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Applying Jackson's Methodological Ideal-Types: Problems of Differentiation and Classification

Adam R.C. Humphreys Millennium - Journal of International Studies 2013 41: 290 DOI: 10.1177/0305829812463476 The online version of this article can be found at: http://mil.sagepub.com/content/41/2/290

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MIL0010.1177/0305829812463476Millennium: Journal of International StudiesHumphreys

MILLENNIUM
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Journal of International Studies

Applying Jacksons Methodological Ideal-Types: Problems of Differentiation and Classification

Adam R.C. Humphreys
University of Oxford, UK

Millennium: Journal of International Studies 41(2) 290308 The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0305829812463476 mil.sagepub.com

Abstract
In The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations, Patrick Jackson situates methodologies in International Relations in relation to their underlying philosophical assumptions. One of his aims is to map International Relations debates in a way that capture[s] current controversies (p. 40). This ambition is overstated: whilst Jacksons typology is useful as a clarificatory tool, (re)classifying existing scholarship in International Relations is more problematic. One problem with Jacksons approach is that he tends to run together the philosophical assumptions which decisively differentiate his methodologies (by stipulating a distinctive warrant for knowledge claims) and the explanatory strategies that are employed to generate such knowledge claims, suggesting that the latter are entailed by the former. In fact, the explanatory strategies which Jackson associates with each methodology reflect conventional practice in International Relations just as much as they reflect philosophical assumptions. This makes it more difficult to identify each methodology at work than Jackson implies. I illustrate this point through a critical analysis of Jacksons controversial reclassification of Waltz as an analyticist, showing that whilst Jacksons typology helps to expose inconsistencies in Waltzs approach, it does not fully support the proposed reclassification. The conventional aspect of methodologies in International Relations also raises questions about the limits of Jacksons engaged pluralism.

Keywords
Explanation, International Relations theory, methodology

Corresponding author: Adam R.C. Humphreys, Brasenose College, University of Oxford, Radcliffe Square, Oxford, OX1 4AJ, UK. Email: adam.humphreys@politics.ox.ac.uk

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Introduction
The significance of Patrick Jacksons The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations is threefold.1 Firstly, it is, in its own right, a substantial work of meta-theory which does much to clarify the kinds of philosophical commitments which might and do underpin alternative methodological approaches in International Relations (IR). Unlike some other meta-theorists, Jackson resists the temptation to state his preferred methodological stance and demand that the rest of the discipline implements it, opting rather to explore the range of positions which can claim support from the philosophy of science. Secondly, it thereby serves to undermine claims to methodological hegemony. By resisting the disciplining function of the claim to science in IR (9) and, in particular, the equation of neopositivism and scientific acceptability (43), Jackson offers succour to those scholars who are committed to scientific inquiry, but who reject predominant methodological tropes. Thirdly, it offers a basis on which to identify what methodological claims are at work in IR and to explore their impact on substantive inquiry. It is on this third aspect of the book that I focus. Jackson argues that methodological inquiry in IR tends to neglect what he terms our hook-up to the world (28), that is, the grounds on which we can claim to have knowledge of world politics. For him, this is a question of philosophical ontology (28) which is logically prior to questions of scientific ontology (concerning what objects we believe to exist in the world), to questions of epistemology (the form of which depend on philosophical-ontological assumptions) and to questions of method (as distinct from methodology). The cornerstone of his argument is that the philosophy of science offers support to a variety of claims about our hook-up to the world, and thus a variety of philosophical ontologies, each of which holds different implications for how we should go about producing factual knowledge about world politics (32). His aim is to map these claims in a way which makes the systematic reflections found in the philosophy of science accessible to IR scholars and illuminate[s] discussions within and issues pertinent to IR (33). Jackson sets about this task by seeking to show how four operational methodologies in IR (neopositivism, critical realism, analyticism and reflexivity) emerge out of two wagers about our hook-up to the world. The first wager concerns the relationship of knower to known and involves a choice between conceiving of knowledge claims as: (a) corresponding to the world as it is independently of those claims (mindworld dualism); and (b) providing internally coherent accounts of the ordering of lived reality (mind world monism). The second wager concerns the limits of knowledge claims and involves a choice between: (a) limiting those claims to what can be directly or indirectly experienced (phenomenalism); and (b) allowing them to extend beyond what can be experienced (transfactualism). Situating IR methodologies in relation to these two wagers generates the following typology (37): Phenomenalism Transfactualism Mindworld dualism Neopositivism Critical Realism Mindworld monism Analyticism Reflexivity
1. Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations: Philosophy of Science and its Implications for the Study of World Politics (London: Routledge, 2011). References appear as page numbers in parentheses. All emphases in quotes are as in the original text.

