The inferential opportunity of specificity: theory and empirical causality in American Political Development
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The inferential opportunity of specificity: theory and empirical causality in American Political Development Corrine M. McConnaughy1 Received: 8 August 2019 / Accepted: 19 August 2019 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract The context-specificity of the research field of American Political Development (APD) can make it an especially fertile ground for empirical assessment of causal explanations of politics using observational data. Despite an ongoing—though diminishing—quantitative–qualitative divide in political science scholarship, notable agreement has emerged across that divide on the imperative for “rich theories” with multiple implications in the assessment of causal arguments when experimentation is impossible. Drawing on the underlying logic of that agreement, I consider how and why APD can both benefit from and add value to the use of design-based quantitative approaches developed within the potential-outcomes framework for causal inference. Among the central considerations are the possible limits on direct assessment of historical macro-level causal hypotheses and the imperative for multi-level and context-specific theorizing to enable empirical analyses. Also considered is the value of rigorous qualitative work to justify assumptions and measurement strategies in quantitative causal inference analyses. Illustrations of the advocated multiple-implication, multiple-method approach are drawn from my previous work on the development of woman suffrage in the United States. That integrative approach suggests the benefit of continued development of broader toolkits for explanation of complex, contingent, and endogenous political processes. Keywords Causal inference · Potential outcomes · Process tracing · Political dynamics · Suffrage · Voting rights JEL Classification C18 · N41 · N42
1 What do we want to know and why do we want to know it? How do we know what forged the shape of the American political system? And why do we want to know that? One answer to the latter question has been the argument that what we want to know inherently is about democratization (King and Lieberman 2009). How has the American state developed its capacity for accountable, democratic governance? * Corrine M. McConnaughy [email protected] 1
Department of Political Science, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
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How has it lost ground? What political conditions open opportunities for expanded rights for people subject to American governance and what conditions encourage retrenchment? How do conditions translate into outcomes? What choices must political actors make to realize opportunities or resist losses? How do past political choices constrain the possibilities? To answer those questions is to gain insight into what makes democratic preservation or democratic expansion more possible at any particular moment—to be able to speak not only to central tendencies of systems but also to peculiar circumstances of specific times and places. Th
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