Causality and the Study of 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

• 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?