Evaluating Theories

Author(s): Kenneth N. Waltz

Source: The American Political Science Review, Vol. 91, No. 4, (Dec., 1997), pp. 913-917
Published by: American Political Science Association
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 AmericanPoliticalScience Review Vol. 91, No. 4 December 1997

Evaluating
Theories
KENNETH N. WALTZ Universityof California, Berkeley
JohnVasquezclaims to follow Imre Lakatos but distortshis criteriaforjudging theoriesand evaluating
research programs. Vasquez claims that facts observed can falsify a theory by showing that its
predictions are wrong.He fails to consider thepuzzles posed by the interdependenceof theoryand fact.
He places all realists in a single paradigm despite the divergentassumptions of traditional and structural
realists. In contrast to Vasquez, I argue that explanation, not prediction, is the ultimate criterion of good
theory, that a theory can be validated only by working back and forth between its implications and an
uncertain state of affairs that we take to be the realityagainst which theory is tested, and that the results of
tests are alwaysproblematic.

H aving previously covered the criticisms John
Vasquez makes (see especially Waltz 1979,
1986), I respond to his article reluctantly. One
is, however, always tempted to try again.
Following Lakatos (1970), albeit shakily, in moving
from paradigms to theories to research programs,
Vasquez says he places theories in a single paradigm if
they "share certain fundamental assumptions" (p. 900).
He thereupon lumps old and new realists together in
one realist paradigm. This is odd since, as he recog-
nizes, old and new realists work from different basic
assumptions. Believing that states strive for ever more
power, Hans Morgenthau took power to be an end in
itself. In contrast, I built structural theory on the
assumption that survival is the goal of states and that
power is one of the means to that end. Political
scientists generally work from two different paradigms:
one behavioral, the other systemic. Old realists see
causes as running directly from states to the outcomes
their actions produce. New realists see states forming a
structure by their interactions and then being strongly
affected by the structure their interactions have
formed. Old realists account for political outcomes
mainly by analyzing differences among states; new
realists show why states tend to become like units as
they try to coexist in a self-help system, with behaviors
and outcomes explained by differences in the positions
of states as well as by their internal characteristics (see
Waltz 1990). If the term "paradigm"means anything at
all, it cannot accommodate such fundamental differ-
ences.
Vasquez puts old and new realists in the same pot
because he misunderstands realists. He makes odd
statements about what paradigms do because he mis-
understands paradigms. He believes that paradigms
easily generate a family of theories (p. 900). Paradigms
are apparently like sausage machines: Turn the crank,
and theories come out. Yet no one in any field is able
to generate theories easily or even to say how to go
about creating them.
Vasquez finds lots of realist theories because he
defines theories loosely as "inter-related propositions
purporting to explain behavior" (footnote 3). If inter-
Kenneth N. Waltz is Ford Professor of Political Science, Emeritus,
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1950.
The author is grateful to Karen Ruth Adams for her assistance.
relating propositions were all it took to make theories,
then, of course, we would have many of them. I can,
however, think of any number of propositions purport-
ing to explain something that would not qualify as
theories by any useful definition of the term. I define
theory as a picture, mentally formed, of a bounded
realm or domain of activity. A theory depicts the
organization of a realm and the connections among its
parts. The infinite materials of any realm can be
organized in endlessly different ways. Reality is com-
plex; theory is simple. By simplification, theories lay
bare the essential elements in play and indicate neces-
sary relations of cause and interdependency-or sug-
gest where to look for them (see Waltz 1979, 1-13).
Vasquez, following his definition, finds many theories;
I find few.
