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THE USE AND ABUSE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE FOR POLICY David Dessler Wh riting in this journal two decades ago, J. David Singer outlined the promise of a "scientific" approach to international relations theory.1 It was a rare time of conscious methodological and epistemological reflection within the discipline, and Singer was an influential proponent of the "behavioral revolution" then in evidence throughout political science. Singer's target was the work of "classical" or "traditional" scholars such as Hans Morgenthau, Arnold Wolfers, Raymond Aron, and George Liska—the founders of modern international relations theory itself. His complaint was neither with the topics these theorists chose to analyze, nor with the conclusions they drew, but with the methodologies they relied upon. As Klaus Knorr andJames Rosenau summarized in 1967, in the battle then underway between science and tradition, "it is the mode of analysis, not its subject matter, that is the central issue."2 Behavioral scientists like Singer argued that the mode of classical analysis was inherently flawed because it could provide no assurance of objectivity. Traditional international relations theory, though insightful 1.J. David Singer, "The Behavioral Science Approach to International Relations: Payoff and Prospects," SAIS Review, (Summer 1966), 12-20. 2.Klaus Knorr and James Rosenau, "Tradition and Science in the Study of International Politics," in Knorr and Rosenau, eds., Contending Approaches to International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 12. David Dessler is assistant professor at the College of William and Mary. His research fields include theories of international conflict, political economy, and philosophy of social science. "What's at Stake in the Agent-Structure Debate?" will appear in International Organization Summer 1989. 203 204 SAIS REVIEW and at times profound, eschewed the behavioral ideal of verifiable knowledge , and thus left itself vulnerable to charges of bias and subjectivity in the research process. The validity of classical research, this argument continued, depended entirely on the good judgment and balanced intuition of the scholars carrying it out. This dependence on subjective judgment left traditional theory captive to "skillful rhetoric and academic gamesmanship" among scholars; opinion replaced fact and self-interested argumentation retarded the cumulation of knowledge.3 Only science, Singer and his colleagues argued, could transform this situation, for only science provided the means to escape the clutches of subjectivity. Science provides an epistemology and methodology that ensures objectivity in the research process. "The whole point of scientific method," Singer explained , "is to permit us to investigate whatever problems interest and excite us, while largely eliminating the possibility that we will come out where we want to come out."4 Singer did not call for an outright rejection of classical scholarship. But he did insist that its conclusions could not be considered authoritative until they could be assessed by scientific method. He argued that only by emulating the outlook, attitudes, and techniques of natural scientists—most importantly, the procedures of "systematic observation, operationally derived evidence, and replicable analytical procedures" — could subjective knowledge be either confirmed as truth (and "collected") or shown to be illusory (and rejected).5 The behavioralists did not claim that science could entirely eliminate the role of intuition in the process of theoretical discovery. But they did assert that science, unlike its rival approaches, could go beyond intuition. AsJames Dougherty and Robert Pfaltzgraffsaw it, what differentiates scientific practice from its predecessors is precisely the "attempt to go beyond personal judgments and to launch into deductive or inductive methods which are independent of personal bias, and which invoke either logic or mathematics to serve as substitutes for intuitive interpretation."6 By viewing science as the road leading beyond subjectivity, scholars in the field could easily reconcile tradition with science, without denying the conflict between them. Tradition, resting in the last analysis entirely on the good judgment of its purveyors, was a pre-scientific practice ; science, which could subject intuition to rigorous and reproducible checks, would start with tradition and transcend its limitations. Knorr 3.J. David Singer, "The Incompleat Theorist: Insight without Evidence," in Knorr and Rosenau, Contending Approaches, 80. 4.Ibid. 5.Ibid., 83-4. 6.Robert Pfaltzgraff, Contending Theories of International Relations: A Comprehensive Survey 2nd edition (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 36. USE AND...

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