What Can We Know? How Do We Know?

Abstract

This book was conceived in the course of a long, wet afternoon in Columbus, Ohio. Inside, in a small, brightly lit auditorium, enthusiastic graduate students took turns presenting papers that were the product of an year-long seminar intended to help them develop dissertation proposals. Their words fell on the ears of their fellow students and six professors in international relations. Their presentations, although diverse in subject, were remarkably uniform in structure. They began by laying out a few propositions, went on to describe the data sets or cases that would be used to test these propositions and ended with a discussion of preliminary research findings. The professor who had taught the student participants exuded an avuncular aura throughout the proceedings, and my colleagues, who were encouraged to interrogate the students, largely queried them about their research design and choice of data. For the most part, the students provided competent answers to these questions.