Download This PaperInternational Political Theory, Political Science and the Inter-Paradigm Debate: The Natural Selection of Realism
Centre for International Relations, Queen's University at Kingston, Occasional Paper No. 19, 39pp (1987)
39 Pages Posted: 29 Apr 2020
Date Written: June 6, 1987
Abstract
The inter-paradigm debate currently in progress among IR specialists essentially involves the comparative merits of the contending perspectives' core organizing notions, with the general assumption being that these notions set parameters on the lines of inquiry that scholars follow in attempting to generate knowledge about the subject matter of the field. Indeed, it is frequently asserted that prior paradigm choice largely defines the very scope of the observables analysts and theorists will seek to describe and explain. Given the finite resources available for the knowledge building enterprise and the authentically existential stakes at issue in international affairs, it is entirely comprehensible why the professional and normative impetuses driving the present disciplinary dispute have engaged the attention of the field's practitioners.
This paper approaches the inter-paradigm debate from the vantage-point of political science and consequently evaluates the claims and existing products of the competing meta-theoretical stances associated with each paradigmatic vision in function of that vantage point. I will first indicate what I understand to be the essential features of "international political theory" since the principal criterion for paradigm selection resides in the assessment one makes of the comparative strengths of paradigms of potential constructs within integrated sets of abstract propositions, which when taken together seek to offer a formal explanation of one or more field phenomena. I next relate that evaluation to the major points of contention within IR that have crystallized in the current debates centering on paradigm legitimacy, and in doing so I make the case for the social-scientific credentials of realist thought by demonstrating what realism has remained the preeminent organizing framework for political scientists working in IR.
Keywords: International Political Theory, Realism, Paradigms, Methodology
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