outcomes or relationships that should be present; they are not intervening processes but
deduced facts whose existence make a given hypothesis much more plausible.
An example from comparative politics is Marx’s (1998) study of racial orders in the
United States, South Africa, and Brazil. Marx seeks to explain why the United States and
South Africa experienced highly repressive racial domination, whereas Brazil was
marked by more significant racial toleration. His cross-case argument emphasizes the
role of intra-white divisions. Where whites were divided, as in the U.S. and South Africa
following the Civil War and Boer War, nationalist loyalty and white unity were forged
through the construction of systems of racial domination that systematically excluded
blacks. Where no major intra-white cleavage developed, as in Brazil, whites did not have
to achieve unity through exclusion and thus a much higher degree of racial harmony
could develop.
Marx supports this argument using within-case evidence. Some of the evidence
involves examining intervening mechanisms and thus follows the process-tracing
approach discussed above. Yet additional evidence takes the form of facts that confirm
implicit and explicit predictions about other things that should be true if this argument is
valid. For instance, Marx suggests that, if intra-white conflict really is decisive, efforts to
enhance black status should produce increased white conflict along the North-South fault
line in the U.S. and between British and Afrikaners in South Africa. By contrast,
progressive racial reforms should not generate similar intra-white divisions in Brazil. His
historical narrative then backs up this proposition. Likewise, if intra-white divisions
really are the key, then Marx argues that we should see evidence that more progressive
white factions view political stability as more important than racial equality. Again, he
finds much support for this argument. Overall, he suggests that it is highly unlikely that
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