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<!doctype html>
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<title>Causality and the Study of Government</title>
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<section class="vcard">
<h1>Causality and the Study of Government</h1>
<h3><a rel="author" class="url n"
href="http://www.cnlawrence.com/"><span
class="honorific-prefix">Dr.</span>
<span class="given-name">Christopher</span>
<abbr class="additional-name">N.</abbr>
<span class="family-name">Lawrence</span></a></h3>
<h4 class="org">Middle Georgia State University</h4>
<h4>POLS 1101: American Government</h4>
<h5><a id="narrationToggle" onclick="toggleAutoplay(this);return false;"
href="#">🔊 Disable Narration</a></h5>
</section>
<section>
<h2>Causality and the Study of Politics</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>Political science is one of the <em>social sciences</em>, the
scientific disciplines focused on understanding human
society.</p></li>
<li class=fragment><p>Political scientists focus
on <b>causal</b> questions:</p>
<ul>
<li class=fragment><p>Goal: understand <em>why</em> certain
political events occur, or don't occur.</p></li>
<li class=fragment><p>For example…</p>
<ul>
<li class=fragment><p><em>why</em> did Barack Obama
win the 2012 presidential election?</p></li>
<li class=fragment><p><em>why</em> do Republicans have more
seats in Congress than the Democrats?</p></li>
</ul>
<li class=fragment><p>We want to <em>explain</em> political
events, not just <em>describe</em> them.</p></li>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section>
<h2>Causality in the Social Sciences</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>In the natural and biological sciences, most outcomes have a
single cause (or, at worst, a small number of causes).</p></li>
<li class=fragment><p>Events in the social or political world tend
to have <i>multiple</i> causes.</p></li>
<li class=fragment><p>The causes of political and social events tend
not to be <i>deterministic</i> either.</p></li>
</ul>
</section>
<section>
<h2>Correlation versus Causation</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>To believe something <em>caused</em> something else to happen, we must
show that there is more than a <b>correlation</b> or association
between the two phenomena.</p></li>
<li class=fragment><p>Example: when ice cream sales go up, so do
residential burglaries.</p>
<ul>
<li class=fragment><p>People are unlikely to be turning to a life
of crime due to the influence of ice cream.</p></li>
<li class=fragment><p>People are unlikely to be breaking into peoples'
houses because they can't otherwise afford ice cream.</p></li>
<li class=fragment><p>More likely explanation: some other factor is
causing more people to commit crimes and more people to eat ice
cream.</p>
<ul>
<li class=fragment><p>Weather</p></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section>
<h2>Another Example</h2>
<ul>
<img src="img/intro/640px-FirePhotography.jpg"
alt="Firefighters trying to save an abandoned convent in
Massueville, Quebec, Canada." style="width: 40%; float: right">
<li><p>Cities that have more firefighters tend to have more
fires.</p>
<ul>
<li class=fragment><p>Firefighters are unlikely to be creating
additional fires.</p></li>
<li class=fragment><p>More likely explanation: bigger cities
have more fires than smaller cities.</p></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section>
<h2>Spurious Relationships</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>An apparent relationship between two concepts
(or <em>variables</em>) that reflects correlation
but <em>not</em> causation is referred to as a <b>spurious
relationship</b>.</p></li>
<li class=fragment><p>Both the correlation between ice cream sales
and burglaries, and the correlation between firefighters and
fires, are said to be spurious.</p></li>
</ul>
</section>
<section>
<h2>Correlation and Causation in Politics</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>Politicians who receive donations (directly or indirectly)
from interest groups like the National Rifle Association are
more likely to support the group's positions in
Congress.</p></li>
<li class=fragment><p>Are interest groups “buying votes” with their
contributions?</p>
<ul>
<li class=fragment><p>This interpretation is tempting, but it's
also possible that groups like the NRA only give money to
politicians who already agree and vote with them.</p></li>
<li class=fragment><p>Need a more sophisticated strategy than
simply observing correlations to decide which explanation is
true.</p></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section>
<h2>Determining Causality</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>For something to cause something else…</p>
<ul>
<li class=fragment><p>the <i>cause</i> must precede
the <i>effect</i>.</p>
<ul>
<li class=fragment><p>World War II did not cause World War
I.</p></li>
<li class=fragment><p>The 2014 unrest in Ferguson, Missouri
did not cause the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012.</p></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class=fragment><p>we must rule out the other factors that
may have affected the outcome.</p></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section>
<h2>Why Government?</h2>
</section>
<section>
<h2>Why Our System of Government?</h2>
</section>
<section class=endmatter>
<h2>Copyright and License</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>The text and narration of these slides are an original,
creative work, Copyright © 2000–15 Christopher N. Lawrence. You may
freely use, modify, and redistribute this slideshow under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International
license. To view a copy of this license,
visit <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
rel="license">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/</a> or
send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900,
Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.</p></li>
<li><p>Other elements of these slides are either in the public domain
(either originally or due to lapse in copyright), are
U.S. government works not subject to copyright, or were licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license (or a
less restrictive license, the Creative Commons Attribution
license) by their original creator.</p></li>
</ul>
</section>
<section class=endmatter><h2>Works Consulted</h2>
<p>The following sources were consulted or used in the production of
one or more of these slideshows, in addition to various primary
source materials generally cited in-place or otherwise obvious from
context throughout; previous editions of these works may have also
been used. Any errors or omissions remain the sole responsibility
of the author.</p>
<ul>
<li>Barbour, Christine and Gerald C. Wright. 2012. <i>Keeping the
Republic: Power and Citizenship in American Politics</i>, Brief
4th Edition. Washington: CQ Press.</li>
<li>Fiorina, Morris P., Paul E. Peterson, Bertram D. Johnson, and
William G. Mayer. 2011. <i>America's New Democracy</i>, 6th
Edition. New York: Longman Pearson.</li>
<li>O'Connor, Karen, Larry J. Sabato, and Alixandra
B. Yanus. 2013. <i>American Government: Roots and Reform</i>, 12th
Edition. New York: Pearson.</li>
<li>Sidlow, Edward I. and Beth Henschen. 2013. <i>GOVT</i>, 4th
Edition. New York: Cengage Learning.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.electionstudies.org/">The American National
Election Studies</a>.</li>
<li>Various Wikimedia projects, including
the <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/">Wikimedia
Commons</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a>,
and <a href="http://en.wikisource.org/">Wikisource</a>.</li>
</ul>
</section>
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