Contrasts, counterfactuals,and causes

Abstract

There is growing debate concerning the nature of causation in political science. In comparative politics and International Relations, scholars are divided by probabilistic, mechanistic, and conditions-based definitions of ‘cause.’ Moreover, post-positivist approaches to political science increasingly eschew causal analysis altogether. This article argues that the source of these divisions is methodological, not philosophical. Using the example of the Cuban missile crisis, a contrastive, counterfactual approach to causation, where a cause exists when the occurrence of one event rather than another leads to one event rather than another, meets the intuitions and the practice of political scientists engaged in different methodological approaches with different purposes. A contrastive, counterfactual account meets the intuitions of scholars engaged in quantitative and qualitative methods, and captures many of the intuitions guiding debates within qualitative and interpretive methods. By developing a common, unified approach to a key philosophical division, it is easier to identify the differences that matter.