international relations theory International relations theory is the study of international relations (IR) from a theoretical perspective. It seeks to explain behaviors and outcomes in international politics. The three most prominent School of thought, schools of thought are ...

, post-positivism refers to theories of international relations which epistemologically reject

positivism Positivism is a philosophical school that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positivemeaning '' a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. Gerber, ''Soci ...

, the idea that the empiricist observation of the natural sciences can be applied to the social sciences. Post-positivist (or reflectivist) theories of IR attempt to integrate a larger variety of security concerns. Supporters argue that if IR is the study of foreign affairs and relations, it ought to include non-state actors as well as the state. Instead of studying solely '' high politics'' of the state, IR ought to study world politics of the ''everyday world''—which involves both high and low politics. Thus, issues such as

gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...

(''often in terms of

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

which generally holds salient the subordination of women to men) and

ethnicity An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they Collective consciousness, collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, ...

(''such as stateless actors like the

Catalans Catalans ( Catalan, French and Occitan: ''catalans''; ; ; or ) are a Romance ethnic group native to Catalonia, who speak Catalan. The current official category of "Catalans" is that of the citizens of Catalonia, a nationality and autono ...

Rohingya people The Rohingya people (; ; ) are a stateless nation, stateless Indo-Aryan peoples, Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who predominantly follow Islam from Rakhine State, Myanmar. Before the Rohingya genocide in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Ban ...

'') can be ''problematized'' and made into an international security issue—supplementing (''not replacing'') the traditional IR concerns of

diplomacy Diplomacy is the communication by representatives of State (polity), state, International organization, intergovernmental, or Non-governmental organization, non-governmental institutions intended to influence events in the international syste ...

and outright war. The post-positivist approach can be described as ''incredulity towards metanarratives''—in IR, this would involve rejecting all-encompassing stories that claim to explain the international system. It argues that neither realism nor liberalism could be the full story. A post-positivist approach to IR does not claim to provide universal answers but seeks to ask questions instead. A key difference is that while positivist theories such as realism and liberalism highlight ''how power is exercised'', post-positivist theories focus on ''how power is experienced'' resulting in a focus on both different subject matters and agents. Often, post-positivist theories explicitly promote a

normative Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible. A Norm (philosophy), norm in this sense means a standard for evaluatin ...

approach to IR, by considering

ethics Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...

. This is something which has often been ignored under traditional IR as positivist theories make a distinction between positive facts and normative judgement—whereas post-positivist argue that ''

discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. F ...

is constitutive of reality''; in other words, that it is impossible to be truly independent and factual as power-free knowledge cannot exist. Postpositivist theories do not attempt to be scientific or a social science. Instead, they attempt in-depth analysis of cases in order to "understand" international political phenomena by asking relevant questions to determine in what ways the status-quo promote certain power relations. In 2009, 21 percent of international relations faculty characterized their scholarship as post-positivist.

References

*Pettman, Ralph (2001): ''World Politics: Rationalism and Beyond,'' Palgrave, London and New York. {{International relations theories International relations theory Positivism

See also

References