International Relations Editing and Proofreading Services

Three cases are examined and the theory holds in all three. The cases are the three the author already knew well, all from one region, all with the outcome the theory predicts, and all selected after the argument was formed. The comparison is real work honestly done, and it cannot test the theory, because nothing in the design could have come out the other way.

We edit what international relations scholars write — comparative case studies and their selection sections, theoretical and conceptual articles, security and strategic studies papers, foreign policy analyses, international political economy work, institutional and organisational studies, area studies research, policy briefs and reports for institutions, and theses, articles and grant applications. Our editors work on case selection and the argument for it.

Case selection is where a qualitative IR paper is either a test or an illustration, and its failure is a set of cases chosen for convenience and presented as a design. Which cases, and why these, determines what the study can establish. We work through these so the selection rule is stated and the population the cases were drawn from is defined, since three cases from an unspecified universe cannot support a general claim; so selection on the dependent variable is either avoided or acknowledged with what it costs, because a study of successful deterrence tells you little about deterrence unless the failures are in the frame; so the cases are placed against the theory's expectations — most likely, least likely, crucial or typical — as a theory surviving a least-likely case is worth more than one surviving three easy ones; so the negative case is included or its absence justified, given that a reader's first question is what the theory would have to look like when it fails; so scope conditions are stated, since a claim about great powers and a claim about states are different claims; so the counterfactual within each case is spelled out rather than implied; and so the sequence in which evidence and argument were developed is described honestly. Papers written this way are cited as evidence rather than as examples.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including unpublished work, interview material and reports prepared for institutions. We are editors rather than international relations scholars, and we offer no view on theory, cases or policy. What we can do is make the case selection carry the claim.