The idea of prediction in the study of international relations has been a persistent thought in my head for some time. Ostensibly, in our (mostly) non-experimental discipline, prediction represents the preeminent demonstration of a theory’s veracity. Of course, this perspective derives from simplistic conceptions of science as practiced in the natural sciences and as a consequence fit poorly with IR. Regressions struggle to develop models that ‘explain’ more than a small percentage of the variance in the dependent variable(s)—making prediction of outcomes nearly impossible. Our discipline...
