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The Realist Approach to Explanatory Mechanisms in Social Science:

More than a Heuristic?
Chares Demetriou
Philosophy of the Social Sciences 2009 39: 440 originally published online 12
January 2009
DOI: 10.1177/0048393108329268
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Philosophy of
the Social Sciences
Volume 39 Number 3
September 2009 440-462
The Realist Approach to © 2009 SAGE Publications
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Explanatory Mechanisms http://pos.sagepub.com
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in Social Science http://online.sagepub.com
More than a Heuristic?

Chares Demetriou
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
The mechanism-realist paradigm in the philosophy of science, championed

by Mario Bunge and Roy Bhaskar, sets certain expectations for the substan-
tive social-scientific application of the paradigm. To evaluate the application
of the paradigm in accomplished substantive research, as well as the poten-
tial for future research, I examine the work of Charles Tilly, the exemplary
substantive work in the mechanism-realist tradition. Based on this examina-
tion, I argue for the usefulness of explanatory mechanisms, provided that
they are couched in terms of a heuristic. Such a position is the most reason-
able one to adopt given the expectations set by the paradigm in relation to
complexity stemming from mechanism interaction and to a notion of causal-
ity that is deeper than that acknowledged by empiricism and positivism.
Keywords: mechanisms; social-scientific explanations; Charles Tilly;

Mario Bunge; Roy Bhaskar
Introduction
Within the current literature in the philosophy of science, there are argu-
ments made for a realist conception of mechanism. Mario Bunge’s realist
school and Roy Bhaskar’s critical realist school exemplify this. Each claims
a sensible middle ground between empiricism and relativism. In a parallel
fashion, research in the social sciences following the mechanism paradigm
purports to occupy a fruitful position between the extremes of positivism and
of epistemological skepticism. But is the mechanism-realist paradigm as it is
Received 17 April 2008

Author’s Note: I benefited from comments by Jeff Coulter, Daphne Kalotay, Margarita
Petrova, the late Charles Tilly, Claudia Verhoeven, and the two reviewers of Philosophy of the
Social Sciences.
440

Demetriou / Realist Approach to Explanatory Mechanisms 441
applied in social-scientific research a continuation of the mechanism-realist

paradigm as it is designed by the philosophy of science? And is it possible to
be? I maintain that the answer to these two questions is not a straightforward
yes or no. Thus I argue, in a critical manner, that the applied mechanism-
realist paradigm resembles but also deviates in important ways from its philo-
sophical archetype, rendering this particular connection between philosophy
and research problematic. I further argue, in a constructive manner, that
upholding the philosophical realist status of mechanisms nevertheless allows
a mechanism-centered social-scientific research to develop inasmuch as this
research follows a heuristic orientation.
It is difficult to find substantive social-scientific work built on the mecha-
nism paradigm to examine, especially if one excludes the substantive theories
that only speak of mechanisms casually and not reflectively. To be sure, dur-
ing the last decade or so, debates on the role of mechanisms in scientific
explanation have branched out from the natural sciences to the social sci-
ences. But these debates have been mostly contained within the literature in
the philosophy of the social sciences1 and have not found correspondence in
systematic substantive research in the social sciences. There is, however, a
major exception to this: the work of Charles Tilly. In recent years, Tilly alone
and in collaboration with other authors systematically and reflectively pro-
vided substantive explanations through mechanisms in sociology, political
science, and social history. His work, therefore, becomes important in exam-
ining the connection between philosophy and substantive research within the
mechanism-centered realist tradition, particularly so when considering that it
is influenced by Mario Bunge’s philosophy. In this article, then, I take Tilly’s
work to be the key exemplar of the applied mechanism-realist paradigm.
Examining the work of Bunge, Bhaskar, and Tilly clarifies the stakes
that are raised by the rejection of empiricism in favor of mechanistic causal-
ity. The stakes are centered on the opposition between an ontological con-
ception of explanation through mechanisms and an epistemic conception of
explanation following empiricism and logical positivism (Manicas 2006, 7-
25; see also Steinmetz 1998). If, as I maintain in this article, mechanisms
cannot be discovered as ontologies by social scientists pursuing substantive
1. This literature has by now proliferated to such an extent that it speaks in many theoretical
voices and across many research purposes. For instance, while most authors view mechanisms
as an advancement over empiricist research analyzing covariance—because mechanisms are
said to open up the “black boxes” the latter approach leaves behind—fault lines remain among
them regarding mechanisms’ connection to reality, causality, laws, emergence, and so on, as
well as the very definition of mechanisms themselves (Hedstrom and Swedberg 1998;
Mahoney 2003; Norkus 2005; Reiss 2007).

442 Philosophy of the Social Sciences
work, do these social scientists have to abandon the effort to explain social
phenomena through mechanisms? My answer is no. Even though in practi-
cal terms the social-science researcher may delineate patterns of regularity
without being able to arrive at firm knowledge regarding regularity’s con-
nection to real mechanisms, she can avoid relapse to empiricism by taking
regularity to imply potential connection to real mechanisms. This posture is
reasonable to maintain only within a heuristic orientation to research.
My argument proceeds in four steps. I start with an overview of the real-
ist philosophical approach to mechanisms, examined through the work of
Mario Bunge and Roy Bhaskar. This is not an effort to argue for the merits
of this philosophical school over alternatives. Rather, taking the general
merits of this school for granted, the goal in this section of the article is to
offer an elaboration of the idea of ontological causality through mechanisms—
for this purpose, reviewing only Bunge and Bhaskar, at the exclusion of
other philosophers with realist-mechanist persuasion, such as Rom Harre,
should suffice. In the second section of the article I turn from ontology to
epistemology, discussing two broad epistemological choices that follow the
ontological premises of realism, what I call a strong and a weak program.
This discussion is useful not only because it clarifies that social-scientific
research tends to opt for the weak program rather than the strong one but
also because it raises the critical distinction between real mechanisms and
models of mechanisms. The first two sections of the article prepare the
ground for the third section, in which I examine critically Tilly’s use of
explanatory mechanisms. Through this examination, I demonstrate the dif-
ficulty in extrapolating repeated robust explanatory mechanisms out of
case-specific tracing of events. This difficulty, illuminated by the realist
ontologies discussed earlier, relates in general to the inability to demon-
strate empirically productive continuity within and among explanatory
mechanisms. In the fourth section of the article, I return to the issue of
causality in order to juxtapose the realist perspective on it with the empiri-
cist perspective on it. In light of the discussion of the empirical difficulties
regarding explanatory mechanisms and of the distinction between reality
and model of reality, I expand on my argument in favor of a heuristic strat-
egy in pursuit of explanations through mechanisms.
Ontology and the Realist Philosophy on Mechanisms
In their respective long lines of philosophical production, Mario Bunge