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The bulk of The Conduct of Inquiry is concerned with exposition of how these methodologies reflect and draw on their distinctive pairs of philosophical wagers. Jacksons chief aim is to show that no single approach can exclusively claim the mantle of science in IR (189). One strength of his typology, therefore, is that it makes space for meta-theoretical approaches which are currently marginalised in IR. He criticises neopositivism and critical realism for making unwarranted claims to methodological hegemony and asserts the equal claim to scientific validity of reflexivity and of the kind of analyticist approach he has previously articulated in Civilizing the Enemy.2 Jackson is also concerned to show that philosophy of science can help us to clarify IR research practices, with an eye towards making them more coherent and potentially more productive (25). In fact, he maintains that his typology is sufficient to map out the present diversity of scientific ways of producing knowledge within IR (197). One of the crucial tests of Jacksons typology is therefore how productively it may be applied to existing scholarship. When applying Jacksons typology, it is important to recognise that it is a deliberate over-simplification (37) designed to draw out key features of each methodology. Jackson maintains neither that all IR scholars fall neatly within one of his quadrants nor that all methodological debates in IR fall across one of the boundaries. What the typology provides is an ideal-typical standard against which to compare existing scholarship. That said, if Jackson is correct in affirming that researchers in IR tend to be insufficiently explicit about their philosophical assumptions (25, 30), then this is suggestive of some of the problems likely to be involved in applying his typology. Such problems are readily apparent from Jacksons own efforts in this regard. For example, he classifies Waltz as an analyticist, adding that the relative absence of controversy over the more widespread reading of Waltz as a neopositivist is testimony to neopositivisms unreflective dominance in IR (113). Recent debates have, though, also generated a new characterisation of Waltz as a scientific realist and offered new evidence for a neopositivist interpretation of his work. These debates illustrate Jacksons point about the need for greater clarity regarding philosophical assumptions in IR, but they also reveal how difficult it can be to classify such assumptions with confidence. I contend that while his typology can helpfully bring out inconsistencies in Waltzs approach, it cannot facilitate a definitive (re)classification of Waltzs methodology. In practice, his typology is much more helpful as a clarificatory than as a classificatory tool. What underlies these concerns about how Jacksons typology may be applied in IR is a deeper worry that the contours of particular methodologies in IR owe as much to convention as to wagers in philosophical ontology. In his exposition, Jackson tends to run together the philosophical assumptions which determine what form knowledge claims must take and the explanatory strategies used to generate those claims. The two are analytically separable. Indeed, one feature of methodological debates in IR is precisely that advocates of particular meta-theoretical approaches tend to assert ownership of
2. Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2006), especially ch. 2. Critical realists also seek to create space for meta-theories other than neopositivism. See Colin Wight and Jonathan Joseph, Scientific Realism and International Relations, in Scientific Realism and International Relations, eds Colin Wight and Jonathan Joseph (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010), passim.

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particular explanatory strategies, even when those strategies are consistent with a range of meta-theories. Such assertions easily slide into the sorts of unjustified claims to methodological hegemony that Jackson seeks to undermine. Jacksons typology can help us to unpack these issues, but the results are rather messier than he implies. My argument therefore proceeds as follows. In the next section, I examine Jacksons claims about the relationship between each of his methodologies and the philosophicalontological wagers they operationalise, arguing that in IR particular explanatory strategies are conventionally, rather than logically, associated with particular wagers. Consequently, what fundamentally differentiates Jacksons methodologies is not so much the explanatory strategies they employ as the ends to which those strategies are put. I argue that, in practice, this is likely to make classification of existing scholarship more difficult than Jackson suggests. The subsequent section gives substance to this contention by showing how it illuminates aspects of Waltzs methodology which work against a definitive classification. The conclusion considers the broader implications of the idea that IR methodologies are conventional complexes of philosophical assumptions and explanatory strategies.

Unpacking Jacksons Methodologies: Problems of Differentiation

Although he does not use the terms interchangeably, Jackson never defines the relationship between philosophical ontologies and methodologies. Instead, he speaks variously of the philosophical-ontological commitments underpinning each methodology, of how methodology connects philosophical premises and substantive conclusions, of how each methodology stems from a particular combination of philosophicalontological commitments, and of the requirements of research design entailed by underlying commitments in the realm of philosophical ontology (1967).3 The resulting ambiguity about which aspects of each methodology are strictly entailed by philosophical-ontological wagers and which reflect conventional ways in which those wagers are operationalised in IR permeates the text. This is a significant obstacle to the application of Jacksons typology to existing scholarship in IR, for it undermines our ability definitively to link particular methodological moves to underlying philosophical assumptions and thereby to track how those assumptions shape IR debates. In examining Jacksons specific claims about the relationship between each of his philosophical ontologies and their associated methodologies, I leave reflexivity to one side and focus exclusively on neopositivism, critical realism and analyticism.4 I do so for two related reasons. Firstly, despite Jacksons even-handedness, I am not convinced that many of the researchers likely to fall under his reflexivist label are committed to science in the way that he suggests. Whereas neopositivists, critical realists and analyticists share a commitment to generating knowledge of the world (however that is construed), in
3. 4. My italics. I follow Jackson (76) in talking of critical rather than scientific realism. See Wight and Joseph, Scientific Realism and IR, 17; Fred Chernoff, Critical Realism, Scientific Realism, and International Relations Theory, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 35, no. 2 (2007): 399407.

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Jacksons own account, reflexivists pursue different, if equally important, ends such as provoking greater self-awareness and self-reflection among researchers and promoting social change (198, 201).5 Secondly, Jackson employs a Weberian definition of science as empirical inquiry designed to produce knowledge (19). This enables him simultaneously to acknowledge that scientific inquiry may be motivated by evaluative judgements but also to insist that it remains logically distinct from those judgements (1923, 1936). His purpose in adopting such a definition is to avoid prejudging what counts as good science (19), but his reliance on Weber creates a curiosity, viz. Weber, as an analyticist, belongs within one of the quadrants of Jacksons typology, while the typology itself is presented as an idealtype even though ideal-typical analysis is analyticist. This creates a difficulty in capturing reflexive research, for reflexivists are likely to reject Webers sharp distinction between scientific inquiry and the evaluative judgements in which it is grounded and, indeed, to want to investigate the content and purpose of such boundaries. This constitutes an important challenge to Jacksons enterprise, but not one I can take up here.

Neopositivism
According to Jackson, neopositivist methodological principles include the notion that a causal connection shows itself in systematic cross-case correlations between specific factors and the notion that knowledge is constructed through the successive proposing and testing of hypothetical guesses about the character of the world (41). These principles clearly reflect neopositivisms philosophical assumptions. Phenomenalism implies that all we can know of causation is how its effects are experienced and that all that distinguishes the experience of causal effects from that of accidental effects is the formers systematicity. This explains why neopositivists tend to prize empirical regularities and to interpret causal claims in terms of covariation. Mindworld dualism suggests that any claim about the world remains no more than a conjecture until it is tested against experience. Although repeatedly passing hard tests intuitively offers support for what may now be termed a hypothesis, the problem of induction (of establishing a warrant for believing that the future will be like the past) means that strictly speaking hypotheses can only ever be falsified, not verified. It may therefore seem that methodological principles such as search for empirical regularities, define causal effects in terms of covariation and subject all hypotheses to repeated tests follow relatively straightforwardly from neopositivist wagers. However, two problems arise when it comes to definitely identifying neopositivist methodologies at work: firstly, the search for regularities is not exclusive to neopositivists, who are not themselves obliged to employ inferential strategies for developing conjectures; and, secondly, hypothesis-testing may be difficult to differentiate from the means used to evaluate empirical claims within other methodologies. Given how neopositivists conceive of causation, the search for empirical regularities is a key task. However, it may be achieved in different ways: Hempels focus on
5. Some critical realists also emphasise such transformative goals. See Heikki Patomki, After International Relations: Critical Realism and the (Re)Construction of World Politics (London: Routledge, 2002).

