Abstract

The correct solution to complex problems, such as those involved in international relations, can generally be discovered ex post but not predicted ex ante. Economics and game theory attempt to model such complexity, but have difficulty taking into account psychological subtleties, the myriad factors that each agent considers when making a decision, and cultural differences. And understanding that one is dealing with a system—that is, with interacting factors instead of with insulated monads—may not make the questions any more amenable to prediction, particularly because the more unique an event, the less likely it is to be foreseen. Jervis's analysis of complex systems may therefore be more of a contribution to the historical sciences than to predictive social science.