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In defence of numbers: synoptic reviews and paradigm evaluation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

John Vasquez
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Extract

Since the publication of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Keohane and Nye's call for a new paradigm in world politics, there has been increasing attention within the field as to what paradigm or paradigms dominate it and how they can be assessed. ‘Colouring it Morgenthau9 attempted to answer both those questions and in the process to develop measures for Kuhn's concepts that would permit some of his propositions to be tested. It is significant that although the original ‘Colour it Morgenthau’ thesis has been criticized, and various counter-views put forth, none of these have ever attempted to test their positions with data in a manner that would permit falsification, or even put forward a research design that would indicate how paradigm evaluations might be conducted. If criticism is to advance knowledge, then it is important that critics present not only counter-views but counter-research or, minimally, a research design that would allow their points to be tested.

Type
Discussion
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , April 1982 , pp. 134 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1982

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References

1. Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1970)Google Scholar; Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S. Jr., (eds.), Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Vasquez, John A., The Power of Paradigms: An Empirical Evaluation of International Relations Inquiry (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1974), pp. 194–195Google Scholar.

3. Lakatos, Imre, ‘Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes’ in Lakatos, I. and Musgrave, A., (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 91–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. It should be noted again, as it is in the article (p. 226), that the removal of the Rummel article with over 2, 500 findings does not improve the performance of the realist paradigm.

5. Popper, Karl, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London, 1959)Google Scholar. Until such evaluations are completed, it should not be assumed that realist explanations are ‘true, until “proven” false’. Indeed, perhaps the major contribution of ‘Colouring it Morgenthau’ was to point out that there was very little scientific evidence that supported the realist paradigm. The evidence that did exist was primarily anecdotal and impressionistic.

6. Vasquez, John A., The Power of Power Politics: A Critique (London and New Brunswick, N. J., 1982)Google Scholar, ch. 8.

7. Siverson, Randolph and King, Joel, ‘Alliances and the Expansion of War’, in Singer, J. David and Wallace, Michael, (eds.), To Augur Well (Beverly Hills, 1979), pp. 37–50Google Scholar.

8. Leng, Russell, ‘Influence Strategies and Interstate Conflict’, In Singer, J. David, (ed.),The Correlates of War: II (New York, 1980), pp. 124–158Google Scholar.

9. Wallace, Michael, ‘Arms Races and Escalation: Some New Evidence’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 23 (1979), pp. 3–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Old Nails in New Coffins: The Para Bellum Hypothesis Revisited’, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 18(1981), pp. 91–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. See Mansbach, Richard W. and Vasquez, John A., In Search of Theory: A New Paradigm for Global Politics (New York, 1981)Google Scholar, ch. 8.

11. In this sense the ‘Colouring it Morgenthau’ article was meant to be a contribution to an ‘applied’ philosophy of science.

12. For the data on this question see Vasquez, 1974, pp. 339–344.

13. While citation studies may be useful in this task, it may not necessarily be a proper technique for identifying the exemplar of a discipline. How many contemporary physicists or biologists cite Einstein or Darwin, for example? A better technique might be to survey scholars on this question. Finnegan, Richard in ‘The Field of International Relations: The View from Within’, Towson State Journal of International Affairs, vol. 7 (1972), pp. 1–24Google Scholar, asked scholars to list the works and scholars who had contributed most to the field. Hans Morgenthau and Politics Among Nations received by far the most nominations (about twice as many as the second-ranked scholar, Karl Deutsch. and the second-ranked work, System and Process in International Politics).

14. Vasquez, 1982, ch. 4.