Vasquez's belief that theories are plentiful and easy
to produce reflects the positivist tradition that perme-
ates American political science. At the extreme, posi-
tivists believe that reality can be apprehended directly,
without benefit of theory. Reality is whatever we
directly observe. In a more moderate version of posi-
tivism, theory is but one step removed from reality, is
arrived at largely by induction, is rather easy to con-
struct, and is fairly easy to test. In their book on
interdependence, Keohane and Nye provide a clear
example when they "argue that complex interdepen-
dence sometimes comes closer to reality than does
realism" (1989, 23). Yet, if we knew what reality is,
theory would serve no purpose. Statements such as
"parsimony is a judgment .., about the nature of the
world: it is assumed to be simple," neatly express the
idea that theory does little more than mirror reality
(King, Keohane, and Verba 1994, 20)
Faced with an infinite number of "facts" one must
wonder, however, which ones are to be taken as
pertinent when trying to explain something. As the
molecular biologist Gunther Stent has put it: "Reality
is constructed by the mind ... the recognition of struc-
tures is nothing else than the selective destruction of
information" (1973, E17). Scientists and philosophers
of science refer to facts as being "theory laden" and to
theory and fact as being "interdependent." "Every
fact," as Goethe nicely put it, "is already a theory."
Theory, rather than being a mirror in which reality is
reflected, is an instrument to be used in attempting to
explain a circumscribed part of a reality of whose true

913
Evaluating Theories
dimensions we can never be sure. The instrument is of
no use if it does little more than ape the complexity of
the world. To say that a "theory should be just as
complicated as all our evidence suggests" (King, Keo-
hane, and Verba 1994, 20) amounts to a renunciation
of science from Galileo onward.
Because of the interdependence of theory and fact,
the construction and testing of theories is a more
problematic task than most political scientists have
thought. Understanding this, Lakatos rejected "dog-
matic falsification" in favor of judging theories by the
fruitfulness of the research programs they may spawn.
Following Lakatos, Vasquez faults the realist paradigm
for what he takes to be the regressive quality of its
research program. Forsaking Lakatos, he then adduces
evidence that in his view falsifies balance-of-power
theory in its structural-realist form. I shall consider
both claims.
I disagree with Lakatos on some points, but not on
his rejection of the notion that tests can falsify theories.
To explain why falsification won't do, I all too briefly
mention two problems. First, proving something false
requires proving something else true. Yet the facts
against which we test theories are themselves problem-
atic. As Lakatos rightly says, in italics, "theoriesare not
only equally unprovable,. . . they are also equally undis-
provable" (1970, 103; cf. Harris 1970, 353). Among
natural scientists, falsification is a little used method
(Bochenski 1965, 109; cf. Harris 1970). Social scientists
should think about why this is so.
Second, citing Popper (1959), Vasquez insists that
"paradigms" should specify the evidence that would
disprove them and criticizes realism for not doing so
(p. 905). In contrast, Lakatos observes that "the most
admired scientific theories simply fail to forbid any
observablestate of affairs"(1970, 100, his italics). This is
true for many reasons. Lakatos himself points out that
we always evaluate theories with a ceteris paribus
clause implied, and we can never be sure that it holds.
To express the same thought in different words, scien-
tific theories deal in idealizations. If the results of
scientific experiments are carried to enough decimal
points, hypotheses inferred from theories are always
proved wrong. As the Nobel Laureate in physics,
Steven Weinberg, puts it: "There is no theory that is
not contradicted by some experiment" (1992, 93).
Ernst Nagel (1961, 460-6, 505-9) expressed a similar
thought when he pointed out that social-science pre-
dictions fail because social scientists do not deal in
idealizations. It is because falsification is untenable
that Lakatos proposes that we evaluate theories by the
fruitfulness of their research programs. Ultimately, he
concludes, as others had earlier, that a theory is
overthrown only by a better theory (p. 119; cf. Conant
1947, 48).
Despite claiming to follow Lakatos's advice to eval-
uate theories through their research programs,
Vasquez emphasizes what he takes to be evidence
falsifying balance-of-power theory. According to him,
the historian Paul Schroeder (1994) has presented
"devastatingevidence" against it. One must under-
stand,however,what a theoryclaimsto explainbefore
914
December 1997
FIGURE 1
International Structure
Interacting Units
attempting to test it. Early in his piece, Schroeder (p.
