Kausalitet inom samhällsvetenskapen

En fallstudie av nazistiska partiframgångar i Tärendö kommun

Abstract

The article’s purpose is to discuss causality in the social sciences. More specifi- cally, causality as the relationship between the necessary and sufficient conditions in order to derive why A, B, C ... n cause Z. Its empirical focus is the 1934 Tärendö municipal election within which the Swedish Nazi party received 30.8 percent of the vote as compared to surrounding municipalities where it received less than 4 percent of the vote. Its analytical foci are the necessary and sufficient conditions behind a historical event, as refered to by the so-called INUS model, derived from a number of formal logical rules (above all the rule of contraposition). In Tärendö, in contrast to surrounding communities, a number of socially prominent people (the forester, doctor, priests and farmers) supported the Nazi message and there was no established social-democratic alternative, besides a communist party, and only weakened bourgeois partial alternatives that formed a defense against Nazism.