Social mechanisms without black boxes

Abstract

Introduction “Explaining” means “finding the causes. ” Explaining a social phenomenon means identifying its cause(s). In most cases, the explanation takes the form of a more or less complicated set of causal statements. The relations between the elements of the set can be more or less complex; they can be linear, recursive, include feedback loops, and so on. The set is what we usually call a “social mechanism” (SM). A SM is, in other words, the well-articulated set of causes responsible for a given social phenomenon. With the exception of typical simple ones, SMs tend to be idiosyncratic and singular (Boudon 1986). I am essentially interested here in the discussion of a basic distinction – namely, that some explanations of social mechanisms give the impression of being “final, ” while others do not. Thus the causal statement “A legal limitation of rents provokes a degradation of housing” arouses the further question “Why is that so? ” In that sense, it is not “final. ” The answer to this question is that the owners, who have the exclusive capacity of repairing the houses, are not incited to do so when this cost exceeds the benefit that they draw from renting their house. With this answer, we have the impression that the explanation is final: It arouses in our mind no additional question. We have this impression because the causes of the social mechanism lie in a behavior of the owners that we easily perceive as understandable: We understand very easily why the owners do what…