and Roy Bhaskar argue for philosophies in which a realist notion of

mechanisms is prominent. For both philosophers mechanism is a key onto-

logical category. It does not stand for a methodological proxy of reality but
for a central element of it.2 Below I show how their respective definitions
of mechanism, though different, are compatible with each other given a
similar understanding of structure/system and of complexity in relation to
the ontology (as opposed to epistemology) of causality.
The ontological categories privileged by Bunge and Bhaskar have a wide
scope, aiming to describe all levels of reality. To start with Bunge, a key cate-
gory for him is that of the system, which he defines as “a complex object whose
parts or components are held together by bonds of some kind” and which in
concrete form may variously belong to the physical, chemical, biological,
social, and technological levels of reality (2004a, 188; 1996, 20). Indeed,
Bunge upholds “systemism,” the ontological position postulating that “every-
thing in the universe is, was, or will be a system or a component of one” (2004a,
190). A concrete system, in turn, includes not only parts and bonds but also
environment and mechanisms. Just as bonds make up a structure that helps dis-
tinguish the system from its environment—e.g., “a labor union from a sector of
the working class” (Bunge 2004b, 372-73)—mechanisms present dynamics
that as well help define the system. At the same time, mechanisms are defined
by the system. They are sequences of states or strings of events—what Bunge
describes with the shorthand, process—that entail transfers of energy3 and
have a function in the system due to their connection to the system’s parts and
structure. Thus, for instance, “a physiological mechanism is a collection of
processes inside an organism, and a political mechanism—such as popular
mobilization in favor of or against a proposed bill—is a collection of processes
inside a polity or among polities” (Bunge 1997, 415). The function of a mech-
anism, it is worth noting, does not necessarily help maintain the system, as
functionalism would have it, but may rather push the system towards change or
even be one that is ambivalent in its effects (Bunge 1997, 413).
For Bhaskar, too, the notion of mechanism is ontologically linked to
structure, within a view of reality that, not unlike Bunge’s view, features
2. Curiously, even as this realist take on mechanisms is relatively uncommon in philosophy

and is not shared necessarily by other philosophers labeled realists, Bunge and Bhaskar have
not developed their work in dialogue with one another. While this opens up the question of
how their philosophies compare with each other on various philosophical positions, the focus
in this exposition remains on mechanisms, forgoing a more comprehensive discussion that
would have been fascinating on its own right.
3. Because they are conceived to entail transfers of energy, Bunge argues that mechanisms and
processes relate to concrete (material) systems but not to conceptual or logical systems. See
Wight (2004) for a counterargument.

structural pluralism at various levels (Bhaskar 1986, 106). Particularly,

Bhaskar holds mechanism to be that aspect of the inner and environmental
structure of a thing by virtue of which the thing has a certain power. A
mechanism, he adds, operates when triggered and normally endures longer
than any pattern of events it triggers (1978, 50). But if this link to structure
shows an affinity to Bunge’s account, it is evident that Bhaskar is not defin-
ing the same ontology. While Bunge sees mechanism essentially as con-
stituent events, Bhaskar sees it as power-affiliated reality that is over and
above any pattern of events it generates (Bhaskar 1986, 27).
Yet Bhaskar and Bunge are closer to each other regarding this matter
than may be assumed at first glance, when considering that Bunge holds
that mechanisms, like all events, are governed by laws. What Bhaskar calls
mechanism, then, corresponds more closely to what Bunge calls law, and
what Bunge calls mechanism corresponds more closely to what Bhaskar
would likely call patterns of events. What Bhaskar calls law, for that matter,
is the flip side of his notion of mechanism, because structures and genera-
tive mechanisms “comprise the real bases of causal laws” (Bhaskar 1986,
27). Or, to use the words of Andrew Collier, one of the principal interpreters
of Bhaskar, “a mechanism, in Bhaskar’s sense, is that to which a law refers”
(1994, 43).
The above contrast puts in context another apparent difference between
the two philosophers. Bhaskar claims for his notion of mechanism as wide
a scope as Bunge does for his own notion of mechanism, that is, as an ontol-
ogy pertaining to all different levels of reality, viz. biological, social,
chemical, etc.—this within a corresponding general approach he labels
naturalism (Bhaskar 1979, 3). But he takes his concept a step further than
(and, indeed, away from) Bunge to claim that it is precisely mechanisms,
not things or events, that are particular to different levels of reality. This, it
seems to me, ultimately betrays a small difference in degree between two
broader ontological positions, where Bhaskar relatively privileges move-
ment and the powers behind it, while Bunge bestows relative importance to
system, making movement and force derivatives of it.4
4. I am referring to “a small difference in degree” because Bhaskar too makes an ontological

connection between the powers entailed in mechanisms and pertinent things and structures.
In my view, Bhaskar simply does not push his position towards material and structure as much
as does Bunge, who declares that state defines process (1996, 25). Such difference is remi-
niscent of the difference between strong and weak process metaphysics as presented by
Nicholas Rescher (1996), whereby ontological emphasis can be placed either on the process
itself or on its constituent material parts.

