Reclaiming Causality in Political Science

Session Submission Type: In-Person Roundtable

Session Description

During the last decade, political science graduate training has increasingly focused on experimental methods and other tools for conducting research with strong causal identification strategies. This shift has been accompanied by new standards regarding the kinds of questions and methods that are appropriate for the study of causality in political science. In this roundtable, participants critically discuss and debate these developments and their implications for knowledge generation and methodological pluralism in political science. Special attention focuses on the question of alternatives to the experimental approach and whether scholars using these alternatives need to reclaim causality in political science.

Panel discussants are asked to address questions such as the following:
(1) Is political science in fact converging on methodological standards for causal inference in which experimental research designs are the gold standard?
(2) Is it accurate to assert that causal inference is best achieved via experimental research designs? What are the consequences of the rise of experimental methods (and strong causal inference methods) for research agendas and knowledge generation in the discipline?
(3) What other approaches to causality exist? For example, does comparative-historical analysis offer a coherent alternative? How do other approaches compare to experimental methods?
(4) What is the standing of alternative approaches to causality in contemporary political science? What are the consequences of this standing for the discipline?
(5) Do scholars in comparative-historical analysis or other fields need to “reclaim causality” for the discipline of political science? If so, what does this reclaiming look like and how could it happen?

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Chair

• Tulia G. Falleti University of Pennsylvania

Discussant

• James Mahoney Northwestern University

Presenters

• Sheri Berman Barnard College, Columbia University

• Stephan Haggard University of California, San Diego

• Alan M. Jacobs University of British Columbia

• Rudra Sil University of Pennsylvania

• Prerna Singh Brown University