Abstract
There are two “tribes” that do not communicate very well with each other: these are the quantitative and qualitative scholars in International Relations (IR) (and Political Science in general). The difficult dialogue between these two groups can be extended to the troubled relationship between quantitative IR researchers and Area Studies scholars that, as a rule, prefers qualitative approaches and to draw insights from several disciplines, such as history, cultural studies, economics, geography, literary, and language studies, to elaborate a comprehensive explanation of a single case. The divide is broad and, in many cases, difficult to close. The two groups look at one another with circumspection, attributing the worst negative trait to the opposite party: to produce irrelevant knowledge based on statistical manipulation of trivial (but easily operationalizable) variables without policy relevance (the main accusation to quantitative analysis); to look only at their own backyard, producing not generalizable/cumulative knowledge (the main accusation to Area Studies). Putting aside reciprocal acrimonies, some patterns of cooperation are possible and can be mutually fruitful.
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Notes
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Neoclassical realists still maintain that the best approach for their studies is diplomatic history (Ripsman et al., 2016, p. 131).
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It is a little bit ironic that simulations depended heavily on historical analysis to generate their data. Luigi Albertini’s three tome book on the origins of WWI was one of the most “plundered” works by IR scholars interested in describing the evolving of the 1914 July crisis.
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See for example the Correlates of War’s definition of war, that is essential to calculate the frequency of this event in international politics across different periods and region: An interstate war is a military clash between at least two independent political unit (city-state, nation-state, empire), with at least 1000 battle-related casualties over a period of 12 months. David Singer realized the risk behind this definition and for this reason he “recruited Melvin Small, a historian, to the project to ensure that the list of wars generated by these rules corresponded to the general consensus of historians about which conflicts were wars. These definitions and their descendants over time are the most used war data in the field” (Morrow, 2012: 83).
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See for example Chow and Wang (2010).
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As Kang puts it: “This case study was a detailed exploration of a non-Western, historical example of a remarkably stable yet unequal relationship between two unlike political actors in an international order. As a vivid case study, the Vietnam–China relationship illuminates the ways in which hierarchy and international order can exist in international politics. The data presented in this research also provide an unprecedented granular view of war and other violence in premodern East Asia—data that can be used to explore any number of scholarly issues about domestic and international violence over a remarkably longtime, 400-year period” (Kang et al., 2019: 919).
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Rosa, P. (2023). Dyadic Approach and Quantitative Analysis: Easing the Dialogue Between IR and Area Studies. In: D'Amato, S., Dian, M., Russo, A. (eds) International Relations and Area Studies. Contributions to International Relations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39655-7_9
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