Principles of International Politics

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

• Publisher: CQ Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781483304663
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Renowned scholar Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, who set the standard for the scientific approach to international relations and transformed the field, has returned with a reformulated fifth edition based on extensive reviewer feedback and guided by an emphasis on questions about the causes and consequences of war, peace, and world order. More than ever before, the strategic perspective in international relations is examined with complete clarity, precision, and accessibility. What hasn?t changed is Bueno de Mesquita?s commitment to covering the fundamentals of IR. The foundational topics and examination are all there: the major theories of war, the domestic sources of international politics, an exploration of the democratic peace, the problems of terrorism, the role of foreign aid, democratization, international political economy, globalization, international organizations, international law, and the global environment. The first part of the book, "Foundations"offers highly accessible coverage of key concepts, introducing students to different ways to think about the national interest and showing them how to use game theory and the strategic perspective/selectorate theory to better understand what happens in all aspects of international affairs. This section uses debate over North Korea?s nuclear weapons development as an ongoing example to build concepts and build confidence in the student?s how of basic modeling ideas. Also covered is a basic, intuitive introduction to game theory and other evidence and logic based tools for analyzing international relations. Part II, "War, " next provides a more thorough evaluation of how domestic political incentives and the domestic institutions of governance shape choices about conflict initiation, escalation, and termination. It also surveys major theories of war and conflict, working through hypotheses derived from constructivism, neo-realism, liberalism and selectorate theory and evaluating them against the evidence to see what actually works and what doesn?t.Chapters in Part III, "Peace, " build on the logic of collective action to help students see why it is so difficult to get national governments to do "what is right" even when they can agree on what is right, with chapters covering the effectiveness of international organizations and international law, as well as a thorough evaluation of environmental issues, human rights enforcement and the domestic and the international political economy of trade. Part IV, "World Order" emphasizes efforts to promote the spread of democracy and economic prosperity. It also addresses how to understand and deal with terrorism. Whether examining terrorism, the spread of democracy or the alleviation of poverty, chapters in this section carefully examine which strategies work, which do not, and why. The Arab Spring provides a useful ongoing example of the strengths and weaknesses of foreign aid policy and military intervention policies. No other introductory text delivers such an easily-understood contemporary explanation of international politics, while truly enabling students to learn how to mobilize the key concepts and models themselves—thus develop a new method for thinking about world affairs. More than ever before, Principles provides a comprehensive evaluation of all aspects of international affairs, systematically compares the accuracy of competing approaches to international relations, and walks students through the simple, intuitive models and games that capture the essence of the strategic, selectorate viewpoint.

1

Evaluating Arguments about International Politics

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (second right) gestures as he visits Iran’s Fuel Manufacturing Plant (FMP), a new facility producing uranium fuel for a planned heavy-water nuclear reactor, just outside the city of Isfahan, 255 miles south of Tehran, Iran, on April 9, 2009. The United States has plans in place to attack Iran if necessary to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. The question is, does Iran have such intentions? The observed facts so far are consistent both with their claim to want enriched uranium for peaceful purposes and with the fear that they may plan to develop nuclear weapons.

OVERVIEW

• Theories are important in helping us sort out which facts are essential in understanding international affairs.
• Every theory should be susceptible to being falsified by evidence and should be evaluated in terms of its logical consistency.
• In keeping with the first principle of wing walking, a theory should not be abandoned before there is substantial evidence in favor of an alternative explanation.
• Logic and evidence, rather than personal tastes, are the key ingredients in assessing the merits of competing theories.
• The scientific method is the least subjective and most beneficial way of evaluating the merits of alternative explanations of the same phenomena.

Assumptions Check

1.	Which is generally preferable for testing hypotheses?
	a.	difficult to explain cases
	b.	a random sample of cases
2.	A single case study can falsify a hypothesis that predicts __________.
	a.	necessary conditions
	b.	sufficient conditions
	c.	probabilistic conditions
3.	Which is better to test empirically?
	a.	the accuracy of assumptions
	b.	the logical implications of assumptions
4.	To be useful, a theory should __________.
	a.	be as simple as possible relative to the quantity of things it explains
	b.	be as detailed as possible relative to the quantity of things it explains
	c.	be as nuanced as recounting of facts or history as possible

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See end of chapter for answers.

