Developing the Answers 13onto treaties just cheap talk? Is it because there is no threat of direct international
enforcement? Or is it because states often lack the capacity to implement new stan-
dards? Sociologist Wade M. Cole began with a hypothesis, unlike the Correlates of War
proj ect, which began with data collection, that “noncompliance with international
treaty obligations is neither willful or premediated.”^14 Rather, it depends on a state’s
bureaucratic efficiency. Using data from each in de pen dent variable of state bureau-
cratic efficiency and dependent variables of state empowerment and physical integrity
rights data found in the Cingranelli- Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Dataset, Cole
uses sophisticated statistical models that confirm his expectations. Improvements in a
state’s empowerment and physical- integrity rights after the signing of the International
Covenant on Civil and Po liti cal Rights depend on state capacity.
Yet methodological prob lems occur in both proj ects. The Correlates of War data-
base looks at all international wars, irrespective of the dif er ent po liti cal, military,
social, and technological contexts. Can wars of the late 1800s be explained by the
same factors as the wars of the new millennium? Answering that question has led sub-
sequent researchers to expand the data set to include militarized interstate disputes,
conflicts that do not involve a full- scale war. And those data include not only interna-
tional and civil wars but also regional internal, intercommunal, and nonstate wars.^15
The human rights study also involves major prob lems of mea sure ment and operation-
alization of key variables. How can one mea sure concepts like state’s empowerment
and state capacity? Many dif er ent indicators need to be combined. And data may not
be available for all states across all the time periods studied. In each case, alternative
explanations need to be investigated. Such studies are never an end in themselves,
only a means to improve explanation and to provide other scholars with hypotheses
that warrant further testing.
Disillusionment with behavioral approaches has taken several forms. First, data
have to be selected and compiled. Dif er ent data may lead to substantially dif er ent
conclusions. Witness the contrasting assessments on the question of whether there has
been a decline in global vio lence, whether the world is, in fact, more peaceful. Second,
some critics suggest that attention to data and methods has overwhelmed the sub-
stance of their research. Few would doubt the importance of Singer and Small’s initial
excursion into the causes of war, but even the researchers themselves admitted losing
sight of the impor tant questions in their quest to compile data and hone research
methods. Some scholars, still within the behavioral orientation, suggest simplifying
esoteric methods to refocus on the substantive questions. Third, to still others, many
of the foundational questions— the nature of humanity and society— are neglected by
behavioralists because they are not easily testable by empirical methods. These critics
suggest returning to the philosophical roots of international relations. Most scholars
remain firmly committed to behavioralism and the scientific method, pointing to the
slow incremental pro gress that has been made in explaining the interactions of states.