Introduction: Thinking Theoretically §

Content

1. Nature of Theories and Social Science §

1.1 What do IR theories debate about? §

1. Explaining the motivations and conditioning factors leading to war

   • Right to fight preventive wars
   • states’ duty to fight humanitarian wrs
   • interventionists gain national interests by intervening

2. Are (there?) cooperative relations between competing hegemonic states, such as the USA and China?

   This questions doesn’t make sense Questions

3. What role can international institutions play today in altering the preferences of powerful international actors?

4. How are global power relations to be identified and where, and with whom, does power lie in world politics?

   What is global power relations?

5. What are the limits and possibilities of progress in tackling urgent world political problems, from poverty to the threat or experience of chronic insecurity, and from terrorism to climate change?

1.2. Why use theories for these questions? §

There are two problems with asking world leaders why they did what they did

1. False Answer: world leaders answering

   • Lies due to security and discretion
   • Saving face or hiding their lackings
   • Biased or propaganda answer

2. Unaware Response: leaders might be subconsciously influenced by many things in making a decision, not just one, either they are aware or not

💡 Don’t leaders make informed, planned, and precise decisions all the time? The social world is one in which individuals exist within powerful economic, political, social, gendered, racial, linguistic, and moral structures. Even leaders sometimes act on instincts, based on past mentorship, and only theories about them can consistently explain leaders’ actions.

2. Why are there so many theories? §

The main debate has been between different forms of Liberalism and Realism (Neo-Liberalism & Neo-Realism)

Marxism also came to be one of the traditionals

2.1. What did each theories in the Interparadigm debate focus on? §

• Realism focused on the primary issue of explaining war/conflicts, the bipolar structure of IS
• Liberalism covered secondary issues of institutions and trade
• Marxism explained economic power and structural inequality

2.2. Why is realism & neo-realism the dominant theory for world politics? §

As international relations is defined as being about war, the theory that explains it best would be realism

Realism and Neorealism reflected implicit, unstated, ‘common-sense’ assumptions of war in world politics.

3. What is the inter-paradigm actually debating about? §

The three theories are just intellectual pluralism in defining IR

Intellectual Pluralism: The many competing theories all explain one world but focuses on different parts of the world.

The three theories compete for attention of their ability to explain different parts of the same world

But had different scopes altogether:

• Realism: international wars and conflicts in Cold War
• Liberalism: concerns trade and international economic relations between leading capitalist economies.
• Marxism: the pattern of world trade and investment that creates inequalities

If this is true, then the dominance of one theory is the result of a prior assumption about the main things in world politics that need explaining

• what are the ‘prior assumptions’ about the main things in world politic referring to?
  • Why is it that war/conflicts are the main parts of world politics?

💡 Choosing a theory to explain something is a political choice and doesn’t have one concrete answer. If your context is urban wealthy area, you choose liberalism. If your context is war and famine, you use realism. If your context is unequal society, you use marxism.

Don’t each theories (Realism, liberalism, marxism) have their own perspectives of everything in society right? because they aim to explain the world?

• They each have perspectives but don’t focus on them so much as each one does for their scope.

Are the different theories perspectives on their similar parts have similarities or difference?

• What do realism think about inequality?…

4. What is the fourth great debate? §

From dissatisfaction of the notion of interparadigm debate, that sparked the debate between rationalist and reflectivist theories.

• Has been the main divide between IR theories for the last two decades

Proposed by Robert Keohane referring to tension between two approaches:

• Rationalist: neorealism and neoliberalism
• Reflectivist: feminism and poststructuralism

Why did Robert Keohane not think constructivism, normative theory, and the English school not be considered reflectionists?

all of which can best be understood as overlapping the rationalist/reflectivist divide (What does this mean?)

What is Positivism ? §

Positivist: information derived from sensory experience, as interpreted through reason and logic, forms the exclusive source of all certain knowledge.

• Rejects claim without empirical evidence to prove the theory. Most follow scientific methods
• follows empiricism
• any knowledge is fallable. New discoveries could disprove past findings.

Rejects concepts such as

• Social structure
• Justice

What is post-positivesm? §

interpretivism/reflectivism: have interpretive understanding of society.

• oppose possitivism claims

Post-Positivist Paradigm

• Femenism
• Post-structuralism
• Normative Theories…

4.1 What’s the difference between rationalist and reflectivist approach? §

• Rationalist (positivism) are positivist
• Reflectivist (post-positivism) oppose positivism

central differences between rationalist and reflectivist accounts are epistemological and methodological , and only secondarily about what the world is like (ontology).

how we know what we claim to know.

4.1.1. What does rationalist base their knowledge claims on? Is it reliable? §

foundationalism a term used to describe theories that believe that our knowledge can have foundations, either in reason and rationality, systematic empirical observation, or independent existence of reality.

Dominance of rationalist approach on ‘how we knows what we knows’ through foundationalism

• It makes knowledge claims based on secure grounds
• Rationalists claim it is more accurate as it uses systematic scientific approach.

others underestimate the power of human minds

Humans can gain knowledge by other means than theory and facts.

4.1.2. What does reflectionst base their knowledge on? Is it reliable? §

But what do they based their knowledge on though? Not answered yet Questions

Reflectivist doesn’t use scientific approach or based on foundationalism

⇒ dismissed by rationlists scholars for not being legitimate social science.

5. What is Constructivism ? §

Argued by Stephen Walt

Main alternative to Realism and Liberalism is Constructivism

• Similar philosophically to rationalism
• Reject reflectivism as it criticized mainstream paradigms but didn’t offer alternative
• Unit of analysis is individuals
• Instrument is ideas and discourses
• Limitation: better at describing the past than anticipating the future

Competing Theories Comparison §

• Realism
  • Unit of Analysis: States
  • Main Instruments: Economic and military power
• Liberalism
  • Unit of Analysis: States
  • Main Instruments: Vary across international institutions, economic exchange, promotion of democracy
• Constructivism
  • Unit of Analysis: Individuals (especially elites)
  • Main Instruments: Ideas and Discourse
  • Main Limitation: better at describing the past than anticipating the future

“compleat diplomat” of the future should remain cognizant of realism’s emphasis on the inescapable role of power, keep liberalism’s awareness of domestic forces in mind, and occasionally reflect on constructivism’s vision of change — Stephen Walt

6. What do the theories share? §

The different theories share 3 similar significant assumptions:

1. Importance of theory in understanding the world
   • Facts comes from either
     • Something linked to theory
     • Result of powerful and unstated assumption
2. Theories have histories: theories are created at different times when events create them, some are old some are new
3. Theories link theory and practice: use knowledge learned to apply to understand real world better

7. How to Pick between theories? §

Theorists write their work in a perspective of promoting their own theory while down playing competitors. Learn about many theories from many perspectives and compare them by yourself.

You cannot combine different theories scoping on different things into one world view because

• They do prioritize some parts of the world, but they have precise assumptions about others too
• They might see the same, but offer different explanations for the same phenomenon

You shouldn’t only debate theories that are on the same grounds (neoreliams vs neoliberalism)

• Compare theories in different ethimethology and ontology

Oxford University Press Summary

Q&A §

1. Is Intellectual Pluralism true, can you pick between different theories based on what you’re trying to understand?
   • Do students need to be tied down to one theory/group-of-theories or can they pick and choose?

References §