Methodology is about defining the research process in order to come to meaningful results. In the present case, it will be used to explain Brazil's foreign policy actions by understanding its ethanol diplomacy during the two terms of the Lula government and Dilma's first term as president. This chapter will cover the variety of methods used to explain and analyse Brazil's international ethanol strategy.

The discussion of the methods in use serves to enable other academics to reproduce and therefore validate the results of research, which therefore need to follow rules that are ‘intersubjectively communicable’ (Gläser and Laudel 2009: 31). How the researcher obtained her results needs to be clear to academic peers. The minimum amount of reproducibility that should be sought consists of a description of the steps to be taken and the rules to be followed to achieve the results (2009: 32). This chapter will lay out the methods I use to explore Brazil's international ethanol strategy in a coherent manner that will allow for transparency and possible reproduction by other researchers.

Transparency of research is even more important when applying and combining a multitude of methods. The use of different methods and theories within one study is called ‘triangulation’ (Gläser and Laudel 2009: 105). Given the complex nature of social processes and the limitations of methodological purism, Flick argues, ‘it is becoming more fruitful to combine different theoretical approaches or to take these into account in combining methods’ (2002: 16). This study will follow this recommendation.

Flick further advocates for a ‘pragmatic use of methods’, while keeping in mind the dilemma between ‘pragmatic but nevertheless methodologically acceptable short-cut strategies for collecting, transcribing, and analysing qualitative data’ (2002: 19). This general stream of thought is supported by Gerring's view, that a ‘good enough’ research design that has been developed ‘after a theory and hypothesis has been formulated’ can be judged by six general criteria: ‘theoretical fit, cumulation, the treatment, the outcome, the sample, and practical constraints’ (2011: 627).

The following paragraphs will therefore describe the pragmatic combination of case study research and process tracing, while keeping in mind the goal of reproducibility.