Beyond Simplicity: Focused Realism and Computational Modeling in International Relations

International relations faces an important choice: whether to employ formal or empirical methods that simplify our analysis or to rely on descriptive realism at the expense of focus. Facing this dilemma, many scholars have opted for focused simplicity. When this leads to over simplification, however, particularly when it leads us to ignore underlying processes and concentrate exclusively on predicting outcomes, the cost is great. Computational modeling enjoys many of the advantages of other formal approaches, while relaxing some of the technical restrictions. Thus, it allows focused realism —the representation of complex structures and processes without losing all-important analytic focus. This essay describes and illustrates the computational approach, reviews the existing international relations applications divided into three categories (dynamic simulations, knowledge-based models, and machine learning), and evaluates the capacity of computational models to achieve focused realism.