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empirical laws and King, Keohane and Verbas focus on measuring causal effects are both means to this end.6 Moreover, there is no reason at all why critical realists and analyticists should not also search for regularities. That search would serve a strictly heuristic, rather than explanatory, function: its purpose would be to identify empirical patterns that might be worth explaining, rather than to provide a basis for explaining them. Yet this possibility precludes us from inferring a neopositivist methodology purely from the search for general laws.7 It is only by establishing that such a search is intended to underwrite a claim about covariation-causality that we can identify neopositivism at work. If critical realists in IR reject all talk of regularities in order to differentiate themselves from neopositivists, this is a matter of convention, not of necessity. Conversely, although Jackson contrasts neopositivists inferential strategies for establishing the presence of causal relationships with the abductive and counterfactual strategies employed by critical realists and analyticists (42), there is no reason at all why neopositivists cannot use abductive or counterfactual reasoning as a heuristic tool. Neopositivist commitments in the realm of philosophical ontology imply nothing about how hypotheses should be developed: what matters is how they perform when tested.8 Hypothesis-testing is, as Jackson suggests, central to the neopositivist attempt to cross the putative mindworld gap. If the nature of the enterprise is sufficiently closely specified (making clear that systematic covariation is intended to ground knowledge claims), then it would seem to imply a neopositivist methodology: such an enterprise would not make sense given an alternative set of philosophical-ontological wagers. In practice, however, hypothesis-testing may be difficult to differentiate from superficially similar enterprises such as trying ideal-types for size to see whether the causal stories they help to generate fit with what we think we already know about the world (from within an analyticist methodology), or seeking to identify real-world manifestations of an abduced claim about underlying causal powers (from within a critical realist methodology). Jackson is right to emphasise the logical distinctiveness of these endeavours, but unless their place in the explanatory process is clearly specified, they may not be easy to distinguish in practice.

Critical Realism
Critical realist wagers on mindworld dualism and transfactualism match a commonsense conception of what scientists do: they seek to explain experienced phenomena by reference to underlying causal powers in a mind-independent world.9 Moreover, as
6. 7. 8. 9. Carl G. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science (New York: Free Press, 1965); Gary King, Robert O. Keohane and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). For example, Wight accepts that constant conjunctions may reveal laws at work. Colin Wight, Agents, Structures and International Relations: Politics as Ontology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 46. Jackson therefore argues, correctly, that the debate about deductive versus inductive explanatory strategies in IR is internal to neopositivism (589). Thus, some critical realists claim that only their approach can explain sciences tangible successes. See Heikki Patomki and Colin Wight, After Postpositivism? The Promises of Critical Realism, International Studies Quarterly 44, no. 2 (2000): 218.

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Jacksons discussion suggests, critical realists in IR employ a distinctive vocabulary of ontology, unobservables and causal powers. As with neopositivism, the question is whether this alone is sufficient to distinguish critical realism from other methodologies: is the distinctiveness of this vocabulary a unique corollary of critical realist wagers in philosophical ontology or a conventional development within IR? The potential difficulties involved in definitively identifying a critical realist methodology at work are readily apparent from Jacksons discussion of unobservables, social stratification, abduction and causal complexes. Critical realism was introduced to IR via Wendts criticism of Waltzs ontologically reductionist definition of the structure of the international system in terms of the observable attributes of state units. Wendt argued that structure is not just a theoretical label for how states react to the presence of rivals, but rather exercises real causal power in its own right, helping to generate state agents as well as to constrain their behaviour.10 This emphasis on the reality of unobservables such as social structures is a common critical realist trope in IR. However, Jackson points out that while electrons may not be directly observable, the fact that they can be detected with the help of specialist equipment means that one does not have to be a critical realist to regard them as real (857). Moreover, instrumentalist approaches may refer even to undetectable unobservables: what divides critical realists from neopositivists are the grounds for affirming the real existence of the undetectable unobservables postulated in scientific theories.11 In short, what distinguishes a critical realist methodology is not so much a focus on unobservables as a distinctive belief about the warrant for regarding undetectable unobservables as real. A similar point applies to critical realist discussion of social stratification and depth ontology. Jackson points out that there is no necessary connection between a picture of the social world that includes particular layers and levels of social relations, and a philosophical ontology that claims that these various levels and layers are in a mindindependent sense real things (75). The sense in which critical realism requires the stratification of reality is that this is what makes possible the idea that we experience only part of what the world is really like (93). This, in turn, justifies the critical realist claim to be able to causally explain the constant conjunctions that neopositivists merely identify.12 The key critical realist move, therefore, is the claim that objects have real but unrealised capacities, including causal powers (98). This follows from philosophicalontological wagers on dualism and transfactualism: the critical realist claim is that we can generate knowledge of those properties of the mind-independent world which cannot be directly experienced (this is what differentiates it from neopositivism). Again, though, the practice of investigating social stratification is not sufficient to identify a critical realist methodology in the absence of more explicitly philosophical-ontological claims about the end to which that practice is directed.
10. Alexander E. Wendt, The AgentStructure Problem in International Relations Theory, International Organization 41, no. 3 (1987): 33570. 11. See Fred Chernoff, The Ontological Fallacy: A Rejoinder on the Status of Scientific Realism in International Relations, Review of International Studies 35, no. 2 (2009): 384. 12. See Milja Kurki, Causes of a Divided Discipline: Rethinking the Concept of Cause in International Relations Theory, Review of International Studies 32, no. 2 (2006): 2015.

