Session 22- Synergy

"War and Peace" is a piece by Jack S. Levy which attempts to give an overview of the different approaches and methods used by scholars to study the phenomena included in the title. The author then describes the recurrence, variations of war and peace and origins of particular wars, as the key themes that his paper will address. The author also presents us with operational definition problems regarding the concepts of war and peace. Three perspectives on war are also mentioned; war as a non-zero constant, war as a variable, and the study of particular wars. The paper further argues that these three perspectives lead to different approaches in methodologies, premises, research designs etc. The Liberal and Realist perspectives of war along with their critiques are also presented. The author concludes by illustrating the importance of the multi-method approach (incorporation and integration of different schools of thoughts or methods?) and suggests its use in not studying War and Peace but argues that it is useful for other research communities as well.

I admire the author's ability to gather  and integrate diverging instruments and perspectives in order to synthesize his arguments. The multi-method approach in my opinion is a better way of understanding and having different perspectives on issues that are studied or explained via lets say a uni-method approach that would not bother to revise its fundamental premises even if later work is arguing against it or has halted altogether completely.