Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-b4m5d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-24T05:12:39.787Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Evaluating Theories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Kenneth N. Waltz
Kenneth N. Waltz*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

John Vasquez claims to follow Imre Lakatos but distorts his criteria for judging theories and evaluating research programs. Vasquez claims that facts observed can falsify a theory by showing that its predictions are wrong. He fails to consider the puzzles posed by the interdependence of theory and fact. He places all realists in a single paradigm despite the divergent assumptions of traditional and structural realists. In contrast to Vasquez, I argue that explanation, not prediction, is the ultimate criterion of good theory, that a theory can be validated only by working back and forth between its implications and an uncertain state of affairs that we take to be the reality against which theory is tested, and that the results of tests are always problematic.

Type
Forum
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 91 , Issue 4 , December 1997 , pp. 913 - 917
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bochenski, J. M. 1965. The Methods of Contemporary Thought, trans. Caws, Peter. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christensen, Thomas J., and Snyder, Jack. 1990. “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity.” International Organization 44(Spring):137–68.Google Scholar
Conant, James B. 1947. On Understanding Science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Harris, Errol E. 1970. Hypothesis and Perception. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Hotelling, Harold. 1929. “Stability in Competition.” Economic Journal 39(03):41–57.Google Scholar
Kegley, Charles W. Jr. 1993. “The Neoidealist Moment in International Studies? Realist Myths and the New International Realities.” International Studies Quarterly 37(06):131–46.Google Scholar
Keohane, Robert O., and Nye, Joseph S.. 1989. Power and Interdependence, 2d ed. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
King, Gary, Keohane, Robert, and Verba, Sidney. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakatos, Imre. 1970. “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes.” In Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, ed. Lakatos, Imre and Musgrave, Alan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nagel, Ernst. 1961. The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.Google Scholar
Popper, Karl R. 1959. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Schroeder, Paul. 1994. “Historical Reality vs. Neo-Realist Theory.” International Security 19(Summer):108–48.Google Scholar
Schweller, Randall L. 1994. “Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In.” International Security 19(Summer):72–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stent, Gunther S. 1973. “Shakespeare and DNA.” New York Times, 01 28, sec. E.Google Scholar
Sumner, William Graham. [1911] 1968. “War.” In War: Studies from Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, ed. Bramson, Leon and Goethals, George W.. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Toulmin, Stephen. 1961. Foresight and Understanding: An Enquiry into the Aims of Science. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Vasquez, John A. 1997. “The Realist Paradigm and Degenerative versus Progressive Research Programs: An Appraisal of Neotraditional Research on Waltz's Balancing Proposition.” American Political Science Review 91(12):899–912.Google Scholar
Walt, Stephen M. 1987. The Origins of Alliances. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Waltz, Kenneth N. 1979. Theory of International Politics. New York: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
Waltz, Kenneth N. 1986. “Reflections on Theory of International Politics: Response to My Critics.” In Neorealism and Its Critics, ed. Keohane, Robert O.. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Waltz, Kenneth N. 1990. “Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory.” Journal of International Affairs 44(Spring/Summer):21–37.Google Scholar
Waltz, Kenneth N. 1993. “The Emerging Structure of International Politics.” International Security 17(Fall):44–79.Google Scholar
Weinberg, Steven. 1992. Dreams of a Final Theory. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.