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According to Jackson, critical realists often rely on abductive explanatory strategies, that is, reasoning from some puzzling set of observations to a likely explanation of those observations (83). Such strategies sit comfortably with transfactualism because they permit reasoning from experienced phenomena to the dispositional properties which may underpin them. However, abduction can also be used to generate testable conjectures, suggesting that it is entirely compatible with the kinds of philosophical-ontological assumptions made by neopositivists and other non-realists (88).13 Jackson also observes that, in contrast to the typical neopositivist focus on isolating potential causal factors, critical realists prefer to operate with causal complexes, which are used to account for a specific outcome in all of its specificity (110). Again, this fits comfortably with transfactualism: it involves showing how dispositional properties are in fact manifested in a particular instance. As an explanatory strategy, though, it may appear rather similar to an analyticists singular causal analysis, which traces how a number of factors com[e] together in a case-specific way (147). In short, those explanatory strategies which fit comfortably with critical realist wagers do not decisively distinguish critical realism from alternative methodologies in IR in the absence of a further articulation of the philosophical-ontological commitments which underpin those strategies.

Analyticism
For mindworld monists, it makes no sense to seek to establish the characteristics (whether systematic or dispositional) of the world as it might be thought to exist independently of our engagement with it: our knowledge is necessarily of a world in which we are already ineluctably implicated. What we can do is to order and interpret, and thereby make sense of, understand and explain, experienced phenomena. Analyticist commitments to monism and phenomenalism therefore dictate that knowledge claims offer a disciplined ordering of the facts of experience (114). Jackson argues that analyticist science, properly understood, must terminate in a case-specific narrative (152). He reasons as follows. Bringing order to the experienced world requires the instrumental oversimplification of complex, actual situations (142). This is achieved by developing ideal-types which model some of the relevant features of the object or process under investigation (1467), thereby providing a conceptual baseline in terms of which actual outcomes can be comprehended (144). Because it is an artificially simple and purely logical instrument, it makes no sense to test an ideal-type (in a neopositivist sense), or to ask whether it captures real causal powers (in a critical realist sense). An ideal-type can only be evaluated pragmatically, by asking whether it reveals intriguing and useful things about the objects to which it is applied (146). This requires comparing the ideal-type to what actually happened, and responding to discrepancies by either reformulating the ideal-type or adducing situationally specific reasons why the observed outcome in that case was not what the model ideal-typically envisions

13. See Jrg Friedrichs and Friedrich Kratochwil, On Acting and Knowing: How Pragmatism Can Advance International Relations Research and Methodology, International Organization 63, no. 4 (2009): 70131.

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(147). The resulting account is explanatory in the sense that it constitutes a case-specific narrative about how and why something came about as it did. Jackson provides a persuasive case that the use of ideal-types and the development of case-specific narratives is consistent with, and perhaps even required by, analyticist wagers on philosophical ontology. However, as we have seen, a focus on developing singular causal analyses is not distinctive to analyticism. Not only is critical realism oriented towards this kind of analysis (because dispositional properties can emerge in different ways in different contexts), but there is also nothing to preclude neopositivists from developing case-specific narratives through process-tracing.14 Moreover, although Jackson argues that ideal-types are distinguished by being strictly neither true nor false, but rather instrumentally useful (146), the same might be said of a neopositivist theory: the question is not whether it captures how the world really works (a realist endeavour), but whether it accurately predicts useful features of the phenomenal world. As with neopositivism and critical realism, what distinguishes an analyticist methodology is not so much the explanatory strategies it employs as the warrant it offers for the knowledge claims thus generated.

Philosophical Ontologies and Methodologies

This brief review has highlighted three aspects of how philosophical-ontological wagers play out in IR. Firstly, explanatory strategies which fit comfortably with the wagers that underpin each methodology may nevertheless also be compatible with other methodologies, at least when employed heuristically. This is true of the neopositivists search for empirical regularities, the critical realists use of abduction and the analyticists development of singular causal analyses. Secondly, what may be conventionally regarded as distinctive characteristics of each methodology may not in fact be sufficient decisively to differentiate it from other methodologies. For example, although analyticist reasoning is inherently instrumental, neopositivist theories may also be instrumental, if in a somewhat different way. Thirdly, some practices may be difficult to distinguish in the absence of further articulation of the ends to which they are put.15 For example, critical realists and analyticists may both refer to causal complexes, even if the resulting knowledge claims are differently construed. All this suggests that the contours of each methodology in IR are not wholly entailed by wagers in philosophical ontology. Indeed, it may be better to think of methodologies as conventional complexes of philosophical wagers, explanatory strategies and perhaps methods. Philosophical assumptions articulate the warrant for knowledge claims and hence determine what form such claims must take (e.g., critical realist assumptions suggest that explanatory claims should identify the dispositional properties and powers

14. See Andrew Bennett and Alexander L. George, Case Studies and Process Tracing in History and Political Science: Similar Strokes for Different Foci, in Bridges and Boundaries: Historians, Political Scientists, and the Study of International Relations, eds Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 13766. 15. Jackson himself, drawing on Dewey, emphasises the importance of clarity about ends (33).

