The sad state of affairs in 'applied' security studies

 I always jealously look at articles in other theoretical disciplines (say in the 'life' sciences) that often synoptically summarize the main hypotheses for phenomena they are struggling with in some box with the authors in the left column, and their findings (which are often contradictory, especially when you're dealing with small-N research) in the other. But how many of those do we have in say international relations theory? The same applies to the more applied side of strategic studies. In many fields that are - or at least should be, if strategy were really about 'big picture' isues -  of interest to us (say economic policies, or social policy or even education, health policy), international organizations produce much empirically-based comparative research. I am, for instance, a great fan and avid reader of the various forms of 'benchmarking' work that the OECD, the World Bank and the IMF do in these various areas. Just trying to 'dissect' various policies that countries follow in those areas, trying to come up with various (input, throughput AND output - and sometimes even outcome) indicators and then seeing if we can somehow map all of those in a search for waht seems to work (under which circumstances, etc.) We have absolutely nothing of the sort in the field of international security. NATO has no mandate to do so (although some of us are trying to change this) and has no real 'in-house think tank anyway - only some embryonic fragments exist throughout the organization, such as in the Policy Planning Staff in the Private Office of the Secretary-General; in the newly created 'Emerging Security Challenges Division' within the and within ACT 

 the EU might (but not in the defense realm, and even if it did, it would not likely have the guts to include non-EU states in the comparisons). And the OSCE or the UN are hardly worth mentioning in this context. [Incidentall, given the current state of international governance I still think that the OECD would be perfect for this job - PRECISELY because it has so little