We talked a little bit about causation in the policy process in Peters' chapters on policy formulation and implementation. As usual, Stone has a different take on causation. While Peters believes that causation can be determined in the policy process, which leads to better policymaking, Stone believes that this mechanistic understanding of causation does not exist in the polis. She believes that establishing cause in the polis is about burdening certain groups and creating political alliances. The symbols and numbers we discussed in chapters six and seven are combined to create these causal stories.
In the polis, we generally try to attribute cause to social forces. Although there are some scientific innovations that attempt to control nature, we tend to believe that we have more influence on events when their causes are social. One of the reasons that I assigned a documentary on Katrina survivors for this week is this debate over the cause of the devastation. If it can be attributed to the natural disaster of Katrina alone, then there is nothing that possibly could have been done to improve the situation, and there is not much we can do to prevent similar devastation in the future. If causation can be attributed to social or political causes like extreme poverty, corruption, incompetence, or bureaucratic red-tape then we have significantly more control. We can create policies to help reduce suffering in the future.
Stone lays out a table on p. 191 with four types of causal stories: mechanical, accidental, intentional, and inadvertent. The first type of cause she discusses is the accidental cause. These are used to explain any incident that is caused by fate - this can include natural disasters, disease, famine, car crashes etc. Many of our torts and class action lawsuits are attempting to prove that causes we thought were accidental are actually intentional or negligently inadvertent. Defenders of the status quo often try to claim that any major problem can be attributed to an accidental cause.
This brings us to intentional causes, which are the converse of accidental causes. An intentional causal story states that someone or a group of people acted willfully, knowing the consequences of their actions, to cause harm to a group or individual. This is the story that tort and class action lawyers want to be able to tell. In the tobacco lawsuit, the plaintiffs were able to prove that the tobacco companies knew full well that their cigarettes were addictive and causing cancer and they took no action. All conspiracy theories, true and untrue fall under the intentional cause story. Stories of oppression can also fall under this category. For example, radical political scholars have argued that the true purpose of welfare reform is to intentionally keep low-income people in poverty to ensure that there is a desperate low-wage labor force for employers.
We often hear about inadvertent causes in policy. Sometimes policy is the cause of unintended consequences. This is the crux of the welfare dependency thesis, which argues that rather than helping the poor the provision of goods and services keeps them dependent on government. Policy can also be the remedy for inadvertent causes of social problems. Obesity is often explained as a problem that is caused by inadvertent actions. It is argued that consumers don't know how bad cheap processed food is for them, and if they knew they would make better choices at restaurants and the grocery store. Negligence and recklessness can also be considered a nefarious inadvertent cause. In this case, individuals or groups should know better but do not act in ways that avoid causing a problem. Often, we punish recklessness or negligence if it is discovered before anyone is hurt. If someone is caught driving under the influence, they are charged even if they didn't harm anyone because they are acting recklessly and could cause harm to someone.
Mechanical causes are often systemic problems, and can be the hardest to address. They can also result in horrible consequences. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, racial inequality has often been attributed to a mechanical cause. While some individuals and institutions still intentionally discriminate, it is more often the case that systemic factors lead to inequality. Whites tend to have more connections, more wealth passed down across generations, and more soft-skills that help them succeed in the labor market in comparison to minority groups. A lot of effort is exerted to transform a mechanical cause into an inadvertent cause so that policy may address the issue. If, as this podcast suggests, these soft-skills can be traced back to early childhood development then policy can intervene and provide pre-schools to help African-American and Latino children develop these soft-skills.
Generally, we cannot establish a single cause of any major social problem. The obesity epidemic is likely caused by a combination of all four types of causes: a desire on behalf of individuals to eat fatty processed foods (intentional), a lack of information about how bad these processed foods really are for us (inadvertent), government subsidies to corn producers which subsidizes foods containing high fructose corn syrup (inadvertent), droughts or other natural disasters that raise the price of produce relative to processed food (accidental), the systemic problem of food deserts (mechanical), changing socio-economic conditions that require both parents to work and/or increase the number of single parents leaving no one to cook at home (mechanical), and so on. Of course, we rarely hear about all of these causes in the polis.
Instead, we are generally offered a strategic causal explanation. On page 204, Stone gives us four reasons why policymakers and analysts would propose a single causal story, "First, they can either challenge or protect an existing social order. Second, by identifying causal agents, they can assign responsibility to particular political actors so that someone will have to stop an activity, do it differently, or possibly face punishment. Third, causal theories can legitimize and empower particular actors as "fixers" of a problem. And fourth, they can create new political alliances among people who are shown to stand in the same victim relationship to the causal agent." There are always multiple individuals and groups to whom cause can be attributed, and multiple stories we can tell. By singling out one cause, policymakers can strategically choose who to benefit and burden, and they can gain some semblance of control over the problem.
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