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which produce experienced phenomena). Within the context of those assumptions, explanatory strategies constitute distinct ways of tackling problems: possibilities include the inferential, abductive and counterfactual modes of reasoning that Jackson discusses, as well as strategies such as cross-case comparison and singular causal analysis. These strategies then determine which more specific methods (such as regression analysis) might be appropriate.16 If so, then there is nothing necessary about how philosophical wagers are operationalised in IR: neopositivist, critical realist and analyticist methodologies in IR are complexes of assumptions, strategies and methods which fit comfortably together, but which are linked as much by convention as by logic. Conceiving of methodologies in this way brings out two features of how philosophical wagers are operationalised in IR which speak directly to the utility of Jacksons typology. Firstly, if methodologies are conventional complexes of philosophical assumptions and explanatory strategies, then the former do not entail the latter: philosophical assumptions determine not which explanatory strategies are appropriate, but rather the ends to which they are put. Secondly, any choice of explanatory strategy will therefore be shaped not only by philosophical-ontological wagers, but also by what we are interested in, by the scope and extent of our current knowledge about it, and by conventional practices within specific research traditions. In short, while certain explanatory strategies may conventionally be associated with particular methodological traditions in IR, what fundamentally differentiates those traditions is not how they set about answering particular questions, but rather the kinds of knowledge claims they seek to generate. Two practical difficulties are therefore likely to accompany efforts to apply Jacksons typology in IR. Firstly, philosophical-ontological wagers cannot be inferred backwards from explanatory strategies: in order to definitively identify a methodology at work, we need to identify the end to which inquiry is directed. The fact that someone searches for covariation, discusses unobservables or employs counterfactual reasoning is not sufficient to identify them as a neopositivist, a critical realist or an analyticist, respectively.17 Secondly, we are therefore heavily reliant on what researchers actually say about the warrant for knowledge claims, including their conception of causation. This may be problematic because Jackson observes that methodological pronouncements cannot necessarily be taken at face value. He notes, for example, that some analyticists erroneously persist in using the language of hypothesis-testing and generalization to describe what they are doing while they are in fact crafting analytical narratives (115) and that neopositivist discussion of causal mechanisms often employs critical realist language (109). This adds to the potential importance of his attempt to reconstruct these methodologies, but it also exacerbates the challenges we face in applying his typology for clarificatory and classificatory purposes.

16. While I accept Jacksons differentiation of methodology from methods (25), my argument does not depend on drawing a hard line between explanatory strategies and methods. 17. Even if philosophical assumptions did entail particular explanatory strategies, it would not follow from this that the reverse was also true. The issue here, however, is as much practical as logical, viz. how, in practice, can methodologies be differentiated?

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A Caveat Concerning the Distinctiveness of Jacksons PhilosophicalOntological Wagers

Before considering how these issues play out in interpretations of Waltzs methodology, it is worth mentioning one further reason why the relationship between philosophicalontological wagers and methodologies in IR may be less straightforward than Jackson implies, viz. even his wagers are in some respects less distinctive than he suggests. If we regard neopositivism as empiricist, limiting knowledge to what can be directly observed, treat analyticism as a form of global anti-realism in which it is by definition impossible to access a world beyond the language required to describe it, and regard critical realism as asserting our ability to know the reality of a world beyond both language and observation, then it is easy to see how they differ. Yet these are caricatures. As Chalmers puts it, no serious contemporary philosopher holds that we can come face to face with reality and directly read off facts about it.18 Once we allow that experience itself is theoryladen, in the sense that it is mediated and active rather than unmediated (60), the positions begin to look less distinctive.19 Jackson is not himself guilty of employing such caricatures, yet his ideal-typical set-up does tend to highlight differences rather than similarities. It is therefore worth considering whether the boundaries between his philosophical-ontological wagers might be fuzzy. Although I can do no more here than to identify them, important questions arise in respect of both the boundary between neopositivism and critical realism and that between neopositivism and analyticism. In regard to the former, an important issue is whether we can really draw a hard distinction between the observational knowledge which neopositivists regard as secure and the knowledge of real underlying properties and dispositions which they reject but which critical realists accept.20 Indeed, one might ask to what extent neopositivists differ from critical realists over realism at all.21 Popper regarded himself as a realist (as opposed to an instrumentalist) in the sense that he believed that science sought a true theory or description of the world.22 What he rejected is the idea that knowledge can be more than conjectural.23 Yet critical realists commitment to ontological realism (the idea that science can in principle tell us what the world is really like) is matched by a commitment to epistemological relativism (the idea that whatever we currently believe the world is like is subject to future revision).24 If we removed the distinctively critical realist vocabulary, how many neopositivists would disagree? Popper recognised that all observation statements are interpretations in the light of some theory.25 An important issue in respect of the boundary between neopositivism and analyticism is therefore whether there is really a clear line between testing how
A.F. Chalmers, What Is This Thing Called Science?, 3rd edn (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 1999), 228. This is why Jackson speaks of phenomenalism rather than empiricism. See also Patomki, After IR, 9. See Chalmers, What Is This Thing Called Science?, 233. According to Wight, the question is not whether to be a realist, but of what kind (Wight, Agents, Structures and IR, 26). See also Chernoff, The Ontological Fallacy, 388. 22. Karl R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2002), ch. 3. See Chalmers, What Is This Thing Called Science?, 23841. 23. Bryan Magee, Popper (London: Fontana, 1973), 26. 24. See Patomki, After IR, 8; Wight, Agents, Structures and IR, 39. 25. Magee, Popper, 33. 18. 19. 20. 21.

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knowledge claims correspond to the world, as dualists prescribe, and exploring how they cohere with what we already believe we know about the world, as analyticists prescribe. In all three philosophical ontologies, the test of scientific knowledge is whether it works. For analyticists, there can be nothing else: scientific knowledge is knowledge of what works in a world in which we are ineluctably implicated. Neopositivists such as Popper are committed, in principle, to revealing how the world really is, but focus in practice on what works. Critical realists justify the claim that science can reveal how the world really is by pointing out that science works. This is not to deny that the distinct sense each methodology gives to the notion of what works is grounded in precisely the philosophical assumptions that Jackson identifies. It is, though, to suggest that some of the practical difficulties likely to be involved in distinguishing between individual methodologies as they are employed in IR may derive in part from the fact that even the philosophical wagers which underpin them are in some respects less distinctive than Jackson indicates.

