Causality in Policy Studies

Alessia Damonte is Associate Professor at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan (Italy). Her research is focused on public policy, comparative politics, political economy, and methods. Fedra Negri is Assistant Professor in political science at the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Milano-Bicocca (IT). Her research focuses on comparative politics, comparative social policies, populism, responsiveness, and quantitative methods for political research. Her publications include articles in Public Choice, Electoral Studies, European Union Politics, West European Politics, and Party Politics.

• 1. Introduction: the Elephant of Causation and the Blind Sages.- 2. Causation in the Social Realm.- 3. Counterfactuals with Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Variation.- 4. Correlation is not Causation, yet… Matching and Weighting for Better Counterfactuals.- 5. Getting the Most Out of Surveys: Multilevel Regression And Poststratification.- 6. Pathway analysis, causal mediation and the identification of causal mechanisms.- 7. Proof by Testing Joint Sufficiency Twice: Explanatory Qualitative Comparative Analysis.- 8. Causal Inference and Policy Evaluation from Case Studies using Bayesian Process Tracing.- 9. Exploring Interventions ogn Social Outcomes with in Silico, Agent-Based Experiments.- 10. The Many Threats from Mechanistic Heterogeneity that Can Spoil Multi-Method Research.