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Science and Sovietology: Bridging the Methods Gap in Soviet Foreign Policy Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Jack Snyder
Jack Snyder
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Abstract

Specialists in the study of Soviet foreign policy increasingly feel torn between the positivist culture of political science departments and the holistic traditions of the Soviet area-studies programs. In fact, these approaches are largely complementary. Examples taken from literature on Soviet security policy and on the domestic sources of Soviet expansionism show how positivist theories and methods can be used to clarify holist (or traditionalist) arguments, to sharpen debates, to suggest more telling tests, and to invigorate the field's research agenda.

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Type
Research Article
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World Politics , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , January 1988, pp. 169 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1988

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References

1 These are ideal types. Real scholars often use both approaches in varying combinations or proportions. For example, some positivist scholars, like Kenneth Waltz, look at whole systems or, like Robert Jervis, try to explain the subjective understandings of actors. Despite these qualifications, I would contend that the above distinctions capture the most important lines of epistemological cleavage. The term “holism” is unsatisfactory, but alternatives like “traditionalism” or “non-positivism” are even more problematic. For further discussion, see Diesing, Paul, Patterns of Discovery in the Social Sciences (New York: Aldine, 1971)Google Scholar, and Polkinghorne, Donald, Methodology for the Human Sciences (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

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37 For example, the argument (Ibid., 265–66) that the United States was the defender in the mining of Haiphong Harbor, though not unreasonable, makes use of ad hoc criteria that place more weight on American statements linking the action to the defense of South Vietnam than on the pritnafacie offensive character of U.S. behavior.

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42 McConnell's own conclusions from these cases are somewhat more complex. See ibid., 246, 267–76.

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45 Leites, Nathan, A Study of Bolshevism (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1953)Google Scholar; George, Alexander, “The ‘Operational Code’: A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decision-Making,” in Hoffmann, Erik and Fleron, Frederic, eds., The Conduct of Soviet Foreign Policy, 2d ed. (New York: Aldine, 1980), 191–212Google Scholar.

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