Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Edited by I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave. Pp. viii, 282. £3·50, paperback £1. 1970. (Cambridge University Press.)

Recent developments in the philosophy of science, particularly those falling under the rubric of “scientific realism,” have earned growing recognition among theorists of international relations but have failed to generate substantive programs of research. Consequently, the empirical relevance of much philosophical discourse, such as that centering on the agent-structure problem in social theory, remains unestablished. This article attempts to bridge the gap between the philosophy and practice of science by outlining a model of international structure based on the principles of scientific realism and by considering its implications for a structural research program in international relations theory. Appealing to Imre Lakatos's methodology of theorychoice, the article presents an ontological case for adopting a “transformational” model of structure over the “positional” model developed in the work of Kenneth Waltz. The article demonstrates that the positional approach offers no conceptual or explanatory hold on those features of the international structure that are the intended products of state action. In conclusion, the article argues that the stakes in the agent-structure debate include the capacity to generate integrative structural theory and the ability to theorize the possibilities for peaceful change in the international system.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0020818300032999

What's at stake in the agent-structure debate?

Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy

Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and de‹ciency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself the enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency. (Ibn al-Haytham)1

국제정치이론 = Theory of international politics

Grasping the democratic peace: principles for a post-Cold War world

Relative nation-state capability follows a generalized nonlinear pattern over long periods. Empirical evidence indicates that between 1816–1975 nine major powers have traversed at least a segment of this relative capability cycle of political ascendancy, maturation and decline. Specific changes in a state's relative capability dynamics increase its propensity to initiate extensive war. Whether the extensiveness of a war is defined in terms of duration, intensity or magnitude, major powers are likely to initiate more extensive wars at the critical inflection and turning points on the curve of relative capability where the linear role perceptions held by government and society change pervasively. This analysis involves a new theoretical focus for examining the causes of war, shifting attention from interactions between nations to the consequences of changes in relative power and to the political evolution of the nation-state itself.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0003055400169540

War and the Cycle of Relative Power

Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: new perspectives on the causes and management of systems crisis Part I. Dynamics of State Power and Role: Systems Structure: 1. What is power cycle theory? Introducing the main concepts 2. Measuring national capability and power 3. The cycle of state power and role Part II. Dynamics of Major War and Systems Transformation: 4. Critical intervals on the power cycle: why wars become major 5. Systemic disequilibrium and world war Part III. Dynamics of General Equilibrium and World Order: 6. Prerequisites of world order: international political equilibrium 7. World order and systems transformation: guidelines for statecraft Part IV. Systems Transformation and World Order at Century's End: 8. Systems change since 1945: instability at critical points and awareness of the power cycle 9. Is decline inevitable? US leadership and the systemic security dilemma 10. Systems transformation and the new imperatives of high politics Appendix: mathematical relations in the power cycle References Index.

Systems in Crisis: New Imperatives of High Politics at Century's End

A forecast is a prediction based on knowledge of past behavior. The forecaster must consider to what extent past trends will continue in the future. In linear forecasts, the past is prologue, and forecasting amounts to linear extrapolation of the past trend into the future. When conditions are propitious and behavior over time is approximately linear, the linear forecast will fit the data tolerably well. But forecasts ultimately fail because no technique has been developed that allows the forecaster to predict, prior to the event itself, when a nonlinearity will occur. This essay argues that a nonlinearity is a critical point at which expectations (predictions) induced by the prior trend suddenly confront a profound alteration in that trend, indeed, an abrupt inversion. A nonlinearity is a total break from the past trend, a discontinuity. The theory of relative power (systemic structure) dynamics known as power cycle theory provides both a thorough, graphic explanation of this discontinuity in expectations that occurs at critical points in the process, and the reason why nonlinearities are impossible to derive from prior trends. Theoretical and empirical assessment of a process and its dynamics makes possible an explanation of the conditions that give rise to such nonlinearity. Hence such dynamical analysis can predict that such a nonlinearity will occur, but in all but a closed system it still cannot predict when the nonlinearity will occur.

Why Forecasts Fail: The Limits and Potential of Forecasting in International Relations and Economics

The Politics of Assimilation: Hegemony and Its Aftermath

Confronting widespread ambiguities of theory and research design, this article establishes conditions underlying international political stability for state and system. In turn, it (1) dissects the cycle of relative power and role to elucidate the concept of general equilibrium, depicting graphically the trauma of role adjustment that accompanies critical changes in relative power; (2) compares the empirical results for transitions and critical points using the same set of data; (3) shows mathematically that inversions in the trend of slope can approximate critical intervals; and (4) demonstrates via diagrams of each state's critical change why the disequilibrated system 1885-1914 succumbed to massive world war. Empirical research on systems transformation and major war must incorporate both strategic power balancing and power-role equilibration for states in the central system in a broader concept like general equilibrium.

Charles F. Doran

Papers

War and the Cycle of Relative Power

Systems in Crisis: New Imperatives of High Politics at Century's End

Why Forecasts Fail: The Limits and Potential of Forecasting in International Relations and Economics

The Politics of Assimilation: Hegemony and Its Aftermath

Systemic Disequilibrium, Foreign Policy Role, and the Power Cycle Challenges for Research Design