Necessary Conditions:
Theory, Methodology, and
Applications
Gary Goertz and Harvey Starr (editors)
ROWMAN & L ITTLEFIELD
N EW YORK
Chapter 4
The Substantive Importance of Necessary
Condition Hypotheses
Gary Goertz
This volume proposes that necessary conditions form a core part of social science
theory. Claims about the existence or importance of necessary conditions in social
science often provoke responses of a philosophical nature, such as (1) there are no
significant necessary conditions for social phenomena, or (2) causation is probabilistic. Other chapters in this volume respond to these positions. In this chapter
I focus not on whether there are significant necessary conditions in the real world
but rather on the extent to which major social thinkers have proposed important
necessary conditions for social phenomena. Simply put:
Necessary conditions are a core part of social theory if influential
social scientists have used them at the core of their theories.
This chapter presents 150 necessary condition hypotheses covering large areas of political science, sociology, and economic history which use very diverse
methodologies. This list is in no sense a representative one and does not pretend
to be a systematic survey. Rather these are necessary condition hypotheses that I
have come across over the last seven or eight years. As such one is more likely
to find hypotheses about domestic/international war/peace than ones on voting.
However, core parts of political science in form of the state, institutions, and policy are well represented.
As the 150 necessary condition hypotheses in this chapter indicate, one can
find necessary conditions in an incredibly diverse array of substantive topics and
methodologies. This alone demonstrates the central importance of necessary conditions for social theory. Based on this survey I can formulate Goertz’s First Law:
I would like to thank Andy Bennett and Alexander George for comments on an earlier version of this
chapter. Bear Braumoeller supplied some of the necessary condition hypotheses used in this chapter.
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For any research area one can find important necessary condition hypotheses.
For those areas of social science that I am most familiar with—international
relations, comparative politics, and economic history, as well as areas of sociology
that significantly overlap with political science, I feel confident in this law.
The way this law operates in game theory and history deserve special attention. History often deals with the individual case, as opposed to the general
propositions that occupy the other social sciences. Here the necessary condition
idea appears via a single-case necessary condition hypothesis. For example:
[T]he international gold standard was a central factor in the worldwide Depression. Recovery proved possible, for these same reasons, only after abandoning the gold standard . . . finally, to clinch the argument we must show
that removal of the gold standard in the 1930s established the preconditions
for recovery from the Depression. (Eichengreen 1992, x, 4)
Levy, in chapter 6, shows how this works in what might be called an analytic narrative. The presence of key events makes things like recovery from the Depression
or the occurrence of World War I possible.
In a related fashion, qualitative comparative case studies in political science
often contain specific necessary condition hypotheses:
This article seeks to explain telecoms liberalization and cooperation in Europe. Two conditions are necessary for international collective action to
emerge. The first is policy adaptation at the national level, such that governments are willing to consider alternatives to pure unilateralism. In telecommunications, technological changes induced widespread policy adaptation in
EC states. This adaptation was a necessary prerequisite for European cooperation. (Sandholtz 1993, 242)
Game theory and formal modeling produce necessary condition hypotheses in
a very different fashion. Given the mathematical orientation of the methodology,
it is not surprising that necessary conditions arise via mathematical proofs. A
typical example would be:
It has been shown then that a necessary and sufficient condition for (B,B) [B
= tit-for-tat] to be an equilibrium [in a repeated prisoners’ dilemma game] is
that each player’s discount factor is no less than the larger of (y−x)/(y−w)
and (y − x)/(x − z). [y = temptation, x = cooperation, z = sucker, and w =
defect]. (M. Taylor 1987, 69, emphasis is the author’s)
This is in formal terms the same idea that Axelrod made famous in The Evolution
of Cooperation: “[T]he two key requisites for cooperation to thrive are that the
cooperation be based on reciprocity, and that the shadow of the future is important
enough to make this reciprocity stable” (1984, 173).
Economics and game theory models illustrate a case where the theory does
not really contain necessary conditions but rather generates them. The necessary
The Substantive Importance of Necessary Condition Hypotheses
67
condition concept is not present in the theory itself. This contrasts with most of
the examples in this chapter (and most of those in other chapters of this volume)
where the necessary condition concept is directly used in formulating the theory.
Hence, the relevance of necessary conditions for much formal modeling comes
through testing the necessary condition results of the theory.
Necessary conditions have remained important over the decades because often the hypothesis was initially formulated in necessary condition terms. The
research then often locks in on that language and the topic continues to be discussed and described in necessary condition terms over the decades. A number of
traditions appear in the hypotheses below. I give a few examples of each but in all
cases many more could easily be found. Among the necessary condition traditions
represented in the 150 hypotheses are:
1. Collective security
2. Democratic peace
3. Deterrence
4. Groupthink
5. Hegemonic stability theory
6. International balance-of-power theories
7. Power transition theory of war
8. (Pre)requisites of democracy
9. Prerequisites of economic growth
10. Social movements and revolution
As one traces these traditions, much of the debate focuses on a critique of the
straightforward necessary condition version of the hypothesis. Often the hypothesis is refined and whittled down, as illustrated by the economic requisites of
democracy and the democratic peace. But rarely does the necessary condition
version of the hypothesis completely disappear from the scene.
INUS Hypotheses
Virtually all of the hypotheses below fall into one of two categories: (1) necessary
condition hypotheses regarding a single case, or (2) general necessary condition
hypotheses covering a broad class of social phenomena such as those listed above.
In the philosophical literature on cause, there exists a prominent view of cause that
has been quite popular with qualitative scholars, the INUS view of causation.
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Gary Goertz
Originally proposed by Mackie (see Mackie 1974 for his most elaborate statement; see Marini and Singer 1988 for a more recent discussion in a social science
context), INUS looks at explanations that are an “Insufficient but Nonredundant
(i.e., Necessary) part of an Unnecessary but Sufficient condition.” This mouthful
is best understood via equations 4.1 and 4.2. Here the “*” and “+” should be
interpreted in logical terms, where “+” means “or” and “*” signifies “and.”
Y
Y
= A∗B∗C +D∗E
= A∗B∗C +D∗C
(4.1)
(4.2)
What we have are two causal configurations or paths in each equation whereby
Y occurs; for example, in equation 4.1 one route is via A ∗ B ∗ C and the second
via D ∗ E, i.e., we have a situation of equifinality for Y . Equation 4.1 says that
A, B, and C together are jointly sufficient for Y , as are D and E. Note that there
are no general necessary conditions for the class of phenomena Y in equation 4.1,
while C is a necessary condition in equation 4.2 because it is common to both
paths (the intersection in set theoretic language, see chapter 2 in this volume).
However, if we limit ourselves to a specific path, say A ∗ B ∗ C in equation 4.1, then A, B, C are necessary conditions for Y . So in this subset of Y , we
do have necessary conditions. Hence INUS necessary condition hypotheses fall
somewhere in between the general hypothesis that C is a necessary condition for
Y in general (as in equation 4.2) and C is a necessary condition for Y in a specific
case.
Ragin’s Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) methodology (1987; chapter 7 in this volume uses QCA) implements exactly the INUS approach. Once the
variables A, B, . . . are coded (dichotomously), the QCA computer program will
automatically generate results like those illustrated in equations 4.1 and 4.2.
Bennett and George’s (n.d.) “[T]ypological theories,” and in fact typologies in
general, produce various pathways to Y similar to those in equations 4.1 and 4.2:
“Typological theory identifies generalized pathways, whether the path in question
has occurred only once, or a thousand times, or is merely a hypothesized as a
potential path that has not yet occurred at all. A pathway is characterized in terms
of variables rather than by the values of these variables associated with a historical
explanation” (Bennett and George n.d.). One difference between the Bennett and
George approach and Ragin’s is that the QCA methodology only works on paths
for which there are actual examples, while typological theories potentially have
categories with no existing cases. Another difference important in the current
context is that the Ragin methodology explicitly uses the necessary and sufficient
condition causal tools, while Bennett and George make no restrictions on the kinds
of causal relations in the various pathways (e.g., one path can have necessary
conditions while another may not).
While equations like those above seem simple, in practice they make large
demands if they are generated via theory. One must theorize at least two causal
paths and figure out the necessary and sufficient conditions for each pathway. For
The Substantive Importance of Necessary Condition Hypotheses
69
this reason, I think it is extremely rare to find INUS sets of hypotheses in the sense
of the equations above in the social science literature (beyond those produced by
Ragin’s program).
However, if one lets go of the requirement that the theory propose necessary
and sufficient conditions, then it is not hard to find examples of multiple path theories. For example, typologies (note that a typological theory is much more than
just a typology) of two or more dimensions generate a variety of configurations
like those in equations 4.1 and 4.2. But the focus of this volume and chapter is on
necessary conditions; these typology-based multiple paths rarely make necessary
condition claims.
One possible reason examples along the lines of equation 4.1 are difficult to
find may be that a given work focuses only on one path without trying to give all
possible paths, which might be generically described as
Y = A ∗ B ∗ C + unspecified alternative paths
(4.3)
While plausible in philosophical examples, equation 4.3 seems difficult to
find in social science practice. I suspect that when scholars propose just necessary
conditions and make no claims of sufficiency, they have multiple paths in mind.
