Causal Mechanisms in the Social Sciences

@article{Hedstrm2010CausalMI,
  title={Causal Mechanisms in the Social Sciences},
  author={Peter Hedstr{\"o}m and Petri Ylikoski},
  journal={Review of Sociology},
  year={2010},
  volume={36},
  pages={49-67}
}
During the past decade, social mechanisms and mechanism-based explanations have received considerable attention in the social sciences as well as in the philosophy of science. This article critically reviews the most important philosophical and social science contributions to the mechanism approach. The first part discusses the idea of mechanism-based explanation from the point of view of philosophy of science and relates it to causation and to the covering-law account of explanation. The… 
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