ABSTRACT
Methodologists often discuss the issues that arise in the explanation of outcomes that apply to multiple cases, such as the occurrence of wars, alliances, and trade agreements. They have comparatively less to say about the explanation of particular historical outcomes, such as the causes of World War I and the end of the Cold War. In this chapter, I build on Goertz and Levy’s framework for the analysis of necessary condition counterfactuals in examining how scholars establish valid claims about the causes of singular events that occurred in the past.
