Functions and mechanisms in structural-modelling explanation

One way the social scientists explain phenomena is by building structural models. These models are explanatory insofar as they manage to perform a recursive decomposition on an initial multivariate probability distribution, which can be interpreted as a mechanism. The social scientists should include the variables in the model on the basis of their function in the mechanism. This paper examines the notion of `function' within structural modelling. We argue that `functions' ought to be understood as the theoretical underpinnings of the causes, namely as the role that causes play in the functioning of the mechanism