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LG601 Political and International Theory
Postpositivism
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Overview
Positivism: a critical review
Positivism & postpositivism
Explaining & Understanding
How postpositivism is regarded (by a sub-sector)
The Great Debates
Marginalising postpositivism
Postpositivism: postmodernists, poststructuralists, feminists, Critical
Theorists (and some social constructivists)
The researcher’s process
Mapping understandings of knowledge
Postpositivism: discourse theory and analysis as a method
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Positivism – a critical review
Smith argues that positivism is terribly ill-defined. There are three
common ways of using the term in IR. The first use has characterised
international relations although the overlap of usages is especially marked:
1 positivism is treated as the same thing as empiricism, each is seen as an
epistemology (how we might know something about the world)
2 positivism is used in a methodological way, it is a set of rules for the
practice of science or study
3 positivism is equated with behaviouralism, meaning a very restrictive
reliance on quantitative data and a disregard for what goes on inside actors’
heads, as a basis for knowledge claims
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Positivism and Post-positivism: concept of theory
P&IR theories in positivism = empirical propositions that can be tested
This empirical theory must be consistent with well-established knowledge in
related fields of inquiry (unity of behavioural and natural sciences)
Epistemology is key: scholars can make generalisations about the social world,
including international relations, which are verifiable
Theory=> hypotheses => test => eliminate => diverse tests => pass, modification
or fail?
Independent, dependent and intervening variables are specified, all of which are
involved in explaining domestic and international politics
In P&IR: Quantitative research/Rational Choice Theory: game theory (logical)
Problem is that humans rarely conform to simple models of their behaviour.
Models make reference to values, but overlook disagreements based on values
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Positivism – a critical review
Smith rejects Nicholson’s definition of positivism as epistemology (empiricism).
Sees positivism as a methodological commitment, tied to an empiricist
epistemology =>results in a very restricted range of permissible ontological
claims.
Empiricism underestimates the amount of theory involved in perception
and observation
Epistemology must be separated conceptually from ontology and methodology.
Smith sees neither as prior => they are mutually and inextricably interrelated.
The interrelationship of the epistemological, methodology and ontological
entailments of positivism are ignored and most theorists are unaware of the
consequences
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Explaining and Understanding:
key concepts
Holism
Cause
External (material)
structure
Degrees of Determinism –
constraints present
Law-generating
Individualism
Meaning and Rules
Social (and material)
structure
Degrees of determinism change possible
Actor’s perspectives
Theories of social action
natural science approach
Positivist
interpretative approach
Post positivist
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Explaining and Understanding: Explaining
“Explaining and Understanding” frames the positivist vs post-positivist debate
Explaining: is an outsider’s story = the scientist explaining the natural world
The human realm is treated as part of nature
The social world is an independent and predictable environment
Science says events are caused according to laws that determine under what
conditions an event will occur, i.e. Similar events occur in similar conditions
Those that explain differ to the degree to which they think similar effects always
occur in similar conditions, i.e. weak or strong determinism
Strong determinism suggests it makes no difference whether Obama or McCain
is elected, US foreign policy behaviour will be the same – do you agree?
Theories cast in terms of external structures and systematic forces are called
‘holist’ (meaning the parts of the whole behave as the whole requires) by
Hollis and Smith in terms of the range of causal theories = they seek to explain
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Explaining and Understanding: Understanding
H&S: Considerations of meaning may take us beyond the scope of scientific
method
Can you make room for meaning by saying that human relations are a little
more complex than other workings of nature?
Can do one of two things:
(1) put meaning aside and concentrate on behaviour because science must
stick to what it can in principle be tested against experience and observation.
=> behaviouralism
(2) make meaning central and construct a [scientific] method peculiar to the
social world => hermeneutics/ interpretative tradition
Action must always be understood from within e.g. winking, meaning of winker
and interpretation of person being winked at vs causal laws that explain the
mechanics of how winking biologically happens; causal laws of physical
movement
=> Hermeneutic objection to behaviouralism
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Postpositivism evaluated in IR
Positivist empiricist epistemology has determined what could be studied in IR
because it has determined what kinds of things existed in international
relations
Positivism is seen the gold standard by which to judge all newcomers.
Positivists judge the worth of postpositivism on positivist grounds.
The criteria favours rationalism and the very foundations of knowledge that
postpositivists are challenging
The debate between traditional and post-positivism theory is so important that
it is defined as the third “discipline-defining debate” in international relations
history
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First
1900-1949
The “Great Debates”:
Second
1950-1999
2000 - ?
