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Methods for Measuring Mechanisms of Contention

  • Symposium on McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly's "Measuring Mechanisms of Contention"
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Abstract

A substantial intellectual movement has been growing in the social sciences around the adoption of mechanism- and process-based explanations as complements to variable-based explanations, or even as substitutes for them. But once we have recognized the validity and dignity of studying mechanisms and processes, what is the next step? Recently, both political scientists’ and sociologists’ discussions have begun to turn away from correlation to mechanism-based approaches to causation. But there is still a widespread assumption that mechanisms are unobservable. We maintain that ways can be developed to observe the presence or absence of mechanisms either directly or indirectly. In this paper, by way of example, we put forward four methods—two direct and two indirect—for measuring mechanisms of contention.

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Notes

  1. In this context, we leave aside a fourth problem: the relationship between mechanisms and the larger processes of which they are a part. For our views of this issue, see McAdam et al. (2001), ch. 1 and Tilly and Tarrow (2007).

  2. In independent agreement with this premise, the American Political Science Association’s Organized Section on Qualitative Methods, recently changed its name to “Organized Section on Qualitative and Multi-method Approaches.”

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Elisabeth Wood for allowing us to reproduce two of the graphics from her book, Forging Democracy From Below and for useful comments on a draft of this paper. We also are grateful to Tulia Falleti, David Laitin, Julia Lynch, Jim Mahoney, Ann Mische, Dan Sherman and Libby Wood for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

    Doug McAdam

  2. Department of Government, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

    Sidney Tarrow

  3. Social Science, Columbia University, 413 Fayerweather Hall, MC 2552, New York, 10027-7001, USA

    Charles Tilly

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  1. Doug McAdam
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Correspondence to Doug McAdam.

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McAdam, D., Tarrow, S. & Tilly, C. Methods for Measuring Mechanisms of Contention. Qual Sociol 31, 307–331 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-008-9100-6

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