Introduction: The Elephant of Causation and the Blind Sages

What does a policy outcome hinge on? The response is vital to policy-making and calls for the best of our knowledge from a variety of disciplines---from economics to sociology and from political science to public administration and management. The response entails a stance about causation, however, and almost every discipline has its own. Researchers are like the blind sages who had never come across the elephant of causation before and who develop their idea of the elephant by ``touching'' a different part of it. Which part of the elephant will you happen to touch? Will you be able to listen to and understand what the other sages will tell you?