Touching the Future: A Constructive Intervention on Forward Reasoning in IR

What is the proper place of the future? Political Science in general, and IR in particular, are disciplines torn in between recognizing the intricacies and indeterminacy of their research subject and a desire (as much as a pressure) to give tangible and clear-cut implications and produce results that can be applied to policy-making. Drawing on exemplary studies on nuclear proliferation and sanctions we show, however, that all too often thorough elaborations that appreciate complexity nonetheless are diverted to service overzealous predictions and rudimentary forecasts, in disregard of their own premises and key theoretical insights on knowledge generation and forward reasoning. We reveal how many of these predictive studies have not only been wrong and misleading, but that they might also prepare the ground for fatally flawed policy-decisions. There remains thus a translation gap to bridge for efforts legitimately aiming to reason on future developments. This paper outlines an agenda for forward reasoning, critically reflecting key insights developed within sociology of knowledge in recent years and catering to the contingencies of future-oriented policy-making. The paper seeks to help scholars being more aware of their ethical responsibility and to contribute to more constructive bases of communicating research implications between scholars and policy-makers.