Quantitative Approaches

Chapter six confronts the hard case of quantitative research, which seems firmly based on “timeless” mathematical formulas and Western standard time. It thus appears most resistant to interpretation as a narrative timing project. This chapter excavates quantitative IR’s temporal assumptions and dependencies, with illustrations drawn from international conflict research. It argues that dominant statistical models and the statistical approach in general work to tame overly temporal phenomena by constructing narrative and poetic links to eternal logic. After tracing the narrative timing techniques embedded in IR’s quantitative workhorse, the general linear model, it shows how putatively “time-sensitive” techniques like time series analysis and event hazard models still treat time as a problem for sound knowledge development. The chapter closes by highlighting the distinctly temporal moves made in the recent Bayesian turn, which suggest that instead of relying on passive timing meters, quantitative research must remain in an active timing mode much closer to lived time than the scientific laboratory.