Research suggests that causal judgment is influenced primarily by counterfactual or covariational reasoning. In contrast, the author of this article develops judgment dissociation theory (JDT), which predicts that these types of reasoning differ in function and can lead to divergent judgments. The actuality principle proposes that causal selections focus on antecedents that are sufficient to generate the actual outcome. The substitution principle proposes that ad hoc categorization plays a key role in counterfactual and covariational reasoning such that counterfactual selections focus on antecedents that would have been sufficient to prevent the outcome or something like it and covariational selections focus on antecedents that yield the largest increase in the probability of the outcome or something like it. The findings of 4 experiments support JDT but not the competing counterfactual and covariational accounts. If causation is the cement of the universe, as the philosopher David Hume (1740/1938) put it, then it is fair to say that causal knowledge is the cement that binds together each person’s representational universe. Causal reasoning—the process that generates this glue—confers many functional advantages. In virtually every sphere of human interest, our abilities to learn and categorize

Inferences about counterfactuals are essential for prediction, answering ‘‘what if ’ ’ questions, and estimating causal effects. However, when the counterfactuals posed are too far from the data at hand, conclusions drawn from well-specified statistical analyses become based on speculation and convenient but indefensible model assumptions rather than empirical evidence. Unfortunately, standard statistical approaches assume the veracity of the model rather than revealing the degree of model-dependence, so this problem can be hard to detect. We develop easy-to-apply methods to evaluate counterfactuals that do not require sensitivity testing over specified classes of models. If an analysis fails the tests we offer, then we know that substantive results are sensitive to at least some modeling choices that are not based on empirical evidence. We use these methods to evaluate the extensive scholarly literatures on the effects of changes in the degree of democracy in a country (on any dependent variable) and separate analyses of the effects of UN peacebuilding efforts. We find evidence that many scholars are inadvertently drawing conclusions based more on modeling hypotheses than on evidence in the data. For some research questions, history contains insufficient information to be our guide. Free software that accompanies this paper implements all our suggestions. Social science is about making inferencesFusing facts we know to learn about facts we do not know. Some inferential targets (the facts we do not know) are factual, which means that they exist even if we do not know them. In early 2003, Saddam Hussein was obviously either alive or dead, but the world did not know which it was

This article reformulates liberal international relations (IR) theory in a nonideological and nonutopian form appropriate to empirical social science. Liberal IR theory elaborates the insight that state-society relations—the relationship of states to the domestic and transnational social context in which they are embedded—have a fundamental impact on state behavior in world politics. Societal ideas, interests, and institutions influence state behavior by shaping state preferences, that is, the fundamental social purposes underlying the strategic calculations of governments. For liberals, the configuration of state preferences matters most in world politics—not, as realists argue, the configuration of capabilities and not, as institutionalists (that is, functional regime theorists) maintain, the configuration of information and institutions. This article codifies this basic liberal insight in the form of three core theoretical assumptions, derives from them three variants of liberal theory, and demonstrates that the existence of a coherent liberal theory has significant theoretical, methodological, and empirical implications. Restated in this way, liberal theory deserves to be treated as a paradigmatic alternative empirically coequal with and analytically more fundamental than the two dominant theories in contemporary IR scholarship: realism and institutionalism. For detailed comments and criticisms, I am grateful above all to Anne-Marie Slaughter, who was there

The significance of counterfactual thinking in the causal judgment process has been emphasized for nearly two decades, yet no previous research has directly compared the relative effect of thinking counterfactually versus factually on causal judgment. Three experiments examined this comparison by manipulating the task frame used to focus participants’ thinking about a target event. Prior to making judgments about causality, preventability, blame, and control, participants were directed to think about a target actor either in counterfactual terms (what the actor could have done to change the outcome) or in factual terms (what the actor had done that led to the outcome). In each experiment, the effect of counterfactual thinking did not differ reliably from the effect of factual thinking on causal judgment. Implications for research on causal judgment and mental representation are discussed.

What explains the developing world’s newfound enthusiasm for free trade? Are developing country leaders jumping on the NAFTA, EU, APEC, and WTO bandwagons in order to achieve Pareto-improving gains? Or might it simply be their desire not to be left behind while their neighbors “go it alone”? This article suggests that in many cases — and in direct opposition to the collective-action-based models of international cooperation we are accustomed to seeing in the comparative and international political economy literatures — it is the latter (defensive) motivation that has been driving much of the action. NAFTA, I argue, is a case in point: Without in any way being bullied or coerced, the Mexican and Canadian governments agreed to take part in a cooperative multilateral arrangement they genuinely, and intensely, disliked. Although hard to reconcile with conventional “positive-sum” theories of voluntary cooperation, this finding is perfectly consistent with the broader power-politics model I sketch out in the first part of the article.

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Acknowledgement. I wish to thank Jim Woodward and the editors for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. 2 1.

Abstract: The Great Depression in Germany led to the radicalization of the electorate, leading the country and then the world into the darkest days of Western Civilization. Could it have been otherwise? This paper explores whether the NSDAP takeover might have been averted with a fiscal policy that lowered the unemployment rate in those parts of Germany where their support rose most rapidly. A counterfactual simulation model based on estimates of the relationship between unemployment and the radical vote at the electoral district level provides a framework for considering how much lower unemployment would have to have been in those districts to prevent the NSDAP from becoming a formidable political force in Germany. Budget neutrality is maintained, so that the simulations do not depend on an expanded fiscal policy. The results indicate that such a policy could well have averted the NSDAP’s seizure of power, and the catastrophe that followed in its wake. "The only thing we owe history is to rewrite it."- Oscar Wilde That the Great Depression in Germany led to the radicalization of the electorate is not controversial. With the unprecedented increase in unemployment, the support for the extreme right-wing NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) increased dramatically, leading Germany and then the world directly into the darkest days of Western Civilization

With the end of the Cold War, we must wonder whether there were missed opportunities to regulate the arms race and global competition, which nearly bankrupted the United States and contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. A missed opportunity for agreement is a situation where there was at least one alternative that the parties to a conflict preferred or would have preferred to nonagreement. Hard-core Realists argue that states compete for territory, arms, and influence because they have conflicting national interests. Soft-core Realists maintain that such conflicts are effects of international anarchy and uncertainty, and that states can cooperate contingent on reciprocity. I argue that states often fail to cooperate even when they have compatible preferences because policy-makers make incorrect inferences about the opponent’s motives and intentions, a process that can be illuminated by social psychology. I present three alternative explanations of trust and distrust in international relations—rational choice, domestic structures, and social psychology. If policy-makers are prudent, they will assess the other’s interests in observing an agreement as well as its reputation. Often, domestic political structures encourage leaders to promote distrust of an external enemy to legitimize their internal rule or foreign