The Effect of Actor and Issue Classifications on the Analysis of Global Conflict-Cooperation
T HE REALIST PARADIGM, associated with the work of Hans Morgenthau, has dominated Western scholarly enquiry into world politics. Despite the intuitive satisfaction derived from that map of reality, serious questions have been raised in recent years about the utility of this paradigm to produce theoretically significant findings.' The failure of the familiar paradigm to produce explanations and predictions that survive empirical tests may be due to distortions that the map creates in data collections. This research note will examine some distortions that result from three simplifications: the emphasis