Advanced research in international relations (DL)

do I conduct a case study?

a contribution, has not been done before.
Feasible: Can you address it with the time and resources available?
Ethical: Does it do no harm?
Concise: Well-articulated, concepts clearly defined.
Answerable.
Based on earlier research (or a gap in the literature).

a good research question? Is it interesting, relevant, feasible, ethical, concise, answerable, based on earlier research? Should we refine the question?

is to formulate one or more hypotheses.
Hypotheses can be seen as tentative answers to our research question.
Example: Why do resource‐rich states rarely become major world (economic) powers?
H1: Resource-rich states channel wealth to elites and neglect state infrastructure.
H2: By dint of geographical misfortune, most resource-rich states were poor when they discovered the resource and therefore have a long way to catch up.

(X causes Y).
To test hypotheses, we normally need to compare to investigate whether different circumstances (X) give rise to different outcomes (Y). This does not have to be between countries; it can be between individuals, between regions of a country, between regions of the world, or between different points in time.
Comparison in politics/IR is the act of taking two or more elements, and analysing their similarities and differences.

Examples: wealth, political participation, degree of democracy. They are not always easy to operationalise and measure.
Hypotheses suggest a causal link between two variables: a dependent variable (DV), which is the thing you are trying to explain and an independent variable (IV), which is what you think causes the thing you are trying to explain.
So a hypothesis takes the form IV => DV. Example:
Economic development causes democracy.
But remember: there may be more than one cause for the phenomenon you are interested in (more than one IV for your DV).