Evaluating interventions in history: The case of international conflict resolution

Practitioners concerned with reducing or preventing violent interstate or inter-communal conflict need to learn lessons from history to make well-informed choices. Although expert judgment is critical in learning and applying such lessons, social scientific analysis can help practitioners diagnose conflict situations and understand the general conditions under which and the processes by which particular interventions are likely to ameliorate particular kinds of conflict situations. This article identifies numerous conceptual, methodological, and inferential challenges of using a scientific approach to evaluate the effects of past conflict resolution interventions. It also assesses possible ways of meeting each challenge. The authors conclude that it is important to develop theories that include taxonomies of interventions and outcomes, propositions linking outcomes to characteristics of interventions and to external contingencies, and they postulate about the causal mechanisms and processes that connect interventions to outcomes. Practitioners can use such theories as guides to thinking and action, and can advance knowledge through a dialogue of theory and experience. A triangulation strategy that combines several research approaches and sources of information is particularly helpful for meeting challenges of measurement and inference.