Chapter 15 Notes: International History and International Politics—Why Are They Studied Differently?
Introduction: Negotiating International History and Politics
This chapter, by Robert Jervis, serves as a reflective dialogue on how historians and political scientists study international relations (IR). It frames differences and complementarities between the two disciplines, how each crafts explanations, and what each can learn from the other.
The editors Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman set up Bridges and Boundaries as a study of methods, case study practices, and theoretical aims across history and political science in IR.
Central questions include: Why do historians and political scientists approach IR differently? Can their methods be reconciled or made mutually illuminating? What counts as explanation in each field, and how does time, narrative, and moral evaluation shape each discipline’s conclusions?
A Tale of Two Disciplines (Big-picture orientation)
The two disciplines co-evolve, influencing each other through disciplinary mores, incentives, and institutional contexts.
Political science, especially in the United States, has developed a tradition of theory-building, formal modeling, and a search for parsimonious explanations, while history emphasizes narrative, context, and multi-causal explanations.
The author notes that the differences are not absolute; there are numerous exceptions and overlaps (e.g., Larson’s archival work vs. Gaddis’s narrative synthesis). Footnotes signal specific examples that blur the lines between disciplines.
The Vietnam War era and campus protests helped push historical writing toward left-leaning politics and a broader emphasis on non-elites and antipositivist methods; political science also faced shifts, but along different lines (e.g., increased use of quantitative data and formal models).
What the Differences Are Not
The book challenges simplistic stereotypes: political scientists do not exclusively use structural explanations, and historians do not only describe unique events without theory.
There are considerable internal differences within each field; many scholars blur the line between “discipline” boundaries.
Notable exceptions cited include: Deborah Welch Larson (political scientist who uses archives) and John Lewis Gaddis (historian who theorizes about nuclear strategy), illustrating cross-disciplinary work.
The authors emphasize that the two disciplines have historically differed in their socialization, incentives, and epistemic commitments, rather than adhering to rigid dichotomies.
Two key historical tensions shaping contemporary IR: (a) the leftward shift in historical writing post-Vietnam (and its openness to non-elites, non-positivist methods), and (b) the rise of quantitative and formal methods in political science in the 1960s–70s, which pulled political science closer to formal modeling while history moved in a different direction.
The discussion also notes how disciplinary cultures are affected by global scholarly communities and language barriers, with history exhibiting a more international comparative scope than political science, which has been more US-centered.
The Two Disciplines: Patterns, Differences, and Similarities
The chapter argues that the differences between the disciplines are shaped by incentives, training, and institutional contexts, not simply by epistemic commitments.
Political science’s approach tends to emphasize generalization, theory-building, and the explicit use of models to explain a wide range of phenomena with a smaller set of causes.
History tends to emphasize narrative, case-specific explanation, contextualization, and the progressive unfolding of events through time, often accepting multiple sufficient causes.
The cross-disciplinary friction is heightened by divergent timelines of evidence gathering, with historians privileging primary sources and long temporal horizons, while political scientists favor theoretical generalizations and replicable patterns across cases.
The text references debates on whether politics is best understood as a set of structural determinants or as outcomes of domestic political dynamics and leadership; the authors argue that both perspectives illuminate different aspects of IR.
Parsimony in Theory-Building
Parsimony: the idea that a theory should explain a large range of phenomena with a relatively small number of factors, avoiding overly complex explanations.
Two roots of parsimony in political science:
Convenience: Occam’s Razor – simpler explanations are easier to test and work with.
Ontology: the belief that the world is composed of a manageable set of fundamental forces or factors; in physics, this belief was historically strong, prompting a preference for parsimonious theories.
In political science, parsimony is valued for its ability to explain diverse phenomena (e.g., collective goods theory, which explains alliances, tariffs, and interest-group behavior). However, there is a warning that parsimony can push scholars to fit cases to a theory rather than let the theory emerge from the evidence.
Historians are more hesitant about forcing all cases into a single theoretical wrapper; they may accept that different events require different explanations and resist forcing a uniform cause across cases.
The New Left critique is cited as an example of a single-cause explanatory frame (economic interests of the ruling class) that can illuminate some cases but misfit others; this highlights the tension between parsimony and the diversity of historical realities.
The chapter emphasizes that parsimony has costs: it can sacrifice detailed case explanations and push scholars to “fit” evidence to a theory, which historians typically resist.
Key implication: parsimony should not be equated with mono-causality; even parsimonious theories can incorporate multiple interacting factors where appropriate.
