To strengthen the causal argument, I employ a “nested design.” Nested
designs are common in comparative historical research. They allow a
researcher to enhance the leverage of a causal argument by examining
the question at different levels of analysis (cross-national and subnational)
with different kinds of data (dataset observations and causal process
observations) (Brady and Collier 2004; George and Bennett 2005).
Two levels are nested in this study. In the first part, six case studies
are contrasted at the broad macrostructural level to demonstrate that
different dynamics of state formation had different bearings on postcolonial
state structures in these cases. In the second part of the study,
the focus narrows to the accommodation pattern in the Vietnamese and
Indonesian cases during the 1940s. Here the goal is to identify how this
pattern was specifically institutionalized at the level of organization and
in the discourses of the nationalist movements that would form the Vietnamese
and Indonesian postcolonial states. By examining two variants of accommodation within limited time frames, the analyses at the second
level add not only nuances to the argument but also causal process observations
that increase its explanatory leverage.