109) draws a picture of neorealism's logic. All of his
arrows run in one direction, from the system down-
ward. Realizing that many people have trouble under-
standing theory, I drew a few pictures myself. Figure 1
depicts one of them (Waltz 1979, 40). Structural theory
emphasizes that causation runs from structures to
states and from states to structure. It also explains,
among other things, why balances of power recurrently
form. Schroeder rejects structural theory because it
fails to account for the motives of statesmen. Yet, as
William Graham Sumner wrote: "Motives from which
men act have nothing at all to do with the conse-
quences of their action" ([1911] 1968, 212). I would say
"little" rather than "nothing," but the point is clear,
and structural theory explains why it holds. What
Vasquez takes to be Schroeder's "devastating evi-
dence" turns out to be a melange of irrelevant diplo-
matic lore. Like Vasquez, Schroeder ignores the basic
injunction that theories be judged by what they claim to
explain. Moreover, both fail to notice that Mor-
genthau's understanding of balances of power differs
fundamentally from mine. For Morgenthau, balances
are intended and must be sought by the statesmen who
produce them. For me, balances are produced whether
or not intended. Schroeder's "evidence" may apply to
Morgenthau's ideas about balances of power; it does
not apply to mine. This again shows how misleading it
is to place all realists in a single paradigm.
Vasquez and Schroeder note that power is often out
of balance. Is structural theory invalidated because the
actions of states sometimes fail to bring their system
into balance? In answering this question, it is helpful to
think of similar problems in economics. Classical eco-
nomic theory holds that, in the absence of governmen-
tal intervention, competitive economies tend toward
equilibrium at full employment of the factors of pro-
duction. Yet one rarely finds an economy in equilib-
rium. Further, theory leads one to expect that compe-
tition will lead to a similarity of products as well as of
prices. Illustrating the result, Harold Hotelling (1929)
pointed out that autos, furniture, cider, churches, and
political parties become much like one another. But a
tendency toward the sameness of products may not be
apparent at a given moment, for a competitor may
successfully outflank its rivals by offering a design that
breaks the mold. Do economies in disequilibrium and
variations in product design cast doubt on hypotheses
inferred from theories of competition?Hardly.Eco-
nomic theorypredictsstrongand persistenttendencies
American Political Science Review
rather than particular states or conditions. Similarly, no
contradiction exists between saying that international-
political systems tend strongly toward balance but are
seldom in balance.
Vasquez's attempt to apply Lakatos's ideas about
research programs to balance-of-power theory is as
unsuccessful as his attempt to adduce evidence that
would falsify it. Lakatos defines a series of theories as
progressive "if each new theory has some excess em-
pirical content over its predecessor, that is, if it predicts
some novel, hitherto unexpected facts" (1970, 116).
Newtonian science is a wonderful example of a pro-
gressive series of theories, incorporating the same basic
assumptions about the universe in theories covering
successively more phenomena. Classical economics,
able to explain the working of national and of interna-
tional economies as well, is another example. In inter-
national politics, where can one find such a use of
fundamental concepts to develop theories covering
ever more phenomena? Vasquez claims to find several,
but his claim rests sometimes on placing in a single
realist program work that belongs in different ones, and
sometimes on taking work done when applying a
theory as being the creation of a new one.
One cannot judge the fertility of a research program
by evaluating work done outside of it. Vasquez takes
Randall Schweller's (1994) essay on bandwagoning as
work done within the realist paradigm and argues that
it provides an example of its degeneration. Schweller,
however, sets out to show that the central theory of
neorealism is wrong. He rejects neorealism's assump-
tions about power as a means and survival as the goal
of states in favor of Morgenthau's assumption that
states seek ever more power. He claims to show that
bandwagoning is more common than balancing, believ-
ing that if it is, then neorealist theory fails. Schweller
and I work within different research programs. The
question therefore shifts from the quality of the pro-
gram to whether his claims about bandwagoning inval-
idate structural theory.
Structural theory assumes that the dominant goal of
states is security, since to pursue whatever other goals
they may have, they first must survive. Bandwagoning
and balancing by the logic of the theory are opposite
responses of security-seeking states to their situations.
States concerned for their security value relative gains
over absolute ones. At the extremes, however, with
very secure or very insecure states, the quest for
absolute gains may prevail over the quest for relative
ones. Very weak states cannot make themselves secure
by their own efforts. Whatever the risks, their main
chance may be to jump on a bandwagon pulled by
stronger states. Other states may have a choice be-
tween joining a stronger state and balancing against it,
and they may make the wrong one. States sometimes
blunder when trying to respond sensibly to both inter-
nal and external pressures. Morgenthau once com-
pared a statesman not believing in the balance of
power to a scientist not believing in the law of gravity.
