Table Of ContentCOUNTERFACTUAL THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS
IN WORLD POLITICS
Sponsored by the Committee on International Peace and Security
of the Social Science Research Council
COUNTERFACTUAL THOUGHT
EXPERIMENTS IN WORLD POLITICS
LOGICAL, METHODOLOGICAL, AND
PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
Edited by Philip E. Tetlock and Aaron Belkin
P R I N C E T O N U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S P R I N C E T O N , N E W J E R S E Y
Copyright © 1996 by the Social Science Research Council
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester,
West Sussex
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Counterfactual thought experiments in world politics : logical,
methodological, and psychological perspectives / edited by Philip E.
Tetlock and Aaron Belkin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-691-02792-7 (cl : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-691-02791-9 (pb :
alk. paper)
1. World politics. 2. History—Philosophy. 3. Counterfactuals
(Logic). I. Tetlock, Philip. II. Belkin, Aaron, 1966-
D16.9.C645 1996
901—dc20 96-6396
CIP
This book has been composed in Times Roman
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Contents
List of Contributors vii
Acknowledgments ix
PART ONE: Counterfactual Inference: Form and Function
1 Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical,
Methodological, and Psychological Perspectives 1
Philip E. Tetlock and Aaron Belkin
2 Causes and Counterfactuals in Social Science: Exploring an
Analogy between Cellular Automata and Historical
Processes 39
James D. Fearon
PART TWO: Counterfactual Analysis of Particular Events
3 Counterfactual Reasoning in Western Studies of Soviet
Politics and Foreign Relations 69
George W. Breslauer
4 Confronting Hitler and Its Consequences 95
Yuen Foong Khong
5 Back to the Past: Counterfactuals and the Cuban
Missile Crisis 119
Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein
6 Counterfactual Reasoning in Motivational Analysis:
U.S. Policy toward Iran 149
Richard K. Herrmann and Michael P. Fischerkeller
PART THREE: Counterfactual Analysis of Classes of Events
7 Counterfactuals about War and Its Absence 171
Bruce Russett
8 Using Counterfactuals in Historical Analysis: Theories of
Revolution 187
Edgar Kiser and Margaret Levi
VI CONTENTS
PART FOUR: Counterfactuals and Game Theory
9 Counterfactuals and International Affairs: Some Insights
from Game Theory 211
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
10 Off-the-Path Behavior: A Game-Theoretic Approach to
Counterfactuals and Its Implications for Political and
Historical Analysis 230
Barry R. Weingast
PART FIVE: Computer and Mental Simulations of Possible Worlds
11 Rerunning History: Counterfactual Simulation in
World Politics 247
Lars-Erik Cederman
12 Counterfactuals, Past and Future 268
Steven Weber
PART SIX: Commentaries
1 Conceptual Blending and Counterfactual Argument in the
Social and Behavioral Sciences 291
Mark Turner
2 Psychological Biases in Counterfactual Thought
Experiments 296
James M. Olson, Neal J. Roese, and Ronald J. Deibert
3 Counterfactual Inferences as Instances of Statistical
Inferences 301
Robyn M. Dawes
4 Counterfactuals, Causation, and Complexity 309
Robert Jervis
References 317
Index 337
Contributors
AARON BELKIN
Doctoral candidate, Department of Political Science
University of California, Berkeley
GEORGE W. BRESLAUER
Professor, Department of Political Science
University of California, Berkeley
BRUCE BUENO DE MESQUITA
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Stanford University
LARS-ERIK CEDERMAN
University Lecturer in International Relations, Somerville College
Oxford University
ROBYN M. DAWES
University Professor
Carnegie Mellon University
RONALD J. DEIBERT
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
University of Toronto
JAMES D. FEARON
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
University of Chicago
MICHAEL P. FISCHERKELLER
Doctoral candidate, Department of Political Science
The Ohio State University
RICHARD K. HERRMANN
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
Director, Program in Foreign Policy Analysis, Mershon Center
The Ohio State University
ROBERT JERVIS
Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Relations,
Department of Political Science
Columbia University
YUEN FOONG KHONG
Fellow, Nuffield College
lohn G. Winant University Lecturer in American Foreign Policy
Oxford University
Vlll CONTRIBUTORS
EDGAR KISER
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
University of Washington
RICHARD NED LEBOW
Director, Mershon Center
Professor, Department of Political Science
The Ohio State University
MARGARET LEVI
Professor, Department of Political Science
University of Washington
JAMES M. OLSON
Professor, Department of Psychology
University of Western Ontario
NEAL J. ROESE
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
Northwestern University
BRUCE RUSSETT
Dean Acheson Professor of International Relations and Political Science
Yale University
JANICE GROSS STEIN
Harrowston Professor of Conflict Management, Department of
Political Science
University of Toronto
PHILIP E. TETLOCK
Harold E. Burtt Professor of Psychology and Political Science
The Ohio State University
MARK TURNER
Professor, Department of English
Member, Center for Neural and Cognitive Sciences
University of Maryland
STEVEN WEBER
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
University of California, Berkeley
BARRY R. WEINGAST
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Professor, Department of Political Science
Stanford University
Acknowledgments
As THIS VOLUME ATTESTS, judging the plausibility of counterfactual argu-
ments is a tricky business. Nonetheless, we place great confidence in the
following counterfactual: if we had not received generous intellectual and
financial support from a variety of colleagues and institutions, this volume
would not exist.
On the financial front, we owe a special debt of gratitude to the Commit-
tee on International Peace and Security of the Social Science Research
Council, the John D. and Catherine T. Mac Arthur Foundation, the Center
for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Institute of Personality
and Social Research, the Institute of International Studies at the University
of California, Berkeley, the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation,
and the National Science Foundation Training Grant to the Mershon Center
at the Ohio State University.
On the collegial front, our debts are even more numerous. Most impor-
tant, we want to acknowledge the help given by contributors to this volume
as well as the other participants in the conference on counterfactual thought
experiments held at Berkeley in January 1995. Although many participants
at that conference do not appear in this book, their ideas do at various junc-
tures. We appreciate the intellectual guidance of Henry Brady, David Col-
lier, Barry Eichengreen, Fred Greenstein, Robert Keohane, Nelson Polsby,
Robert Powell, Eleanor Rosch, Brian Skyrms, and Peter Woodruff. We sin-
gle out Daniel Kahneman for thanks. Although he does not appear in this
volume, he had a major impact on how we now think about thought experi-
ments.
We also want to acknowledge the constructive comments that we have
received on various aspects of this project (including our introductory chap-
ter) from Christopher Achen, Robert Bates, Alexander George, Albert Fish-
low, John Gaddis, Ernst Haas, Peter Katzenstein, Deborah Larson, Elisabeth
Lloyd, Scott Sagan, Paul Sniderman, and Peter Suedfeld. And we owe a
debt of considerable gratitude to the numerous anonymous reviewers who
examined our manuscript for both Cambridge University Press and Princeton
University Press.
Shifting to the administrative dimensions of the project, we would like to
acknowledge the support of the Social Science Research Council and the
assistance of Steve Heydemann, Robert Latham, and the editorial staff of
Princeton University Press, including Malcolm DeBevoise, Malcolm Litch-
field, and Heidi Sheehan, and Cambridge University Press, in particular
John Haslam. We would be terribly remiss if we did not remember the