Figure 1
Bhaskar’s Deep Realism Scheme
Domain of Domain of Domain of
the Real the Actual Empirical
Mechanism --
Events -- --
Experiences -- -- --
Despite any differences on the definition of mechanism and its relation to

affiliated ontologies, Bunge and Bhaskar are on the same page when describ-
ing the complexity in which mechanisms operate. Bunge maintains that com-
plex systems, like social systems and biosystems, have several concurrent
mechanisms. As he explains, “they undergo several more or less intertwined
processes at the same time and on different levels” (2004a, 293). Being numer-
ous and complex, therefore, mechanisms can be unobservable, something
which can be deduced also when considering that mechanisms may work to
cancel each other out in terms of effects. The acknowledgment of complexity
leads Bunge to distinguish between an essential mechanism, which has a func-
tion peculiar to the system, and a nonessential mechanism, which may occur
also in another system (Bunge 2004a, 200; 1997, 434-5).
Bhaskar, on his part, adds a different vantage point to this complexity.
He distinguishes among three domains in reference to reality: the domain
of the experience, which refers to reality that is accessible through the
senses; the domain of the actual, which refers to realized events and sub-
sumes the previous domain; and the domain of the real, which refers to real-
ity that is not necessarily realized through events and subsumes the
previous two domains. A mechanism in the sense of Bhaskar may either be
actualized through events or exist as structural potentiality. The scheme
developed by Bhaskar (1978, 13) summarizes his perspective, which
became known as deep realism (Figure 1).
Applying Bunge’s position on Bhaskar’s scheme, it can be seen that
Bunge in effect situates his notion of mechanism at the domain of the
actual, while in all likelihood he would relegate law to the domain of the
real. Bunge’s position allows him to consider a mechanism to be lawful but
not to equate it with the law (or laws), since a law is thought to govern other
mechanisms in addition. Thus inasmuch as causation implies reference to

Figure 2
A Diagram of a Mechanism
B (1) C (1)
A (1) D (1)
X Y
A (…n) D (…n)
B (…n) C (…n)
laws, it, as Andrew Sayer writes, “need not imply regularity in patterns and
sequences of events” (1992, 121). Nor is mechanism, according to Bunge,
guided necessarily by laws at the same level of reality or with the same
degree of regularity; a mechanism, for example, may emerge from lower
levels of reality through (apparent) randomness. But in the final analysis
even randomness (or stochastic processes) unfolds through mechanisms,
albeit ones of which we may not be aware at the domain of the empirical.
Bhaskar underscores the general point regarding multilevel interaction by
stressing that mechanisms (or laws, in Bunge’s account) of different levels
of reality may generate the same event (Bhaskar 1986, 107-13). This is
what he calls vertical explanation, as opposed to horizontal explanation,
which rather refers to mechanism generating another mechanism at the
same level of reality (Collier 1994, 109).
Much of the exposition so far can be illustrated through the diagram in
Figure 2.
X, Y, and the arrow connecting them together represent mechanism as
conceptualized by Bunge (but not exactly by Bhaskar), where X stands for
an initial condition, Y for an outcome that is in some sense functional in a
certain structural context, and the arrow for a series of events or states. The
mechanism interacts with other forces and mechanisms, thus As stand for
those forces and mechanisms that affect the initial condition, Bs for those
forces and mechanisms that contribute to the mechanism’s constituent
events, and Cs to those forces and additional mechanisms that contribute to
the effect. Cs, Bs, and As may be elements from the same, upper and/or
lower levels of reality in relation to the mechanism. Finally, Ds stand for
effects resulting from Y, with influence from further elements which,
depending on relevant structure, may be scant or many. The diagram makes
it easy to see not only the interaction entailed in the realist perspective but

also that it is the structure/system that determines what a mechanism is, so

that in a slightly different structural configuration we may have a mecha-
nism that has, say, A(1) as the pertinent initial condition, D(1) as the perti-
nent outcome, and X, Y, and B(1) as parts of the pertinent string of events.
Epistemology and Mechanistic Programs
The above summary of the realist ontology of mechanisms streamlines

certain epistemologies to the exclusion of others. In this section I show that
two distinct, though not mutually exclusive, research directions can be on
principle supported by the ontological notion of causality through mecha-
nisms: one that seeks to identify key mechanisms and one that seeks to use
mechanisms as parts of explanation of concrete social phenomena. The for-
mer, I suggest, can be considered a strong program and the latter a weak one.
Before elaborating on the two programs, it must be stressed that the dis-
covery of mechanisms—whether those are defined by Bunge or Bhaskar—
cannot follow empiricism or positivism. Rather, as Bunge succinctly puts it,
mechanisms are to be discovered through conjecture. This stand follows the
recognition that an empiricist or positivist method would treat data exclu-
sively at the domain of the empirical, thus ignoring the epistemological chal-
lenge of hidden mechanisms. Thus the Humean notion of causality as
regular succession (constant conjunction) and the related idea of covering
laws are rejected in favor of the ontologically deeper notion of mechanistic
causality/emergence described above (Bunge 1997, 420-25, 431-32; 1996,
26-30, 141-42; Bhaskar 1986, 27-36; 1979, 11-17).
Accordingly, when Bunge allows that laws may generate different
degrees of regularity, he takes an epistemological (rather than ontological)
perspective to refer to the laws’ actual manifestation through events. In the
epistemological plane, therefore, the empirical researcher encounters dif-
ferent degrees of regularity due to noise resultant from complexity and
mechanism interaction. This recognition leads Bunge to distinguish
between laws of nature and social norms, the latter having weak law-like
appearance since they are particularly subject to noise. Bhaskar on his part
takes a similar position when he acknowledges that because many mecha-
nisms are triggered at the same time in a given context, and thus produce
codetermined outcomes, structure may seem to feature tendencies, rather
than laws or discrete powers. Laws and powers can be isolated only under
experimental conditions in what he calls closed systems, conditions which

