Measures spread rapidly when they are tied explicitly to a convincing theory.

Evidence

Since one cannot avoid causal hypotheses when building concepts one should be as conscious as possible about them. As chapter 5 suggests, one could go so far as to empirically test them, but at the very least one should be as explicit as possible about them. When Dixon first proposed the weakest-link measure in 1993, he quickly convinced most scholars. This was because he clearly tied a theory of the democratic peace to a quantitative measure. Since the theory was convincing, the measure was quickly and uncontroversially adopted. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts, 455

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the weakest-link and dyadic democracy material in chapter 5; the same logic applies wherever scholars adopt a measure without noticing the hypothesis embedded in it.
• SEED: Angle: ‘The measure that argued for itself’ — how a quantitative indicator can smuggle a whole theory of the democratic peace past peer review because the theory felt obvious.