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research task. For example, despite the considerable research effort of many scholars over the years on the question “Do arms races lead to war?” a recent review of this literature tells us that “there is still no well-developed theory that provides a reliable guide for policymakers.”537 However, research on this question does show that arms races are neither a necessary condition for the occurrence of war (since wars do sometimes occur in the absence of a prior arms race) nor a sufficient condition (since an arms race is not always followed by war). Additional study should attempt at least to identify a number of conditions that can be said to favor the likelihood of war and perhaps to identify ways in which policymakers can reduce or control the likelihood of an arms race resulting in war.

Sixth, but by no means least in importance, in attempting to develop conditional generalizations, scholars should consider whether the phenomenon in question is characterized by equifinality (or “multiple causation”); that is, the possibility or fact that similar outcomes in different cases of a phenomenon can have different causal explanations. An example of equifinality was the discovery that deterrence can fail in several different ways, leading to the identification of three different causal patterns leading to deterrence failure.538 Another example of equifinality emerged in the identification of several different paths to “inadvertent war” (a war that occurs even though neither side wanted or expected it at the beginning of the crisis).539

The phenomenon of equifinality pervades much of international relations and many other areas of life, as John Stuart Mill recognized so many years ago in his System of Logic. Mill warned that the methods of agreement and difference he outlined were not applicable to many social phenomena, because their occurrence was subject to “plurality of causes.”540 Equifinality has important implications not only for the form that causal knowledge of foreign policy outcomes often must take but also for research strategies aimed at developing causal theory. For example, the fact that the phenomenon being studied is subject to equifinality and that alternative causal paths may lead to similar outcomes directly contradicts the familiar insistence of some scholars that the researcher must vary the dependent variable. Scholars should not assume, as they often do, that the task of developing theory and causal knowledge consists in finding a single causal generalization or pattern for all instances of an undertaking that have resulted in a similar outcome. Rather, the research task will be better pursued and be more fruitful if the investigator is alert to discovering different causal patterns that lead to a similar outcome.

Other Types of Scholarly Contributions to Policymaking

As noted earlier in this chapter, although we focus discussion on one important type of knowledge that scholarly research can contribute to policymaking, there are also other types of contributions.541 For example, well-informed, objective analyses of problems such as the impact of conflicts of a nationalistic, ethnic, and religious character on intrastate and interstate relations, problems of nuclear proliferation, environmental and ecological problems, population and demographic trends, problems of food production and distribution, water scarcities, health and sanitation problems—all these and other analyses improve the knowledge base required for management of challenges to national, regional, and world-wide well-being.

In addition, scholars can—and indeed do—make a variety of other types of contributions. Among these are the development of better concepts and conceptual frameworks that can assist policy specialists to orient themselves to the phenomena and problems with which they must deal.542 Similarly, scholars can make an important contribution by challenging simplistic concepts being employed by policymakers. A recent example of such a contribution is Robert Litwak’s criticism of policymakers’ use of the concept of