cannot be obtained regarding social structures, which always have to be

encountered in open systems (Bhaskar 1979, 12-13).
Proposing a conjecture-centered epistemology, of course, does not solve
all epistemological matters. It is in order to better grasp the epistemologi-
cal demands generated by the realist ontology that I distinguish between
two broadly conceived research programs, a strong one and a weak one.
A strong program—not to be confused with a predictive program, which
the philosophy of science often presents in contradistinction to an explana-
tory program—would build on the presumption of a strong identity
between reality and the model of reality. It should be evident that reality as
described in the abstract by Bunge and Bhaskar cannot be fully described
concretely. It can only be described through a model that, to some degree
or another, is always an idealization. Strong identity means, therefore, that
the model can capture some key elements of reality as necessarily excludes
less important ones. To put it differently, it will not really describe a single
mechanism but rather a mechanism, or a constellation of mechanisms, that
can stand for a more complex reality, which may include concomitant or
supportive mechanisms. Returning to the above diagram of Figure 2, we
can say that the main task of the strong program is to identify the X-to-Y
mechanism as a key mechanism, having sorted out the noise from other
influences, which is to say, having made empirical calls regarding codeter-
mination, vertical-versus-horizontal interaction, and so on.
With a model of mechanism being at issue, however, the concern is not
only with noise relating to the unfolding of mechanism but also with mech-
anism’s endpoint, i.e., its outcome. For since the model of the mechanism
may stand for a more complex reality, such as a constellation of mecha-
nisms, different distinct outcomes may likely be generated at the same time.
To illustrate, we would have a diagram with not only a single Y, but poten-
tially with Y(2), Y(3), and so on. Though a mechanism is arguably unicausal
at the level of ontology, therefore, a model of mechanism(s) is likely mul-
ticausal. What is more, the possibility exists that at the epistemological
level the same outcome may be generated from different mechanisms, a
condition referred to as multiple realizability (Sawyer 2004). In this case,
in addition to the X-to-Y mechanism, we would get a Z-to-Y one.
A strong program, furthermore, would build on the presumption, backed by
Bunge and Bhaskar, that mechanisms recur. This adds further complexity with
which to reckon. For one, multicausality may appear accentuated when the
mechanisms that the model stands for regularly precipitate a chain of effects,
such that Y is regularly linked to Ds. Moreover, and more fundamentally,

recurring mechanisms require a sophisticated understanding of the structure

and/or the system that give them ontological hypostasis, especially if the
program, following Bunge, aims at making a judgment on the mechanisms that
are particular to the social system, as opposed to other systems. Mechanisms,
whether they mean recurrent sequences of events following the same pattern
(Bunge) or recurring forms of power (Bhaskar), recur as similar structural con-
ditions give rise to them. This shifts the onus of the research to the ontological
mapping of social structures (i.e., the configuration of the social system). This
is a complicated task when considering not only that slightly different social
configurations at the domain of the actual may give ontological hypostasis to
different mechanisms, but also that, at the domain of the empirical, social
structure may appear to be weak, social systems porous, etc. (see Brante 2001
for a general proposal regarding this task in relation to mechanisms).
Despite its challenges, the strong program in social science is a logical
part of the philosophies of Bunge and Bhaskar, and both philosophers sup-
port it mutatis mutandis; as Bhaskar puts it, realism’s key question vis-à-vis
social science is, “what properties do societies and people possess that
might make them possible objects of knowledge for us?” (1979, 17). To be
sure, neither of the two philosophers uses the term strong program, and in
the final analysis it is not clear at what level of detail either of them would
consider the “ontological mapping” of social structures and mechanisms to
be possible. Yet they do maintain a logical attachment to the strong program
at the same time that they consider social science’s primary goal to be the
explanation of social phenomena (Bhaskar 1979, 27, 56; Bunge 1997, 442,
447; 1996, 137-42). While the juxtaposition of the strong program with a
weak, explanatory program is absent from their writings, it is apropos the
task at hand of comparing the philosophical with the substantive notion of
realist mechanistic causality. So how does the explanatory program com-
pare with the strong program?
The weaker agenda puts the emphasis on the explanation of phenomena
by mechanisms. In so doing, this program downplays the importance of
identifying mechanisms that have key place in social life generally, aiming
instead to identify mechanisms in epistemological contexts dictated by the
explananda.
This program faces some of the challenges encountered by the strong
program and at the same time avoids at least one other. What it avoids is the
challenge regarding multicausality. Since the inquiry now starts from an
explanandum and walks backwards to find the concatenation of mechanisms
that does the explaining, it is not a concern what other effects those
mechanisms have—that is, if the X-to-Y mechanism concatenates with other

mechanisms to generate the explanandum, we need only care about Y, and

not any other additional Ys that do not have a place in the concatenation.
Regarding challenges, they relate in general to the limitations attached
to the analysis of mechanisms through models of mechanisms. What was
said above regarding noise can therefore be repeated here as well. However,
since the task now is the explanation of specific phenomena, an issue arises
as to whether an explanation invoking mechanisms alone suffices.5 Can the
complexity—even at the level of the empirical—behind the kind of social
phenomena that are typically the subject of sociological monographs and
articles be reduced to models of mechanisms? Arguably it could, at least on
principle, provided that we get to know enough about mechanisms so as to
summarize them comprehensively. But that would require that the strong
program make advances first. In lieu of that, one cannot but think that
mechanisms would not explain fully an explanandum, but would rather
leave something to be explained/described through nonmechanistic con-
ceptualizations and modes. Indeed, like the case with formal modeling in
the empiricist tradition, commonsense narrative would have to fill in a
mechanistic explanation in order to refer to what appear to be contingency,
chance, the background, the circumstantial, the distant antecedent, the
ceteris paribus clause, the mysterious, and perhaps even the obvious.
It is worth mentioning at this point that the recognition that we can con-
cretely refer only to models of mechanisms, and not to mechanisms exactly
as they exist in reality, sheds light on the dispute among some theorists of
mechanisms as to whether nonrecurrent mechanisms exist or not (Mayntz
2004, 241). While the dispute at the metaphysical level cannot be resolved,
one can nevertheless agree with Bunge and Bhaskar that all mechanisms
recur and at the same time hold that it is possible for an explanation of a
concrete phenomenon to present models of seemingly unique mechanisms.
This can be the case because the model would be a reduction of not fully
understood mechanism interaction.
Finally, there remains a point to be made regarding structure and the poten-
tiality it may support. The explanatory paradigm, strictly speaking, would tend
5. This is not to suggest that the description of mechanisms alone can suffice to advance the
strong program. It can be argued, in fact, that description of other elements besides mecha-
nisms (see later in the text for an elucidation) may be needed at least at the beginning of the
program. I thank one of the reviewers for alerting me to the need for this clarification. The
point remains, however, that when at hand are explanations of concrete phenomena, as in the
weak program, the question of whether explanation through mechanisms alone is sufficient
becomes pressing.

to privilege actuality at the expense of potentiality, simply because the phe-

nomena to be explained are actualized. There is no compelling reason, of
course, to exclude some form of structuralism from this program. After all, it
would only be true to its philosophical roots if the paradigm shows respect to
the ontological importance of structure and/or system. However, it must be
recognized that a program that would include the study of counterfactuals (i.e.,
what could but did not happen at the domain of the actual) would require an
understanding of structure just as demanding as that required by the strong
program.6 Short of that, the pursuit of the explanatory program must be cog-
nizant of its limited efficaciousness in capturing reality.
Explanatory Mechanisms in Tilly’s

