Causal Inference from Pivotal Politics Theories
We review attempts to evaluate Pivotal Politics and related theories in light of the social sciences’ movement toward causal empiricism. To accommodate limitations of available data, most existing empirical approaches require additional assumptions about key variables. Moreover, it is difficult to f...
Saved in:
Published in | The Journal of politics Vol. 80; no. 3; pp. 1082 - 1087 |
---|---|
Main Authors | , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Chicago
University of Chicago on behalf of the Southern Political Science Association
01.07.2018
University of Chicago Press |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
Cover
Loading…
Summary: | We review attempts to evaluate Pivotal Politics and related theories in light of the social sciences’ movement toward causal empiricism. To accommodate limitations of available data, most existing empirical approaches require additional assumptions about key variables. Moreover, it is difficult to find sources of exogenous variation in causal factors of interest. Although causal empiricism and pivotal politics theories share a focus on counterfactual comparisons, we argue that many design-based strategies for inference are ill suited to directly testing the theory’s predictions. We conclude by discussing opportunities to apply the contemporary causal inference “toolkit” to evaluate the theories’ central predictions, highlighting both the barriers to application as well as potential avenues for future use. |
---|---|
ISSN: | 0022-3816 1468-2508 |
DOI: | 10.1086/697950 |