign policy analysis (FPA). However, while policy research and FPA have strong interpretivist strands, PT has been predominantly developed and applied within a regularity-oriented, broadly positivist framework. This article advances an analyticist approach to PT for policy research. Pivoting around ideal typification, it reconceptualizes mechanis…
Is there a religious bias? Attitudes towards military humanitarian intervention in Germany
Is individual support for internationally agreed military humanitarian interventions (MHIs) subject to a religious bias? Conducting a vignette-based survey experiment, the paper provides micro-level evidence for such a bias within a highly unlikely sample: German university students. Participants in our survey experiment were more compassionate and indeed more supportive of an MHI when the victims of war-related violence were Christians rather th…
International bureaucrats in the UN Security Council debates
Intergovernmental deliberations in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) are typically considered the realm of sovereign nation states. We challenge this position by studying the role of the UN Secretariat in UNSC debates, focusing on the debates on Afghanistan (1995–2017). We combine natural language processing with a network theoretical perspective to observe speaker position, topic introduction, and topic evolution and we complement this …
Process Tracing
This contribution develops process tracing (PT) as a method for Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). It explains what it takes to conduct PT, trace a mechanism, and draw conclusions on that basis. Importantly, I lay out an analyticist approach to PT that is amendable to more actor-centered and interpretivist studies. This approach treats mechanisms as akin to Weberian ideal types: abstract constructs that are adduced from multiple concrete, contextuall…
Researching non-state actors in international security
Research, across the board, is becoming more formalized. Whether for an ethnographic study, a comparative case-study or experiment, the list of prescriptions that comes with a scholar's methodological choices are growing. This is not necessarily a negative development: transparent descriptions of methodological choices give readers handles to assess the intent and quality of a study. But method should not suffocate. Where our messy social reality…
We don’t do that’
In this article I put forward a social constructivist perspective on state use of Private Military and Security Contractors (PMSCs). I will argue that state outsourcing decisions are, to a large extent, shaped by nationally shared values, understandings and dispositions. Concretely, I first provide a detailed overview of the extent of domestic and deployed contracting by the Danish Defence and, thereafter, based on a number of semi-structured int…
What the Research on PMSCs Discovered and Neglected
More than 15 years ago a new debate was opened discussing an emerging phenomenon: Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) in and around conflict zones. Initially focused on the actions of a number of notorious companies, the field matured rapidly and created a lively debate on how to accommodate these actors in military and democratic institutions. This article has two purposes. First, it offers an appraisal of the literature, and past re…
International bureaucrats in the UN Security Council debates
Intergovernmental deliberations in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) are typically considered the realm of sovereign nation states. We challenge this position by studying the role of the UN Secretariat in UNSC debates, focusing on the debates on Afghanistan (1995–2017). We combine natural language processing with a network theoretical perspective to observe speaker position, topic introduction, and topic evolution and we complement this …
Researching non-state actors in international security
Research, across the board, is becoming more formalized. Whether for an ethnographic study, a comparative case-study or experiment, the list of prescriptions that comes with a scholar's methodological choices are growing. This is not necessarily a negative development: transparent descriptions of methodological choices give readers handles to assess the intent and quality of a study. But method should not suffocate. Where our messy social reality…
We don’t do that’
In this article I put forward a social constructivist perspective on state use of Private Military and Security Contractors (PMSCs). I will argue that state outsourcing decisions are, to a large extent, shaped by nationally shared values, understandings and dispositions. Concretely, I first provide a detailed overview of the extent of domestic and deployed contracting by the Danish Defence and, thereafter, based on a number of semi-structured int…
What the Research on PMSCs Discovered and Neglected
More than 15 years ago a new debate was opened discussing an emerging phenomenon: Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) in and around conflict zones. Initially focused on the actions of a number of notorious companies, the field matured rapidly and created a lively debate on how to accommodate these actors in military and democratic institutions. This article has two purposes. First, it offers an appraisal of the literature, and past re…
Is there a religious bias? Attitudes towards military humanitarian intervention in Germany
Is individual support for internationally agreed military humanitarian interventions (MHIs) subject to a religious bias? Conducting a vignette-based survey experiment, the paper provides micro-level evidence for such a bias within a highly unlikely sample: German university students. Participants in our survey experiment were more compassionate and indeed more supportive of an MHI when the victims of war-related violence were Christians rather th…
What the Research on PMSCs Discovered and Neglected
More than 15 years ago a new debate was opened discussing an emerging phenomenon: Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) in and around conflict zones. Initially focused on the actions of a number of notorious companies, the field matured rapidly and created a lively debate on how to accommodate these actors in military and democratic institutions. This article has two purposes. First, it offers an appraisal of the literature, and past re…
Researching non-state actors in international security
Research, across the board, is becoming more formalized. Whether for an ethnographic study, a comparative case-study or experiment, the list of prescriptions that comes with a scholar's methodological choices are growing. This is not necessarily a negative development: transparent descriptions of methodological choices give readers handles to assess the intent and quality of a study. But method should not suffocate. Where our messy social reality…
We don’t do that’
In this article I put forward a social constructivist perspective on state use of Private Military and Security Contractors (PMSCs). I will argue that state outsourcing decisions are, to a large extent, shaped by nationally shared values, understandings and dispositions. Concretely, I first provide a detailed overview of the extent of domestic and deployed contracting by the Danish Defence and, thereafter, based on a number of semi-structured int…
Process Tracing
This contribution develops process tracing (PT) as a method for Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). It explains what it takes to conduct PT, trace a mechanism, and draw conclusions on that basis. Importantly, I lay out an analyticist approach to PT that is amendable to more actor-centered and interpretivist studies. This approach treats mechanisms as akin to Weberian ideal types: abstract constructs that are adduced from multiple concrete, contextuall…
International bureaucrats in the UN Security Council debates
Intergovernmental deliberations in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) are typically considered the realm of sovereign nation states. We challenge this position by studying the role of the UN Secretariat in UNSC debates, focusing on the debates on Afghanistan (1995–2017). We combine natural language processing with a network theoretical perspective to observe speaker position, topic introduction, and topic evolution and we complement this …
Is there a religious bias? Attitudes towards military humanitarian intervention in Germany
Is individual support for internationally agreed military humanitarian interventions (MHIs) subject to a religious bias? Conducting a vignette-based survey experiment, the paper provides micro-level evidence for such a bias within a highly unlikely sample: German university students. Participants in our survey experiment were more compassionate and indeed more supportive of an MHI when the victims of war-related violence were Christians rather th…
Interpretive Process Tracing in policy research
The goal of this article – which also functions as the introduction to a themed section – is to establish and further develop an interpretive variant of Process Tracing (PT) for policy research: Interpretive Process Tracing (IPT). Inspired by the turn towards mechanism-based explanations, policy scholars started studying the causal mechanisms that shape policy making. However, the dominant understanding of PT establishes the method as largely pos…
Interpretive process tracing? How PT can become amenable to interpretive research
Process tracing (PT) is a popular method that is increasingly applied in policy studies, including foreign policy analysis (FPA). However, while policy research and FPA have strong interpretivist strands, PT has been predominantly developed and applied within a regularity-oriented, broadly positivist framework. This article advances an analyticist approach to PT for policy research. Pivoting around ideal typification, it reconceptualizes mechanis…
Law (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (3 works) · Politics (3 works) · Public relations (3 works) · Defense, Military, and Policy Studies (2 works) · Economics (2 works)