Scholarly record
ON THE BORDER, OUTSIDE: THE POST-POSITIVIST INFLUENCE IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY AND POLITICAL THEORY
Abstract
Positivism has been the dominant paradigm across the social sciences. Its quasi-monopoly has been broken only in the last several decades when with the publication of Thomas Kuhns grounbreaking study The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), other meta-theoretical stances have managed to assert themselves. From the 1980s onwards, the field of International Relations (IR) has witnessed the emergence of a reflectivist current characterized by the embrace of post-positivism. Reflectivist theories from poststructuralism, strands of feminism, Critical Theory to postcolonialism and Green theory did not overthrow and replace the dominant IR theories (neorealism and neoliberalism). Instead, they managed to expand the framework for research outside the state-bound, systemic, and institutional setting proposed by the positivist stance. Where social sciences are concerned, post-positivism disputes the fact that the logic and research principles borrowed from the natural sciences are entirely adequate for the study of society and social relations. In this regard, post-positivism problematizes both the existence of a neutral observer far removed from the object of its study and the need to model research on law-like regularities based on the correspondence between theory and fact. Post-positivism reevaluates what science is supposed to be as well as how and what can be researched. In the first part of this paper, we analyze the positivist and post-positivist paradigms in political sciences (PS) followed in the second part, by an analysis that contrasts the main ideas of positivism with the post-positivist stance that emerges in International Relations (IR) during the 1980s.
Publication Impact Profile
Publication details
References15
Brian Fay, Contemporary Philosophy of Social Science, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 1996, p. 1.
Heather Savigny and Lee Marsden, Doing Political Science and International Relations. Theories in Actions, Palgrave Macmillan, London and New York, 2011, p. 38
Mark Bevir and R.A.W. Rhodes, “Interpretive Political Science. Mapping the Field”, in M. Bevir and R.A.W. Rhodes (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Interpretive Political Science, Routledge, New York, p. 3-5.
William Rose, “Positivism and Its Critique”, in John T. Ishiyama and Marijke Breuning, 21st Century Political Science. A Reference Book (Vol 2), SAGE Publications, London, 2011, p. 461.
Michael J. Roskin, Robert L. Cord, James A. Medeiros, Walter S. Jones, Știința politică. O introducere, transl. Teodora Moldovanu, Polirom, Iași, 2011, p 44.
Robert A. Dahl, “The Behavioral Approach in Political Science: Epitaph for a Monument to a Successful Protest”, American Political Science Review, vol. 55, Dec. 1961, pp. 770-771.
For more details, see Samuel Merrill III, Bernard Grofman, A Unified Theory of Voting: Directional and Proximity Spatial Models, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999;
Samuel Merrill III, „Discriminating Between the Directional and Proximity Spatial Models of Electoral Competition”, în Electoral Studies, vol. 14, no. 3, 1995.
Gabriel Almond, „Știința politică: istoria disciplinei”, in Robert E. Goodin, Hans-Dieter Klingemann (eds.), Manual de știință politică, trans. Irina Ana Kantor et al., Polirom, Iași, 2005, pp. 84-85.
Douglas Torgerson, “Policy Analysis and Public Life: The Restoration of Phronesis?”, in James Farr, John S. Dryzek, Stephen T. Leonard (eds.), Political Science in History: Research Programs and Political Traditions, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1995, p. 227.
David E. McNabb, Research Methods for Political Science. Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches (Second Edition), Routledge, Oxon and New York, 2010, p. 19.
Nick J. Fox, “Postpositivism”, in Lisa M. Given (ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods (Volume 1&2), SAGE, 2008, London, p. 662.
Stefano Guzzini, Realism in International Relations and International Political Economy, Routledge, New York, 1998, p. 205-206.
Steve Smith, “Positivism and Beyond”, in Steve Smith et al. (eds.), in International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, p. 17.
Steve Smith, “New Approaches to International Theory”, in John Baylis and Steve Smith (eds.), The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (First Edition), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997, pp. 169-171.
View or Download full articleAccess options
SWS access login
Login as SWS Scientific CommitteeLogin as SWS Scientific PartnerLogin as SWS AuthorAuthors and approved SWS contributors will read and export their own linked papers after identity matching by SWS profile, email and SGEM GlobalID.
For librarian assistance: [email protected]
Purchase Instant Access
- Article can be downloaded after successful payment.
- Article may be used according to SWS library access terms.
- Article cannot be redistributed.
