Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

This case is about the comparative case study method and discusses the opportunities and challenges of designing and conducting it in practice. It draws on my research about military organizations in peace operations. In my research, I argue that military organizational cultures influence the way in which soldiers behave while deployed in a peace mission and, ultimately, their ability to keep peace. I complement this argument with an explanation for why those domestic national military cultures look the way they do. To answer my questions, I combine most similar system with most different system designs and compare French and Italian units deployed in the UN mission in Lebanon and the NATO mission in Afghanistan, respectively. I collected my data combining in-depth qualitative interviews, semi-structured questionnaires, focus groups, and observations between 2007 and 2014.