“反事实”框架与政治学因果推论

Counter-factual Framework and Causal Inference in Political Science

政治学研究的主要任务是从纷繁复杂的政治现象中发现事物之间普遍性的因果关联。'反事实'和因果机制是揭示因果关系的两条主要路径。'反事实'框架因其逻辑简约清晰更受学界的推崇。本文呈现了'反事实'因果推论的原理,剖析了该方法在政治学研究中存在的局限。在此基础上,从'反事实'框架出发,分别阐述了个案、小N案例和大N案例研究中如何通过匹配从而'控制'干扰变量来帮助研究者探索因果性结论的具体技术。这些技术主要包括对照案例、质性比较分析和倾向值匹配。最后指出了'反事实'因果推论的未来发展方向。'反事实'框架不仅是因果推论的方法论工具,更是进行因果探索必须坚持的理念。

The main task of political science is to discover the causal relationship among complicated political phenomena.At present,counterfactual and causal mechanism are two main paths to reveal causal relationship.In the academic community,counter-factual framework is more respected because of its simple logic.This paper analyzes the principle of counter-factual causal inference and its defects in political science.On this basis,this paper elaborates these specific techniques to help researchers to propose causal conclusions by matching and controlling interference variables from the counter-factual framework’s perspective.These techniques include control cases,qualitative comparative analysis and propensity score matching.Finally,this paper discusses the prospect of counter-factual causal inference.Counter-factual framework is not only a methodological tool of causal inference,but also a sturdy idea in causal exploration.