Concrete Counterfactual Tests for Process Tracing: Defending an Interventionist Potential Outcomes Framework

Abstract

This article uses the interventionist theory of causation, a counterfactual theory taken from philosophy of science, to strengthen causal analysis in process tracing research. Causal claims from process tracing are re-expressed in terms of so-called hypothetical interventions, and concrete evidential tests are proposed which are shown to corroborate process tracing claims. In particular, three steps are prescribed for an interventionist investigation, and each step in turn is shown to make the causal analysis more robust, amongst others by disambiguating causal claims and clarifying or strengthening the existing methodological advice on counterfactual analysis. The article's claims are then illustrated using a concrete example, Haggard and Kaufman's analysis of the Argentinian transition to democracy. It is shown that interventionism could have strengthened the authors’ conclusions. The article concludes with a short Bayesian analysis of its key methodological proposals.

Where there is smoke, there is fire? Making sense of the past failure and future prospects of cannabis reform in Chile

“…Complementing process tracing with counterfactual analysis allows me to assess alternative explanations further through hypothetical “what‐if” scenarios (Goertz & Mahoney, 2012). Methodologists have pointed to the potential benefits of combing process tracing with counterfactual analysis (Runhardt, 2022) as it can “add greater weighting to primary and secondary forms of evidence” (Kay & Baker, 2015, p. 14), but there are few studies that do so.…”

The Use and Disuse of Historical Counterfactuals in Process- and Contrastive Historiography: Insights from Causal Pre-emption

“…The main notion of causality embedded in a (mechanistic) historical process corresponds to the notion of 'actual causality' (Beach and Pedersen 2016:31;Runhardt 2022). Understood as actual causality, the relationship of a historical process to counterfactual dependence is well-known: the latter is merely a special case of the former.…”

“…If we understand historiographical explanation as arguments about the functional consequences of counterfactual interventions, nonmodal historical narratives that merely weave together sequences of actual events are readily seen as semantically inferior and blurry representations of a latent causal argument that must be defined in the formal language of structural interventions. Indeed, prior theoretical attempts to account for historiographical explanation in the language of counterfactuals tend to stress the methodological need for a more explicit use and communication of historical counterfactuals (Reiss 2012;Runhardt 2022). While we are sympathetic to the idea that an explicit recourse to counterfactuals may help bring clarity to not only contrastive but also process historiography, we are also mindful of the 'stickiness' of traditional historiographical practice not only in disciplinary history but also in sociology and adjacent fields of social science.…”

“… See, however, Runhardt (2015;2022) for a notable exception, who interprets process-tracing as actual causality defined withinWoodward's (2003) interventionist account and uses it to stress the practical importance of counterfactual reasoning for process tracing.…”