In short, one can frequently find in practice something like equation 4.2, though
much less specified. The argument focuses on the common C variable, which is
necessary to all the multiple paths. The scholar realizes that other factors—like
A, B, D, and E—enter into sufficiency, but does not specify specific paths or
combinations of C with various additional circumstances.
Along these lines, Bennett and George (n.d.) propose that one can construct
typological theories using various case studies as means of generating the various
causal paths. The case studies are the “building blocks” that illustrate and describe
the various means of arriving at Y . They illustrate this using Posen’s (1984) and
Rosen’s (1988) views on the causes of innovation in militaries. Roughly, Posen
argues for an external path via the intervention of civilian elites, failure in war, and
so on, while Rosen stresses the internal path via reforming military elites. This
building block approach makes significant theoretical demands; one needs not
only the building blocks but also the ability to construct a more comprehensive
theory with them.
As I have presented the INUS framework, it seems to lie closer to the general
necessary condition hypothesis end of the spectrum than the individual case end.
However, there is much in Mackie’s treatment that would place it much more on
the individual case side of things. Of most relevance here is that he often talks
about causes being necessary in the circumstances. Something being necessary
in the circumstances makes a lot of sense of a single case, but much less sense in
INUS theories like those of equations 4.1 and 4.2. When Levy says in chapter 6
that the German blank check was a necessary condition for World War I, he is
implicitly saying that it was a necessary condition in the circumstances actually
prevailing before World War I.
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In the philosophical literature, the attachment of the INUS to the individual
case perspective becomes clearer. The examples of INUS almost always involve
singular events and possible alternative routes to a particular outcome:
Since most effects result from multiple causation, what we typically refer
to as a cause is an inus condition. For example, if experts investigating the
cause of a house fire conclude that an electrical short circuit (X) caused the
fire (Y ), they are not saying that X was a necessary or sufficient condition
for Y . They know that smoking in bed, the overturning of a lighted oil stove,
or any one of a number of other events, if it had occurred, might have set the
house on fire. (Marini and Singer 1988, 355)
What we see is an example of equation 4.3 applied to an individual case. It is hard
again to find this kind of example in an actual historical analyses. Most of the
time it arises in arguments against a necessary condition interpretation of a given
historical event. To take the example from Levy’s chapter, one might argue against
him by saying that World War I would have happened even in the absence of a
German blank check (implying perhaps that World War I was overdetermined),
hence it was not “necessary in the circumstances.”
In the context of equation 4.1 we can say A is necessary in the circumstances
of B and C. This gives explicit meaning to the often vague notion of “circumstances”; however, in many of Mackie’s examples, the “circumstances” seem basically to mean in a particular instance.
It is possible to find “INUS-like” hypotheses of the form
Y =A∗B∗C ∗D
(4.4)
Unlike a true INUS model, there is only one causal pathway to Y and so we have in
fact four general or case study specific necessary condition hypotheses represented
by the four variables A, B, C, and D. This INUS-like hypothesis adds, like all
true INUS hypotheses, a sufficient condition hypothesis to the necessary condition
one. Not only are A through D each individually necessary, but they are jointly
sufficient for Y .
While multiple-path INUS hypotheses are rare, single path INUS-like ones
can be found with a little effort. The list below provides some prominent examples
of what INUS-like hypotheses look like in practice. It should be noted that in some
cases, e.g., Claude, the sufficient condition hypothesis must be inferred.
1. “However simple the collective security approach may seem upon superficial acquaintance, the truth is that it assumes the satisfaction of an extraordinarily complex
network of requirements. The first group of prerequisites includes those of a subjective character, related to the general acceptability of the responsibilities of collective
security; the second group may be characterized as a category of objective requirements, related to the suitability of the global situation to the operation of collective
security” (Claude 1971, 250).
The Substantive Importance of Necessary Condition Hypotheses
71
2. “As often as not, it appears, brinkmanship challenges were initiated in the absence
of any good evidence suggesting that the adversary lacked the resolve to defend his
commitment. In many cases, the available evidence point to just the opposite conclusion, as the commitment in question met all the four conditions we have postulated
as necessary for successful deterrence” (Lebow 1981, 93).
3. “Theorem 4.1: Communication leads to enlightenment [knowledge] if and only if:
(1) the speaker is persuasive, (2) only the speaker initially possesses the knowledge that the speaker needs, and (3) common interests or external forces induce the
speaker to reveal what he knows” (Lupia and McCubbins 1998, 69).
4. “[W]e find that cooperation resulted from the temporary convergence of four necessary conditions: a small win set in the United States, a sympathetic chief negotiator,
a faction in the Argentine government willing to use outside pressures to pursue
its own political goals internally, and the existence and active involvement of nongovernmental human rights organizations. Lacking any one of these four factors,
cooperation would almost certainly not have occurred. Given these stringent conditions, it is not surprising that, in general, the United States met with few comparable
successes on the human rights front” (Sikkink and Martin 1994, 355).
5. “[A]dvantages throughout the ‘diamond’ [demand conditions, related or supporting industries, firm strategy/structure, and rivalry] are necessary for achieving and
sustaining competitive success in the knowledge-intensive industries that form the
backbone of advanced economies” (Porter 1990, 73)
6. “[States] will adopt a given policy alternative if, and only if, they have both the
‘willingness’ and the ‘opportunity’ to do so” (Most and Starr 1984, 393).
7. Sabatier and Mazmanian (1979) argue that there are six necessary and sufficient
conditions for the effective implementation of legally stated policy objectives.
8. “Analytic reasoning applied where a systems approach is needed leads to the laying down of all sorts of conditions as prerequisites to balances of power forming
and tending toward equilibrium and as general preconditions of world stability and
peace. Some require that the number of great powers exceed two; others that a major power be willing to play the role of balancer. . . . But balances of power form
in the absence of ‘necessary’ conditions, and since 1945 the world has been stable,
. . . Balance-of-power politics prevail wherever two, and only two, requirements are
met: that the order be anarchic and that it be populated by units wishing to survive”
(Waltz 1979, 121).
Within this list, one can note INUS-like hypotheses arising from formal considerations, as illustrated by Lupia and McCubbins. The Sikkink and Martin example shows how this can work in a case study. The Waltz example illustrates an
extremely general INUS-like hypothesis. The above examples indicate that the
INUS idea is useful in locating the special subclass of theories and hypotheses
that have multiple necessary conditions which are then often considered sufficient
for the outcome.
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Gary Goertz
The INUS perspective also suggests another important kind of a necessary
condition hypothesis, one that might be labeled a “contingent” necessary condition hypothesis.1 Referring back to equation 4.1 we can examine the combination
of D ∗ E, which is sufficient for Y . This suggests the hypothesis that for D to
have an impact, E must be present: E is necessary for D to have an effect (not
necessarily a sufficient one).
One place where one can see these kinds of hypotheses is where E forms the
(structural) preconditions while D is the trigger or precipitant. Elsewhere (Goertz
1994), I have called these “powder keg” theories. If the effect is an explosion, then
the existence of a powder keg is necessary for the match to have its effect of producing the explosion. Theories of [R]evolution—not to mention theories of war,
particularly World War I—often can be divided into the structural preconditions
and precipitating events:
[R]evolution becomes possible when a condition of multiple dysfunction
meets an intransigent elite; just such a conjunction occurred in the decades
before the English, the French, and the Russian revolutions. Revolution only
becomes probable however, if certain special factors intervene: the “precipitants” or “accelerators.” (Stone 1972, 10)
The same idea permeates the literature on social movements. Notably, the concept
of political opportunity structure suggests a powder keg model:
In this study, I shall argue that people go out into the streets and protest in
response to deeply felt grievances and opportunities. But this produces a
protest cycle only when structural cleavages are both deep and visible and
when opportunities for mass protest are opened up by the political system.
. . . But on its own structure change only creates the objective potential for
movements and cannot overcome the personal inertia nor develop the networks and solidarities necessary to mount group action. (Tarrow 1989, 13,
21)
In a little-noticed discussion, Mill (1905 [1859]) talks about what he calls
the “chemical principle” whereby one can get dramatic effects by putting two
chemicals together. Here the effect is more than the sum of the causes. The
powder keg model restates this basic idea. Of particular relevance here is that
Mill contrasts this principle with his dominant view of cause based on an additive
sufficiency view (where the principle analogy is the physics of force).
In this section on INUS hypotheses I have discussed some special subclasses
of necessary condition hypotheses. One can see the possibilities ranging along
two dimensions. The first dimension might be thought of in terms of the N of
the hypothesis, which can range from case study to large N, with INUS ones lying somewhere in the middle. A second dimension consists of the complexity of
the necessary condition hypothesis. Some necessary condition theories are more
1 One could say a “conditional” but the phrase “conditional necessary condition” seems a bit
awkward.
The Substantive Importance of Necessary Condition Hypotheses
73
complex because they include multiple necessary conditions which are jointly sufficient. Another complex hypothesis makes the effect of X contingent on the necessary presence of Z. Not surprisingly most of the hypotheses given below are
of the simple “Z is necessary for Y ” variety. Also, they reflect the two dominant
concerns of social scientists, analyzing individual cases and proposing general
theories.
Sufficient Condition Hypotheses
If necessary conditions are relatively common in social science practice, then explicit sufficient condition hypotheses are quite rare. This is all the more curious
since in principle a necessary condition hypothesis can be converted into a sufficient condition one via the contrapositive operation, whereby “Z is necessary for
Y ” becomes “not-Z is sufficient for not-Y .”
