Social scientists increasingly exploit natural experiments in their research. This article
surveys recent applications in political science, with the goal of illustrating the inferential …

Natural experiments help to overcome some of the obstacles researchers face when making
causal inferences in the social sciences. However, even when natural interventions are …

The term “natural experiment” is used inconsistently. In one interpretation, it refers to an
experiment where a treatment is randomly assigned by someone other than the researcher …

Many areas of political science focus on causal questions. Evidence from statistical analyses
is often used to make the case for causal relationships. While statistical analyses can help …

This article mentions that the number of experiments has increased dramatically in political
science in the last thirty-five years because of their power for making causal inferences. It …

Field experimentation enables researchers to draw unbiased and externally valid causal
inferences about social processes. Despite these strengths, field experimentation is seldom …

Increasingly, political scientists use the term'experiment'or'experimental'to describe their
empirical research. One of the primary reasons for doing so is the advantage of experiments …

Quantitative analysis of causal effects in political science has trended toward the adoption of
“causal empiricist” approaches. Such approaches place heavy emphasis on causal …

Although political scientists have long expressed skepticism about the prospects for
experimental science, an analysis of the first hundred volumes of the American Political …

Previous researchers have argued that necessary and/or sufficient causes should be tested
through research designs that consider only cases with limited combinations of scores on …