Not Every Real Problem Is the Root Cause

In a guest contribution at Econbrowser, Jeffrey Frankel — the Harpel Professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government — starts from the observation that many factors are at play in American politics, a long list that includes things crying out for reform, such as gerrymandering of congressional districts. His caution concerns what happens next. Most of those factors, he writes, will not bear the weight of being identified as the single fundamental exogenous cause of all the others. The distinction is worth keeping: real problems and root causes are different categories, and a long list of the former can feel like an answer without actually functioning as one.