Various (pre)requisites for democracy have been proposed over the last 50
years. The formulation is almost inevitably in necessary condition form, e.g., a
minimum level of GNP is necessary for democracy. This can be replaced by a
claim that a certain level of GNP and lower is sufficient for nondemocracy. If
these are formally equal, why does one not find them both in practice?
One of the few research questions that regularly gets sufficient condition expression is the democratic peace: “[T]he democratic peace is a ‘near-perfect’ sufficient condition for peace—the only such condition known to us” (Gleditsch 1995,
318). In contrast to just about everything else, here the necessary condition version is much less common. One rarely sees the statement that nondemocracy is
a necessary condition for war. This is also a exceptional case where one early
empirical analysis worked from the sufficient condition version. Doyle (1983a,
1983b) categorized states as “liberal democracies” and then examined if they had
fought any wars. This is exactly the sufficiency approach to a necessary condition
hypothesis (the necessary condition approach would look at all wars to see if any
were between democracies).
The absence of sufficient condition hypotheses is perplexing since testing
them is more straightforward than necessary condition ones. The presence of a
necessary condition says nothing about the occurrence of the dependent variable.
However, the presence of a sufficient condition predicts the outcome will occur.
The ambiguity between necessary and sufficient conditions can be seen in the
list of multiple necessary conditions given above. As I noted (p. 70), authors like
Claude, E. Ostrom, and others propose multiple necessary conditions with some
regularity, but often hesitate to say that they are jointly sufficient. In Ostrom’s
case, her data even support the sufficient condition hypothesis, but she still does
not express it explicitly.
Sometimes the hypothesis receives a necessary condition formulation when a
sufficiency one seems more appropriate. For example, Bueno de Mesquita in The
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Gary Goertz
War Trap (1981) says that positive expected utility is a necessary condition for
war. In many ways, a sufficient condition hypothesis makes more sense within the
expected utility framework. One would expect that a large positive expected utility
would be a sufficient for war, just as a large expected profit would be sufficient
reason to invest in a firm. In addition, it would make sense that the larger the
expected utility, the more likely war would be initiated since the expected benefits
would be greater. The basic expected utility idea really leads to a sufficiency
hypothesis as much as to a necessary condition one.2
Specific Sufficient Condition Hypotheses
In this section I provide a diverse list of the few explicit, or relatively explicit,
sufficient condition hypotheses I have come across in the last several years. This
does not include sufficient condition hypotheses that form part of necessary and
sufficient condition hypotheses, which are covered in the database below (see the
“Index of Necessary Condition Hypotheses” at the end of the book to locate hypotheses by author or subject; the index gives their hypothesis numbers, e.g., H1
is hypothesis 1 in the database).
• “In the classical theory of deterrence these two causal events (conditions) [credibility of intent and credibility of capability] are viewed as necessary and sufficient”
(Cioffi-Revilla 1998, 151).
• “The introduction of universal suffrage led almost everywhere (the United States
excepted) to the development of Socialist parties” (Duverger 1954, 66).
• “The presence of strategic territory, then, was relatively close [25 out of 31 cases] to
being a sufficient condition for a dispute to exist” (Huth 1996, 75).
• “These class and target differences among popular movements were the decisive,
organizational cause of the lack of political revolution in Britain . . . The “people”
controlled segmentally most of the extensive and political organizations of protest
. . . Most “populace” discontent was channeled through them; it was not yet extensively or politically organized. This was sufficient cause of the absence of revolutionary movements in Britain before Chartism” (Mann 1993, 123).
• “In the rationalist perspective, however, a community of basic political values and
norms is at best a necessary condition of enlargement [of the European Union].
. . . By contrast, in the sociological perspective, sharing a community of values and
norms with outside states is both necessary and sufficient for their admission to the
organization” (Schimmelfennig 2001, 61).
• “Once adversaries agreed to negotiate, every case where a third-party stepped in to
guarantee a treaty resulted in a successful settlement” (Walter 1997, 349).
2 However, the empirical analysis only supports a necessary condition hypothesis, not a sufficient
condition one.
The Substantive Importance of Necessary Condition Hypotheses
75
Conclusion
The list of necessary condition hypotheses given in the following pages is ordered
alphabetically by author. In order to make this list more usable, Harvey Starr and I
have constructed an Index of Necessary Condition Hypotheses (see the end of the
book) to this list, as well as all the other necessary condition hypotheses discussed
in this volume,3 which allows the reader to find necessary condition hypotheses by
author or subject. Also, where possible I have tried to take direct quotes from the
author in question. In a few instances I have described the hypothesis myself, and
in a few cases I have used another author’s description. The context should make
clear which of these three possibilities is being used. In all cases, the hypothesis
forms a, or often the, core proposition of the work in question. I have avoided
necessary condition hypotheses that were made in passing or which do not seem
central to the work in question. Also, I have excluded cases where scholars have
claimed something is not a necessary condition.
Obviously, I do not make claims for the empirical validity of any particular
necessary condition hypothesis. There are some which I think are clearly not
necessary conditions. However, the point here is not the empirical validity but the
theoretical importance of the proposition. All of the hypotheses below make major
claims about social, political, and economic phenomena. Many of the authors rank
among the most influential social scientists, either currently working or of their
times. But as Goertz’s Law states, one will find important necessary condition
hypotheses in all research areas, hence a list of necessary condition hypotheses
must include many influential scholars.
3 In some cases we have given only the reference if the title states clearly that the book or article is
concerned with a necessary condition hypothesis or hypotheses.
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Gary Goertz
Necessary Condition Hypotheses: A Database
The numbers in parentheses after cited hypotheses are the page numbers where
these quotes can be found.
1. Adler 1992. “The expectations created by the arms control epistemic community
were thus a necessary condition, though certainly not the only condition, for the
forgoing of the ABM regime, and they preceded rather than followed the units of
effective modification—namely, the creation of normative behavioral patterns and
the formal creation of the regime.” (145)
2. Amsden 1992. “A relatively equal income distribution is a necessary condition for
late industrialization because it empowers the state to discipline business and facilitates the state bureaucracy’s monitoring of the disciplinary process. One may
speculate that the more equal the distribution of income economy-wide, the higher
the quality of government intervention and, hence, the faster the rate of growth of
manufacturing output and productivity.” (73)
3. Anderson and McKeown 1987. “For war to occur between nations, this conception
implies the following necessary conditions: (1) at least one of the nations is experiencing a disparity between achievements and aspirations. (2) There is a history of
previous interactions that leads this nation to focus attention on the other as a possible target for military action. (3) Rule-of-thumb calculations convince at least one
set of leaders that going to war has a reasonable chance of producing an acceptable
outcome.” (5)
4. Atkinson and Coleman 1989. “Thus . . . ‘structural’ approaches examine how variations in three factors (the centralization and automomy of the state and the mobilization of business) give rise to various forms of policy network. However, the
three factors are only “conditioning factors,” representing necessary but not sufficient conditions for each type of network: the grid between barriers and network
only offers “that policy network most likely to arise in the absence of a serious
political or economic obstacle.” (59)
5. Axelrod 1984. “[T]he two key requisites for cooperation to thrive are that the cooperation be based on reciprocity, and that the shadow of the future is important
enough to make this reciprocity stable.” (173)
6. Bairoch 1997. “It is clear that England was one of the three or four European regions
where coal had already been mined for a longtime. Therefore, very likely a factor
almost certainly necessary for industrialization, but without a doubt not sufficient.”
(231)4
7. Bates 1998. “For the ICO [International Coffee Organization] to work, it needed to
fulfill two necessary conditions: it had to restrict arbitrage between the member and
nonmember markets and competition among the producers of coffee. The evidence
suggests that it succeeded at both.” (219)
4 The translation is mine. The original French reads:“[I]l est indiscutable que l’Angleterre faisait
partie de ces trois ou quatre régions européennes où le charbon était exploité depuis longtemps. Donc
très probablement un facteur presque necessaire, mais, san aucun doute, pas un facteur suffisant [pour
l’industrialisation].”
The Substantive Importance of Necessary Condition Hypotheses
77
8. Baumol and Oates 1975. “[A] tax rate set at a level that achieves the desired reduction in the total emission of pollutant will satisfy the necessary conditions for the
minimization of the program’s cost socially.” (143)
9. Belanger and Pinard 1991. “The competition model of ethnic resurgence and the
relevant evidence are critically examined. We note the absence of direct measures
of competition in the research on ethnic movements and the mixed nature of the
evidence it produced. More important, the model does not specify the links between
competition and conflict. We offer a partial reformulation that stresses the necessary
conditions under which ethnic competition leads to ethnic conflict: (1) competition
must be perceived as unfair and (2) competitive relations must be relatively free
from interdependence.” (446)
10. Bennett 1997. “This article examines different explanations for the cross-national
diffusion of three recent innovations in bureaucratic accountability—the institution
of the ombudsman, freedom of information legislation and data protection (information privacy) law. . . . A combination of methodologies is employed to conclude
that while the growth of government and liberal democratic values are necessary
conditions for the adoption of all three policy instruments they are not sufficient
conditions.” (213)
11. Bernholz 1982. Externalities as a necessary conditions for cyclical social preferences. Quarterly Journal of Economics 97:699–705.
