Contents: List of contributors -- 1 Introduction to the Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Comparative Policy Analysis / B. Guy Peters and Guillaume Fontaine. 1 Introduction: substance and methods in comparative policy analysis. 2 Theoretical issues. 3 Methodological issues. 4 Research design and methods selection. 5 Conclusion: the importance of method for comparative policy research and practice. PART I THE METHODOLOGICAL DEBATE -- 2 The comparative method and comparative policy analysis / B. Guy Peters. 1 Introduction. 2 Modes of analysis in comparative policy studies. 3 Sampling on the dependent variable. 4 The comparative method and case studies. 5 The possibility of hybrid designs. 6 Several thoughts on small-N research. 7 Conclusion: what, if anything, is special about comparative policy studies? -- 3 The most-similar and most-different systems design in comparative policy analysis / Carsten Anckar. 1 Introduction. 2 The most-similar systems design. 3 The most-different systems design. 4 Deductive and inductive research strategies. 5 Applying the most-similar systems design in deductive and inductive research. 6 Applying the most-different systems design in deductive and inductive research. 7 The most-similar and most-different systems designs compared. 8 Criticism and response. 9 The relevance of the most-similar and most-different systems in contemporary research. 10 Conclusion / 4 Can a case study test a theory? Types and tokens in comparative policy analysis / Keith Dowding. 1 Introduction. 2 What is a theory?. 3 Testing a theory as an invariant generalization. 4 Testing a theory as an empirical generalization. 5 Testing a theory as a mechanism. 6 Unique cases. 7 Conclusions -- PART II THEORETICAL CHALLENGES -- 5 Comparing policy processes: insights and lessons from the Advocacy Coalition Framework research program / Daniel Nohrstedt, Christopher M. Weible, Karin Ingold and Adam D. Henry. 1 Introduction. 2 Elements of comparison when applying the ACF. 3 Comparative ACF research: guidelines, experiences and shortcomings. 4 Insights and lessons. 5 Conclusion. 6 Comparing agenda-settings: the Comparative Agendas Project / Laura Chaqués Bonafont, Christoffer Green-Pedersen and Henrik Bech Seeberg. 1 Introduction. 2 Agenda-setting models. 3 Methodological developments. 4 Political agendas. 5 Measures of the agenda. 6 Future direction of policy agenda research -- 7 Comparing historical cases: advances in comparative historical research / Grace Jaramillo. 1 Introduction. 2 Comparative historical analysis. 3 Maximizing process tracing results. 4 Indexes as tools of organizing and validating results. 5 Case study: assessing industrial policy using an index of intervention. 6 Conclusions -- 8 Comparing international policy transfers / Osmany Porto de Oliveira. 1 Introduction. 2 The comparative analysis of policy transfers: a challenge, solution, and opportunity / 3 Beyond comparative country analysis: transnational comparison. 4 Issues, questions, and concepts for policy transfers comparative analysis. 5 What and how should we compare in international policy transfers analysis?. 6 Comparing transfer agents, instruments, and arenas. 7 Conclusion / PART III MEASUREMENT AND EXPERIMENTAL METHODS -- 9 Using experiments in comparative policy analysis: from policy evaluation to the policy process / Peter John. 1 Introduction. 2 What are experiments?. 3 Causal inference. 4 The history of experiments in public policy. 5 Elite experiments. 6 Conclusions: lessons for students of the policy process. 10 Measuring change in comparative policy analysis: concepts and empirical approaches / Jale Tosun and Julia Schnepf. 1 Introduction. 2 Conceptualizing policy change. 3 The multi-dimensional approach to measuring policy change. 4 The budget approach to measuring policy change. 5 The diffusion approach to measuring policy change. 6 The outcome approach to measuring policy change. 7 Discussion and conclusion -- 11 Using indexes in comparative policy analysis: global comparisons / Tero Erkkilä. 1 Introduction. 2 Background. 3 Governance indicators and critique of ranking. 4 Towards second-generation measurements: transparency metrics. 5 Measurement issues in regional and city-level indicators. 6 Summary. 7 Conclusions -- 12 Using text-as-data methods in comparative policy analysis / Fabrizio Gilardi and Bruno Wüest. 1 Introduction. 2 Text-as-data applications in comparative policy analysis: an overview. 3 Text-as-data in practice. 4 Methods. 5 New directions of text-as-data applications. 6 Conclusion -- PART IV MIXED METHODS AND MULTI-METHODS -- 13 Critical multiplism for comparative policy analysis / William N. Dunn and B. Guy Peters. 1 Introduction. 2 Critical multiplism and mixed methods. 3 Some mixed-methods designs. 4 Bounding multiple triangulation. 5 Conclusions. 14 Causal case studies for comparative policy analysis / Derek Beach. 1 Introduction. 2 Key terms. 3 Variance-based versus case-based approaches to studying public policies. 4 How to do case-based studies of policy processes. 5 Conclusions -- 15 Qualitative Comparative Analysis for comparative policy analysis / Eva Thomann. 1 Introduction. 2 QCA as a technique. 3 QCA in comparative public policy analysis. 4 Approaches to QCA in comparative public policy. 5 A case-oriented or condition-oriented approach to cases. 6 A theory-generating or theory-evaluating mode of reasoning. 7 Emphasizing substantively interpretable or redundancy-free models. 8 Conclusions -- 16 Process tracing for comparative policy analysis: a realist approach / Guillaume Fontaine. 1 Introduction: a popular method. 2 Methodology. 3 A template for realist process tracing. 4 Conclusion: process tracing for policy learning.