Laws can be broken, but breaking them risks punish-
ment. One who violates the law of gravityby stepping
from a nineteenth-storywindowwill sufferinstantand
Vol. 91, No. 4
condign punishment. A state that bandwagons when
the situation calls for balancing runs risks, as Mussoli-
ni's Italy discovered after it jumped on Hitler's band-
wagon, although in international politics punishment
may not be swift and sure. By joining the stronger side,
Italy became Germany's junior partner, and Mussolini
lost control of his policy. Bandwagoning by some states
strengthened Germany and encouraged Hitler to fur-
ther conquest. Only balancing in the middle and later
1930s could have stopped him. Various states, includ-
ing Italy, paid a great price for their failure to balance
earlier. Theory does not direct the policies of states; it
does describe their expected consequences.
States' actions are not determined by structure.
Rather, as I have said before, structures shape and
shove; they encourage states to do some things and to
refrain from doing others. Because states coexist in a
self-help system, they are free to do any fool thing they
care to, but they are likely to be rewarded for behavior
that is responsive to structural pressures and punished
for behavior that is not.
Vasquez requires that theories predict, since predic-
tion seems to make falsification possible. He therefore
seizes upon Schweller's claim that bandwagoning is
more common than balancing. Whether this looks like
falsifying evidence depends on what is predicted. Like
classical economic theory, balance-of-power theory
does not say that a system will be in equilibrium most
or even much of the time. Instead, it predicts that, willy
nilly, balances will form over time. That, Vasquez
would no doubt say, is not much of a prediction. Yet
Charles Kegley (1993, 139) has sensibly remarked that
if a multipolar system emerges from the present unipo-
lar one, realism will be vindicated. Seldom in interna-
tional politics do signs of vindication appear so quickly.
Multipolarity is developing before our eyes: To all but
the myopic, it can already be seen on the horizon.
Moreover, it is emerging in accordance with the bal-
ancing imperative.
In the light of structural theory, unipolarity appears
as the least stable of international configurations. Un-
likely though it is, a dominant power may behave with
moderation, restraint, and forbearance. Even if it does,
however, weaker states will worry about its future
behavior. America's founding fathers warned against
the perils of power in the absence of checks and
balances. Is unbalanced power less of a danger in
international than in national politics? Some countries
will not want to bet that it is. As nature abhors a
vacuum, so international politics abhors unbalanced
power. Faced by unbalanced power, states try to in-
crease their own strength or they ally with others to
bring the international distribution of power into bal-
ance. The reactions of other states to the drive for
dominance of Charles I of Spain, of Louis XIV and
Napoleon Bonaparte of France, of Wilhelm II and
Adolph Hitler of Germany, illustrate the point.
Will the preponderant power of the United States
elicit similar reactions? Unbalanced power, whoever
wields it, is a potential danger to others. The powerful
state may,and the United Statesdoes, thinkof itself as
actingfor the sake of peace, justice, and well-beingin
915
Evaluating Theories
the world. These terms, however, will be defined to the
liking of the powerful, which may conflict with the
preferences and interests of others. The powerful state
will at times act in ways that appear arbitraryand high
handed to others, who will smart under the unfair
treatment they believe they are receiving. Some of the
weaker states in the system will therefore act to restore
a balance and thus move the system back to bi- or
multipolarity. China and Japan are doing so now.