12. Bernholz 1997. “Necessary and sufficient conditions for a viable democracy,” in
Breton, A. et al. (eds.) Understanding democracy: Economical and political perspectives, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
13. Berry 1979. “Numerous studies of regulation have offered theories of ‘regulatory
failure.’ Such studies demonstrate agreement in the belief that commissions fail
to meet their responsibilities because they lack certain requisites of organizational
strength and effectiveness: ample financial support, adequate staff (in terms of both
size and expertise), good informational services, and so on. These requisites have
been conceptualized in other organizational contexts as elements of professionalism.” (269)
14. Bhagwati and Hudec 1996. Fair trade and harmonization: Prerequisite for free
trade? 2 vols. Cambridge: MIT Press.
15. Botcheva and Martin 2001. “Low externalities thus provide the necessary conditions
for divergent patterns of state behavior. Of course, if all states hapen to prefer the
same course of action, behavior will converge even if externalities are low. Thus,
low externalities are only a necessary, not a sufficient condition. But we expect that
low externalities combined with diverse state preferences will lead to divergence.”
(8) “H1: Convergence Effects. International institutions will more likely result in
convergence of member state behavior when the following two conditions are met:
1a. States recognize substantial externalities to their behavior. . . . 1b. Institutions
are designed adequately, having either monitoring mechanisms in place that allow
for enforcement of cooperative behavior [enforce cooperation!] or procedures that
facilitate negotiation.” (11–12) (See H2 on p. 13 for a divergence effects hypothesis.)
16. Bohman 1990. “Using Habermas’s theory of communicative action and his remarks
on the legitimacy of the state under modern social conditions as a starting point, I
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Gary Goertz
combine normative democratic theory with the critique of ideology. I first outline
four necessary-but-not-sufficient conditions of communication for democratic decision making: such agreements must (1) be formally and procedurally correct, (2) be
cognitively adequate, (3) concern issues on which consensus or compromise can be
reached, and (4) be free of ideology.” (93)
17. Brady, Brody, and Epstein 1989. “We wish to show that a necessary condition for
the strong, centralized leadership exhibited in the Senate by the Aldrich oligarchy
was the existence of a party membership that was homogeneous in its policy preferences.” (205)
18. Brüderl, Preisendörfer, and Ziegler 1992. “Human capital theory and organizational
ecology offer a comprehensive set of factors that influence the mortality of newly
formed business organizations. Human capital theory identifies individual characteristics of the founder as important prerequisites for survival.” (227)
19. Bueno de Mesquita 1981. “The expected utility model provides a framework from
which at least several significant, several lesser, deductions about the necessary conditions for war have been made.” (92) “The results just reported strongly support the
proposition that positive expected utility is necessary—though not sufficient—for a
leader to initiate a serious international dispute, including a war.” (129)
20. Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman 1992. “Realpolitik Proposition 3.1: The Negotiation/Status Quo Theorem. Under full information conditions and with demands
being exogenous to the international interaction game, only negotiation or the status
quo can be an equilibrium outcome of the realpolitik variant of the game.” (60)
21. Caillaud, Guesnerie, and Rey 1992. “We consider a principal-agent contracting
problem under incomplete information where some of the agent’s actions are imperfectly observable . . . [W]e characterize necessary conditions for a mechanism
to be implementable under noisy observation by a linear schedule, and by quadratic
schedules. We give the geometric intuition behind all results.” (595)
22. Cameron, Lapinski, and Riemann 2000. “Using a newly constructed data set of 443
episodes of legislative bargaining between the president and Congress, we evaluate
two game theoretic models of political bargaining: Matthews’ coordination model
and Ingberman and Yao’s commitment model. We empirically test whether political
rhetoric (i.e., presidential veto threats) are important in bargaining over public policy
in the United States between 1946 and 1992. The paper provides empirical insight
into presidential power and also addresses some difficult issues in the empirical
evaluation of formal models with necessary conditions, sufficient conditions, or no
stochastic components. We find that the coordination model does a better job than
the commitment model of accounting for the data.” (187)
23. Claude 1971. “However simple the collective security approach may seem upon
superficial acquaintance, the truth is that it assumes the satisfaction of an extraordinarily complex network of requirements. The first group of prerequisites includes
those of a subjective character, related to the general acceptability of the responsibilities of collective security; the second group may be characterized as a category
of objective requirements, related to the suitability of the global situation to the operation of collective security.” (250) (Note later in chapter he gives a necessary
condition analysis of the failure of the League and the United Nations.)
The Substantive Importance of Necessary Condition Hypotheses
79
24. Collier and Messick 1975. “Two interpretations of the prerequisites thesis were
suggested. On the one hand, it may be argued that it identifies only a necessary
condition for adoption [of social security programs] and that while countries would
never fall below a given level of modernization there will actually be a wide variation
above that level in the degree of modernization at adoption. Alternatively, there may
be a certain level of modernization that is both a necessary and sufficient condition
for adoption.” (1306)
25. Dahl 1956. “[L]et us pose the key question in slightly different form: What are the
necessary and sufficient conditions for maximizing democracy in the real world?”
(64)
26. De Long 1992. “Over the past century in six major economies, economic growth has
been strongly associated with machinery investment, as is the case for a larger group
of nations since 1950. Both macroeconomic patterns and narratives of the history
of technology suggest that this association is causal—that a high rate of machinery
investment appears to be a necessary prerequisite for rapid long-run growth.” (307)
27. Demsetz 1967. “A primary function of property rights is that of guiding incentives
to achieve a greater internalization of externalities. . . . One condition is necessary to
make costs and benefits externalities. The cost of a transaction in the rights between
the parties (internalization) must exceed the gains from internalization.” (348)
28. Dennett 1995. “But we can already be virtually certain that mutual recognition and
the capacity to communicate a promise—stressed by both Hobbes and Nietzsche—
are necessary conditions for the evolution of morality.” (481)
29. Deutsch et al. 1957. “Altogether we have found nine essential conditions for an
amalgamated security-community: (1) mutual compatibility of main values; (2) a
distinctive way of life; (3) expectations of stronger economic ties or gains; (4) a
marked increase in political and administrative capabilities of at least some units
. . . ” (58)
30. Dion and Huber 1996. “A necessary condition for an open rule to occur in equilibrium is that xF [Congress floor ideal point] is located between xC [Committee ideal
point] and xR [Rules committee ideal point]. That is, whenever the Committee and
the Rules Committee are on the same side of the Floor, the Rules Committee will
either deny a rule or assign a closed rule.” (32)
31. Doran 1991. Chapter 6, “Prerequisites of World Order.”
32. Downs and Iida 1994. Downs and Iida consider six arguments about collective security: “(1) collective security requires a substantial diffusion of power, (2) variation
in assessment of threats dramatically limits the range and efficacy of collective security, (3) the free-rider problem jeopardizes any collective security arrangement, (4)
collective security cannot survive in the absence of an outside threat, (5) collective
security requires states to commit themselves to an inflexible course of action that is
insensitive to context and self-interest, (6) the logic of collective security is circular
in the sense that its establishment requires that its consequences already exist.” (36)
33. Doyle 1986. “The interaction of a metropole and a periphery joined together by
transnational forces generates differences in political power which permit the metropole to control the periphery. This relationship is produced and shaped by the three
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necessary features, which are together sufficient. It is also influenced and shaped by
the structure of the international system. (1) A metropole, typified by a centralized
state, through social differentiation, and public legitimacy and communal loyalty.
(2) A transnational extension of the economy, society, or culture of the metropole.
(3) A periphery, which may be (a) tribal . . . (b) patrimonial.” (130)
34. Drezner 2000. “For most analysts of economic sanctions, international cooperation
seems so transparently useful that it is assumed to be a necessary condition for sanctions to extract any political concessions. Robert Gilpin writes ‘Whereas positive
leverage is usually a unilateral action, negative leverage in almost all cases must be
multilateral. To be effective, other states must give it their support’ [1984, 639].
James Mayall concurs, observing that ‘the decision to impose sanctions is . . . inseparable from diplomacy to persuade other states, particularly allies, to follow suit’
[1984, 639]. Richard Haass concludes that ‘multilateral support for economic sanctions should constitute a prerequisite for their introduction by the United States.’
[1998, 206]. Martin begins her book Coercive Cooperation [1992] with the following assumption: ‘[S]tates with an interest in using economic sanctions face the
problem of gaining the cooperation of others. Without such cooperation, their efforts
probably will be futile.’ ” (76)
35. Eichengreen 1992. “[T]he international gold standard was a central factor in the
worldwide Depression. Recovery proved possible, for these same reasons, only after
abandoning the gold standard . . . finally, to clinch the argument we must show that
removal of the gold standard in the 1930s established the preconditions for recovery
from the Depression.” (x, 4)
36. Evans 1993. Evans requires seven prerequisite conditions for peacekeeping success:
clear and achievable goals, adequate resources, close coordination between peacekeeping and peacemaking, impartiality, local support, external support, and a clearly
signposted exit.