Substantive Research
If the weak program is more feasible than the strong one, how does it
fare in practice? In recent years, Charles Tilly was a persistent advocate of
explanatory mechanisms. Through the bulk of his historical and empirical
writings during this time, he led the effort to put a mechanistic program into
practice, with his collaboration with Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow
being a particularly focused, if also explorative, endeavor in this direction
(Tilly 2001, 2005, 2008; McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001, 2007, 2008;
Tilly and Tarrow 2007; for a concise review of Tilly’s recent oeuvre, see
Diani 2007). However, while Tilly’s recent work presents the most appro-
priate material available with which to review the explanatory program, the
work focuses so much on substantive theory that it eschews the devil in the
details of metatheory. Though there may be value in privileging empirical
knowledge over conceptual clarity at a program’s early stage, I argue that
the ambiguity here is counterproductive and needs to be overcome. As I
show below, Tilly remains ambiguous about the definition of mechanisms
and the challenges stemming from noise, as well as about the critical dis-
tinction between explanatory mechanisms and real mechanisms, a topic
that I take up in the next section.
Tilly’s approach borrows from Bunge, but not wholesale. His brand
of realism shares Bunge’s opposition to positivism and epistemological
6. It is not that potentiality has been a foreign concept in the social sciences. Theories of
power, such as Marxist ones, have made room for the concept, with Pierre Bourdieu making
a particularly ambitious case for it. His criticism of network theory, for example, is exactly
based on the latter’s preoccupation with actuality (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 113-14).

skepticism, but not Bunge’s emphasis on systems and the need to locate
mechanisms directly in the structural conditions of their existence. As he
keeps his distance from a potential systems or neofunctionalist theory of
sorts, Tilly in effect distances himself from the strong program (Tilly 2008,
27, 86, 121-24). He makes it clear, at any rate, that he is interested solely in
explanations, albeit quite ambitiously through what he calls robust, recur-
rent mechanisms (Tilly 2001, 24). How does he define mechanisms, then,
and do they prove to be recurrent and robust in practice?
Tilly holds that an explanatory mechanism is defined by the scale of the
analysis. Thus what is an explanatory mechanism in a given epistemological
context can become in a larger epistemological context, and in concatena-
tion with other explanatory mechanisms, a different explanatory mechanism.
When dealing with this relationship of scale, Tilly names the broader mech-
anism a process, but he makes it clear that the mechanism-process relation-
ship is arbitrary: a process may become part of yet a larger process, while a
mechanism may be broken down to constituent, smaller mechanisms
(McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001, 27; Tilly’s take does not follow Bunge’s
distinction between process and mechanism—see Bunge 1997, 415-16).
Further, in offering a formal definition, Tilly holds that mechanisms “form
a delimited class of events that change relations among specified sets of ele-
ments in identical or closely similar ways over a variety of situations”
(McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001, 24; Tilly 2001, 25-26; Tilly and Tarrow
2007, 29; Tilly also paraphrases his definition thus: “similar events that produce
essentially the same immediate effects across a wide range of circumstances,”
Tilly 2003, 20). This “Bungean” definition of mechanism connotes not only the
linkage between an initial state and an outcome but also the mode of that link-
age, i.e., the pattern of the events. However, Tilly fails to clarify what gives “the
class of events” its raison d’être as a class. He could, for one, take Bunge’s lead
to suggest that the events belong to a type through their ontological linkage to
a system. But instead of moving towards systems theory, Tilly leaves the defi-
nition of given mechanisms up to their epistemological context and simply
wants to demonstrate the worthiness of this approach empirically.
Yet the connotation of mechanism changes when one moves from Tilly’s
formal definition to the practical definition implied in his substantive theo-
ries. My contention is that, in its practical manifestation in Tilly’s work,
named mechanisms are defined in effect only by their outcome regardless of
their mode of constituent events or their initial condition—the implication
that some initial state is different from the outcome is, of course, present.
This is not to say that Tilly fails to account empirically for the determinants
of given outcomes; rather, it is to suggest that such determinants are not

abstracted and thus their potential abstract form—the mechanisms’ mode—

is not then demonstrated to be present in cross-episode manifestations of the
mechanism. To refer to the earlier diagram of Figure 2 once again, this boils
down to saying that, in a given epistemological context, Y is called a mech-
anism. References to some of the mechanisms Tilly and his associate iden-
tify will help demonstrate the point.
Consider the mechanism of diffusion, defined as the “transfer in the
same or similar shape of forms and claims of contention across space or
across sectors and ideological divides” (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001,
68). Nowhere in this definition do we see a reference to the modus operandi
of the mechanism, what might be the “class of events” through which the
outcome is generated. Nor does such a mode become evident in substantive
analyses. For example, McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly maintain that in the
context of the secessionist mobilization within the USSR in the 1980s, dif-
fusion “resulted in part from deliberate proselytizing by the Balts, but it was
also transmitted by media reports and by elite . . . ” (2001, 252). In the
context of the Rwanda genocide, furthermore, the authors note that diffu-
sion of killing took place through a combination of interpersonal networks
and mass media (2001, 339). What the substantive analyses in McAdam,
Tarrow, and Tilly (2001) imply, therefore, is that there are potentially sev-
eral alternative modes through which diffusion could be generated—e.g.,
through weak ties, strong ties, mass media, combination of these, and so on.
What the analyses miss is an abstract formulation of the link between the
outcome “diffusion” and its determinants. In lieu of it, we are in effect told
that the mechanism exists when the outcome “diffusion” is present.
It is even the case that the outcome, rather than the modus operandi, effec-
tively defines those mechanisms that are linked to structure by definition—
which would be a quality arguably constraining the mode—such as the group
of mechanisms that constitute social boundary change. Consider the mecha-
nism of site transfer, which refers to “shifts in the exact location of persons
and social sites, with respect to differentiated relations on either side of the
boundary, cross-boundary relations, and/or representation of the boundary”
(Tilly 2005, 144). It is evident from Tilly’s analyses that boundary transfers
unfold in a variety of pathways, some of which involve relatively simple and
well-defined forms of social interaction and some others complicated and
diverse forms. Thus, on the one hand, Tilly often evokes employment prac-
tices in relation to boundary change, such as when the boundary between
Korean-Americans and Mexican-Americans in the inner city changed as
Korean-American delicatessen owners hired Mexican-American labor, or
when the boundary between males and females in late-1800s and early-1900s

