Yearning for a progressive research program in Canadian foreign policy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
According to Imre Lakatos, progressive research programs are centred on the notion of an empirical knowledge foundation where new theories and methods lead to novel factual discoveries. Only through advanced but diverse methodologically sound strategies can one hope for a “better” understanding of events. With Lakatosian analysis in mind, this paper examines the state of Canadian foreign policy scholarship. The author has collected 531 peer-reviewed articles pertaining to Canadian foreign policy published between 2002 and 2012 in five leading peer-reviewed publications: Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, International Journal, the Canadian Journal of Political Science, the American Review of Canadian Studies, and Études Internationales. He has differentiated these articles based on five methodological approaches: description, quantitative analysis, comparative study, critical study, and qualitative analysis. The results suggest a disheartening lack of diversity in the methodological approaches guiding Canadian foreign policy scholarship. Moreover, the overwhelming preference for descriptive methods indicates clear signs of a degenerative research program.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.042 | 0.055 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.008 | 0.011 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.020 | 0.015 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.019 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".