Structural International Relations Theories and the Future of Operational Code Analysis

Abstract

It is relatively easy to respond to Waltz (1999) by making the claim that models and methods from the general cognitivist research program in world politics can strengthen structural theories of international relations (Hagan 2001; Tetlock 1998). It is harder to demonstrate that the additional effort to become familiar with cognitive theories is worth it for several reasons. Beliefs and other individual-level mechanisms have not always been easily accessible inside the “black box” of decision-making processes by states, groups, and individuals, and they often need to be observed with “at-a-distance” methods (Hermann 2002; Post 2003; Schafer 2000). It has also been very time-consuming to do the process-tracing necessary to reach the microfoundations of complex processes generated inside a political system.

Operational code analysis is a research program and not a theory, and it employs theories unfamiliar to me.

—Waltz 1999