Counterfactuals and Security Studies

Cause is a cognitive shorthand, not a feature of the world. Context is almost invariably critical in shaping outcomes. For both these reasons, correlations in international relations are weak and all but useless for purposes of explanation and prediction. I develop “inefficient causation” as an alternative approach to explanation and forecasting. It divides the causal problem into two components: reasons actors have for behaving as they do, and the aggregation of the behavior of multiple actors. Both make use of comparative and counterfactual analysis.