Who’s Afraid of Infinite Regress? A Process-Tracing Exercise

Abstract

How can social scientists uncover the root causes of contemporary outcomes? Many scholars have assumed that the problem of infinite regress poses a central impediment to this endeavor. However, there have been few attempts to clearly conceptualize infinite regress or confirm this assumption. This article undertakes the challenge. Using examples from four historically-oriented books on diverse subjects – modern Hindu-Muslim riots in India, Italian governance, federalism, and early European democracy – I use process-tracing and sequence elaboration to regress and weigh causes back through time. This exercise yields three findings. First, antecedent conditions in all cases are ‘contextualizing’ and not ‘diminishing’ causes. Second, causal chains often become convoluted. And lastly, mechanisms become tenuous the further back in time causes are situated. Scholars are advised that diagramming causal chains and using sequence elaboration are concrete steps to help avoid spurious relationships and locate the deepest causes of a given outcome.