Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 PARADIGMS AND PRAGMATISM
- 2 THINKING AND WORKING IN THE MIDST OF THINGS
- 3 ADVANCING EXPLANATION IN COMPARATIVE POLITICS
- 4 STRONG THEORY, COMPLEX HISTORY
- 5 RECONSIDERATIONS OF RATIONAL CHOICE IN COMPARATIVE AND HISTORICAL ANALYSIS
- 6 CULTURE IN COMPARATIVE POLITICAL ANALYSIS
- 7 RESEARCHING THE STATE
- 8 AN APPROACH TO COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OR A SUBFIELD WITHIN A SUBFIELD?
- 9 THE GLOBAL CONTEXT OF COMPARATIVE POLITICS
- 10 COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES ON CONTENTIOUS POLITICS
- 11 CITIZENSHIP IN DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
- 12 NESTED CITIZENS
- 13 BACK TO THE FUTURE
- 14 THE COMPARATIVE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE WELFARE STATE
- 15 MAKING CAUSAL CLAIMS ABOUT THE EFFECT OF “ETHNICITY”
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
- Titles in the series
13 - BACK TO THE FUTURE
ENDOGENOUS INSTITUTIONS AND COMPARATIVE POLITICS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 PARADIGMS AND PRAGMATISM
- 2 THINKING AND WORKING IN THE MIDST OF THINGS
- 3 ADVANCING EXPLANATION IN COMPARATIVE POLITICS
- 4 STRONG THEORY, COMPLEX HISTORY
- 5 RECONSIDERATIONS OF RATIONAL CHOICE IN COMPARATIVE AND HISTORICAL ANALYSIS
- 6 CULTURE IN COMPARATIVE POLITICAL ANALYSIS
- 7 RESEARCHING THE STATE
- 8 AN APPROACH TO COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OR A SUBFIELD WITHIN A SUBFIELD?
- 9 THE GLOBAL CONTEXT OF COMPARATIVE POLITICS
- 10 COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES ON CONTENTIOUS POLITICS
- 11 CITIZENSHIP IN DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
- 12 NESTED CITIZENS
- 13 BACK TO THE FUTURE
- 14 THE COMPARATIVE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE WELFARE STATE
- 15 MAKING CAUSAL CLAIMS ABOUT THE EFFECT OF “ETHNICITY”
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
- Titles in the series
Summary
Like a fashion trend traveling from New York to the heartland, soul-searching about causality has made its way from empirical research in economics to that in political science with the usual lag. Gone are the days when it was enough to have a nice theory, a conditional correlation, and some rhetoric about the implausibility of competing explanations while implying but assiduously avoiding the “c” word. Editors, reviewers, and search committees are beginning to look for more explicit and careful empirical treatments of causality. That is, following a definition of causality tracing back to Mill (1848), researchers are expected to lay out a set of possible outcomes, or counterfactuals, generated by a set of determinants, and demonstrate that holding all possible determinants except one at a constant level, the manipulation of that determinant is associated with a specific change in outcome, which can be deemed a causal effect (Heckman 2005).
It does not take much soul-searching to realize, however, that the observational studies that make up the vast majority of empirical explorations in comparative politics are deeply flawed when held up to the experimental ideal. Where does this leave us? In the extreme view, if we cannot do randomized field experiments or perhaps survey experiments, we should do nothing. The opposite extreme position holds that this would remake comparative politics into an arid subfield of program evaluation, turning a blind eye to the interesting and important questions that animated the field in its golden era (definitions vary).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Comparative PoliticsRationality, Culture, and Structure, pp. 333 - 357Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
- 21
- Cited by