Applying Jacksons Ideal-Types: Classifying Waltz

One of the most striking features of Jacksons own attempt to apply his methodological ideal-types in IR is his classification of Waltz as an analyticist. He offers two main grounds for this view. Firstly, he observes that Waltzs discussion of the nature of theory involves a rejection of the sharp distinction between theory and empirical reality upheld by neopositivists and a distinctly instrumental view of theoretical constructs that is incompatible with critical realism (113). Secondly, he notes Waltzs claim that neorealism should deal with apparently discrepant evidence by adducing case-specific factors that interact or interfere with the structural imperative of balancing power (113) and argues that his model of the international system is best understood as an ideal-type (14950). Jackson adds an important element to recent discussions of Waltzs methodology by focusing not only on what Waltz says about the nature of theory, but also on how he applies his theory. However, I identify two problems with Jacksons analysis: firstly, Waltzs methodological pronouncements offer at least some support to readings of him as a neopositivist, a critical realist and an analyticist; and, secondly, there is in fact a notable disjunction between what Waltz says and what he does, a disjunction which Jacksons typology can help to expose, but which Jackson himself rather neglects.

Waltzs Methodological Pronouncements

In making the case that Waltzs pronouncements on the nature of theory identify him as an analyticist, Jackson cites (11213) a notorious passage from the opening of Theory of International Politics:
If a theory is not an edifice of truth and not a reproduction of reality, then what is it? A theory is a picture, mentally formed, of a bounded realm or domain of activity. A theory is a depiction of the organization of a domain and of the connections among its parts. The infinite materials of any realm can be organized in endlessly different ways. A theory indicates that some factors

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are more important than others and specifies relations among them. Theory isolates one realm from all others in order to deal with it intellectually.

He also cites briefer passages to the effect that theories construct a reality, but no one can ever say it is the reality, and that they should be evaluated in terms of whether they convey a sense of the unobservable relations of things and provide connections and causes by which sense is made of things observed (113).26 He infers from these passages, firstly, that Waltz rejects neopositivisms categorical distinction between theory and reality and, secondly, that for Waltz, the purpose of theory is not, as it would be for critical realists, to reveal real-but-unobservable components of the world, but is instead to order the complex chaos of empirical reality into more comprehensible and manageable forms (113). An immediate problem is that Wver and Joseph cite the same passages in support of their respective identifications of Waltz as a scientific realist and as a neopositivist.27 Wvers argument is, firstly, that Waltz searches for non-observable mechanisms which are always present latently but only sometimes materialise and, secondly, that Waltz rejects a positivist view of theory as a set of testable axioms, instead regarding it as a picture which is applied by assessing its correspondence to actual features of the observed domain.28 Josephs argument is that while Waltz strongly distinguishes between theories and laws, and hence regards the development of theories as a creative (mental) act, there is nothing in that which distinguishes his approach from that of contemporary neopositivist philosophers of science who recognised the limits of a more narrowly inductive approach.29 This suggests that the passages Jackson cites are not sufficient to ground a compelling classification of Waltz as a neopositivist, critical realist or analyticist. Other aspects of Waltzs methodological discussion suggest a similar conclusion. For example, his statement that [t]heories explain laws sounds neopositivist, but his contention that we need theories [i]n order to get beyond the facts of observation might equally be interpreted in a critical realist sense. Meanwhile, his statement that [a] theory, though related to the world about which explanations are wanted, always remains distinct from that world could be accepted by adherents of all three methodologies.30 We face similar problems when we turn to neorealism itself. A neopositivist could interpret Waltz as developing a theoretical explanation of the recurrent formation of balances of power, citing in support his insistence that assumptions are unrealistic and his emphasis on testing many hypotheses.31 A critical realist could interpret Waltz as modelling a structure possessing real causal powers, citing in support his claim that

26. The passages are from Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), 89. 27. Ole Wver, Waltzs Theory of Theory, International Relations 23, no. 2 (2009): 206, 209; Jonathan Joseph, Is Waltz a Realist?, International Relations 24, no. 4 (2010): 481. 28. Wver, Waltzs Theory of Theory, 204, 206, 211. 29. Joseph, Is Waltz a Realist?, 4803. 30. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 6. 31. Ibid., 119, 124.

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[s]tructures are causes, but not in the sense meant by saying that A causes X and B causes Y, and his emphasis on explaining how states are disposed to react rather than how they actually behave.32 An analyticist could interpret Waltz as developing a deliberately oversimplified model of the international system designed to illuminate certain key features, citing in support his suggestion that we might compare features of the observed domain with the picture the theory has limned.33 One reason for this ambiguity is that the enterprise of theory construction is, mutatis mutandis, consistent with all three methodologies. Jacksons wagers concern the explanatory purposes to which theories are put, including the kinds of knowledge claims they can generate, not the process of theory-building itself. Yet, for all the variety of claims that can be cited in support of one or another interpretation of his methodology, Waltz in fact says very little about the warrant for any knowledge claims that might be generated by his theory. We are therefore forced to try to infer his philosophical assumptions from his broader work, an inherently problematic task. A further reason for the ambiguity is that Waltzs methodological pronouncements exhibit some prima facie inconsistencies. For example, he states that though balance-of-power theory offers some predictions, the predictions are indeterminate, acknowledges the consequent obstacles to falsifying the theory, and yet still holds out the possibility of devising tests that confirm.34 It is hard to accommodate this set of principles within any of Jacksons methodologies. Joseph acknowledges that elements of Waltzs statements appear to support alternative readings and rests his classification of Waltz as a neopositivist largely on the fact that Waltzs methodological discussions reproduce many elements of the debates taking place among contemporary neopositivist philosophers of science.35 This highlights an important indirect means of applying Jacksons ideal-types: we may be able to identify distinctive features of the kinds of methodological debates in which researchers engage, even if their own statements are unclear.36 That said, Waltzs lack of clarity remains striking for a work that is often identified as an exemplar of neopositivist scholarship in IR. Given that Waltz dedicates a whole chapter of Theory of International Politics to methodological issues, his ambiguity offers support for Jacksons complaints about the philosophical naivety of IR, even if it also makes it difficult to apply Jacksons methodological ideal-types for classificatory purposes.

