Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical, Methodological, and Psychological Perspectives

Philip E. Tetlock, Aaron Belkin

Princeton University Press, Sep 8, 1996 - History - 344 pages

Political scientists often ask themselves what might have been if history had unfolded differently: if Stalin had been ousted as General Party Secretary or if the United States had not dropped the bomb on Japan. Although scholars sometimes scoff at applying hypothetical reasoning to world politics, the contributors to this volume--including James Fearon, Richard Lebow, Margaret Levi, Bruce Russett, and Barry Weingast--find such counterfactual conjectures not only useful, but necessary for drawing causal inferences from historical data. Given the importance of counterfactuals, it is perhaps surprising that we lack standards for evaluating them. To fill this gap, Philip Tetlock and Aaron Belkin propose a set of criteria for distinguishing plausible from implausible counterfactual conjectures across a wide range of applications.


The contributors to this volume make use of these and other criteria to evaluate counterfactuals that emerge in diverse methodological contexts including comparative case studies, game theory, and statistical analysis. Taken together, these essays go a long way toward establishing a more nuanced and rigorous framework for assessing counterfactual arguments about world politics in particular and about the social sciences more broadly.

Contents

• Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics Logical Methodological and Psychological Perspectives: 3
• Causes and Counterfactuals in Social Science Exploring an Analogy between Cellular Automata and Historical Processes: 39
• Counterfactual Analysis of Particular Events: 69
• Counterfactual Reasoning in Western Studies of Soviet Politics and Foreign Relations: 71
• Confronting Hitler and Its Consequences: 95
• Back to the Past Counterfactuals and the Cuban Missile Crisis: 119
• Counterfactual Reasoning in Motivational Analysis US Policy toward Iran: 149
• Counterfactual Analysis of Classes of events: 169
• Counterfactuals about War and Its Absence: 171
• Using Counterfactuals in Historical Analysis Theories of Revolution: 187
• Counterfactuals and Game Theory: 209
• Counterfactuals and International Affairs Some Insights from Game Theory: 211
• OffthePath Behavior A GameTheoretic Approach to Counterfactuals and Its Implications for Political and Historical Analysis: 228
• Computer and Mental Simulations of Possible Worlds: 243
• Rerunning History Counterfactual Simulation in World Politics: 245
• Counterfactuals Past and Future: 266
• Commentaries: 287
• Conceptual Blending and Counterfactual Argument in the Social and Behavioral Sciences: 289
• Psychological Biases in Counterfactual Thought Experiments: 294
• Counterfactual Inferences as Instances of Statistical Inferences: 299
• Counterfactuals Causation and Complexity: 307
• References: 315
• Index: 335

Bibliographic information

• Title: Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical, Methodological, and Psychological Perspectives; Princeton paperbacks
• Editors: Philip E. Tetlock, Aaron Belkin
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1996
• ISBN: 0691027919, 9780691027913
• Length: 344 pages
• Subjects: History / General; History / Historiography; Political Science / History & Theory; Political Science / World / General