Forbidden Fruit

Counterfactuals and International Relations

Häftad, Engelska, 2010

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Could World War I have been averted if Franz Ferdinand and his wife hadn't been murdered by Serbian nationalists in 1914? What if Ronald Reagan had been killed by Hinckley's bullet? Would the Cold War have ended as it did? In Forbidden Fruit, Richard Ned Lebow develops protocols for conducting robust counterfactual thought experiments and uses them to probe the causes and contingency of transformative international developments like World War I and the end of the Cold War. He uses experiments, surveys, and a short story to explore why policymakers, historians, and international relations scholars are so resistant to the contingency and indeterminism inherent in open-ended, nonlinear systems. Most controversially, Lebow argues that the difference between counterfactual and so-called factual arguments is misleading, as both can be evidence-rich and logically persuasive. A must-read for social scientists, Forbidden Fruit also examines the binary between fact and fiction and the use of counterfactuals in fictional works like Philip Roth's The Plot Against America to understand complex causation and its implications for who we are and what we think makes the social world work.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2010-02-07
Mått152 x 235 x 25 mm
Vikt482 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor352
FörlagPrinceton University Press
ISBN9780691132907

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Statsvetenskap och politisk teori inom Samhälle och politik

Acknowledgments ix PART ONE Chapter One: Making Sense of the World 3 Chapter Two: Counterfactual Thought Experiments 29 PART TWO Chapter Three: Franz Ferdinand Found Alive: World War I Unnecessary 69 Chapter Four: Leadership and the End of the Cold War: Did It Have to End This Way? 103 Coauthored with George W. Breslauer PART THREE Chapter Five: Scholars and Causation 1 137 Coauthored with Philip E. Tetlock Chapter Six: Scholars and Causation 2 166 APPENDIX Experiment 4, Instrument 1: Unmaking American Tragedies 196 Chapter Seven: If Mozart Had Died at Your Age: Psycho-logic versus Statistical Inference 205 Chapter Eight: Heil to the Chief: Sinclair Lewis, Philip Roth, and Fascism 222 Conclusions 259 Notes 287 Index 329

"If nothing else, Forbidden Fruit shows how, through counterfactual, alternative thinking, a resounding acknowledgement of the arts can be achieved."--David Marx, David Marx Reviews "I have benefited enormously from Ned Lebow's learning, imagination and intellectual effort, and am sure that many readers will feel the same way towards this judicious, yet daring, scholarly contribution to the study of history and international relations."--Hidemi Suganami, International Affairs