日本民主黨於 2009 年的眾議院選舉中擊敗執政的自由民主黨，黨魁鳩山由紀夫於 9 月 16 日成為日本首相。由於民主黨在參議院未過半，為了維持國會穩定運作，鳩山首相選擇與社會民主黨、國民新黨組成聯合內閣。 不過鳩山政權內部不斷出現閣員之間的對立，而鳩山首相始終無法處理這些政府決策過程之中所發生的混亂，學者與主要媒體多認為，發生混亂的原因是在於鳩山本人的領導能力不足。不過本論文認為，導致鳩山政權內部的混亂主因是民主黨建構的決策運作模式本..

Yukio Hatoyama, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), succeeded to the Prime Minister of Japan on 16 September 2009 after DPJ won the 2009 Japanese general election. In the election, DPJ acquired 308 out of a total of 480 seats in the House of Representatives of Japan, while the Liberal Democratic Party(LDP), the former ruling party only acquired 119 seats. However, Hatoyama was thus forced to form a coalition government with the Social Democratic Party and the People’s New Party in response to a situatio..

本文主要的目的在於爬梳社會科學方法論中因果機制分析的發展和演進，並進一步評估政治學研究中如何運用因果機制來進行解釋以及討論相關的解釋效力的問題。本文將具體評析政治學國際關係領域中民主和平論之論點，以此來衡量政治學運用因果機制解釋的優勢和侷限。因果機制研究層面上，本文聚焦在機制的定義和類型、機制的觀察性、因果機制與因果關係、法則和中介變數的差異、機制的層次、機制的運作和測量、機制的路徑圖。因果機制運用層面上，本文側重於民主和平論的源起和演進、 民主和平論的重要論述、對於民主和平論的挑戰以及..

The main purpose of this paper is to parse out the development and evolution of causal mechanism and to further evaluate how political research adopts the method of causal mechanism to explain and discuss the explanatory effect in the field of qualitative methods. Our focus is to shed light on the causal mechanism of democratic peace theory in the field of international relations and to gauge its advantages and restraints. On the dimension of causal mechanism, this paper focuses on the definition of mechanism, observation of causal mechanis..