Watching Your Posterior: Comment on Seawright

In: Political analysis: PA ; the official journal of the Society for Political Methodology and the Political Methodology Section of the American Political Science Association, Band 10, Heft 2, S. 198-203

Abstract

In "Testing for Necessary and/or Sufficient Causation," Jason Seawright (2002) presents an intriguing new Bayesian technique for testing theories that posit necessary conditions. His technique differs in substantial ways from those presented in separate articles by Dion (1998), Ragin (1987), and ourselves (2000) and constitutes a fundamental critique of those procedures. Having criticized quite a few procedures and theorists in our own article, we can hardly complain; rather, we recognize the constructive spirit of the endeavor and, in that same spirit, would like to offer a rejoinder.