Waltzs Applications of His Theory

The second part of Jacksons case for classifying Waltz as an analyticist rests on Waltzs distinctly instrumental view of theoretical constructs (113). However, it is unclear what Waltz means when he says that theories construct a reality, but no one

32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

Ibid., 74, 124. Ibid., 123. Ibid., 1234. Joseph, Is Waltz a Realist?, 4836. Goddard and Nexon employ this mode of reasoning to ground a structural functionalist interpretation of Waltzs methodology. Stacie E. Goddard and Daniel H. Nexon, Paradigm Lost? Reassessing Theory of International Politics, European Journal of International Relations 11, no. 1 (2005): 961.

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can ever say that it is the reality. Is he, as Jackson suggests, laying out a monist view in which it makes no sense to ask about the correspondence between theory and reality, or is he, in Popperian fashion, emphasising both the sense in which observation is theory-laden and the provisionality of the knowledge that theories generate? Whichever view we take, it is important to recognise that instrumentalism is consistent not only with analyticism, but also with neopositivism. Indeed, Waltzs own account of why he assumes that states seek to survive might be drawn directly from Milton Friedman:
The assumption is a radical simplification made for the sake of constructing a theory. The question to ask of the assumption, as ever, is not whether it is true but whether it is the most sensible and useful one that can be made. Whether it is a useful assumption depends on whether a theory based on the assumption can be contrived, a theory from which important consequences not otherwise obvious can be inferred.37

Waltzs instrumentalism is therefore not sufficient to identify him as an analyticist in the absence of further specification of the instrumental ends to which his theory is put. Jackson seeks to provide that further specification in his contention that Waltzs model of the international system should be understood as an ideal-type. However, there are several problems with this argument. Firstly, Waltz neither employs the vocabulary of ideal-types nor undertakes anything resembling Jacksons process for developing an ideal-type (1445). Secondly, he makes no effort to lay out how case-specific factors might be adduced to deal with discrepant evidence. Although he argues that in multipolar systems, structural imperatives may be undermined by factors such as ideological preference, the pull of previous ties, diplomacy and the need to be attractive in personality and policy, such arguments are neither a systematic feature of his work, nor presented in the manner that Jacksons exposition of analyticism suggests they should be (14951).38 Thirdly, he does not, except in passing, develop case-specific narratives. Notwithstanding Jacksons proviso about divisions of labour (152), we must surely allow that if Waltz is indeed an analyticist, he fails to follow through on that methodology with any consistency. If classifying Waltz as an analyticist is more problematic than Jackson suggests, such arguments do help to draw out elements of Waltzs approach that may be lost in the uncritical presumption that he is a neopositivist. One such inconsistency is the disjunction between Waltzs rhetoric about theory-testing and how he applies his theory in practice. Waltzs brief discussions of theory-testing provide the most powerful evidence for a neopositivist reading of his methodology: the closest he comes to articulating a warrant for knowledge claims is his insistence that testing theories always means inferring expectations, or hypotheses, from them and testing those expectations and his specification of seven steps for performing such tests.39 Yet, when in later

37. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 91. See Milton Friedman, The Methodology of Positive Economics, in Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1953). 38. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 1646, 176.

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chapters he explores what he terms the economic and military effects of the way in which the international political system is structured, he does not perform such tests. He examines empirical developments through what we might regard as a neorealist lens, emphasising the importance of differentiating between greater and lesser powers in thinking about interdependence and the importance of polarity in thinking about system stability, but the practice certainly does not match the rhetoric.40 Just as Waltzs practice is inconsistent with his own demands about theory-testing, so he also fails to implement the explanatory practices that Jackson associates with analyticism. Nevertheless, his empirical discussions do draw on his definition of structure in a manner not wholly dissimilar to what Jackson describes in his exposition of analyticism, viz. he uses his conception of structure as a means of helping to make sense of and give some order to the complexity of international politics. His implicit claim is not that neorealism can generate useful predictions, but rather that it provides a way of thinking which can help to tease out features of the international system and of state behaviour within it (such as the tendency of balances of power to form whether individual states intend to balance or not) which might otherwise prove difficult to understand. Jacksons interpretation of Waltz as an analyticist highlights this aspect of Waltzs work, even if it is ultimately hard to square with what look like distinctively neopositivist pronouncements on theory-testing. Waltz is not an outlier: his work lies at the heart of the discipline of IR, demonstrating continued relevance both as the godfather of an ongoing and still influential structural realist research programme and as the other in relation to which so many critical approaches in IR define themselves. Jacksons questioning of the widespread and often uncritical interpretation of his work as (neo)positivist is therefore suggestive of the possibilities for more nuanced philosophical and methodological debates within the discipline. That said, for all Jacksons own provocative identification of Waltz as an analyticist, in this case his typology is far more useful as a clarificatory than as a classificatory device. What his typology contributes to inquiry into Waltzs methodology is primarily a framework against which to expose Waltzs own lack of clarity, and perhaps inconsistency, concerning the philosophical warrant for whatever knowledge claims his theory helps to produce.41 Its force does not lie in its ability to tidy up the discipline by (re)classifying existing scholarship, but in the grounds it affords for arguing that researchers can and should be clearer about their methodological assumptions and in its demonstration that in being clearer, neopositivism is not the only option.

39. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 13, 123. These steps reflect standard neopositivist procedure. See Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 51. 40. See Adam R.C. Humphreys, Another Waltz? Methodological Rhetoric and Practice in Theory of International Politics, International Relations, forthcoming (2013). 41. This is in keeping with Jacksons own observation that, in many cases, reconstructing the argument of a scholarly work along methodological lines is quite impossible, because the work contains several different arguments that rest on philosophically divergent bases (208).

