Keep muddling through?

Abstract

What is the ground by virtue of which the discipline of International Relations (IR) may claim authoritative knowledge of its subject? Why should officials charged with making policy consult and even defer to the findings, the forecasts, the expert advice of mere scholars? Why aren’t the practitioners of international politics - career diplomats, statesmen - held (as much by themselves as by us) to be the reigning experts? The answer is obvious: IR lays claim to ‘knowledge in its most stringent sense and in its highest form’ through ‘adherence to the standard of knowledge’, (Bueno de Mesquita, 1985: 123, emphasis added) that is, to the scientific standard. Only this claim to dignity makes it conceivable that men of affairs would give ear to prognostications regarding the outcome of this election or the results of that policy, especially when those predictions seem contrary to their plain view of things or ‘gut feelings’.