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Colouring it Morgenthau: new evidence for an old thesis on quantitative international politics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

John A. Vasquez
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Extract

In the last decade a number of scholars have criticized the dominant paradigm in international relations inquiry. Two major criticisms have been levelled at some of the advocates of paradigm change: they do not clearly demonstrate the dominance of a specific paradigm, and they have produced no data-based studies to demonstrate the obsolescence of the fundamental assumptions of the field. This paper attempts to meet these criticisms by systematically testing what has become known as the “Colour It Morgenthau” thesis, namely the claim that the Realist paradigm has dominated quantitative international relations and has up to this time failed to explain behaviour adequately.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , October 1979 , pp. 210 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1979

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References

page 210 note 1 Burton, John W., Systems, States, Diplomacy, and Rules (Cambridge, 1968);Google Scholar, Joseph S. Jr. and Keohane, Robert O., ‘Transnational Relations and World Polities’, International Organization, xxv (1971), pp. 721—48;Google ScholarKaiser, Karl, ‘Transnational Politics: Toward a Theory of Multinational Polities’, International Organization, xxv (1971), pp. 790–818;CrossRefGoogle ScholarYoung, Oran, ‘The Actors in World Polities’, in Rosenau, James N., Davis, Vincent, and East, Maurice A. (eds.), The Analysis of International Politics (New York, 1972), pp. 125–44;Google ScholarHandelman, John, Vasquez, John A., O'Leary, Michael K., and Coplin, William D., ‘Colour It Morgenthau: A Data-Based Assessment of Quantitative International Relations Research’ (paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, New York City, March, 1973);Google ScholarBurton, J. W., Groom, A. J. R., Mitchell, C. R., and De Reuck, A. V. S., The Study of World Society: A London Perspective (Pittsburgh, 1974);Google ScholarCoplin, William D., Introduction to International Politics, second ed. (Chicago, 1974), pp. 399–416;Google ScholarPuchala, Donald and Fagan, Stuart I., ‘International Politics in the 1970s: The Search for a Perspective’, International Organization, xxviii (1974), pp. 247–66;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMansbach, Richard, Lampert, Donald, and Ferguson, Yale, The Web of World Politics (Englewood Cliffs, 1976).Google Scholar

page 210 note 2 James N. Rosenau, ‘Comments on Handelman et al.’ presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, New York City, March, 1973; James N. Rosenau, ‘Comments on Burton et al.’ presented at the annual meeting-of the International Studies Association, St. Louis, March, 1974; Charles A. McClelland, ‘Comments on Burton et al.’, presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, St. Louis, March, 1973.

page 210 note 3 Handelman, et al. op. cit.

page 211 note 1 Support for statements in this paragraph can be found in Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, second ed. (Chicago, 1970), pp. 175Google Scholar, 10, 52–53.

page 211 note 2 To ensure that the Realist paradigm does indeed make these assumptions, a textual and content analysis of Hans J. Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations, the exemplar of realist scholarship, was conducted. The findings, which are reported in detail elsewhere, support, the claim that the three delineated assumptions are fundamental assumptions made by Morgenthau. See John A. Vasquez, The power of Paradigms: An Empirical Evaluation of International Relations Inquiry (Syracuse, New York: Doctoral Dissertation in Political Science, Syracuse University, 1974), Ch. 3.

page 213 note 1 Ibid.

page 213 note 2 Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics Among Nations (New York, 1960, 1973)Google Scholar, Ch. 11, 12, 13. 14, 21.

page 213 note 3 Ibid. Ch. 8, 9.

page 213 note 4 Ibid. 1960, pp. 36–37, 159, 196; 1973, pp. 37–38, 196.

page 213 note 5 Ibid. Ch. 27, 29, 30.

page 213 note 6 Ibid. 1960, pp. 338–345; 1973, pp. 332–339.

page 214 note 1 Although the sample used to test proposition two does not include any hypotheses from books or unpublished articles this omission would not bias the results since any measurement error resulting from the omission can be regarded as random. Similarly, the last statement also applies to any published articles Jones and Singer may have missed.

page 215 note 1 A content analysis of the index of Politics Among Nations found that the three most frequently employed common nouns were: balance of power, national power, and war. Since Morgenthau used the term balance of power in the broad sense of limiting national power, it can be treated as an extension of the concept of national power. This evidence can be used to support the claim that national power and inter-nation conflict-co-operation are the primary independent and dependent variables. For a detailed report see Vasquez, The Power of Paradigms, op. cit. Ch. 3.

page 216 note 1 This criterion is suggested in Imre Lakatos, ‘Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes’, in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (ed.). Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (London, 1970), p. 116.

page 217 note 1 Indeed if the ”Colour It Morgenthau” claim on dominance is correct, it would be expected that any difference in the quality of the hypotheses would benefit the realist hypotheses. Since they would be more frequently tested, it could be assumed that the more attention they receive would, if anything, result in greater methodological care rather than less.

page 218 note 1 This rule means that both significance and strength of association are important in the testing process. For this reason hypotheses that were tested solely by significance tests are dropped from the sample (100 cases). Other cases that were dropped included: all tests which sought to accept the null hypotheses (seven cases) and all tests which employed measures of association that do range from 0 · 00 to|1 · 001 (42 cases). These cases were dropped because they could not be measured by the Predictive Power Index (see below). However, dropping 149 cases out of 7,827 will not substantially affect the findings.

page 218 note 2 For an extended justification of this measure see Vasquez, The Power of Paradigms, op. cit. Gh. 6.

page 223 note 1 The findings on PI (A) indicate that 80 · 2 per cent of the realist hypotheses compared t o 65 · 6 per cent of the non-realist hypotheses are statistically insignificant or have a measure of association of less than · 33] (category 10); 90·7 per cent of the realist hypotheses compared to 78 · 1 per cent of the non-realist hypotheses have a measure of association of less than|. 46| (categories 10 & 20).

page 225 note 1 Hypotheses were classified as trivial if they were (a) similar to common sense generalizations obvious from even a superficial reading of newspapers (e.g., nations tend to enter alliance before they fight wars); (6) correlated measures of the same concept (for example, economic capability with quality of consumer goods); or (c) were highly idiographic and therefore of little importance for building general theory (for example, population size and number of airline flights). Despite these rules, tricality is very much a subjective concept. Therefore the raw and coded data have been published for inspection in Vasquez, The Power of Paradigms, op. cit. Appendix III.

page 226 note 1 One article by Rummel (1968) tested over 2,500 hypotheses. This analysis was repeated without the article, and the results were substantially the same.

page 227 note 1 For the author's view on a possible alternative paradigm see: P. Dale Dean, Jr. and John A. Vasquez, ‘From Power Politics to Issue Politics: Bipolarity and Multipolarity in Light of a New Paradigm’, Western Political Quarterly, 29 (March 1976), pp. 7–28.