| Summary/Abstract |
John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt argue that American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War has been a failure and that the reasons stem from the American domestic political system. For Mearsheimer, a prevailing form of Liberalism is at fault; for Walt it is the consensus of the foreign policy establishment (“the Blob”). These arguments have much to be said for them but are not supported by adequate evidence because both authors neglect standard methods of verification: counterfactuals, the applications of the hypothetico-deductive method, and the use of comparisons to countries or cases in which the posited independent variable is absent. Examining the arguments in this light brings out weaknesses and opportunities for further testing, highlights the tension between the explanatory and the normative aspects of realist theorizing, and points to other cases in which the impact of the situation is discounted.
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