Tracing Causal Paths from Experimental and Observational Data
Journal: The Journal of Politics
Year: 2022

The study of causal mechanisms abounds in political science, and causal mediation analysis has grown rapidly across different subfields. Yet, conventional methods for analyzing causal mechanisms are difficult to use when the causal effect of interest involves multiple mediators that are potentially causally dependent—a common scenario in political science applications. This article introduces a general framework for tracing causal paths with multiple mediators. In this framework, the total effec