England changed as women replaced men in clerical jobs (Tilly 2005, 112,
148). On the other hand, Tilly evokes just as well complicated and diverse
forms of social interaction, such as when the entire civil rights movement is
presented to account for changes in the Black/White boundary and when the
entire process of democratization in France is presented to account for
changes in the citizen/noncitizen boundary (Tilly and Tarrow 2007, 190; Tilly
2005, chapter 11). As with the substantive treatment of diffusion, therefore,
the substantive treatment of site transfers implies the presence of undefined
or multiple modes of events constitutive of mechanisms. Ultimately, the same
point can be made regarding all other mechanisms presented by Tilly and his
associates, such as polarization, boundary activation, social appropriation,
radicalization, category formation, repression, and brokerage—indeed, of the
last mechanism, even McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly acknowledge that “brokers
vary significantly in social location and modus operandi . . . ” (2001, 142).7
It becomes clear, then, that Tilly’s formal definition is too demanding for
the empirical material to support. At the epistemological level where his
substantive theories operate—the level of accounting for episodes of col-
lective action—the mode of social action (including socio-cognitive events)
cannot be specified in a way that would exclusively match the identified
mechanisms. This shortcoming, in turn, may lead to such empirical para-
doxes as when a given set of social interactions generates two alleged
mechanisms. To see this, one can casually reflect on the mode through
which the mechanism of polarization (i.e., the increase of ideological dis-
tance between political actors or coalitions) and the mechanism of bound-
ary activation (i.e., the increase in the salience of the us-them distinction
separating two political actors) may unfold (Tilly and Tarrow 2007, 215,
217). Is it likely that distinct modes of action characterize respectively the
outcomes “polarization” and “boundary activation” so that these modes
may generate (repeatedly) the one outcome but not the other? Is it not more
reasonable to expect, rather, that a single series of interaction, such as ver-
bal or physical confrontation between two groups of people, would lead at
the same time to both polarization and boundary activation?
7. In reviewing McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2001), Ruud Koopmans argues that some of the
identified mechanisms, such as brokerage and social appropriation, are tautological because
they are recognizable only by their result, while certain other mechanisms, such as repression,
are not (2003, 117). My contestation here that all mechanisms in McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly
(2001), and elsewhere in Tilly’s work, are effectively defined by their outcome holds true
because Koopmans’s notion of “result” conflates outcome (the Y in the diagram) with a mech-
anism’s other potential effects (the Ds). Thus what appear to him not to be tautological mech-
anisms are in fact tautological mechanisms that are linked to other effects.

The definitional problems in Tilly are in fact a sign of more profound

empirical challenges. Even as series of events lacking particular and repeated
modes, mechanisms seem to run into trouble in terms of concrete specificity
regarding their constituent characteristics. As Zenonas Norkus argues, mech-
anisms in McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2001) fail to demonstrate “productive
continuity” (Norkus 2005, 368). That is, the connections between a mecha-
nism’s initial state and its outcome, as well as the connections among and
within the concatenated mechanisms, remain unsatisfactorily intelligible and
continuous. Indeed, in technical language, Norkus echoes what others who
reviewed McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2001) have put more plainly: that the
identification of mechanisms is ad hoc and the mechanisms could be replaced
by different descriptions of the same observations (Rucht 2003, 114; Koopmans
2003, 118); that the links between broad mechanisms and their constituent
mechanisms are weak (Rucht 2003, 115; Oliver 2003, 120; Earl 2008); that
the same concatenation of mechanisms explains different outcomes (Rucht
2003: 115; Koopmans 2003, 117); and that the same outcome is explained by
different concatenations of mechanisms (Rucht 2003, 114).
In short, the failure to demonstrate productive continuity is the flip side
of the failure to link outcome and mode. The difficulty in extrapolating
repeated robust mechanisms out of case-specific analyses relates to this
failure, which is, in the final analysis, a failure at a given epistemological
level to sort out the complexity (mechanism interaction, codetermination,
etc.) that the alleged mechanisms stand for.
Mechanisms as Heuristics for Explanation
Yet the foregoing is, as are the critics of McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly
(2001), too harsh. First of all, the problem of the relationship between real-
ity and model of reality is not peculiar to the mechanistic explanatory
program. The response this approach would have to offer regarding this
problem, therefore, must ultimately be measured against answers offered
by other approaches. Furthermore, Tilly’s was a nascent effort at the devel-
opment of such a program. Accordingly, he and his collaborators have read-
ily admitted that conceptual problems regarding mechanisms need to be
worked out and that future empirical research may lead to amendments to
identified mechanisms (McAdam 2003, 128; Tarrow 2003, 135; McAdam,
Tarrow, and Tilly 2007). Indeed, it would be unwise to discredit at the out-
set their hope that future work would smooth out current difficulties.

