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This unique book is the first comprehensive guide to the discovery, analysis, and evaluation of natural experiments - an increasingly popular methodology in the social sciences. Thad Dunning provides an introduction to key issues in causal inference, including model specification, and emphasizes the importance of strong research design over complex statistical analysis. Surveying many examples of standard natural experiments, regression-discontinuity designs, and instrumental-variables designs, Dunning highlights both the strengths and potential weaknesses of these methods, aiding researchers in better harnessing the promise of natural experiments while avoiding the pitfalls. Dunning also demonstrates the contribution of qualitative methods to natural experiments and proposes new ways to integrate qualitative and quantitative techniques. Chapters complete with exercises and appendices covering specialized topics such as cluster-randomized natural experiments, make this an ideal teaching tool as well as a valuable book for professional researchers

This book challenges the conventional wisdom that natural resource wealth promotes autocracy. Oil and other forms of mineral wealth can promote both authoritarianism and democracy, the book argues, but they do so through different mechanisms; an understanding of these different mechanisms can help elucidate when either the authoritarian or democratic effects of resource wealth will be relatively strong. Exploiting game-theoretic tools and statistical modeling as well as detailed country case studies and drawing on fieldwork in Latin America and Africa, this book builds and tests a theory that explains political variation across resource-rich states. It will be read by scholars studying the political effects of natural resource wealth in many regions, as well as by those interested in the emergence and persistence of democratic regimes

Replication of simple and transparent experiments should promote the cumulation of knowledge. Yet, randomization alone does not guarantee simple analysis, transparent reporting, or third-party replication. This article surveys several challenges to cumulative learning from experiments and discusses emerging research practices—including several kinds of prespecification, two forms of replication, and a new model for coordinated experimental research—that may partially overcome the obstacles. I reflect on both the strengths and limitations of these new approaches to doing social science research.

Cientistas Sociais crescentemente exploram experimentos naturais em suas pesquisas. Este artigo faz um levantamento de aplicações recentes na Ciência Política, com o objetivo de mostrar as vantagens inferenciais proporcionadas por este tipo de desenho da pesquisa. Quando um tratamento designado é menos do que "como se" aleatoriamente, estudos podem se constituir em algo menos do que experimentos naturais e ameaças a inferência causal valida em cenários de observação podem surgir. O autor propõe um continuum de plausibilidade para experimentos naturais, definidos pela magnitude em que o tratamento designado é plausível "como se" aleatório e identifica vários estudos nesse continuo.

Two recent research programs—one on the sources of democratic consolidation and another on the causes and consequences of violent conflict—have tended to evolve in relative isolation. The contributions to this special issue of Journal of Conflict Resolution help to bridge this gap, through explicit theoretical and empirical analysis of the relationship between fighting and voting. Armed conflict and electoral politics may be strategic substitutes, in that political actors may optimally choose to submit to the ballot box or instead attempt to impose their will by force; or they may be strategic complements, in that actors use violence to bolster their electoral aims, or use electoral returns as sources of information on underlying preferences that they exploit in armed campaigns. In either case, the distribution of popular support for contending parties can shape not only the incidence but also the type of armed conflict, and it can also influence the incentives of parties to invest in institutional mechanisms that mitigate commitment problems and help to bring violent conflicts to an end. The contributions to this issue illuminate these themes and demonstrate the value of bringing these separate research programs into closer dialogue.