ABSTRACT

The credibility revolution transformed quantitative social sciences and was both a curse and a blessing for Russian studies. On the one hand, Russia turned out to be an attractive field for experimentalist research, which allowed Russian studies to gain unprecedented recognition in the broader disciplines. On the other hand, a focus on causal identification could have contributed to insufficient attention to potentially important topics relevant for understanding Russia and to some aspects of the Russian setting able to augment the general social science discourse. The war in Ukraine makes many causal identification designs used for studying Russia (with the exception of natural experiments) difficult or impossible to implement. It may make the return to other approaches and de-emphasizing causal identification necessary, at least to some extent. At the same time, the question remains of how the general social science disciplines will perceive such shift in focus.

摘要

可信度革命改变了定量社会科学，对俄罗斯研究既是诅咒又是祝福。一方面，俄罗斯被证明是一个对实验主义研究具有吸引力的领域，这使得俄罗斯研究在更广泛的学科中获得了前所未有的认可。另一方面，对因果识别的关注可能导致对与了解俄罗斯相关的潜在重要主题以及能够增强一般社会科学话语的俄罗斯环境的某些方面的关注不足。乌克兰战争使得许多用于研究俄罗斯（自然实验除外）的因果识别设计难以或无法实施。至少在某种程度上，这可能使回归其他方法和不再强调因果识别成为必要。