Mechanisms

Mechanisms, as used in the social sciences, are analytical constructs that tell in detail how the two components of an explanation are related— that is, how the explanans produces the explanandum. Social mechanisms are particularly suitable to address power-related phenomena due to their interdisciplinary nature, their ability to connect macro and micro phenomena, and their acknowledgment that purposive actors (not variables) have the starring roles in politics. Used across the natural and the social sciences in the form of simple models, mechanisms produce satisfactory partial explanations without the formal requirements of causal explanations and without the universal aspirations of the grand theory.

Mechanisms, frequently presented as simplified analogies of how something works, have always been part of the scientific toolboxes of the natural and the social sciences. Mechanistic thought was commonly used by several pre-Socratic philosophers (Anaximander, Pythagoras) to describe the functioning of nature in general and of celestial bodies in particular, and is widely use in contemporary state-of-the-art studies of the neurosciences to explain the functioning of the brain. In the social sciences, from Aristotle to Karl Marx and from Adam Smith to Talcott Parsons, the mechanical analogy has also been used to describe the dynamics of human relations, whether in regard to the provision of material goods (economics), the crystallization of social practices (sociology), or struggles for the control of enforceable rules (politics). Such a broad scope of application throughout time and across diverse fields of knowledge is possible due to the simplicity, pervasiveness, and great explanatory power of the mechanistic analogy.

Mechanisms are usually described as formed by three sets of components; two of them are static and the third is dynamic. The static components (also called elements or entities) are the whole and its parts, as in a clock and a click wheel. The dynamic component is the flux or movement that relates the parts among themselves and with the whole, as is the case with the ticking of the clock. For example, the mechanism of social differentiation works in such a way that a given individual (the part) feels empathy or antipathy (the dynamics) with other individuals (other parts) to form groups like “us” and “them” (the whole). As shown in the previous example, the use of mechanisms as explanatory devices and pedagogic resources facilitates the description of complex phenomena in simple terms, a sort of modeling that allows for the separation of the phenomenon to be explained from the rest of the social phenomena. Mechanisms tend to be simple and linear processes, located close to factual experience, that explain a small part of social interactions. They seldom work in isolation; it is usually the confluence of several mechanisms that produce the macro social events. To continue the example, the mechanism of social differentiation works along with the mechanisms of material inheritance and symbolic identification to create the phenomenon of nationalism. Given the difficulties of building a full-fledged definition of nationalism, an efficient alternative is to use social mechanisms to describe a portion of the creation and promotion of national sentiments.

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