I argue that the empirical challenges found in Tilly’s work and the mech-
anistic explanatory program more generally are serious but not devastating,
provided that the program is adjusted to match the relation between
explanatory mechanisms and real mechanisms. As I show below, the crux
of the matter is to accept, first, that a notion of causality at the level of epis-
temology does not necessarily imply the rejection of an ontological notion
of causality, and secondly, that the current state of knowledge allows us
only to speculate on the affinity between explanatory and real mechanisms.
Focusing on substantive theory and not on philosophy, Tilly does not dis-
cuss the relationship between explanatory mechanisms and real mechanisms.
On the face of it, his idea of mechanistic causality may appear realist, since
the task to explain why a phenomenon comes about is for him tantamount to
the task to describe (through mechanisms) how that phenomenon comes
about—rather than to appeal to covering laws. Nevertheless the question
remains: does the regularity that Tilly substantively observes stand for real
mechanisms or epiphenomena of them? I argue that, in practical terms given
the current state of knowledge in the social sciences, and notwithstanding the-
oretical ideas about emergence (e.g., Sawyer 2004 and Kontopoulos 1993), it
is not possible to answer this or similar questions confidently. Thus when
considering the relationship of scale regarding mechanisms, Tilly and his
associates cannot—nor do they attempt to—make the call as to whether a rel-
atively macro mechanism (process) is ontologically reducible to its con-
stituent parts or whether it becomes a totality with emergent, distinct
characteristics.8 Is, for instance, a macro mechanism such as parliamenta-
rization, which McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2008) define as the reorientation
of politics towards emerging representative assemblies, an emergent ontology
or, rather, merely a summary (at the semantic level) of a long series of mech-
anisms (see also, Lichbach 2008)? Examined with ontological criteria, then,
their effort amounts to the identification of regularity at the domain of the
empirical without a solid sense as to its emergent characteristics from the
same or different domains, let alone the various levels of reality.
It is important to acknowledge here that identifying regularity in and of
itself betrays commitment neither to mechanistic/deep realism nor to
Humean empiricism. It can potentially be the first step to distinct programs
that are attached to the one or the other philosophical position, that is, either
8. This is not solved by the axiomatic position they adopt according to which social relations,
as opposed to individuals alone, have ontological standing, because we still need to decide
which relational mechanisms are ontologically reducible to lower-level interaction and which
are not (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001, 22-24; see also Tilly 1998, 18-24).

to the position that there is more to regularity (deep realism) or not (empiri-
cism). Yet if explanatory mechanisms lose association to real mechanisms,
they lose their claim to explanation through mechanisms. The conundrum
is, therefore, whether or not a practical inability to identify real mechanisms
necessitates the abandonment of the mechanistic explanatory program in
favor of the mere identification of regularity and a corresponding empiricist
notion of causality (proclaiming rejection of, or at least, agnosticism
regarding deep causality). I argue that there is middle ground: maintain the-
oretical commitment to mechanisms as ontologies and reduce the ambition
of the explanatory program through mechanisms, thereby treating the
apprehension of real mechanisms as an endeavor which, though elusive,
orients and disciplines the delimitation of regularity. This means that the
explanatory program should be couched in terms of a heuristic.
This more humble term implies respect for a view of reality governed by
mechanisms but promotes a strategy that seeks explanations that in the current
stage of knowledge can only speculatively, and not necessarily, stand for these
mechanisms. This is not the same as a strategy that concretely hypothesizes
the real workings of that reality. The latter would be a more ambitious program
offering claims about real mechanisms that would then have to be tested in
order to be accepted or rejected. The former makes no strong empirical claims
about mechanisms, including their ontological existence and causal power.
Rather, accepting on principle (and on good evidence from the natural sci-
ences) the ontological notion of causality through mechanisms, the heuristic
program on mechanisms puts faith in the idea that real mechanisms have an
affinity with the domains of the empirical and of the actual and thus betray
something of themselves to the empirical researcher. In this sense, observed
regularity is considered to exist within the penumbra of real mechanisms.
Accordingly, the heuristic program treats the identification of regularity
as a promising but open-ended venue the advancement of which would
come from the long-term accumulation of interrelated empirical and theo-
retical knowledge regarding social patterns. Theoretical knowledge would
primarily relate to the ability to pass judgment on how much the model of
reality resembles reality, that is, to judge the extent to which explanatory
mechanisms stand for real mechanisms. This may not be easily achieved
through the heuristic program, but it is important that through this program
this particular link between reality and model is neither taken for granted
nor rejected a priori, but rather is problematized and given prominence.
I argue that Tilly’s de facto approach to mechanisms should be at the
center of the heuristic strategy. As explained above, Tilly operates on an

outcome-driven definition of mechanism. It is important, however, that the

explanations he provides involve concatenations of such mechanisms (con-
catenations which themselves are called mechanisms or processes by him).
Following this approach, I suggest to define an explanatory mechanism as
the concatenation of (pertinent) outcomes. (Ideally, the word “mechanism”
would be replaced with a word that connotes the status of a model, thus
avoiding a conflation with the ontological notion of mechanisms, but there
is no need presently to complicate matters with the introduction of neolo-
gisms). A mechanism, then, would not be the outcome in and of itself—the
Y of the diagram—but rather the way the outcome combines with other out-
comes to account for an explanandum—if the X to Y is an explanatory mech-
anism, the arrow connecting them is thought to be composed by outcomes.
Thus even though every outcome is on principle explained by mechanisms,
the explanation of an explanandum may or may not necessitate an explanation
of the pertinent outcomes themselves, depending on the logic attached to the
explanatory context. In other words, this approach does not deny that out-
comes are themselves constituted by mechanisms but rather suggests that at
certain epistemological levels we can bracket the constituent mechanisms
for the sake of looking at how outcomes combine to explain phenomena,
thus forming an explanatory mechanism.
The obvious advantage of this strategy is that it avoids the demand to
account ontologically for each of the outcomes that are considered in the
explanation, including the potential for multiple realizability. More gener-
ally, the strategy avoids the demand to demonstrate productive continuity at
the various levels of the analysis, be those temporal, organizational, or
across levels of reality. Since the “explanatory mechanism” would stand for
a regularity but only speculatively and not necessarily for a real mechanism,
noise resultant from mechanism interaction, codetermination, etc., could
be bracketed for the time being—to be sorted out if and when accumu-
lated knowledge on patterns sheds light on it. In the short run, in fact,
discontinuity—elliptical or asymmetrical linkages of events—may be
appropriate in a given epistemological context, and narrative would have to
be utilized as a key, rather than complementary, part of the explanation.
This strategy, finally, also removes the expectation to keep unpacking
“black boxes,” since the task is not to reduce the explanation to (alleged or
real) lower-level ontologies and mechanisms, as advocates of mechanisms
often argue (for a discussion, see Bennet 2003). Thus the wager on the exis-
tence of emergent characteristics at the social level may have a better
chance to yield results in the future.

