A New Case for the Study of Individual Events in Political Science

Despite significant advances in both quantitative and qualitative methods over the last few years, the discipline of political science has yet to explicitly address the special challenges and benefits of studying specific historical events marked by high levels of contingency. The field of security studies, where concrete historical cases have always played a major role in the development of the subfield, should place special focus on the specific challenges and benefits to the study of such events. Taking full advantage of what event-specific research can teach us, however, will require thinking about generalizability, evidence, the role of contingency, and falsifiability in ways that are not yet fully understood in the discipline. More clarity on such questions will benefit our understanding of like nuclear crises in particular.