37. Finnemore 1996. “Most explanations for the creation of new state bureaucracies
trace the cause to some change in material conditions that reconfigure the interests
of actors within the state. Functionalists might consider such an objective change
to be sufficient as well as necessary for the new bureaucracy to appear. Others, less
sanguine about the efficacy of political systems in meeting all needs and fulfilling
all functions, would regard change in material condition as a necessary condition
only . . . Thus, in most explanations there is some prerequisite condition associated
with the creation of new state bureaucracies. Three kinds of prerequisites have been
considered relevant. . . . issue specific . . . the situation in the issue area particularly relevant to the new organization that prompts its creation . . . development or
modernization levels are argued to prompt the creation of science policy entities . . .
security conditions are argued to prompt the creation of science policy bureaucracies
through the actions of military consumers of science.” (40) (Note that Finnemore is
arguing against this position.)
38. Fitzmaurice 1976. “There are certain prerequisites for the establishment of a successful system of national parliamentary control. There must be a strong and active
parliamentary system, with parliament playing a central role in government. There
The Substantive Importance of Necessary Condition Hypotheses
81
must be a strong tradition of parliamentary involvement in the foreign policy making process. The Community itself must be a political issue. The must be an active
core of M.P.s interested in the Community.” (282)
39. Fogel 1964. “The axiom of indispensability (1) . . . the evidence usually cited does
not support the traditional interpretation of the imperative role of the railroad in
American economic growth. This evidence fails to establish a causal relationship
between the railroad and either the regional reorganization of trade, or the change
in the structure of output, or the rise in per capita, or the various other strategy
changes that characterized the American economy of the last century. It does not
even establish the weaker proposition that railroads were a necessary condition of
these developments.” (15)
40. Gartzke 1998. “Opportunity and willingness are necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for escalation. Tests of the democratic peace must at minimum incorporate
necessary conditions—opportunity and willingness—in order to make adequate assessments of the proposition that democracies do not fight.” (9)
41. George and Smoke 1974. “The initiator’s belief that the risks of his action are calculable and that the unacceptable risks of it can be controlled and avoided is, with
very few exceptions, a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for a decision to
challenge deterrence.” (529)
42. Gerschenkron 1962. “Reflections on the concept of “prerequisites” of modern industrialization,” in Economic backwardness in historical perspective, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
43. Gilpin 1987. “[T]hree prerequisites—hegemony, liberal ideology [in hegemon], and
common interests—must exist for the emergence and expansion of the liberal market
system.” (73)
44. Goertz and Diehl 1995. “We hypothesized that such stability [of enduring rivalries]
in the international system is not easily disrupted, and a shock is necessary to upset
that continuity . . . Our expectations have largely been confirmed. Almost 87% of
enduring rivalries began with at least one shock, Over 90% of enduring rivalries . . .
that ended . . . did so immediately following a political shock.” (50)
45. Goldstone 1990. “Only where there have been demographic shifts and increasing
demographic pressures that create political stress (elite competition, fiscal crisis,
and mass mobilization potential based on concentration of youth) will there be state
breakdown. When the cultural framework permits the development of an elite ideology committed to innovation there will be a revolution” (Kiser and Levi 1996,
190).
46. Griffith, Palmenatz, and Pennock 1953. Cultural prerequisites to a successfully
functioning democracy: A symposium. American Political Science Review 50:101–
37.
47. Haass 1990. “Haass’s (27–28) four prerequisites for ripeness are (1) a shared desire
to come to agreement, (2) the ability of leaders to come to an agreement and sell
it to their constitutents . . . , (3) room enough in the negotiations so that the parties
can claim they protected their national interests, and (4) a negotiation process that is
acceptable to both parties” (Hancock 2001, 197).
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Gary Goertz
48. Haas 1993. “Crises or widely publicized shocks are probably necessary precipitants
of environmental regime creation, but crises along cannot explain how or which
collective responses to a perceived joint problem are likely to develop.” (187)
49. Hampson and Hart 1995. “Had the Cuban Missile Crisis not occurred when it did,
evidence suggests that a treaty might not have been negotiated, because of the deep
suspicions that marked East–West relations and obviously plagued the test ban negotiations.” (74)
50. Hardin 1995. “The constructive veto and most revolutions require that both sides
of the dual coordination theory be met: The current leadership must suffer falling
coordination while the alternative leadership is backed by increasing coordination.
Political order can often survive if only one of these conditions is met. The effectiveness of power depends on the obstacles to be moved with it.” (32)
51. Hechter 1983. “A group can only obtain high compliance of its members if they are
dependent on it to achieve preferred goals. . . . [T]he group’s capacity to monitor
the member’s behavior is a necessary condition of compliance. . . . More formally,
dependence and the group’s monitoring capacity are both necessary conditions for
compliance but each is by itself insufficient.” (24, 26)
52. Holsti 1992. “Skeptics . . . have argued that the Concert operated only because a
variety of background conditions predisposed the powers to behave as if they were
constrained. . . . The opposite view is that the Concert was a necessary condition for
the relative peace that pervaded the continent in the 19th century.” (47)
53. Holsti 1996. “All three elements of the state [idea of state, physical basis of state,
and the institutional expression of the state] are interconnected and are necessary, if
not always sufficient, for a state to cohere and sustain its basic functions.” (83)
54. Humphreys 1996. “Deforestation emerged as a global issue because it was perceived
to be of global concern, with global effects necessitating global action. However,
it is a central argument of this work that there has been no coherent and generally
accepted formulation of the problem . . . Clearly problem formulation is an essential
prerequisite to problem solution.” (21)
55. Hunt 1997. Hunt argues that domestic political support is a necessary condition for
war.
56. Huth 1996. “The absence of a prior gain in territory is quite close to being a necessary condition for a dispute in the postwar period.” (87)
57. Ikenberry and Kupchan 1990. “[T]here are two necessary conditions for socialization to occur. First, the hegemon must be seeking to recast the international order
in a way that is more compatible with its interests . . . Second, the domestic conditions in secondary states must make the elites receptive to the importation of new
ideas and normative claims about state behavior . . . Our second hypothesis is that
socialization occurs only when normative changes takes place within the elite community.” (292–93)
58. Jacobson and Weiss 1999. “[F]or parties to implement and comply with accords,
they must feel that the obligations imposed are equitable. The differentiated obligations under the Montreal Protocol for phasing ozone-depleting substances . . . was
a prerequisite for adherence to the accord of a large number of countries.” (523)
The Substantive Importance of Necessary Condition Hypotheses
83
59. Janis 1982. “[A] vital theoretical issue in groupthink analysis, namely the question
whether Janis was right to consider high group cohesiveness as necessary condition
for the occurrence of groupthink” (t’Hart 1990, 40).
60. Johnston 1996. “This does not mean that an improvement in relative capabilities
inexorably led to the initiation of conflict. Indeed, there are a number of dyad years
in Chinese-U.S. and Chinese-Soviet relations, for instance, where such an improvement occurred and there was no military conflict. Rather, a favorable change in
relative capabilities appears to have been a necessary but not sufficient condition.”
(256)
61. Jones 1994. “But occasionally a major breakthrough occurs. While not all serial
policy shifts are characterized by such policy breakthroughs, policy breakthroughs
do not occur in the absence of a serial shift in attentiveness. The shift from parallel
to serial processing in a policymaking system is invariably associated with agenda
access of a new policy issue.” (181)
62. Kaempfer and Lowenberg 1999. “The international relations literature on multilateralism is framed largely in terms of a collective good problem. Hegemonic stability
theory, for example, argues that multilateral cooperation is a public good that can be
provided only if a dominant state assumes a leadership role.” (38)
63. Keohane 1980. “As applied to the last century and a half, this theory—which will
be referred to as the ‘hegemonic stability’ theory—does well at identifying the apparently necessary conditions for strong international economic regimes, but poorly
at establishing sufficient conditions.” (137)
64. Kingdon 1984. “If one of the three elements is missing—if a solution is not available
[policy stream], a problem cannot be found or is not sufficiently compelling, or
support is not forthcoming from the policy stream—then the subject’s place on the
decision agenda is fleeting.” (187)
65. Kissinger 1979. “In the final reckoning weakness has invariably tempted aggression
and impotence brings abdication of policy in its train . . . The balance of power . . .
