ABSTRACT
The best thing about abduction is that the researcher, instead of only confirming, modifying or disconfirming hypotheses derived from prefabricated theories, actually learns something new about his field of inquiry. For example, I personally sympathize with the conservative view that the monopoly of force is the core of sovereign statehood, which states should be careful not to surrender beyond their territorial reach of control. So my own cognitive and emotional bias was that, in this particular policy field, national sovereignty should play a more important role than functional incentives. To my own surprise, however, I have found that states are more concerned with problem solving than with territorial sovereignty even in this most unlikely field of international cooperation (Mitrany 1943: 25-7, 34; Morgenthau 1963).
