Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics : : Logical, Methodological, and Psychological Perspectives / / ed. by Aaron Belkin, Philip E. Tetlock.

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,...

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Superior document:Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
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Place / Publishing House:Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2020]
©1997
Julkaisuvuosi:2020
Kieli:English
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Ulkoasu:1 online resource (344 p.) :; 8 tables 16 line illus.
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Other title:Frontmatter --
Contents --
List of Contributors --
Acknowledgments --
PART ONE: Counterfactual Inference: Form and Function --
1. Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical, Methodological, and Psychological Perspectives --
2. Causes and Counterfactuals in Social Science: Exploring an Analogy between Cellular Automata and Historical Processes --
PART TWO: Counterfactual Analysis of Particular Events --
3. Counterfactual Reasoning in Western Studies of Soviet Politics and Foreign Relations --
4. Confronting Hitler and Its Consequences --
5. Back to the Past: Counterfactuals and the Cuban Missile Crisis --
6. Counterfactual Reasoning in Motivational Analysis: U.S. Policy toward Iran --
PART THREE: Counterfactual Analysis of Classes of Events --
7. Counterfactuals about War and Its Absence --
8. Using Counterfactuals in Historical Analysis: Theories of Revolution --
PART FOUR: Counterfactuals and Game Theory --
9. Counterfactuals and International Affairs: Some Insights from Game Theory --
10. Off-the-Path Behavior: A Game-Theoretic Approach to Counterfactuals and Its Implications for Political and Historical Analysis --
PART FIVE: Computer and Mental Simulations of Possible Worlds --
11. Rerunning History: Counterfactual Simulation in World Politics --
12. Counterfactuals, Past and Future --
PART SIX: Commentaries --
1. Conceptual Blending and Counterfactual Argument in the Social and Behavioral Sciences --
2. Psychological Biases in Counterfactual Thought Experiments --
3. Counterfactual Inferences as Instances of Statistical Inferences --
4. Counterfactuals, Causation, and Complexity
Yhteenveto: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.
Aineistotyyppi:Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
ISBN:9780691215075
9783110442496
9783110784237
DOI:10.1515/9780691215075?locatt=mode:legacy
Pääsy:restricted access
Hierarchical level:Monograph
Statement of Responsibility: ed. by Aaron Belkin, Philip E. Tetlock.