ABSTRACT
Conceptual analysis never had it easy in International Relations. Annoyed by the continuous need to defend such analysis – ‘it is not mere semantics’ (leaving aside for the moment what this charge may precisely mean) – David Baldwin (1979, 1980) bitterly and repeatedly complained about the systematic neglect of the central role such analysis plays in the scientific enterprise. It seemed so self-evident, that being clear about the meaning of concepts would enhance and indeed ensure any meaningful scientific communication to start with. Looking at how concepts fitted into frameworks of analyses and theories would moreover be fundamental for specifying the very building blocks of, and causal links in our explanations. Not basing one's analysis on a careful conceptual discussion ran the risk of tautologies within the explanatory frameworks. Such a prior conceptual check was crucial to avoid the ‘garbage in – garbage out’ of empirical analysis, where analysts faced with anomalies busily fine-tune methods and empirics, when the problem is already in their conceptual base (see the ‘wrecking exercise’ in Baldwin 1985). Surely, conceptual analysis as a first necessary step of all explanations was to be a central concern of any social science. And yet .