Methodological issues
Methodological issues:
ontological and
epistemological
Substantive issues
What were the causes of
World War I?
What were the causes of
World War II?
How is it possible to
achieve peace/prevent
war?
Third
How can the politics/IR world
be studied with methods of
the natural science?
How can facts and
regularities be discovered?
What is reality / how do we
know what we know is real?
Post-positivists: critical
constructivists/postBehaviouralists /neorealists structuralists vs
vs traditionalists
positivists: neorealists/
neoliberals, conventional
Liberal idealism vs
Scientific approach vs law, constructivists
realism
history...perception/intuition
Law, history
Meta-theoretical,
Explaining/predicting reality subjective/interpretative
Normative/prescriptive objectively/rigorously using vs ‘objective’ scientific
vs dangers of normative, (in)dependent variables.
approach
describing the reality of Using theory to better
the world
predict reality
Theory - practice -‘reality’9
Marginalising postpositivism in IR
Many scholars adopt strategies that marginalise critical scholarship
Krause’s 4 mainstream methods to respond to critical scholarship:
(1)cooptation – changing the label but not the focus of strategic studies to
security studies
(2) exclusion – not part of discipline if you don’t test theories
(3) character assassination – e.g Walt, Keohane, realist conference
attendees
(4) definitional fiat –maintaining the ground rules for studying particular
issues through tautological assertions that balancing or bandwagoning
models account for centuries of interstate relations, which ignores how
identities groups emerge, and the possibility that nationalism can be
projected through prisms other than state relations etc
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Postpositivism in IR
New critical approaches to international theory have in common a rejection of
the assumptions of positivism and their claims about knowledge/the world
By ‘critical’ here is meant the work of
post-modernists,
Critical Theorists (in the Frankfurt School sense),
feminist theorists and
Poststructuralists
The international world is an entirely humanly-constructed arrangement:
approach required is different from natural science, needs to acknowledge
that people conceive/construct/constitute the worlds they live in, including the
international world
Jackson and Sorensen classify critical theory, postmodernism and normative
theory as post-positivist methodologies BUT no mention of poststructuralism,
Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory or Derridian deconstruction –
“postmodern deconstruction”?
Postmodernists ≠poststructuralists
Note: There is a difference when using the term critical theories (small ‘c’ and small ‘t’) which refer to a generic notion of all postpositivist
approaches and Critical Theory (big C and big T) of Frankfurt School of Critical Theory
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Postpositivist writers and premises
Central tenet of postmodern work is to over throw all positivist positions on epistemology
There are three writers that have helped in overthrowing the positivist epistemology:
Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty.
Foucault argues that academic discourses emerged not as a result of scholarly enquiry
but as the direct consequence of power relations; “power/knowledge”;
Derrida argues that reason is a product of specific cultural and historical setting of
thinking and writing; the knower is always caught up in a language and mode of thinking
which, far from interpreting a world, instead constructs it
Rorty argues that the mind cannot mirror nature; what matters is the coherence of
beliefs, so we should give up on the notion of truth and defend particular values
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Postpositivism: POMO Approaches
Postmodernism: ‘incredulity towards narratives’, i.e. theories of IR, etc.
Main target is neorealism
POMOs:
•
Deny the notion of objectivity, of human progress through enhanced
knowledge
•
Sceptical of universal truths, deflates academic egos
•
Conform to academic conventions of intellectual enquiry; tendency to nihilism
Moderate POMOs: theories have elements of subjectivity (our values/perspectives)
and objectivity (agreement on substantial insights about what the real world is like)
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Postpositivism: CT Approaches Critical Theory developed from Marxist thought; German group of scholars: Frankfurt
School; work of Robert Cox and Andrew Linklater
CT rejects three basic premises of positivism:
(1) an objective, external (to the observer) reality
(2) subject/object distinction
(3) value-free social science
Theory is always for someone and for some purpose; knowledge in IR is either
positivist/problem-solving or critical/emancipatory: do you agree?
