Table Of ContentTheory and Evidence in Comparative Politics
and International Relations
New Visions in Security
Series Editor:Richard Ned Lebow
Ending the Cold War:Interpretations,Causation,and the Study of International
Relations
Edited by Richard K.Herrmann and Richard Ned Lebow
Embedded Liberalism and Its Critics:Justifying Global Governance in the American
Century
Jens Steffek
Theory and Evidence in Comparative Politics and International Relations
Edited by Richard Ned Lebow and Mark Irving Lichbach
Geopolitics Reframed:Security and Identity in Europe’s Eastern Enlargement
(forthcoming)
Merje Kuus
Theory and Evidence in
Comparative Politics and
International Relations
Edited by
Richard Ned Lebow
and
Mark Irving Lichbach
THEORYANDEVIDENCEINCOMPARATIVEPOLITICSANDINTERNATIONALRELATIONS
Copyright © Richard Ned Lebow and Mark Irving Lichbach,2007.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-4039-7456-3
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First published in 2007 by
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ISBN 978-1-4039-7661-1 ISBN 978-0-230-60750-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230607507
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Theory and evidence in comparative politics and international
relations / edited by Richard Ned Lebow and Mark Irving Lichbach.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN978-1-4039-7661-1(pb)
1.Social sciences––Philosophy.2.Social sciences––Methodology.
3.Political science––Philosophy.4.Political science––Methodology.
5.Knowledge,Theory of.6.Science––Philosophy.I.Lebow,Richard Ned.
II.Lichbach,Mark Irving,1951–
H61.S58976 2007
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Contents
About the Authors ix
1. What Can We Know? How Do We Know? 1
Richard Ned Lebow
Part I Foundational Claims
2. Evidence,Inference,and Truth as Problems ofTheory
Building in the Social Sciences 25
Friedrich V.Kratochwil
3. The Limits ofInterpreting Evidence 55
Ted Hopf
Part II The Product ofInquiry
4. Beyond Logical Positivism:Reframing King,Keohane,
and Verba 87
Brian M.Pollins
5. Methodological Pluralism and the Limits ofNaturalism
in the Study ofPolitics 107
Fred Chernoff
Part III The Purpose and Methods ofResearch
6. Transforming Inferences into Explanations:Lessons from
the Study ofMass Extinctions 145
David Waldner
7. Theory,Evidence,and Politics in the Evolution of
International Relations Research Programs 177
Jack S.Levy
viii CONTENTS
8. Imperial Peace or Imperial Method? Skeptical Inquiries
into Ambiguous Evidence for the “Democratic Peace” 199
Andrew Lawrence
Part IV New Directions
9. Social Science as Case-Based Diagnostics 229
Steven Bernstein,Richard Ned Lebow,Janice Gross Stein,
and Steven Weber
10. Theory and Evidence 261
Mark Irving Lichbach
Index 285
About the Authors
Steven Bernstein is Associate Professor of Political Science at the
University of Toronto.His current research focuses on global governance
and the problem of legitimacy. He is the author of The Compromise of
Liberal Environmentalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001)
and coeditor (with Louis W. Pauly) of Global Liberalism and Political
Order: Toward a New Grand Compromise?(Albany,NY:SUNY Press,2007).
Fred Chernoff is Professor of Political Science and Director of the
International Relations Program at Colgate University in Hamilton, NY.
His interests are in international relations theory and metatheory and
security studies. His most recent books are Theory and Metatheory in
International Relations: Concepts and Contending Accounts (Palgrave-
Macmillan, 2007) and The Power of International Theory: Re-forging the
Link to Policy-making Through Scientific Enquiry(Routledge,2005).
Ted Hopf is Associate Professor of political science at Ohio State
University. His most recent book is Social Construction of International
Politics(Ithaca,NY:Cornell University Press,2002).
Friedrich V. Kratochwil is Professor of International Relations at the
European University Institute in Florence, Italy. His most recent book
(together with Ed Mansfield,eds.) is International Organization and Global
Governance(New York:Pearson,2006).He has been the editor ofEuropean
Journal ofInternational Relations(2000–2004) and is a member ofseveral
editorial boards in Europe and the United States.
Andrew Lawrence is Lecturer in African Politics in the School of Social
and Political Studies at the University of Edinburgh.He is working on a
book on the political economy of South Africa’s democratization in
comparative perspective.
Jack S.Levyis Board ofGovernors’Professor ofpolitical science at Rutgers
University, New Jersey. He is author of War in the Modern Great Power
System, 1495–1975 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1983)
and of numerous articles relating to the causes of war and foreign-policy
decision making.
