ON THE BORDER, OUTSIDE: THE POST-POSITIVIST INFLUENCE IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY AND POLITICAL THEORY

• Ivanescu, M.
• Filimon, L. M.

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 Kuhn’s 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.

SGEM Research areas:

• SOCIAL SCIENCES: Section Political Sciences

Year:

2017

Type of Publication:

In Proceedings

Keywords:

positivism; post-positivism; international relations theory; political theory; rationalism; reflectivism

Volume:

17

SGEM Book title:

4th International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on Social Sciences and Arts SGEM 2017

Book number:

2

SGEM Series:

International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on Social Sciences and Arts-SGEM

Pages:

125-132

Publisher address:

51 Alexander Malinov blvd, Sofia, 1712, Bulgaria

SGEM supporters:

Bulgarian Acad Sci; Acad Sci Czech Republ; Latvian Acad Sci; Polish Acad Sci; Russian Acad Sci; Serbian Acad Sci & Arts; Slovak Acad Sci; Natl Acad Sci Ukraine; Natl Acad Sci Armenia; Sci Council Japan; World Acad Sci; European Acad Sci, Arts & Letters; Ac

Period:

24 - 30 August 2017

ISBN:

978-619-7408-14-0

ISSN:

2367-5659

Conference:

4th International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on Social Sciences and Arts SGEM 2017, 24 - 30 August 2017

DOI:

10.5593/sgemsocial2017/12/S01.016