Presidential Address: The secret ingredient on Iron Chef—road kill

• Published in: Conflict management and peace science Vol. 30; no. 1; pp. 3 - 10
• Main Author: Morgan, T. Clifton
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE 01.02.2013
• Subjects: Conflict; Conflict management; Defense spending; Democracy; Empirical evidence; Game theory; International Relations; Peacetime; Physics; Presidents; Scientists; Spatial models; Technology; Test theory
• DOI: 10.1177/0738894212470790
• ISSN: 0738-8942

Looking back over the past four decades one cannot fail to be impressed by the advances in the scientific study of conflict processes. One aspect of this rests simply with the growth in the number of people who consider themselves "peace scientists" and with the general acceptance that the field now enjoys. While individual studies continue to be challenged on methodological and epistemological grounds, as they should be, it is rare for someone to make general claims to the effect that international relations simply cannot be studied in a rigorous, systematic and reproducible (i.e. scientific) way. This was not always the case (see, for example, the collection of essays in Knorr and Rosenau, 1969). [Reprinted by permission; copyright Sage Publications Ltd.]