While heated arguments between practitioners of qualitative and quantitative research have begun to test the very integrity of the social sciences, Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba have produced a farsighted and timely book that promises to sharpen and strengthen a wide range of research performed in this field. These leading scholars, each representing diverse academic traditions, have developed a unified approach to valid descriptive and causal inference in qualitative research, where numerical measurement is either impossible or undesirable. Their book demonstrates that the same logic of inference underlies both good quantitative and good qualitative research designs, and their approach applies equally to each. Providing precepts intended to stimulate and discipline thought, the authors explore issues related to framing research questions, measuring the accuracy of data and uncertainty of empirical inferences, discovering causal effects, and generally improving qualitative research. Among the specific topics they address are interpretation and inference, comparative case studies, constructing causal theories, dependent and explanatory variables, the limits of random selection, selection bias, and errors in measurement. Mathematical notation is occasionally used to clarify concepts, but no prior knowledge of mathematics or statistics is assumed. The unified logic of inference that this book explicates will be enormously useful to qualitative researchers of all traditions and substantive fields.

Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research

Domestic politics and international relations are often inextricably entangled, but existing theories (particularly “state-centric” theories) do not adequately account for these linkages. When national leaders must win ratification (formal or informal) from their constituents for an international agreement, their negotiating behavior reflects the simultaneous imperatives of both a domestic political game and an international game. Using illustrations from Western economic summitry, the Panama Canal and Versailles Treaty negotiations, IMF stabilization programs, the European Community, and many other diplomatic contexts, this article offers a theory of ratification. It addresses the role of domestic preferences and coalitions, domestic political institutions and practices, the strategies and tactics of negotiators, uncertainty, the domestic reverberation of international pressures, and the interests of the chief negotiator. This theory of “two-level games” may also be applicable to many other political phenomena, such as dependency, legislative committees, and multiparty coalitions.

/pdf/diplomacy-and-domestic-politics-the-logic-of-two-level-games-fpe0vxji8k.pdf

Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games

The growing technical uncertainties and complexities of problems of global concern have made international policy coordination not only increasingly necessary but also increasingly difficult. If decision makers are unfamiliar with the technical aspects of a specific problem, how do they define state interests and develop viable solutions? What factors shape their behavior? Under conditions of uncertainty, what are the origins of international institutions? And how can we best study the processes through which international policy coordination and order emerge? While a variety of analytic approaches have been used to address the problems of international cooperation, the approaches have yielded only fragmentary insights. At its core, the study of policy coordination among states involves arguments about determinism versus free will and about the ways in which the international system is maintained and transformed. Among the overlapping topics of debate are whether national behavior is determined or broadly conditioned by system-level factors, unit-level factors, or some complex interplay between the two; whether state policymakers can identify national interests and behave independently of pressures from the social groups they nominally represent; and whether states respond consistently to opportunities to create, defend, or expand their own wealth and power, to enhance collective material benefits, or to promote nonmaterial values.' A related question of

/pdf/introduction-epistemic-communities-and-international-policy-55mu65c5cp.pdf

Introduction: epistemic communities and international policy coordination

Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

/pdf/international-norm-dynamics-and-political-change-37ig9r9dlq.pdf

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

The debate between realists and liberals has reemerged as an axis of contention in international relations theory.’ Revolving in the past around competing theories of human nature, the debate is more concerned today with the extent to which state action is influenced by ‘structure’ (anarchy and the distribution of power) versus ‘process’ (interaction and learning) and institutions. Does the absence of centralized political authority force states to play competitive power politics? Can international regimes overcome this logic, and under what conditions? What in anarchy is given and immutable, and what is amenable to change?