Critical Theory: International system is a construct of the most powerful states
•
Focus on power and domination, not just states and state system
•
Seek to determine the political interests that IR theories/theorists serve
•
Seek to provide knowledge on human progress and possibilities for emancipation
•
Use theory to help bring about change; echoing the Idealists
•
Cannot escape one’s position
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Postpositivism: NT Approaches
Normative Theory is not post-positivist, it is ‘pre- and post-positivist’
NT addresses the ethical nature of relations between communities and states
NT:
•
rejects premises of positivism because positivism does not normally consider
moral decisions and dilemmas, which for NT, are the most important issues in IR
•
has a common thread with constructivism, sharing a focus on intersubjective
meanings, ideas and beliefs
•
is another name for political theory or the moral philosophy of international
relations
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Postpositivism in IR: poststructuralist approaches
Poststructuralism is a label applied to scholars by those people who don’t
do poststructural work
Poststructuralism‘s critical purpose is to destabilize truths, reveal their
contingency and the nature of their production
Poststructural work draws on the work of Jacques Derrida and Michel
Foucault
Most of these scholars have not entered the broad church of Critical Security
Studies, but their work inspires some members to engage in it
Muttimer explains you can’t come up with a list of bullet points that inform
poststructural work
Instead he lists authors and texts that are cited as poststructural. e.g. Klein
1994 Strategic Studies and World Order and David Campbell, 1998 Writing
Security
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Postpositivism in IR: The Matrix
Morpheus: Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something.
What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that
there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a
splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do
you know what I'm talking about? …It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes
to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage.
Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.
Morpheus: I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're
the one that has to walk through it.
Morpheus: This is your last
chance. After this, there is no
turning back. You take the
blue pill - the story ends, you
wake up in your bed and
believe whatever you want to
believe.
Morpheus: You take
the red pill - you stay
in Wonderland and I
show you how deep
the rabbit-hole goes.
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The researcher’s process…
Research interest
Ontology
Literature
Theoretical paradigm
Research question
Ontology
Epistemology
Method/approach
Formal/statistical model
Cognitive/discursive
Critical Constructivism
Epistemology
Teaching
Juppille
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solution of the remaining puzzles of normal science (Kuhn. 175).
211)
Constructivism
Anti-empirical
Unobservable
Immaterial
Abstract
Realism/Liberalism
Empirical
Observable
Material
Concrete
Postpositivism: posties, pomos, feminists, social constructivists
Poststructuralists, postmodernists, some feminists and social constructivists
share certain theoretical commitments about how discourses work and that
discursive studies of the knowledge/power nexus in IR = critical theorizing
Reject positivist epistemology / challenge ‘scientism’ of mainstream IR
BUT: Conventional social constructivists have distanced themselves from
‘postmodern’ constructivists - don’t want to be tarred with the same brush
Critics argue that post/critical social constructivism is unusable because it
cannot determine what is true and every result is one among many other
possible stories about reality
It is politically unusable because it cannot determine what is good/bad. When
conditions are identified as needing change, it is just the constructivists’
expression of their own contingent views (See Houghton article)
Critical methodology does not imply rejection of the idea that there are better
or worse interpretations – only a rejection of the idea that these are arbitrated
against some external ‘reality’ rather than against social actors’
understandings of their world
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Research materials of discourse theory and analysis
Discourse theorists use texts such as diplomatic documents, theory articles,
transcripts of interviews as the main research materials
Should look at a set of texts by different people presumed, according to the research
focus, to be authorised speakers/writers of a dominant discourse
The goal is to establish a particular discourse, to establish how the different texts
overlap and the structure of meanings they share
Identify the “space of objects” that are differentiated from, but related to each
other
Draw up a list of predications attaching to the subjects the text constructs and
clarifying how these subjects are distinguished from and related to one another
The USA
vs Iraq in the second Gulf War
Democratic Ideals
Dictatorship
Honest
Subversive
Protector
Dangerous
Legal Combatants
Illegal Combatants
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Mapping understandings of knowledge
Behaviouralism
Positivism
Materialist:
material object ‘out there’
Copenhagen School
Stable:
Enough to be ‘objective’
Conventional
constructivism
Contingent:
Everything is subjective
Critical Theory
Critical Constructivism
postmodernism
Poststructuralism
Discursive:
constituted by language
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Positivism and Post-positivism: Combining Approaches?
Some scholars try to avoid the extreme positions on the positivist-postpositivist debate
Seek out a middle ground between pure explaining and pure understanding
Hollis and Smith argue that it is impossible to compare theories of IR because the
theories define what is evidence in different ways – “there is no body of evidence that we
could use to compare their explanations” (1990: 61)
They have different analyses of human nature AND different ways to study it
THEREFORE “there is no easy way to combine a natural science approach with an
interpretative one”
It is held by positivism that the theory appears to be consistent with the facts or
inconsistent: BUT what if theory is involved in deciding what the facts are
Weberian notion of social science advocates a science which attempts the interpretative
understanding of social action to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects
Understanding does not prevent scholars from proceeding to frame hypotheses to test
empirical theories that seek to explain social phenomena: is it either/or, can it be both/and
Some of the major debates in IR are about this issue: Do you think it is either/or or
both/and?
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