Summary (Thinking about IR theory)

 Given the tremendous diversity and complexity of what is studied, there is a multiplicity of
views concerning how one studies international relations. The possible avenues go well
beyond the realms of history and political science.
 Different perspectives on international relations naturally generate debates. Beginning in the
period between the two world wars and continuing after World War II into the 1950s, realists
and idealists argued over the nature of international politics and the possibility of peaceful
change. In the 1960s the so-called second great debate between traditionalists and
behavioralists dealt with the question of appropriate methodology. Traditionalists emphasized
the relative utility of history, law, philosophy, and other traditional, non-quantitative modes of
inquiry to understanding government and other governmental or political institutions.
Behavioralists argued in favor of social science conceptualization, quantification of variables
when possible, formal hypothesis testing, and causal model building in the study of political
processes or patterns of behavior.
 The earlier debates have been overtaken by new challenges to the dominance in the social
sciences of scientific or “positivist” methods borrowed from the natural sciences. Following
the German scholar Max Weber
 Approaches drawing on history and Marxist insights have been the subject of much discussion
in certain journals in the field, contributing as well to the growing literature on
postcolonialism.
 Epistemology involves the ways and means by which we come to know something (or at least
what we think we know) about the world.
 Ontology refers to how each of us views the world—how we see or understand the essence of
things around us.
 Dialectical materialism is an example of a theoretical idea drawn from a Marxist, materialist
ontology. Economic structuralists vary in their assessments of the future course and effects on
the human condition of this historical mechanism.
 Images are general perspectives on international relations and world politics that consist of
certain assumptions about key actors and processes that influence our theorizing.
 Another meaning, more consistent with usage in this volume, views theory as simply a way of
making the world or some part of it more intelligible or better understood. Theories dealing
with international relations aspire to achieve this goal.
 How do we identify these laws? The preferred positivist method is through the development
of hypotheses—a proposition relating two or more variables. Thus, whenever A is present,
then B can be expected to follow.
 General theories that strive to provide a complete account of the causes of war or other
phenomena are less common than partial, or middle-range, theories that are more modest in
the scope of what is to be explained or predicted.
 The world of theory is an abstract one. Theories may actually exist apart from facts.
Mathematical theorists, for example, deal entirely in the realm of abstraction, whether or not
their work has direct relevance to problems of the world in which we live.
 The levels of analysis constitute a framework designed to organize and assist in systematic
thinking about IR. We differentiate the term levels of analysis (individual or group, state and
society, and “system” as a whole) from units of analysis, the latter referring to states,
 organizations, individuals or groups, classes, and other entities. What one is trying to explain
or study (such as the outbreak of war) is known as the dependent variable. Factors at different
levels of analysis we suspect as being causally related to what we are trying to explain typically
are termed independent variables.
 This issue of levels of analysis also subtly pervades the images and interpretive understandings
we identify. Neo- or structural realists, for example, note how the overall structure or
distribution of power in the international system influences the behavior of states or the
perceptions of decisionmakers. Hence, neorealist analysis emphasizes the systems level at
which states act and interact in relation to each other. Similarly, members of the English
School look to international or world society as the principal level of analysis, even as they are
quite comfortable crossing the different levels of analysis in seeking explanations. Moreover,
certain economic structuralists examine how the historical development of the capitalist world
economy generates state actors.
 An image of international or world politics influences the selection of units or processes
examined and variables identified and operationalized.
 What we term interpretive understandings—constructivist, critical, postmodern, and feminist
thought—share one thing in common: All have taken issue with one or more of the
epistemological, methodological, and ontological assumptions that drive positivist theorizing
in realism and liberalism in particularWhat we term interpretive understandings—
constructivist, critical, postmodern, and feminist thought—share one thing in common: All
have taken issue with one or more of the epistemological, methodological, and ontological
assumptions that drive positivist theorizing in realism and liberalism in particular.
 Normative theory deals not so much with what is—the domain of empirical theory and the
images and interpretive understandings associated with it—but rather with what should or
ought to be.