week 2 - poli 110 - different types of questions

conjuctural causation

is when many causes can contribute to the final event

• multiple necessary conditions: factors work together to produce an outcome

  • ex: plant requires both water and sunlight to grow

  • ex: revolutions require both material deprivation and arbitrary rule

conditional effect: third variable

• more general form: conditional effect: the effect of cause c on e depends on cause d > THIRD VARIABLE

  • an hour of sunlight causes…..

    • 1 cm of plant growth when it is not raining

  • poverty causes….

    • short civil war when ethnic diversity is low

sufficient conditions

• sufficient condition: a cause that always produces an effect

  • ex: a fire is sufficient to cause heat

• “tend to be rare because so much causation is conjunctural” > requires more than one condition

multiple causation

• when there is more than one set of causes that can produce an effect

  • a can cause e

  • c can cause e

• ex: what can cause political leaders to lose power?

  • military defeat or economic decline or inflation and general anti-incumbent mood

multiple vs conjunctural causation

• a combination of A+B can cause E

or

• a combination of C+D can ensure E

deterministic vs probabilistic causal claims

• deterministic causal claim:

  • a claim about what must happen or cannot happen as a result of particular causal conditions. for instance:

    • the outcome cannot happen when the cause is absent

    • the outcome must happen when the cause is present

    • necessary or sufficient conditions claims are deterministic claims

• probabilistic causal claim:

  • a claim that a cause makes an outcome more (or less) likely to occur:

  • most causal claims you will encounter in social science will be probabilistic because:

    • life is complicated and usually many potential factors in play

    • theres a lot of randomness in the universe