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The Young Science of International Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Bruce M. Russett
Bruce M. Russett
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

We have entered a new phase in the apparently endless debate method. Argument once centered on the possibility of quantifying important political variables, and of establishing empirically based generalizations about international behavior. With accumulating evidence that measurement and generalization are possible, the grounds have shifted. Sometimes only specific applications are attacked. Though it is curious how few of the extant applications of scientific method come up to the high standards of some of their critics, the critics’ targets cannot complain too much. After all, the methods and applications are new, most studies do suffer from significant flaws of one sort or another, and constructive criticism is essential to their improvement.

Type
Research Note
Information
World Politics , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , October 1969 , pp. 87 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1969

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References

1 “Professor Russett: Industrious Tailor to a Naked Emperor,” World Politics, xxi (April 1969), 486–511Google Scholar.

2 There is an extensive technical debate about induction as a means of inferring universal statements from singular ones, contributed to by Hume, Kant, Mill, Keynes, Reichenbach, Popper, and others, that I do not think is relevant here. I assume that no one takes seriously the idea that one derives deterministic laws merely by generalizing from observed cases to general principles. For a discussion of probability and inductive reasoning, with an attempt to put induction on firmer ground, see economist Harrod, Sir Roy, Foundations of Inductive Logic (New York 1956)Google Scholar. We are concerned here only with whether induction from bodies of data may be a useful means of generating hypotheses, or at most tentative propositions that one is prepared to accept with some limited confidence until they have been deductively articulated, and tested and not disconfirmed by new data.

3 Sjoberg, Gideon and Nett, Roger, A Methodology for Social Research (New York 1968), 49Google Scholar, 57.

4 The Conduct of Inquiry (San Francisco 1964), 20Google Scholar. On the other side, a good argument for gathering data only to test carefully derived deductive propositions is John Platt's chapter on “Strong Inference” in his The Excitement of Science (Boston 1962)Google Scholar.

5 Dampier, Sir William Cecil, A History of Science (New York 1942), 457–58Google Scholar. His reference to Campbell is Physics, the Elements (Cambridge 1920)Google Scholar.

6 A striking example is the work of Watson and Crick on DNA. See Watson, James D., The Double Helix (New York 1969)Google Scholar.

7 Patterns of Discovery (London 1958), 71Google Scholar.

8 Ibid., 90.

9 See my “A Macroscopic View of International Politics,” in Vincent Davis, Maurice East, and James N. Rosenau, eds., The Analysis of International Politics (New York forthcoming). Some of this discussion is taken from there. See also portions of the work of Hayward Alker, Harold Guetzkow, Robert North, R. J. Rummel, J. David Singer, and Raymond Tanter, among others, for nontrivial propositions stemming in part from inductive efforts.

10 On the four pages 489–92 Young six times describes the book as indulging in the search for empirical generalizations “as an end in itself.” He cites two authorities, Brodbeck, May, “Explanation, Prediction, and ‘Imperfect’ Knowledge,” in Brodbeck, , ed., Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (New York 1968)Google Scholar, and Tullock, Gordon, The Organization of Inquiry (Durham 1966)Google Scholar, ch. 5, on the inefficiency of “puristic induction” for generating hypotheses. Neither, however, uses the term nor, so far as I can see, is really relevant. Tullock's definition of induction is narrower than the common one, yet once we agree on the need for testing all hypotheses, however they are derived, his presentation actually seems sympathetic to induction.

11 The reference is to Community and Contention: Britain and America in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass. 1963)Google Scholar.

12 Young seems to have had some second thoughts about his objectivity. After saying in the text on p. 494 that the book “fails to offer any hypotheses” on the links between regionalism and integration he added a footnote: “One or two possible exceptions such as the link between regional ties and war are discussed in a later section of this essay. In general, however, the statement in the text seems accurate.” Also, pp. 490–91, where he declares “even when empirical data are carefully arrayed to display any statistical regularities in their relationships (and Russett seldom does this),” leaves me mystified. If he is using the term statistical correctly, in die sense of rigorous inference from a sample to a population, I never am able to do this. As explained on p. 218, to do so “would require assumptions about random samples and the distribution of values in a universe” that are not appropriate to the data and such a goal was not part of the study. If he is merely using the word loosely, in the sense of quantitative relationships, then I am doubly perplexed.

13 See his “Political Discontinuities in the International System,” World Politics, xx (April 1968), 369–92Google Scholar.

14 Lazarsfeld, Paul, Berelson, Bernard, and Gaudet, Hazel, The People's Choice (New York 1944)Google Scholar, and Berelson, Bernard, Lazarsfeld, Paul, and McPhee, William, Voting (Chicago 1954)Google Scholar.

15 One attack, which Young cites twice and from which he takes his image, is diat of his colleague Levy, Marion J., “‘Does it Matter if He's Naked?’ Bawled the Child,” in Knorr, Klaus and Rosenau, James N., eds. Contending Approaches to International Politics (Princeton 1969)Google Scholar. Young protests that he does not oppose the use of quantitative data “when such data are employed in the interest of developing theory.” Nevertheless there is little evidence in his publications that he feels it important enough to do much of it.