The purpose of everything that follows in this book is to help you understand international politics. You might think that a review of the history of lots of past events and circumstances is the road to understanding. Certainly that is a commonly held view. Yet everything that follows is designed to help you recognize that understanding the past and, most importantly, the future is not embedded in the facts of history alone. Understanding what happens around us requires more than just knowing what is happening. Facts, after all, do not explain. Facts serve as evidence for explanations. That is one reason that learning about history is so important. History provides the flow of events that can serve as evidence for or against competing explanations. Explanations, however, are not strings of facts. Explanation requires theory—that is, assumptions, logical connections between the assumptions, and implications derived from those logical connections. This chapter is designed to establish some basic ground rules for judging competing explanations of events past, present, and future.

We start by noting that any theory is an explanation of some empirical phenomena. For example, we might construct a theory that proposes an explanation of conditions that lead to or prevent war, that encourage or discourage economic prosperity, that govern the motion of stars and planets, or that influence changes in the weather.

The fundamental components of any theory are the following:

1. assumptions
2. logic
3. predictions

The elements needed to evaluate a theory are as follows:

1. logical consistency among the theory’s assumptions
2. evidence that matches or contradicts the theory’s predictions
3. evidence that reveals whether alternative theories outperform or are outperformed by the theory being assessed

History provides a description of what has happened in the past, whereas theories provide prospective explanations of classes of events, whether from the past or future. Theories are deductive. They consist of a set of assumptions that limits how we view reality. The assumptions can be fit together according to the rules of logic to derive predictions—also known as hypotheses—that represent the theory’s explanation of the portion of reality with which it is concerned.

All theories offer simplified representations of what we think of as the true state of the world. By making different assumptions, each theory simplifies in its own way what we know and believe. Theorizing is essential for policymakers; it is not just something pursued by academics. Policymakers must make decisions prospectively; they cannot make and implement policies with hindsight. When they act, they must do so on the basis of the information at hand and their understanding of what that information implies at the time they choose a course of action. This means that they—and we, as students of politics—need to understand how to make choices while still in the dark about how things will turn out. And that means they need to have some way to evaluate alternative arguments and to use evidence from the past to help inform decisions before results can be known. That way is theory building and testing.

For instance, does Iran intend to build a nuclear weapon or, as the Iranian leadership claims, is Iran just interested in developing civilian nuclear energy and medical isotopes? A plethora of facts, such as Iran is enriching uranium; Iran has built thousands of centrifuges; Iran has underground, formerly secret nuclear research facilities; Iran has a domestic shortage of petroleum because it needs to export its crude oil for foreign earnings; and Iran’s supreme leader issued a fatwa declaring nuclear weapons un-Islamic does not tell policymakers whether Iran’s leadership intends to build nuclear weapons or intends to do just what they say they intend to do. These are all important facts, but decision makers also need theories to guide them in seeking out specific facts that could help them tell apart competing explanations for what Iran intends to do. Competing theories may overlap in their explanations. For instance, a theory that assumes Iran’s religious leaders view nuclear expansion as critical to deterring a threat to their regime from the United States and Israel is consistent with the observed facts. Also consistent with the observed facts is a theory that infers that Iran’s leaders believe heaven awaits those who martyr themselves by destroying Israel. And also consistent with the observed facts is Iran’s claim to be interested in civilian nuclear energy. So these facts do not help us sort out Iranian intentions.

For policymakers to sort out which of the competing views (e.g., deter threats to Iran, destroy Israel, develop civilian nuclear energy) more accurately reflect Iranian intentions, it is necessary for them to figure out which prospective facts would not be consistent with all of these theories but might be consistent with one or two of them. For example, if Iran were detected to be testing a nuclear bomb trigger—the trigger essentially being a smaller atomic explosion—then decision makers would know that Iran’s actions are consistent with an effort to deter outside efforts to impose regime change or intentions to attack Israel and that their actions are not consistent with the intention only to develop civilian nuclear energy. Theory, then, serves as a guide to identify facts to look for to sort out competing explanations. That search for relevant facts is, in fact, a major occupation of intelligence agencies and exactly for the reason that ferreting out relevant facts can help reduce the number of competing explanations behind observed behavior. Just such information is critical for good, informed decisions by policymakers. So theory is not just pie in the sky; it is the critical ingredient in guiding choices about foreign and domestic policy.

This chapter develops rules for selecting among competing explanations and evidence so that we form a shared basis for judging facts as evidence. By using the scientific guidelines set out here, you will learn to evaluate the logic and evidence for alternative explanations of international relations. We draw distinctions between assumptions and hypotheses. We distinguish between the empirical accuracy of hypotheses and assumptions (i.e., how well facts fit with a theory’s predictions) and become familiar with the first principle of wing walking as a guideline for choosing among competing theories. The distinctions made here constitute the basis for applying the scientific method to international affairs.