has in fact been the precondition of peace.” (195)
66. Kleiboer 1998. “Leverage is a necessary condition for mediation success.” (21)
67. Krehbiel 1985. “Obstruction of the legislative process is often abhorred, but few attempts have been made to specify either the conditions under which it occurs or the
precise nature and degree of its putative evil. The author presents necessary conditions for rational obstruction by standing committees, simulates congressional situations to estimate the representativeness of obstructed outcomes relative to outcomes
that would have occurred without obstruction, states and proves general conditions
for representative obstruction, and discusses the findings and results in light of more
realistic congressional settings.” (643)
68. Kugler and Organski 1989. “Clearly, the necessary but not sufficient conditions for
major war emerge only in the rare instances when power parity is accompanied by
a challenger overtaking a dominant nation.” (179)
69. Kupchan and Kupchan 1991. “Three [pre-]conditions must be present if a collective
security organization is to take shape and function effectively. . . . The first condition is that no single state can be so powerful that even the most robust opposing
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coalition would be unable to marshal preponderant force against it. . . . The second
condition is that the major powers of the day must have fundamentally compatible
views of what constitutes a stable and acceptable international order. . . . The third
condition is that the major powers must ‘enjoy a minimum of political solidarity
and moral community’ [citing K. Thompson, ‘Collective Security Examined’] . . . It
is important to note that these four features encompass two of the three necessary
conditions for collective security outlined [above].” (124, 144)
70. Kuznets 1955. “There is a danger in simple analogies; in arguing that because an
unequal income distribution in Western Europe in the past led to accumulation of
savings and financing of basic capital formation, the preservation or accentuation of
present income inequalities in the underdeveloped countries is necessary to secure
the same result.” (25–26)
71. Landau 1969. “In public administration the standard policy for improving the permanent characteristics of an agency has rested upon the classical axiom that the
reliability and efficiency of an operating system, man or machine, is dependent on
the reliability and efficiency on each of its parts, including linkages.” (349)
72. Lebow 1981. “As often as not, it appears, brinkmanship challenges were initiated in
the absence of any good evidence suggesting that the adversary lacked the resolve
to defend his commitment. In many cases, the available evidence point to just the
opposite conclusion, as the commitment in question met all the four conditions we
have postulated as necessary for successful deterrence.” (93)
73. Lemke and Kugler 1996. “The cornerstone of power transition theory is that parity
is a necessary condition for major war.” (4) “The claim of this volume is that the
bulk of the empirical tests now support the notion that dyadic parity provides the
precondition for wars at the global and regional levels.” (29)
74. Leng 2000. “If one were to list the conditions necessary for the prudential management of crises within the bounds of realpolitik, they would be: (1) a shared aversion
to the costs of war; (2) mutual recognition that the aversion is shared by both sides
(to eliminate preemption); (3) recognition by each side that its rival is aware that it
recognizes the rival’s aversion to war (to eliminate preemption out of fear of preemption by the other party); and (4) a mutual awareness of the dangers of tit-for-tat
coercive exchanges leading to uncontrollable escalation.” (301–2)
75. Levi 1988. “The most important finding of this case study [Britain’s and France’s
tax systems] is the relationship between quasi-voluntary compliance and the income
tax. A highly commercialized economy, ruler power, and a well-developed fiscal bureaucracy are necessary but insufficient prerequisites. In the absence of widespread
quasi-compliance, the transaction costs of administering the tax would have been
too high.” (144)
76. Levi 1997. “Legislative approval of the policy bargain is a necessary but not sufficient condition for contingent consent . . . contingent consent has at least one further condition: the existence of institutional arrangements that enforce government’s
commitments. Without a policy bargain, the policy lacks legitimacy. Without appropriate institutional arrangements, the policy lacks credibility.” (109)
77. Levy 1990/91. “German support was a necessary condition for an Austro-Hungarian
war against Serbia.” (156) “[T]he erroneous assumption of British neutrality was
The Substantive Importance of Necessary Condition Hypotheses
85
a necessary condition for German support of an Austrian invasion of Serbia, and
consequently for a continental or world war.” (170)
78. Levy and Gochal 2001. “Our argument is that the preventive motivation for war was
a necessary but not sufficient condition for the 1956 Israeli decision to launch the
Sinai campaign. . . . [Israeli] expectations of British and French involvement in the
war constitutes an additional necessary condition for Israel’s Sinai campaign.” (18)
79. Levy, Young, and Zürn 1995. “Low levels of concern, poor contractual environments and weak capacity are each sufficient to cause failures in collective management of environmental tasks.” (304)
80. Lewis 1985. “Economic equality is a necessary but not sufficient condition for racial
peace.” (2)
81. Licklider 1993. “[There are three] preconditions for settlement [of civil wars]: communication among participants, willingness to alter policies, and establishment of
minimal trust.” (10)
82. Lieberman 1994. “In conclusion, the role of deterrence policies in adversarial relations must be understood in terms of their long term cumulative impact. Short
term deterrence failures are a necessary, but not sufficient condition for long term
deterrence success.” (414)
83. Lohmann 1994. “Thus, exit was a necessary but not sufficient condition for the
collapse of the East German regime.” (86)
84. Lupia and McCubbins 1998. “Theorem 4.1: Communication leads to enlightenment
[knowledge] if and only if: (1) the speaker is persuasive, (2) only the speaker initially possesses the knowledge that the speaker needs, and (3) common interests or
external forces induce the speaker to reveal what he knows.” (69)
85. Malinowski 1936. “The functional view of culture insists therefore upon the principle that in every type of civilization, every custom, material object, idea and belief
fulfills some vital function, has some task to accomplish, represents an indispensable
part within a working whole.” (133)
86. Mandelbaum 1988. “[T]he perennial concentration of power within the international system and the periodic shocks of great disruptive conflicts have not always
produced successful collective approaches to security. They are apparently necessary, but not sufficient conditions for system-wide cooperation.” (33–34)
87. Mann 1993. “Monarchs granted lawyers corporate privileges, seeking to reduce
their social embeddedness. The French monarchy went the farthest, granting patents
of nobility carrying material privileges (noblesse de la robe) and rights to corporate
assemblies (parliaments). The collapse of their particularistic alliance in the 1780s
was a necessary precondition of the French Revolution.” (65)
88. Mansbach 2000. “Although balance-of-power politics worked for Europe at a particular moment in its history, the conditions that allowed it to flourish had begun
to disappear by the end of the eighteenth century with the French Revolution and
Napoleon’s wars . . . What were these conditions, why were they necessary for the
balance to function effectively, and what brought them to an end? . . . The first condition for a balance is a system of competitive states whose leaders are aware of
86
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
Gary Goertz
their linked fates . . . The system requires a limited number of leading actors that
are relatively equal in power . . . Leaders must share an interest in preserving the
system itself, and ideology must not reduce flexibility . . . Foreign policy must remain in the hands of professional diplomats insulated from popular pressures . . . It
must be possible to estimate power accurately . . . War and the threat of war must
be usable instruments of diplomacy.” (50–53, emphasis is the author’s)
Maoz and Mor 1999. “Mutual perceptions of capability to a win a confrontation are
a necessary condition for the development of rivalries.” (109)
March and Simon 1993 [1958]. “The conditions necessary for intergroup conflict
in addition to the general absence of individual conflict can be summarized in terms
of three variables. The existence of a positive felt need for joint decision-making
and of either a difference in goals or a difference in perceptions of reality or both
among the participants of in the organization are necessary conditions for intergroup
conflict.” (141)
Matthews 1990. “[Regarding peace in Zimbabwe] these three factors [escalating
war, economic sanctions, favorable regional and global context] established conditions conducive to a peaceful resolution; in a real sense, the moment in the fall of
1979 was ripe. However, in the absence of a mediator with a clear sense of what a
settlement should look like, with the ability to manage and direct the negotiations,
and with sufficient leverage to be able to offer rewards and to mete out punishments,
these final negotiations might well have collapsed. The skill, experience, and determination of Lord Carrington were critical in the successful exploitation of the ripe
conditions. And yet, without such a favorable environment, attempts at mediation
were likely to fail. In effect, all four factors were essential to the outcome.” (293)
McAdam 1982. “[Describing the ‘classical model of social movements’] social isolation is thus the structural prerequisite for social protest.” (7) “[If] the structural
antecedents of social insurgency are ‘are always present in some degree,’ then it
becomes impossible to rely on them to explain the occurrence of what is a highly
variable social phenomenon. At best, system strain is a necessary, but insufficient,
cause of social movements. . . . [Describing the ‘political process model,’] the generation of insurgency is expected to reflect the favorable confluence of three sets of
factors. Expanding political opportunities combine with the indigenous organizations of the minority community to afford insurgents the ‘structural potential’ for
successful collective action. That potential is, in turn, transformed into actual insurgency by means of the crucial intervening process of cognitive liberation. All
three factors, then are regarded as necessary, but insufficient, causes of social insurgency.” (51) “[I]n the political process model, the generation of a social movement
is attributed to the confluence of three factors: expanding political opportunities;
the mobilization of indigenous organizational resources; and the presence of certain
shared cognitions within the minority community.” (61)
Moore 1966. “Only where there was a relatively strong bourgeoisie independent of
the state and only where the aristocracy and peasantry either sided with the bourgeoisie or were negligible was there a revolution that led to democracy” (Kiser and
Levi 1996, 189).
Moulin 1982. “We give necessary conditions for a neutral social choice function to
be partially implementable by means of a strong equilibrium (i.e., implementable by
The Substantive Importance of Necessary Condition Hypotheses
87
cooperative agents): the veto power of the various coalitions should be maximally
distributed.” (145)
95. Mintz et al. 1994. “The basic assumption of the poliheuristic model is that a necessary though not sufficient condition for the use of force is that it will not undermine
the political fortunes of the leader. . . . Available alternatives are screened along the
most important dimension, and the ‘surviving’ alternatives (chosen or rejected) are
scrutinized along the second and subsequent dimensions, until and choice is made.”
