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Colouring by numbers: comments on a quantitative study of quantitative studies of international politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

William B. Moul
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Extract

John Vasquez, in a recent number of the Review, attempts to document the two-part ‘claim that the Realist paradigm has dominated quantitative international relations and has to this time (1979) failed.to explain (state) behaviour adequately’. He labels this the ‘colour it Morgenthau thesis’.

Type
Discussion
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , April 1982 , pp. 129 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1982

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References

1. Vasquez, John A., ‘Colouring it Morgenthau: new evidence for an old thesis on quantitative international polities’, British Journal of International Studies, 5 (1979), p. 210CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. 2nd enlarged ed. (Chicago, 1970).

3. From Jones, Susan D. and David Singer, J., Beyond Conjecture in International Politics: Abstracts of Data-Based Research (Itasca, Illinois, 1972)Google Scholar. A list of the studies included is presented in Table 2 of ‘Colouring’.

4. Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York, 1967); ‘Colouring’, p. 211Google Scholar.

5. Vasquez, ‘Colouring’, p. 228.

6. Kuhn, Thomas, ‘Comment on the Relations of Science and Art’, in his The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago, 1977), p. 351Google Scholar. See also, his essay ‘Second Thoughts On Paradigms’ in the same collection and the postscript in The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions.

7. Kuhn, The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions, p. 178.

8. ‘Colouring’, p. 211.

9. For example, see Hans Morgenthau, ‘International Relations: Quantitative And Qualitative. Approaches’, in Palmer, Norman D., A Design For International Relations Research: Scope, Theory, Methods, And Relevance (Monograph 10, The American Academy of Political and Social Science, Philadelphia, October, 1970), pp. 67–71Google Scholar and the conference discussions in the same volume.

10. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, pp. 176–177, p. 180.

11. Vasquez, ‘Colouring’, p. 217. (Emphasis added.)

12. Kuhn refers to work in sociology of science in which citations are used to trace communities. Structure of Scientific Revolutions, pp. 176–177.

13. Russett, Bruce M., ‘Methodological and Theoretical Schools in International Relations’, A Design for International Relations Research, p. 93Google Scholar.

14. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 52.

15. Duncan, Otis Dudley, Cuzzort, Ray P., and Duncan, Beverly, Statistical Geography: Problems In Analyzing Areal Data (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1961), pp. 160–174Google Scholar; Lieberson, Stanley and Hansen, L., ‘National Development, Mother Tongue Diversity, and the Comparative Study of Nations’, American Sociological Review, 39 (1974), pp. 523–547CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Moul, William B., ‘On Getting Nothing For Something: A Note on Causal Models of Political Development’, Comparative Political Studies, 1 (July 1974), pp. 142–147Google Scholar.

16. Politics Among Nations, p. 149.

17. Rummel, R., ‘The Relationship Between National Attributes and Foreign Conflict Behavior’, in Quantitative International Politics: Insights and Evidence, Singer, J. David (ed.), (New York: The Free Press, 1968), p. 214Google Scholar.

18. Politics Among Nations, p. 151.

19. Ibid. p. 153.

20. Ibid. pp. 106–108.

21. Ibid. 227.