As the discussion of Iranian intentions highlights, our understanding of arguments and evidence about international relations depends both on facts and theoretical perspective. An outlook that focuses on facts alone—a purely inductive approach—is impossible; all of us select facts to look at based on the theories we carry around with us, just as how we interpret those facts is shaped by that theoretical point of view. Employing a useful set of tools—that is, an effective theoretical perspective—for making sense of facts may allow us to predict the range of actions available to policymakers in international affairs and may even help us predict how things will turn out (Bueno de Mesquita, 2009). In doing so, we may help to engineer better decisions in the future than have sometimes been made in the past.

Theorizing begins by picking and choosing what we think is important for explaining how cooperation or conflict arises. For example, should we focus on the distribution of military might across countries; the flow of trade; variations in political institutions; the personality characteristics of particular leaders; or differences in cultures, languages, or religious beliefs? What seems important is in the eye of the beholder; whether the beholder is right or not depends on how well the evidence fits the beholder’s—the theorist’s—point of view.

WHAT IS A THEORY?

Theories state the expected relationships between variables. Expectations are formed by linking some variables as causes or probabilistic contributors to other variables as consequences in a series of logically connected arguments. The logical connections stipulate the relationship between the variables. A variable is a characteristic, event, or idea that can take on more than one value. Constants—that is, characteristics, events, ideas, and so forth that have only one value—are not variables. Consequently, theories are not about constants.

In the theory of arms races, for example, the dependent variables generally include such concepts as the arms expenditures of a country and the likelihood that a country will find itself at war. These are the phenomena that theories of arms races are designed to explain. Notice that the dependent variables are not individual events such as World War I or the 2012 US defense budget. Rather, World War I might be an event that constitutes one of many events reflected by a dependent variable, such as the “likelihood of war.” The 2012 US defense budget, likewise, is an example of a defense expenditure decision; it is not itself a variable but, rather, a single value or single observation. A series of such values or observations creates a variable.

All theories include dependent and independent variables. A dependent variable is something that we hope to explain; an independent variable is something that we think will provide us with all or part of the explanation of the different values taken on by the dependent variable. Statements about how independent variables relate to dependent variables constitute the propositions or, equivalently, the hypotheses of a theory. These hypotheses, in turn, provide the basis for predicting the values of the dependent variable in the past and, most important, in the future.

The relations among variables generally take one of four forms:

• Some value or values of independent variable A are necessary for some predicted value or values of dependent variable B (necessary conditions satisfy the statement: if not A, then not B).
• Some value or values of independent variable A are sufficient for some predicted value or values of dependent variable B (sufficient conditions satisfy the statement: if A, then B).
• Some value or values of independent variable A are both necessary and sufficient for some predicted value or values of dependent variable B (if not A, then not B, and if A, then B).
• Some value or values of independent variable A probabilistically give rise to some predicted value or values of dependent variable B (if A, then probably B).

Two common independent variables in theories of arms races are (1) the magnitude of the perceived threat coming from an adversary (often measured as that country’s level of arms expenditure) and (2) the domestic demand for consumer goods, public services, and so forth other than defense (i.e., guns vs. butter or defense vs. consumerism). Changes in the values of the independent variables are expected to lead to changes in the value of the dependent variable. For example, in a famous arms race theory developed by Lewis Fry Richardson ([1960] 1949), increases in the level of perceived threat and decreases in public demands for consumer goods and social services together are expected to lead to an increase in the likelihood of war. The theory of arms races states relationships between its independent variables and its dependent variable. It does not state a detailed explanation of a single event; rather, it tries to provide an explanation for at least one class of events.

Predictions follow from the propositions deduced logically in a theory. They serve as a way of testing a theory’s explanation (Friedman 1953). Reliable explanations almost certainly suggest that at least some reliable prediction is possible provided that the necessary tools of measurement and observation are available. Accurate predictions, however, can be achieved even without a meaningful explanation, and a meaningful explanation may lead only to limited predictive accuracy. Consider an example of accurate prediction that does not provide an explanation. Cricket chirps are highly correlated with the temperature of the air. If we know the number of cricket chirps per minute, we can predict the temperature outside quite accurately even though we may not have a clue about why crickets chirp as often as they do. It is certainly more likely that the temperature influences the chirping of crickets than cricket chirps influence the temperature.

CONSTRUCTING THEORIES

How is a theory constructed? In some ways, there are as many answers to this question as there are theories—or theorists. But every theory has some core features in common. For example, every theory contains a set of assumptions. The assumptions of a theory are its crucial building blocks; they specify ...