138 Chapter 5 The case study method helps to explain phenomena such as anticipatory governance within their context (Flyvbjerg, 2006; Verschuren & Doorewaard, 2010) and allows for interpreting similarities and differences across the diverse contexts in this research. The analytical framework on anticipatory governance (Muiderman et al., 2020) provided the theoretical context for our research as well as the notion of opening up and closing down (Stirling, 2008) (see figure 5.1). We used the four approaches as heuristics (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017) to discover and ‘trace’ approaches to anticipatory governance in anticipation processes across diverse sites, and the notion of opening up/closing down to further interpret the external dynamics within approaches. The qualitative multi-sited case study allowed for an open way of gathering and triangulating data – in this case, the interpretation of texts and perspectives. We used several techniques in parallel - literature and document review, snowballing, semistructured interviewing, and focus group discussions – in parallel to an iterative and open-ended exploration and refining of research findings. These synchronous processes also increase the validity of the study (Kleining & Witt, 2000; Yin, 2003). We identified what methods and tools are used by practitioners and policymakers to anticipate climate futures and their intended role in decision-making in 21 countries. Then, we scrutinized for 12 processes how assumptions about the future impact actions in the present and to what ultimate aim (see table 4.1). Finally, we analyzed for each of the 12 processes dynamics of opening up and closing down, as well as for the broader region. Rather than focusing on countries or regions, our unit of analysis is the anticipation process. However, we decided to structure our comparative analysis according to the four regions, to open-endedly explore if regional differences and similarities exist that help explain why certain approaches dominate and dynamics of opening up/closing down occur. We followed the logic of a hierarchical approach to comparative case study research (Verschuren and Doorewaard 2010), which consists of two separate phases. We first examined the anticipation processes as a sequence of separate cases for each region (Sections 4.1.- 4.4.) and then compared across the regions (Section 5) what approaches to anticipatory governance are taken and if they open up or close down future possibilities.
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