Quantitative Methods in International Studies in Russia and Abroad

This article presents the application of quantitative methods of analysis in International Studies in Russia and abroad. The role of formalized quantitative methods and modeling in research methods used in articles in the world leading and top-rated journals on international relations and political science indexed in Scopus is described, based on a review of foreign publications. The genesis of mathematical methods in foreign IR studies is shown, as well as the basic mathematical techniques used by foreign IR researchers in relation to the basic paradigms of theory of IR are studied. The case of the international conflict studies – by far the most quantified sub-discipline within political science – is analyzed in detail. The basic schools for quantitative analysis of international relations, formed in the Soviet Union and Russia, are mentioned and a basic bibliography in this area is provided. This articles also analyses the role of the Soviet and Russian schools of cliometrics and quantitative history under the leadership of academic I.D. Kovalchenko in applying quantitative research in the humanities. The author presents the results of his own study of the use of quantitative methods in articles published in six leading Russian IR scholarly journals in 2014. Three groups of them do not use mathematical methods, occasionally applying and regularly applying- are segregated. The main reasons why quantitative methods are so rarely used in domestic IR studies are revealed. The main practical difficulties of constructing formal models of IR related to interdisciplinary synthesis in educational and research activities in the Russian realities are enumerated. The author pays special attention to the lack of appropriate textbooks in mathematics, adapted for the humanities, as well as of the specialized software needed for quantitative analysis and visualization of research data.

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