Causality and the Study of Government

Middle Georgia State University

POLS 1101: American Government

Causality and the Study of Politics

  • Political science is one of the social sciences, the scientific disciplines focused on understanding human society.

  • Political scientists focus on causal questions:

    • Goal: understand why certain political events occur, or don't occur.

    • For example…

      • why did Barack Obama win the 2012 presidential election?

      • why do Republicans have more seats in Congress than the Democrats?

    • We want to explain political events, not just describe them.

Causality in the Social Sciences

  • In the natural and biological sciences, most outcomes have a single cause (or, at worst, a small number of causes).

  • Events in the social or political world tend to have multiple causes.

  • The causes of political and social events tend not to be deterministic either.

Correlation versus Causation

  • To believe something caused something else to happen, we must show that there is more than a correlation or association between the two phenomena.

  • Example: when ice cream sales go up, so do residential burglaries.

    • People are unlikely to be turning to a life of crime due to the influence of ice cream.

    • People are unlikely to be breaking into peoples' houses because they can't otherwise afford ice cream.

    • More likely explanation: some other factor is causing more people to commit crimes and more people to eat ice cream.

      • Weather

Another Example

    Firefighters trying to save an abandoned convent in
    Massueville, Quebec, Canada.
  • Cities that have more firefighters tend to have more fires.

    • Firefighters are unlikely to be creating additional fires.

    • More likely explanation: bigger cities have more fires than smaller cities.

Spurious Relationships

  • An apparent relationship between two concepts (or variables) that reflects correlation but not causation is referred to as a spurious relationship.

  • Both the correlation between ice cream sales and burglaries, and the correlation between firefighters and fires, are said to be spurious.

Correlation and Causation in Politics

  • Politicians who receive donations (directly or indirectly) from interest groups like the National Rifle Association are more likely to support the group's positions in Congress.

  • Are interest groups “buying votes” with their contributions?

    • This interpretation is tempting, but it's also possible that groups like the NRA only give money to politicians who already agree and vote with them.

    • Need a more sophisticated strategy than simply observing correlations to decide which explanation is true.

Determining Causality

  • For something to cause something else…

    • the cause must precede the effect.

      • World War II did not cause World War I.

      • The 2014 unrest in Ferguson, Missouri did not cause the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012.

    • we must rule out the other factors that may have affected the outcome.

Why Government?

Why Our System of Government?

Copyright and License

  • The text and narration of these slides are an original, creative work, Copyright © 2000–15 Christopher N. Lawrence. You may freely use, modify, and redistribute this slideshow under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

  • Other elements of these slides are either in the public domain (either originally or due to lapse in copyright), are U.S. government works not subject to copyright, or were licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license (or a less restrictive license, the Creative Commons Attribution license) by their original creator.

Works Consulted

The following sources were consulted or used in the production of one or more of these slideshows, in addition to various primary source materials generally cited in-place or otherwise obvious from context throughout; previous editions of these works may have also been used. Any errors or omissions remain the sole responsibility of the author.

  • Barbour, Christine and Gerald C. Wright. 2012. Keeping the Republic: Power and Citizenship in American Politics, Brief 4th Edition. Washington: CQ Press.
  • Fiorina, Morris P., Paul E. Peterson, Bertram D. Johnson, and William G. Mayer. 2011. America's New Democracy, 6th Edition. New York: Longman Pearson.
  • O'Connor, Karen, Larry J. Sabato, and Alixandra B. Yanus. 2013. American Government: Roots and Reform, 12th Edition. New York: Pearson.
  • Sidlow, Edward I. and Beth Henschen. 2013. GOVT, 4th Edition. New York: Cengage Learning.
  • The American National Election Studies.
  • Various Wikimedia projects, including the Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia, and Wikisource.