Theory-Building and the Hypothetico-Deductive Method
Political scientists prioritize theory-building and explicit, parsimonious theorizing; they value general explanations that can apply across multiple cases (
and testable hypotheses), sometimes at the expense of rich narrative detail.Historians emphasize descriptive depth, narrative coherence, and case-specific explanations that illuminate the particularities of a historical moment.
The hypothetico-deductive method (theory-driven testing) is used by political scientists to deduce expectations from a theory and then test those expectations against evidence; this can lead to a flattening of the historical record in order to strengthen analytical rigor.
The author contrasts two case studies:
Nuclear weapons in the Cold War (Gaddis vs Elman): Gaddis uses a narrative approach to show how nuclear weapons played a stabilizing role in keeping peace, while Elman (the author) uses a theory-driven approach to generate broad patterns (e.g., that crises should be fewer after second-strike capabilities) and then tests these implications against the historical record.
Ernest May (historian) vs Elman on the role of historical lessons in policy: May emphasizes rich, contextual case studies that illuminate causal narratives; Elman emphasizes testing hypotheses derived from theory and looking for counterfactuals (dogs that did not bark).
The concept of “dogs that do not bark” (from Sherlock Holmes) is a methodological heuristic used by political scientists to test theories by seeking instances where the predicted outcome did not occur, to challenge or refine explanations.
For historians, explanations are typically multifaceted and context-dependent; the idea of a single theory that fits all cases is less appealing or credible.
The author stresses that the distance between description and explanation is greater in political science than in history; historians often weave description and explanation together, while political scientists may separate them more distinctly.
The structure of many IR monographs reflects disciplinary conventions: chapters foreground theory, then present case studies with explicit checks against the theory; historians, by contrast, often maintain a coherent narrative through the entire empirical presentation.
The debate about whether actors’ behavior is consistent across domains (foreign policy vs domestic politics) and across time is central to theory-building and cross-disciplinary dialogue.
Time, Narrative, and the Role of Chronology
Time is a central axis along which historians build their narratives; they trace beliefs, behaviors, and interactions across time to show how one development leads to another.
For political scientists, time is often a variable to be manipulated in order to test theories, assess patterns, and compare cases across different temporal contexts.
The Berlin crisis of 1958–1962 (as discussed by Deborah Welch Larson) demonstrates how starting points matter: beginning with Khrushchev’s ultimatum produces a different reading than beginning with a later diplomatic outcome; time can alter the perceived causal sequence.
Marc Trachtenberg’s Constructed Peace is cited as a work that emphasizes the temporally contingent nature of European settlement (1945–1963) and how chronology shapes our understanding of the postwar order.
The Berlin example illustrates a broader point: historians see time as the thread that runs through events, enabling a coherent tapestry; political scientists treat time as a variable that can be manipulated to test hypotheses, sometimes at the expense of narrative continuity.
The chapter cautions against ignoring the role of timing in explaining causation: the sequence of events, the pace of changes, and the historical context all matter for understanding why outcomes occurred as they did.
Time, Context, and the Acceptance of Multiple Causes
Historians often accept multiple sufficient causes and view causal chains as context-dependent. They argue that different pathways can lead to similar outcomes depending on time, place, and interplay of factors.
Political scientists often seek parsimonious explanations that can unify diverse cases under a common causal logic, even if this requires acknowledging multiple pathways or conditional applicability rather than universal causation.
The discussion of consistency in behavior across issues (e.g., Kurdish terrorism vs Kosovo liberation) demonstrates the challenge of applying one theoretical framework across diverse issues and times.
The notion of “time as a variable” versus time as a narrative thread underscores a fundamental methodological divergence: time shapes evidence and interpretation differently in the two disciplines.
Moral Judgments, Ethics, and Public Responsibility
Historians are portrayed as more comfortable making moral judgments about actors and events; they see moral evaluation as part of understanding historical context and learning from the past.
Political scientists are portrayed as more focused on explanatory power and the question of what the world is like and why events occurred, with less emphasis on moral evaluation as part of the scientific claim.
The Vietnam War era intensifying moral questioning in history is highlighted; historians often aim to educate the public and engage ethical judgments as part of scholarly work, whereas political scientists may shield their analyses from overt moral judgments to preserve perceived objectivity.
Examples include debates about the morality and wisdom of policy decisions (e.g., U.S. actions in Vietnam) and how moral judgments influence historical narratives and public interpretation.
The chapter notes that some historians defend the idea that historians have a responsibility to promote a more humane world, while many political scientists emphasize understanding the world as a prerequisite to changing it.
The different stances on morality are tied to broader epistemic commitments: historians foreground narrative, context, and moral stakes; political scientists foreground generalization, testability, and ambiguity about value judgments.