/pdf/anarchy-is-what-states-make-of-it-the-social-construction-of-39pmlbk9ww.pdf

Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics

Theory of International Politics

Some students of international politics believe that realism is obsolete.1 They argue that, although realism’s concepts of anarchy, self-help, and power balancing may have been appropriate to a bygone era, they have been displaced by changed conditions and eclipsed by better ideas. New times call for new thinking. Changing conditions require revised theories or entirely different ones. True, if the conditions that a theory contemplated have changed, the theory no longer applies. But what sorts of changes would alter the international political system so profoundly that old ways of thinking would no longer be relevant? Changes of the system would do it; changes in the system would not. Within-system changes take place all the time, some important, some not. Big changes in the means of transportation, communication, and war ghting, for example, strongly affect how states and other agents interact. Such changes occur at the unit level. In modern history, or perhaps in all of history, the introduction of nuclear weaponry was the greatest of such changes. Yet in the nuclear era, international politics remains a self-help arena. Nuclear weapons decisively change how some states provide for their own and possibly for others’ security; but nuclear weapons have not altered the anarchic structure of the international political system. Changes in the structure of the system are distinct from changes at the unit level. Thus, changes in polarity also affect how states provide for their security. Signicant changes take place when the number of great powers reduces to two or one. With more than two, states rely for their security both on their

/pdf/structural-realism-after-the-cold-war-46i7blrn8e.pdf

Structural Realism after the Cold War

Structure of International Politics I F o r more than three hundred years, the drama of modern history has turned on the rise and fall of great powers. In the multipolar era, twelve great powers appeared on the scene at one time or another. At the beginning of World War 11, seven remained; at its conclusion, two. Always before, as some states sank, others rose to take their places. World War I1 broke the pattern; for the first time in a world of sovereign states, bipolarity prevailed. In a 1964 essay, I predicted that bipolarity would last through the century.’ On the brow of the next millennium, we must prepare to bid bipolarity adieu and begin to live without its stark simplicities and comforting symmetry. Already in the fall of 1989, Undersecretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger expressed nostalgia for the ”remarkably stable and predictable atmosphere of the Cold War,“ and in the summer of 1990, John Mearsheimer gave strong reasons for expecting worse days to come.2 For almost half a century it seemed that World War I1 was truly ”the war to end wars” among the great and major powers of the world. The longest peace yet known rested on two pillars: bipolarity and nuclear weapons. During the war, Nicholas Spykman foresaw a postwar international order no different ”from the old,” with international society continuing ”to operate within the same fundamental power pattern^.\"^ Realists generally shared his

/pdf/the-emerging-structure-of-international-politics-5dsqdqbxvw.pdf

The Emerging Structure of International Politics

Foreword to the 2018 Anniversary Edition, by Stephen M. Walt Preface to the 2001 Edition Preface to the 1959 Edition 1. Introduction 2. The First Image: International Conflict and Human Behavior 3. Some Implications of the First Image: The Behavioral Sciences and the Reduction of Interstate Violence 4. The Second Image: International Conflict and the Internal Structure of States 5. Some Implications of the Second Image: International Socialism and the Coming of the First World War 6. The Third Image: International Conflict and International Anarchy 7. Some Implications of the Third Image: Examples from Economics, Politics, and History 8. Conclusion Bibliography Index

Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis

Disarmament measures for small arms, light weapons and ammunition are becoming routine and widespread. For centuries, the vision of disarmament has tantalized with revolutionary possibilities to transform relations between peoples and governments. The data and examples in this chapter support a more modest understanding of the prospects for small arms collection and disarmament. It should arouse neither ‘irrational exuberance,’ nor dismissiveness or anxiety. The experiences recounted here show it is neither a universal antidote for armed violence and political instability, nor, when undertaken with public consent, a threat to liberty and security. This chapter clarifies the accomplishments and limitations of small arms collection and disarmament as it affects civilians, the state, and non-state actors. It shows that collection and disarmament measures are usually associated with a reduction of armed violence and promotion of political stability. Among its key findings:

Kenneth N. Waltz

Papers

Theory of International Politics

Structural Realism after the Cold War

The Emerging Structure of International Politics

Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis

Man, the State, and War