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Dr. Gary Goertz

Title: Professor
Office: Social Sciences Room 328A2
Phone: 520-621-1346
Office Hours: 2:00-3:30 Monday & Wednesday (Spring 2009)
Email: ggoertz@email.arizona.edu
Personal website:
Curriculum Vitae (PDF File)
Bio or Research Areas:
Gary Goertz received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1988. Gary Goertz teaches political science at the University of Arizona. He is the author or co-author of seven books and over 40 articles on issues of international politics, methodology, and conflict studies. He is the author of "Contexts of International Politics" (Cambridge 1994) and co-author with Paul Diehl of "Territorial Changes and International Conflict" (Routledge 1992) and "War and Peace in International Rivalry" (University of Michigan Press, 2000). His current interests include on conflict management and conflict resolution, for which he and Paul Diehl have received a National Science Foundation grant. Other research interests include the theory of international institutions and norms for which he has also received an NSF grant and published a book "International norms and decision making: a punctuated equilibrium model." He is currently working on a large project on the evolution of international institutions, focusing on how they adopt conflict management dimensions. Having been trained as a statistician before his Ph.D. in political science, he has an active and ongoing involvement with methodological issues. Currently the topic of necessary conditions, their theory and methodology occupy him and on which he has co-edited a anthology on topic this topic, "Necessary Conditions: Theory, Methodology, and Applications" (Rowman & Littlefield 2002). He is co-editor of the anthology "Necessary Conditions: Theory, Methodology, and Applications" (2003) and "Explaining War and Peace: Case Studies and Necessary Condition Counterfactuals," (2007). He is editor of a special issue of Political Analysis entitled "Causal Complexity and Qualitative Methods" (2006). His most recent methodological work deals with the construction of concepts "Social Science Concepts: A User's Guide" (2006 Princeton University Press) and "Politics, Gender, and Concepts: Theory and Methodology" (2008 Cambridge University Press).