Time and Change: Consistency Versus Context
The human predisposition toward seeking consistency in behavior and outcomes is discussed as a general cognitive bias. Psychologists have shown that people often project consistency across domains, attributing motives and patterns to individuals or states that may be inconsistent in reality.
The chapter cites examples where leaders’ decisions appear inconsistent or contradictory (e.g., Kaiser Wilhelm, German policy in 1914) and argues that historians are more comfortable acknowledging such inconsistencies as an intrinsic part of historical life.
Political scientists, using hypothetico-deductive methods, seek imports of consistency to enable generalizations across cases; when contradiction occurs, they test whether the core causal claims hold under different conditions.
The author emphasizes that human behavior may be pattern-rich but not strictly consistent; both fields must cope with this reality in different ways.
Productive, Continuing, and Inevitable Differences
The author argues that the differences between historians and political scientists are not only persistent but productive, enabling a richer, more nuanced study of IR when both approaches are engaged.
The differences are continuing and likely to persist; they should be viewed as opportunities for dialogue rather than as barriers.
The goal is not to uniformize methods but to foster a constructive conversation that preserves diversity of methods, aims, and insights.
A key conclusion is that bridging the two disciplines requires mutual respect for different kinds of explanation, different kinds of evidence, and different ethical stances.
Concluding Call for Dialogue and Mutual Enrichment
The chapter closes with an invitation to scholars in both fields to recognize the value of the other’s approach and to seek productive cross-fertilization.
Rather than seeking to convert each other to a single method, the authors advocate for a dialogue that preserves disciplinary identities while leveraging the strengths of both histories and political science.
The overarching message is that international history and international politics can benefit from a sustained, respectful collaboration that advances understanding of world affairs by combining narrative depth with theoretical clarity.
Notable Terms and Examples (glossary-style mini-notes)
Dogs that did not bark: a Sherlock Holmes heuristic used by political scientists to test theories by looking for predicted outcomes that did not occur, challenging the theory.
Hypothetico-deductive method: deriving predictions from a theory and testing them against evidence; can lead to theoretical rigor but may flatten or abstract the historical record.
Parimony: the preference for explanations with a small number of powerful causes; tied to Occam’s Razor and to claims about the world being governed by a relatively small set of fundamental factors.
Overexpansion and cartelized politics (Snyder): a theory that states overexpand due to domestic log-rolling coalitions; used to illustrate how a single explanatory frame can fit several cases but may fail others.
Nuclear revolution: a theoretical claim about how mutual second-strike capabilities shape crisis behavior and deterrence, used as a case study for theory testing and narrative explanation.
Time on the Cross (economic history example): a quantitative history case used to illustrate how data-driven methods interact with historical interpretation.
Time, 1958–1962 (Berlin crisis): illustrates how the starting point can change the interpretive reading of events and how chronology shapes causal inference.
The New Left critique: an example of a single factor (economic class interests) being used to explain a broad set of foreign policy outcomes, highlighting the risk of overly parsimonious explanations.
Ingram and Schroeder’s positions: emphasize that history and IR theory should not be rigidly separated into description vs generalization; both disciplines require nuanced methodological approaches.
Connections to Prior Lectures and Real-World Relevance
The discussion ties into foundational debates about method in the social sciences: how to balance depth with generality, and how to use case studies to inform theory without overfitting.
Real-world relevance includes the practice of policy analysis, the interpretation of international crises, and the ethical considerations scholars face when communicating about sensitive historical events (e.g., Vietnam, Cold War decisions).
The chapter foregrounds ongoing questions about risk, accountability, and the role of scholars in public discourse, especially when studying controversial or morally charged episodes in international history and politics.
Mathematical References (formatted for clarity)
Time horizons and ranges cited in the text can be represented as follows for clarity in notes:
World War II and related periods:
The Thirty Years' Crisis:
The Berlin crisis or related Cold War sequence:
Other example date ranges mentioned in the text include historical periods like and for various chapters.
When quoting specific year ranges, use the above format to denote historical spans in your study notes.
Endnote: Why These Notes Matter for Your Exam
This set of notes captures the core tensions between historical narrative and theory-driven political science in IR, including methods, time, morality, and the goal of explanation.
Understanding these distinctions will help you analyze IR literature with a clear sense of how authors justify their claims, select evidence, and balance narrative detail with theoretical generalization.
Be prepared to discuss examples (e.g., Snyder, Gaddis, May, Larson, Westad) and to articulate how different methodological commitments shape the interpretation of international events.