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Conclusion
In his conclusion, Jackson insists that his methodologies name four different ways in which scientific research can unfold, not four different self-conscious research traditions or schools of thought within the IR field (207). If his point is to preclude his methodologies from being mistaken for substantive IR theories, this is most sensible. However, if his point is that their content is entailed by their distinctive philosophical-ontological wagers, then this cannot be accepted. A footnote to his discussion of neopositivism states that while in principle another methodology could inhabit the quadrant of his typology formed by the intersection of dualism and phenomenalism, in practice neopositivism seems to have cornered that market, at least in IR. The same applies to each of the other three quadrants: Jackson analyses the methodology which most clearly illustrates what a particular combination of philosophical-ontological wagers means for IR research, in part because there is actual IR scholarship utilizing that methodology (219, note 4). In short, what he analyses are the conventional complexes of philosophical assumptions and explanatory strategies which have been and are employed (more or less explicitly) in IR. This is confirmed by his insistence that typologies such as his should take their bearings from the existing contrasts and distinctions that active IR scholars in fact draw in their work (34). If Jackson largely succeeds in producing a mapping of philosophical ontologies that will be of use to IR scholars (32), it is quite another thing to suggest that his typology can straightforwardly be used to map IR itself, despite his aspiration that it should capture current controversies within IR (40).42 I believe that we should be sceptical about the prospects for tidying up the discipline with respect to its philosophical assumptions, or about any claim to definitively (re)classify existing scholarship. Jacksons typology is best treated as a clarificatory tool: a set of ideal-types against which to compare existing practices in IR and with which to highlight salient methodological features, including notable silences and inconsistencies. One such way in which Jacksons discussion is likely to prove fertile is that it provides a basis for identifying which methodological debates researchers are engaging in, even where they are, like Waltz, unclear or inconsistent in their own assumptions. Indeed, I contend that it is Waltzs engagement in debates around the limits of induction, the need for creativity in developing theoretical ideas and competing approaches to theory-testing that, pace Jackson, reveals his neopositivist affinities most strongly. Situating researchers such as Waltz in their methodological contexts also makes space for the idea that extant methodologies in IR are really conventional constellations of philosophical assumptions and explanatory strategies. If no one explanatory strategy (or set of strategies) is strictly entailed by particular wagers, then the debates in which a researcher engages and the range of explanatory strategies which he or she even considers employing may provide our best clue as to his or her understanding of the ultimate warrant for knowledge claims about world politics. In short, even where we cannot definitively
42. Jackson argues, drawing on Dewey, that a typology should be evaluated in terms of the ends it is intended to serve (33), but I am not convinced that these two ends (mapping debates in the philosophy of science and mapping IR) are wholly consistent.

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classify a researcher as a neopositivist, a critical realist or an analyticist, we can still meaningfully debate whether he or she sounds more like one than another and thereby shed light on existing methodological conventions within the field. This element of conventionality in Jacksons methodological ideal-types requires more development than he provides. If other methodologies are indeed consistent with each pair of wagers, then it would be helpful to know how they differ from those which conventionally occupy each of these spaces in IR. It will also be important to expose to critical scrutiny any claim that research needs to proceed in a particular way. Methodologies in IR are too often presented as if they provide all-encompassing accounts of what explanation consists in, of the proper warrant for whatever knowledge claims are generated and of the relevant explanatory strategies and methods. Such claims exhibit an element of ideology, suggesting that there is no alternative.43 Jacksons typology provides a basis for exposing the ideological element of such claims. For example, if identifying Waltz as a neopositivist is less straightforward than is often suggested, then what interests are served by the uncritical presumption that he is a neopositivist? If his classification as a neopositivist seems to provide a necessary other for critical approaches to reject, then this sheds important light on the disciplinary dynamics that may be at work.44 This, in turn, suggests an important limit to the engaged pluralism (207) that Jackson advocates. He claims to have demonstrated that science in IR is irreducibly pluralist, fully capable of being articulated in at least four different varieties (189). The warrant for this conclusion is our inability to adjudicate the merits of the competing philosophicalontological wagers which underpin each of his methodologies except from within a point of view which itself reflects some such wagers. Yet what this implies, strictly speaking, is only a pluralism about philosophical assumptions and not about methodologies in the round, that is, not about the explanatory strategies that are conventionally associated with those assumptions in IR. The kind of methodological pluralism which constitutes an appropriate response to the fact that multiple wagers receive support in the philosophy of science does not transpose directly to the constellations of explanatory strategies with which those wagers may be conventionally associated in IR. Three important thoughts follow from this. Firstly, some explanatory strategies really may be better or worse at helping us to answer particular questions and this is something that we can and should debate. Secondly, we should, nonetheless, adopt a critical attitude to any claim that a particular explanatory strategy represents the best or only way to approach a particular problem. This applies especially where such claims reflect conventional wisdom, for it is only by debating the merits of those methodological practices which have become conventional that we make space for active consideration of what the alternatives may be. Thirdly, to the extent that choices between

43. See, for example, King, Keohane and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry, 4: All good research can be understood indeed, is best understood to derive from the same underlying logic of inference. 44. Jacksons own willingness to re-engage long-standing debates about Waltzs methodology might prompt us to ask what is at stake in his reclassification of Waltz as an analyticist. Is he attempting to co-opt Waltz the analyticist in support of his contention that methodologies other than neopositivism and critical realism are entitled to be regarded as forms of scientific inquiry in IR?

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alternative explanatory strategies reflect not only philosophical-ontological wagers, but also choices about what to subject to scientific inquiry, this marks the point at which science intersects with politics, ethics and ideology. In a sense, therefore, what is implicit in Jacksons position is the need to identify how IR debates are shaped by the political, ethical and ideological commitments which, in his Weberian account, make scientific inquiry both possible and potentially useful. Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the editors and three anonymous reviewers for comments. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the Oxford International Relations Research Colloquium, where Adam Freeman acted as discussant.

Author Biography Adam R.C. Humphreys is Fellow in Politics at Brasenose College, University of Oxford, UK.