The Logic of Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences

Abstract

Historical explanations seek to identify the causes of outcomes in particular cases. Although social scientists commonly develop historical explanations, they lack criteria for distinguishing different types of causes and for evaluating the relative importance of alternative causes of the same outcome. This article first provides an inventory of the five types of causes that are normally used in historical explanations: (1) necessary but not sufficient, (2) sufficient but not necessary, (3) necessary and sufficient, (4) INUS, and (5) SUIN causes. It then introduces a new method—sequence elaboration—for evaluating the relative importance of causes. Sequence elaboration assesses the importance of causes through consideration of their position within a sequence and through consideration of the types of causes that make up the sequence as a whole. Throughout the article, methodological points are illustrated with substantive examples from the field of international and comparative studies.

Environmental change and social conflict: the northeast Atlantic mackerel dispute

“…INUS stands for "an insufficient but necessary part of a condition which is itself unnecessary but sufficient for the result" (Mahoney et al 2009: 125). INUS causes are thus by themselves neither necessary nor sufficient, but form part of a large combination of causes that together are sufficient to produce the outcome under scrutiny (Mahoney et al 2009). Situations explained through INUS causes are characterized by low proximity (many intervening variables between cause and effect), high multi-causality (many variables operating together to produce the outcome), interactivity (none of the causes alone is sufficient to produce the outcome), and non-linearity (a process exhibiting threshold effects) (Homer-Dixon 1996).…”

Synchronous failure: the emerging causal architecture of global crisis

“…An additive relationship, on the other hand, implies a logical "or" relationship, which means any one of the identified stresses by itself could be sufficient for the outcome. In this case, overload happens when X and/or Y occurs in sufficient strength to exceed the system' coping capacity (Mahoney 2008, Mahoney et al 2009). …”

“…For example, high regional concentrations of sulfate aerosols can mask the generalized warming effect of rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. [4] Technically, this would be a representation of INUS causation, in which each cause is an insufficient but necessary member of a set of causes that is itself unnecessary but sufficient for the equifinal outcome of system overload (Mahoney 2008, Mahoney et al 2009). http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol20/iss3/art6/ [5] The EROI trends mentioned here are well-documented (Hall et al 2014).…”

Dependência da trajetória e mudança institucional nos processos de desenvolvimento

“…De qualquer forma, a abordagem de Kurtz, ao adotar uma explicação baseada em dependência da trajetória que lança mão de duas conjunturas críticas, filia-se a um emergente conjunto de abordagens teóricas que confere peso à explicação histórica baseada em sequências de eventos críticos, como nas abordagens de conjunturas críticas sequenciais (Büthe, 2002), de cadeia causal de longo prazo (Pierson, 2004) e de sequência histórica causal (Mahoney, 2009).…”