(450)
96. Mitchell 1994. “[D]eterrence-based strategies often require the successful completion of a complex chain of actions to be effective. The initial discharge standards [oil
pollution discharge standards for oil tankers] subregime faced problems at almost
every step of the process: detecting violations, identifying violators, prosecuting
violators, and imposing potent sanctions. . . . Successful deterrence strategies must
ensure that the whole legal chain operates smoothly, since the breakdown of any link
can significantly impair its effectiveness.” (456)
97. Most and Starr 1984. “[States] will adopt a given policy alternative if, and only if,
they have both the ‘willingness’ and the ‘opportunity’ to do so.” (393)
98. Myrdal 1956. “Internal monetary balance attained by the general means of banking
and fiscal policies is even more a necessary condition for national economic planning than it is for a policy of laissez faire.” (75) “[T]he failure to enforce internal
financial stability is as fatal to effective international cooperation as it is to national
planning.” (66)
99. Niou, Ordeshook, and Rose 1989. “[W]e can imagine circumstances in which countries are uncertain not merely about the resources of others, but also about what
others believe about capabilities . . . Even though we do not consider the strategic
imperatives occasioned by this second type of uncertainty, the analysis this volume
offers is nevertheless relevant to inferring the consequences of such uncertainty for
war. Specifically, a thesis that our analysis supports is that such uncertainty is a
necessary condition for war.” (59)
100. North 1986. “One cannot have the productivity of an industrial society with political
anarchy. But while . . . a state is a necessary condition for realizing the gains from
trade, it is obviously not sufficient.” (260)
101. Oberschall 1996. “(1) [D]iscontents and grievances; (2) ideas and beliefs about
justice and injustice . . . ; (3) the capacity to act collectively. . . ; and (4) political
opportunity. The four dimensions are necessary but not sufficient causes of the
emergence and growth of social movements.” (94)
102. Ostrom 1991. “By ‘design principle’ I mean an essential element or condition that
helps to account for the success of these institutions [common pool resource] in
sustaining the common pool resources and gaining the compliance of generation
after generation of appropriators to the rules in use . . . I am willing to speculate . . .
[that] it will be possible to identify a set of necessary design principles and that such
a set will contain the core of what has been identified here.” (90–91)
103. Pahre 1997. “The theory identifies three necessary conditions for endogenous ratification rules [regarding European integration] in a parliamentary system. The first
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condition is that a significant portion of the public and at least one party represented
in parliament must prefer the status quo to further integration. Second, a country
must have frequent minority governments. Third, at least one party must prefer
having a policy veto through the oversight committee to joining the government.”
(168)
104. Palmerston, Lord. 1861. “[T]wo Powers in this country, the government and public
opinion, that both must concur for any great and important steps” (cited in Rock
1997, 125).
105. Parsons 1948. “[A] social system must somehow provide for the minimum biological and psychological needs of a sufficient proportion of its component members.
On a more strictly social level, there seem to be two primary fundamental foci of its
functional prerequisites. One lies in the coordination of the activities of the various
members. . . . The second focus is on adequacy of motivation. The system can only
function if a sufficient proportion of its members perform the essential social roles
with an adequate degree of effectiveness.” (159)
106. Porter 1990. “[A]dvantages throughout the ‘diamond’ [demand conditions, related
or supporting industries, firm strategy/structure, and rivalry] are necessary for achieving and sustaining competitive success in the knowledge-intensive industries that
form the backbone of advanced economies.” (73)
107. Price and Tannenwald 1996. “Why were the weapons (nuclear) not used? We have
argued that the development of prohibitionary norms was a necessary condition for
the limited use of nuclear and chemical weapons.” (145) “Norms structure realms
of possibilities; they do not determine outcomes. . . . The bottom line is that these
taboos (nuclear and chemical) were a necessary condition.” (148)
108. Przeworski 1986. Przeworski has explored the necessary conditions for the transition to democracy.
109. Putnam 1988. “My research suggests, first, that the key governments at Bonn
adopted policies different from those that they would have pursued in the absence of
international negotiations—but second, that agreement was possible only because
a powerful minority within each government actually favored on domestic grounds
the policy being demanded internationally . . . In short, the Bonn accord represented
genuine international policy coordination. Significant policy changes were pledged
and implemented by the key participants. Moreover—although this counterfactual
claim is necessarily harder to establish—those policy changes would very probably
not have been pursued (certainly not the same scale and within the same time frame)
in the absence of the international agreement. Within each country, one faction supported the policy shift being demanded of its country internationally, but that faction
was initially outnumbered. Thus, international pressure was a necessary condition
for these policy shifts.” (429–30)
110. Radcliffe-Brown 1952. “Durkheim’s definition is that the ‘function’ of a social institution is the correspondence between it and the needs (besoins in French) of the
social organism . . . I would like to substitute for the term ‘needs’ the term ‘necessary conditions of existence,’ or if the term ‘needs’ is used, it is to be understood
only in this sense. It may be here noted, as a point to be returned to, that any attempt
to apply this concept of function in social sciences involves the assumption that there
The Substantive Importance of Necessary Condition Hypotheses
89
are necessary conditions of existence for human societies just as there are for animal
organisms, and that they can be discovered by the proper kind of scientific enquiry.”
(178)
111. Raymond 1996. “Another factor thought to be linked to arbitration outcomes is
whether a rough balance of power exists between the disputants. . . . Many theorists
believe that power parity is a precondition for the development of these norms and
a guarantee that they will be observed once they emerge.” (4)
112. Risse 2000. “Argumentative rationality in the Habermasian sense is based on several
preconditions. First, argumentative consensus requires the ability to empathize . . .
Second, actors need to share a common ‘life world,’ a supply of collective interpretations of the world and themselves . . . Finally, actors need to recognize each other
as equals and have equal access to the discourse . . . relationships of power, force,
and coercion are assumed absent.” (10–11)
113. Riker and Sened 1991. “We develop a theory of the origin of property rights by
specifying the necessary conditions for them to emerge: (1) the underlying good
must be scarce, (2) prospective right-holders must desire the right, and (3) rightgrantors, that is, government officials, must perceive an advantage from enforcing
respect for the right.” (951)
114. Rosenthal 1969. “Only 2 of the 13 RPF coalitions occurred in districts without
Modéré incumbents, suggesting that the presence of such an incumbent can be regarded as a necessary condition for a RPF alliance.” (484)
115. Rostow 1960. “Although the period of transition—between the traditional society
and the take-off—saw major changes in both the economy itself and in the balance
of social values, a decisive feature was often political. Politically, the building of
an effective centralized national state—on the basis of coalitions touched with new
nationalism, in opposition to the traditional landed regional interests, the colonial
power, or both was a decisive aspect of the preconditions period; and it was, almost
universally, a necessary condition for take-off.” (7) “It is nevertheless useful to
regard as a necessary but not sufficient condition for the take-off the fact that the
proportion of net investment to national income (or net national product) rises from,
say, 5% to over 10%, definitely outstripping the likely population pressure.” (37)
116. Rummel 1983. “Joint-Freedom Proposition: Libertarian systems mutually preclude
violence (violence will occur between states only if at least one is nonlibertarian).”
(29)
117. Ryan 1995. “[The U.S. Trade Representative] sometimes initiated 301 investigations if one of the two conditions [high commercial competitiveness or high GATT
regime utility] was met, but never initiated 301 investigations if neither of the conditions was met.” (347–48)
118. Sabatier and Mazmanian 1979. Sabatier and Mazmanian argue that there are six
necessary and sufficient conditions for the effective implementation of legally stated
policy objectives.
119. Sandholtz 1993. “The member states of the European community are not just liberalizing telecommunications but are cooperating extensively in the sector. Breaking with a past dominated by rigid national monopolies (the PTTs), EC states in
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the 1980s undertook collective action in research and development, planning future networks, setting standards, and opening markets. This article seeks to explain
telecoms liberalization and cooperation in Europe. Two conditions are necessary for
international collective action to emerge. The first is policy adaptation at the national
level, such that governments are willing to consider alternatives to pure unilateralism. . . . The second necessary condition is international leadership to organize the
collective action.” (242)
120. Scharpf 1991. “Prerequisites for control of the economy” in Crisis and choice in
European social democracy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
121. Schimmelfennig 2001. “In the rationalist perspective, however, a community of
basic political values and norms is at best a necessary condition of enlargement
[of the European Union]. . . . By contrast, in the sociological perspective, sharing a
community of values and norms with outside states is both necessary and sufficient
for their admission to the organization.” (61)
122. Schroeder 1994. “[W]hile violence on a grand and in some respects unprecedented
scale—twenty-eight years of almost unbroken large-scale war and upheaval—proved
to be one necessary condition of the transition from eighteenth- to ninteenth-century
international politics, it was not really its main cause . . . The transformation occurred first and above all in the field of ideas, collective mentalities, and outlooks
. . . What happened, in the last analysis, was a general recognition by the states of
Europe that they could not pursue the old politics any longer and had to try something new and different.” (viii)
123. Schweller 1992. “A power transition involving a declining democratic leader is both
a necessary and sufficient condition for the absence of preventive war. . . . A power
transition involving a declining nondemocratic state is a necessary but not sufficient
condition for a preventive war, regardless of the regime type of the challenger.”
(248–49)
124. Sikkink and Martin 1994. “We argue that in September 1978, four necessary conditions for successful cooperation were temporarily met in the Argentine case. Implementation of the congressional military aid embargo and the denial of Eximbank
funding narrowed the win-set in the United States; the President was genuinely interested in pursuing a human rights policy and had few competing objectives in Argentina; a dominant faction in the Argentine Junta thought it might be able to use the
visit of the IACHR to prepare the way for political liberalization; and transnational
lobbying had put the issue on both governments’ agendas.” (350)
125. Silver 1983. “The essay challenges Karl Polanyi’s position—that ancient Near Eastern economies knew state and temple administration but not price-making markets.
