Publications by Author: Braumoeller, Bear F.

Political scientists typically conceive of causation purely in "mean–centric" terms: the statement "X causes Y" is taken to imply that an increase in the value of X changes the mean of the distribution of Y. This article challenges that point of view. Many independent variables of interest to students of politics have an effect by altering the variance, not the mean, of the distribution of the dependent variable. This form of causation is alien to methodology textbooks and greatly underappreciated in empirical work. Thinking about the causes of changing variance opens up a theoretical dimension that has heretofore been neglected; understanding the causes of changing variance can provide a more fine–grained empirical description of the political world. 

America in the 1920s and 1930s is often characterized as having been isolationist in the realm of security policy. This article offers a critique of this characterization. American diplomacy in the 1920s was subtle but ambitious and effective. American policy in the years leading up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor was in fact quite responsive to events on the European continent. Isolationists did exist, of course, but they never came close to constituting a majority. In short, American isolationism is a myth.