Proposes a set of criteria for distinguishing plausible from implausible counterfactual conjectures across a range of applications. This volume makes use of these and other criteria to evaluate counterfactuals that emerge in diverse methodological contexts including comparative case studies, game theory, and statistical analysis.

Taken together, these essays go a long way toward establishing a more nuanced and rigorous framework for assessing counterfactual arguments about world politics in particular and about the social sciences more broadly.

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List of Contributors
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Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical, Methodological, and Psychological Perspectives
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Causes and Counterfactuals in Social Science: Exploring an Analogy between Cellular Automata and Historical Processes
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Counterfactual Reasoning in Western Studies of Soviet Politics and Foreign Relations
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Confronting Hitler and Its Consequences
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Back to the Past: Counterfactuals and the Cuban Missile Crisis
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Counterfactual Reasoning in Motivational Analysis: U.S. Policy toward Iran
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Counterfactuals about War and Its Absence
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Using Counterfactuals in Historical Analysis: Theories of Revolution
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Counterfactuals and International Affairs: Some Insights from Game Theory
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Off-the-Path Behavior: A Game-Theoretic Approach to Counterfactuals and Its Implications for Political and Historical Analysis
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Rerunning History: Counterfactual Simulation in World Politics
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Counterfactuals, Past and Future
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Commentary 1: Conceptual Blending and Counterfactual Argument in the Social and Behavioral Sciences
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Commentary 2: Psychological Biases in Counterfactual Thought Experiments
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Commentary 3: Counterfactual Inferences as Instances of Statistical Inferences
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Commentary 4: Counterfactuals, Causation, and Complexity
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References
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Index