It is found that the prerequisite functions of a market economy listed by Polanyi—
the allocation of consumer goods, land, and labor through the supply-demand-price
mechanism; risk-bearing organized as a market function; and loan markets—were
all present in the ancient Near East.” (795)
126. Siverson and Starr 1989. “Whether or not it is the border/opportunity or willingness/alliance variables which are best able to account for the war behavior of states,
it is clear that both of them together produce some powerful underlying necessary
conditions for states to be at war.” (93)
The Substantive Importance of Necessary Condition Hypotheses
91
127. Skocpol 1979. “Only where there are pressures on states due to wars and international competition and only where these pressures result in a conjuncture of fiscal
crisis, abandonment of the state by the dominant classes, and peasant revolts based
in strong peasant communities is there the possibility of a social revolution” (Kiser
and Levi 1996, 189).
128. Skocpol 1992. “Nevertheless, as we shall see in Parts II and III of this book,
the efforts of turn-of-the-century US reformist professionals to promote new social
policies succeed only when they were allied with popular constituencies associated
across many localities and legislative districts.” (47)
129. Snow et al. 1986. “This paper attempts to further theoretical and empirical understanding of adherent and constituent mobilization by proposing and analyzing frame
alignment as a conceptual bridge linking social psychological and resource mobilization views on movement participation. . . . The basic underlying premise is that
frame alignment, of one variety or another, is a necessary condition for participation,
whatever its nature or intensity, and that it is typically an interactional and ongoing
accomplishment.” (464)
130. Snyder 1991. “The most powerful explanation for German expansionism, and the
one that has gained the greatest support from historians, focuses on the domestic
political consequences of Germany’s late industrialization. . . . Within this general
line of argument, it is worth distinguishing among three variants: one stresses the
substantive interests of the individual groups, another stresses the political process
by which those interests were aggregated, and a third stresses the consequences of
the ideological justification of the preferred policies of groups and coalitions. Some
authors have emphasized one of these more than the others. In my view all three are
necessary for an explanation that is logically and empirically satisfying.” (97)
131. Stephens 1987. “Roemer’s [1982] main object was to contest the view, held by
most Marxists, that the existence of wage labor is a necessary condition for the
exploitation of labor in a market economy.” (978)
132. Stone 1972. “[R]evolution becomes possible when a condition of multiple dysfunction meets an intransigent elite; just such a conjunction occurred in the decades
before the English, the French, and the Russian revolutions. Revolution only becomes probable however, if certain special factors intervene: the ‘precipitants’ or
‘accelerators’.” (10)
133. Suganami 1996. “[A] number of distinct questions are in fact asked under the rubric
‘causes of war.’ There are at least three such questions, the distinction among which
constitutes the organizing principle of the present volume. There are: (a) What are
the conditions which must be present for wars to occur? (b) Under what sorts of
circumstances have wars occurred more frequently? (c) How did this particular war
come about?” (6–7)
134. Swofford and Whitney 1987. “Some of the most fundamental assumptions of economics are utility maximization and weak separability of the arguments in the representative consumer’s utility function. This paper contains results from nonparametric tests of these assumptions about consumer behavior. We find that quarterly
per capita data on consumption goods, leisure and monetary assets are consistent
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with utility maximization. Further, consumption goods and leisure meet necessary
and sufficient conditions for weak separability.” (458)
135. Tarrow 1989. “In this study, I shall argue that people go out into the streets and
protest in response to deeply felt grievances and opportunities. But this produces a
protest cycle only when structural cleavages are both deep and visible and when opportunities for mass protest are opened up by the political system.” (13) “But on its
own structure change only creates the objective potential for movements and cannot
overcome the personal inertia nor develop the networks and solidarities necessary to
mount group action.” (21)
136. Taylor 1987. “It has been shown then that a necessary and sufficient condition for
(B,B) [B = tit-for-tat] to be an equilibrium [in a repeated prisoners’ dilemma game]
is that each player’s discount factor is no less than the larger of (y − x)/(y − w)
and (y − x)/(x − z). [y = temptation, x = cooperation, z = sucker, and w = defect]
(69, emphasis is the author’s).
137. Urquhart 1987. Urquhart proposes seven essential factors for successful UN peacekeeping: (1) a viable political context, (2) consistently broad support, (3) representativeness in the force, (4) feasibility built into the mandate, (5) cooperation from the
parties to the dispute, (6) skill and sensitivity in directing the force, and (7) quality
in the command process and military discipline in the troops. (258)
138. Usher 1981. The economic prerequisite to democracy, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
139. Vasquez 1993. “A careful analysis of statistical findings on interstate wars from
1816 to 1965 reveals that world wars are associated with three necessary conditions:
(1) a multipolar distribution of capability in the system, (2) an alliance system that
reduces this multipolarity to two hostile blocs, (3) the creation of two blocs in which
one does not have a clear preponderance of capability over the other.” (248)
140. Wagner 1980. “The division of Germany between East and West was in itself a
sufficient condition for the emergence of what came to be known as the Cold War in
Europe.” (155) “I will try to remedy this deficiency [in the literature] by examining
systematically the problem presented by the necessity that all four occupying powers
reach an agreement on the future of Germany if the Cold War in Europe was to be
avoided.” (162)
141. Walter 1997. “Finally, two additional points should be emphasized. First, security
guarantees are a necessary, not a sufficient condition for settlement . . . states wishing to facilitate early solutions to civil wars must wait until the groups themselves
desire peace before their promises of enforcement will have any effect.” (362)
142. Waltz 1979. “Neo-realists predict that regimes are only likely to emerge when a
systematic concentration of material power resources exists. Regimes will persist
so long as such a power concentration exists” (Haas 1993, 181).
143. Waltz 1979. “Analytic reasoning applied where a systems approach is needed leads
to the laying down of all sorts of conditions as prerequisites to balances of power
forming and tending toward equilibrium and as general preconditions of world stability and peace. Some require that the number of great powers exceed two; others
that a major power be willing to play the role of balancer. . . . But balances of power
form in the absence of ‘necessary’ conditions, and since 1945 the world has been
The Substantive Importance of Necessary Condition Hypotheses
93
stable, . . . Balance-of-power politics prevail wherever two, and only two, requirements are met: that the order be anarchic and that it be populated by units wishing
to survive.” (121)
144. Weyland 1998. “Countries initiate drastic [economic] adjustment when two conditions coincide, namely, a profound economic crisis and the accession to power of
new leaders.” (652) “Leaders choose risky shock plans only when they confront
severe problems.” 653)
145. Williamson 1989. “[T]hey [alliances] were an important causal factor in the eventual
outbreak of war because they locked various governments into courses of action
that were contrary to their own interests . . . In this account the alliance structure
was a necessary condition for the outbreak of war in the particular circumstances of
central Europe in 1914. If the various governments had been unconstrained by tight
alliances, Williamson suggests, they would not have taken the actions that made war
inevitable” (Little 1991, 106).
146. Williamson and Lindert 1980. “The timing is sufficiently close to suggest that
nineteenth-century America offers a classic example where inequality and accumulation rates rose together. A venerable tradition in economic theory appeals to this
correlation to justify the conclusion that the increasing investment requirements of
early capitalist development can only be satisfied by the surplus generated by higher
inequality.” (1980) (Note that the authors argue against this necessary condition hypothesis.)
147. Wilson, Woodrow. “Based on a multicausal liberal analysis, [Woodrow] Wilson
explicitly identified a set of narrow preconditions under which collective security
institutions could succeed. The League, he argued, would function only if nationally
self-determining democracy was a nearly universal form of government among the
great powers.” (Moravcsik 1997, 545)
148. Young and Osherenko 1993. “Our examination of leadership . . . suggests to us that
leadership exercised by individuals is a necessary condition for regime formation.”
(235) “We suspect that a measure of integrative bargaining is a necessary condition of regime formation.” (239) “We conclude that, although the occurrence of
an exogenous shock or a crisis is not necessary for regime formation.” (240) “We
must reject the hypothesis that high priority on agendas of all the key players is a
necessary condition for regime formation.” (240–41) “[T]he presence of all interested parties is not a necessary condition for regime formation. . . . [W]e continue
to think that some factors are so central to the process of regime formation that they
can serve as a basis for propositions state in the form of necessary conditions.” (247)
[Note that Young (1998) has explicitly given up on using necessary and sufficient
condition hypotheses as a way to frame his research agenda. However, he continues
to make necessary condition claims: “Emergence of a champion is a necessary condition for an issue to move to the top of the agenda.” (53) “Under the circumstances,
it is probably accurate to say that there would have been no AEPS [Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy] in the absence of the dedication and entrepreneurial
skill exhibited by the key HODs [Head of Delegation] at a number of points during
this stage.” (110) “[I]t is also fair to say that the whole idea of pursuing multilateral
cooperation in the Artic would have been a non-starter in the absence of the winding
down of the Cold War.” (188).]
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149. Zagare 1996. “Classical Deterrence theorists consider a balance of capabilities as
a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for deterrence stability. For peace to
reign, warfare must also be excessively costly. In this view, each of the ‘two pillars:
bipolarity and nuclear weapons’ (Waltz 1993, 44) must exist before war can be
considered untenable.” (377)
150. Zartman 1985. “[D]omestic strength is only a necessary but not a sufficient condition for conciliation, and it alone does not guarantee a ripe moment.” (238)