In international politics, overwhelming power repels
and leads others to balance against it. Stephen Walt
(1987, viii, 5, 21, 263-5) has offered a reformulation of
balance-of-power theory, believing that states balance
not against power but against threat. Vasquez sees
Walt's "refinement" as placing a semantic patch on the
original theory in an attempt to rescue it from falsifying
evidence. I would agree if I took Walt's reformulation
to be the correction of a concept that increases the
explanatory power of a defective theory and makes it
more precise. Changing the concepts of a theory,
however, makes an old theory into a new one that has
to be evaluated in its own right. I see "balance of
threat" not as the name of a new theory but as part of
a description of how makers of foreign policy think
when making alliance decisions. Theory is an instru-
ment. The empirical material on which it is to be used
is not found in the instrument; it has to be adduced by
the person using it. Walt makes this clear when he
describes "threat"as one of the "factors that statesmen
consider when deciding with whom to ally" (p. 21). In
moving from international-political theory to foreign-
policy application one has to consider such matters as
statesmen's assessments of threats, but they do not
thereby become part of the theory. Forcing more
empirical content into a theory would truly amount to
a "regressive theory shift." It would turn a general
theory into a particular explanation. Vasquez, and
Walt, have unfortunately taken the imaginative appli-
cation of a theory to be the creation of a new one.
Vasquez makes a similar mistake in his appraisal of
Christensen's and Snyder's (1990) essay, "Chain Gangs
and Passed Bucks." "The authors," according to
Vasquez, "find a gap in Waltz's explanation [of Euro-
pean diplomacy preceding World War II] and try to
correct it by bringing in a variable from Jervis" (p. 906).
However good or bad my brief explanation of what
happened in Europe prior to World War II may be
(Waltz 1979, 164-70), an explanation is not a theory. A
theory does not provide an account of what has hap-
pened or of what may happen. Just as a hammer
becomes a useful tool when nails and wood are avail-
able, so a theory becomes useful in devising an expla-
nation of events when combined with information
about them.
The question is not what should be included in an
account of foreign policies but what can be included in
a theory of international politics. A theory is not a
mere collection of variables. If a "gap" is found in a
theory, it cannot be plugged by adding a "variable" to
it. To add to a theory something that one believes has
been omittedrequiresshowinghow it can take its place
as one element of a coherent and effectivetheory. If
916
December 1997
that were easy to do, we would be blessed with a wealth
of strong and comprehensive theories.
I conclude by emphasizing a few points about the
testing of theories. A theory's ability to explain is more
important than its ability to predict. At least Steven
Weinberg and many others think so. Believing that
scientists will one day come up with a final theory, he
writes that even then we will not be able "to predict
everything or even very much," but, he adds, we will be
able to understand why things "work the way they do"
(1992, 45; cf. Toulmin 1961, 36-8). Success in explain-
ing, not in predicting, is the ultimate criterion of good
theory. Theories of evolution, after all, predict nothing
in particular.
Vasquez makes the testing of theories seem easy by
adopting a positivist standard: Does the observation
made correspond with a theory's prediction? His adop-
tion of such a standard is shown by his crisp assertion
that the failure of states to balance "in the period
before World War II... should be taken as falsifying
evidence" (p. 906). Yet what is to be taken as evidence
for or against a theory is always in question. Some
attempts to balance were made in the prewar years, but
a balance formed, so to speak, only in the end. Should
delay in completing a balance be taken as evidence
contradicting balance-of-power theory? One may not
be able to answer the question decisively. Testing
theories is an uncertain business. In this case, however,
one should certainly remember that the theory being
tested explains the process of balancing as well as
predicting that balances recurrently form. The theory
cannot say how long the process will take.
The title of Errol Harris's (1970) book, Hypothesis
and Perception, implies a criticism of Popper's claim
that a critical test of a hypothesis, if flunked, falsifies a
theory once and for all. As Harris suggests, our per-
ceptions count; the results of tests require interpreta-
tion. Evaluating a theory requires working back and
forth between the implications of the theory and an
uncertain state of affairs that we take to be the reality
against which the theory is tested. Whether or not
events in the 1930s tend to validate or to falsify my
version of balance-of-power theory depends as much
on how one interprets the theory as on what happened.
However thorough the evaluation of a theory, we can
never say for sure that the theory is true. All the more,
then, we should test a theory in all of the ways we can
think of-by trying to falsify and to confirm it, by
seeing whether things work in the way the theory
suggests, and by comparing events in arenas of similar
structure to see if they follow similar patterns. Wein-
berg suggests yet another way. "The most important
thing for the progress of physics," he writes, "is not the
decision that a theory is true, but the decision that it is
worth taking seriously" (1992, 103). The structural
theoryset forthin my Theoryof InternationalPolitics at
least passes that test.
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