Causal Processes and their Warrant
Causal Processes and their Warrant
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In this book, Nancy Cartwright, Eileen Munro and John Pemberton introduce a new method for assessing whether plans for how to affect change produced their intended outcome, or whether they are likely to do so in the future. The method offers the prospect of a step-change improvement in the accuracy of policy assessments, based on a new pluralistic theory of causation. This theory, which goes beyond existing ones, synthesises seven tried and tested familiar component accounts so as to license identification and systematisation of a wide range of evidence types. The authors outline well-grounded improvements to methods for policy development and assessment by the systematic use of real-world examples, including notably that of child welfare. Their book will be valuable for the burgeoning audience concerned with the critical issue of how to develop and implement policies that work across domains from welfare to education and economics to medicine.
- Proposes methods for developing and assessing social policies based on a new pluralistic theory of causation
- Illustrates the proposed methods with real world examples, in particular the Barbados sugar-sweetened beverage tax and an extended example of implementing a child protection programme
- Helps readers to understand how these methods work and to see their practical importance
Reviews & endorsements
'This is a detailed and thought-provoking account of how to evidence single-case causal claims. It is clear and engaging-I would recommend it to all evaluators and researchers interested in evaluation methodology.' Jon Williamson, University of Manchester
Product details
- Published: May 2026
- Format: Paperback
- ISBN: 9781009408288
- Length: 322 pages
- Dimensions: 229 × 152 × 17 mm
- Weight: 0.468kg
- Availability: Available
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Overview
- Introduction
- Technical note: production and difference-making
- Technical note: evidential pluralism and singular causation
- Part I. A Theory of Singular Causation:
- 1. Towards a thick theory of singular causal processes
- 1.1 Formal relations
- 1.2 Processes and mediators
- 1.3 INUS conditions
- 1.4 Activities
- Technical note: causation, continuity and activities
- 1.5 Tendency principles
- Technical note: science for a fragile world (Robert Northcott)
- 1.6 Situation-Specific Causal Equation Models (SCEMs)
- 1.7 Underlying systems
- 1.8 What we have done in part 1
- Part II. What's Warrant for Singular Causal Processes and Why:
- 2. What happens in part 2
- 2.1 Evidence-role maps: marshalling the evidence
- Technical note: process triggers
- Technical note: what you can gain from learning that the events in the boxes occur
- 2.2 What evidence should you collect?
- 2.3 What should you do with all this information now you have assembled and organised it?
- 2.4 What we have done in Part 2
- Part III. Case Study of the Implementation of Signs of Safety in M, a UK Agency Providing a Child Protection Service:
- 3.1 Introduction
- 3.2 Background on child protection services and signs of safety
- 3.3 What happened in M
- 3.4 Did all this Help?
- 3.5 Constructing evidence-role maps
- 3.6 Reflections
- 3.7 What we have done in Part 3
- Bibliography
- Index.
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