Part of this approach, then, is to call attention to the identification of out-

comes. This may require primary research, but given some future success in
this research line, “inventories” of key outcomes can be built in and across
broad areas of research, such as contentious politics, identity processes, etc.
In fact, Tilly, alone or in collaboration, has already made considerable
advances in this direction, and it could be argued that the identification of
outcomes is one of the major strengths of his work. Indeed, while Tilly and
his collaborators have been criticized for not being able sufficiently to
account for the superfluity of causal forces surrounding the mechanisms
they identify, the criticisms as a rule do not question the existence and poten-
tial importance of the outcomes as such. Thus even though the exact history
of the forces that precipitate an outcome in a given concrete context cannot
be abstracted and generalized, or even specified, the outcome’s key position
in similar series of social interactions in another context may be evident and
open to further theorization.
For example, consider “scale shift,” an outcome that Tilly and his collab-
orators identify as a mechanism and often employ in explanatory accounts.
Referring to the “change in the number of participating units and/or range of
identities in coordinated actions across some field of contention” (McAdam,
Tarrow, and Tilly 2008), scale shift is, clearly enough, consequential in the
course of social interaction in a given context as it opens up or closes down
opportunities for further interaction. It is, in other words, transformative—
and potentially generative, given further specification of structure and other
forces. Theoretically knowing about the outcome “scale shift,” therefore,
offers a key heuristic for research, alerting the researcher not only to the
presence of the outcome itself but also to its potential relation to other out-
comes with which it may combine to form an explanatory account. Tilly and
his collaborators demonstrate this utility across various areas of research,
from the process of parliamentarization, mentioned above, to the explication
of facets of globalization. In each of the areas they discuss, we find scale
shift concatenating with other outcomes, such as bargaining, boundary deac-
tivation, brokerage, and coordination. Outcomes concatenate—and thus
become explanatory “mechanisms”—in ways that are not predetermined but
which nevertheless variously build adequate accounts of how bigger out-
comes unfold, outcomes such as parliamentarization and globalized political
contention (McAdam 2003; McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2008; see also
Tarrow 2005, 120-24). What this line of heuristic approach can promise,
therefore, is that the more such concatenations show regularity, the more rea-
son we will have to suspect that real mechanisms are involved.

Conclusion
In this article I have argued that explanatory mechanisms in social

science can be at the center of a research program, as Charles Tilly exten-
sively argued, but only in terms of a heuristic program. This argument is
premised on the positions that the ontological notion of causality is supe-
rior to the empiricist alternative and that a theoretically superior notion of
causality must guide substantive research.
As it postulates the existence of mechanisms, realist philosophy sets cer-
tain expectations for their use in the social sciences. These expectations stem
from the realization and specification of a mechanism-centered conception
of complex reality, which necessitates a conception of causality at a level
deeper than that acknowledged by empiricism and positivism. The social-
scientific agenda regarding mechanisms, therefore, would be expected to
pursue knowledge both of the ontology of mechanisms and of their capacity
to explain social phenomena. The first of these two tasks falls in what I
called a strong program. However, entailing the discovery of key workings
of mechanisms in the social world, as well as of the structural conditions of
these mechanisms’ existence, the strong program sets goals that cannot be
met in the near future. What I call a weak program, on the other hand,
relaxes the emphasis on the ontological specification of mechanisms and
structure in favor of providing explanations of social phenomena through
mechanisms. Nevertheless, explanatory mechanisms have a problematic
relationship with real mechanisms. It is to meet this challenge that I argue
that mechanisms can be part of explanations only when the program is
couched in terms of a heuristic. Through it, a modest course towards attribut-
ing causality can be charted, maintaining a commitment to an ontological
notion of causality and a corresponding distance from a pure epistemic
notion of causality.
It may be argued that there is a shortcoming in this approach too. The
explanatory concatenated outcomes, which I tentatively called mechanisms,
will likely not show readily repeatable patterns, and this could be considered
problematic for some. In fact, Tilly and his collaborators suggest that the
more macro the explanation, the more unlikely it is to show such patterns.
They write: “We make a bet on how the social world works: big structures
and sequences never repeat themselves, but result from different combina-
tions and sequences of mechanisms with very general scope” (McAdam,
Tarrow, and Tilly 2001, 30; see also Tilly 2008, 74). What I have maintained
in this article is that the inability to identify readily repeatable concatenations
of outcomes is not a shortcoming of the explanatory program in relation to

positivistic programs, but simply a recognition of the limits of our general

grasp of complex reality. It is, in fact, an indication of the need to conceptu-
alize the mechanistic program in terms of a heuristic. In short, to pursue such
a program is simply to be realistic about realism.
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Chares Demetriou is Golda Meier Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Political Science
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social movements, of the legitimization of political violence, and of collective identity formation.

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Philosophy of the Social

The Realist Approach to Explanatory Mechanisms in Social Science:

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in Social Science http://online.sagepub.com

More than a Heuristic?

The mechanism-realist paradigm in the philosophy of science, championed

Keywords: mechanisms; social-scientific explanations; Charles Tilly;

Received 17 April 2008

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applied in social-scientific research a continuation of the mechanism-realist

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Ontology and the Realist Philosophy on Mechanisms

In their respective long lines of philosophical production, Mario Bunge

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mechanisms is prominent. For both philosophers mechanism is a key onto-

2. Curiously, even as this realist take on mechanisms is relatively uncommon in philosophy

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structural pluralism at various levels (Bhaskar 1986, 106). Particularly,

4. I am referring to “a small difference in degree” because Bhaskar too makes an ontological

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the Real the Actual Empirical

Despite any differences on the definition of mechanism and its relation to

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also that it is the structure/system that determines what a mechanism is, so

Epistemology and Mechanistic Programs

The above summary of the realist ontology of mechanisms streamlines

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cannot be obtained regarding social structures, which always have to be

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recurring mechanisms require a sophisticated understanding of the structure

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mechanisms to generate the explanandum, we need only care about Y, and

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to privilege actuality at the expense of potentiality, simply because the phe-

Explanatory Mechanisms in Tilly’s

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abstracted and thus their potential abstract form—the mechanisms’ mode—

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The definitional problems in Tilly are in fact a sign of more profound

Mechanisms as Heuristics for Explanation

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Downloaded from pos.sagepub.com at UVI - Biblioteca Central on May 2, 2014

Downloaded from pos.sagepub.com at UVI - Biblioteca Central on May 2, 2014

outcome-driven definition of mechanism. It is important, however, that the

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Part of this approach, then, is to call attention to the identification of out-

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In this article I have argued that explanatory mechanisms in social

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positivistic programs, but simply a recognition of the limits of our general

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———. 2008. Methods for measuring mechanisms of contention. Qualitative Sociology 31

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