ABSTRACT
Robert English has provided a strongly written critique of our “Power, Globalization, and the End of the Cold War” (this volume, chapter 7). Unfortunately, English’s reply may have the unintended consequence of reinforcing a pernicious but popular view among political scientists that qualitative research – especially on single cases – cannot generate progress. Here we have a case of seminal importance that has attracted the sustained attention of dozens of international relations scholars for over a decade, and yet it appears that scholars are still involved in what looks like an interminable historians’ debate over causes. In this chapter, we show that such a reaction would be utterly unjustified.
