| This study examines the historical assumptions, methods, and evidence underpinning a range of modern theories of International Relations. It suggests that what are breezily thought of as "empirical" historical questions into the causes of war and the conditions of peace are to the skeptic's eye a troublesome link in a science of international politics. Propelled by the canons of political science, mainstream research in International Relations rests on an easy historical empiricism. This uncritical view of the past has contributed to an often licentious historical method, with history serving less as an independent body of evidence than as a trove to be plundered, and which in the discipline's most "scientific" work saddles history with more certainty than it can bear. The study traces the historical problem in the evolution of International Relations from early contingency-based work through recent quantitative and nomothetic research, exploring the ideas of Reinhold Niebuhr, E. H. Carr, Hans J. Morgenthau, George F. Kennan, Kenneth N. Waltz, and J. David Singer. The study centers on problems of selection bias, anecdotalism, ahistoricism, theoretical filtering, and the false precision of quantitative work. History is tidily packaged or transformed into "data," and fitted to mechanical laws or economical theories, prized for their "predictive power." In terms of the philosophy of social science, the study supports a skeptical view of historical usage. The dissertation concludes with a number of suggested remedies to the historical problem in International Relations. |
