Abstract

We like to believe that our world is regular, that we can predict it fairly well, and that we can control the risks we run. Nassim Taleb argues that we are fooling ourselves and that the course of history is driven by rare and extreme events, which he calls Black Swans. There is much to this, but scholars—at least in political science—are less oblivious to the problem than he believes. More thought needs to be given to hard issues of whether key events were anticipated, whether there were functional substitutes for events that are seen as turning points, the role of beliefs and expectations in Black Swans, and the dynamics that might explain unpredictability.