You Lost Me in the Second Paragraph

11 November 2011, 0035 EST

We define a causal mechanism as a process in which a causal variable of interest, i.e., a treatment variable, influences an outcome. The identification of a causal mechanism requires the specification of an intermediate variable or a mediator that lies on the causal pathway between the treatment and outcome variables. Although qualitative studies often employ the method of process tracing, quantitative investigation of causal mechanisms is based on the estimation of causal mediation effects. Indeed, the traditional approach to causal mediation analysis has been to use structural equation models (e.g., MacKinnon 2008; Shadish, Cook, and Campbell 2001), a practice which goes back decades (Haavelmo 1943).

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.