“…Typically, the editor of a recent special issue of International Politics dedicated to Sino-Russian relations lamented that the topic 'has been the subject of very little scrutiny using rigorous theory, which has obstructed hypothesis formation and evaluation' (Yoder 2020). However, where this empirical testing has occurred, its results are often not so much taken to falsify the theory than to demonstrate the deviance of the area from a universal norm; as Morten Valbjorn pointed out with respect to another region, in many of these cases 'it has been the Middle East rather than the theory that somehow has been considered wrong' (Valbjørn 2017: 649).…”