Question

Write notes on Post Positivist Debate : Meaning and Features.

Answer 1

Answer:

• Milja Kurki has commented that International Relations (IR) is a ‘divided discipline’, split between a ‘positivist mainstream…camp’ and a post-positivist ‘camp’, and she is not alone in this assessment.  This essay will critically examine the benefits and disadvantages of post-positivism in light of this split, as part of what Yosef Lapid has called ‘the third debate’.  In order to do this I will look at its genesis as a reaction against the positivist majority within IR, which I will locate more broadly within a reaction against positivism in the social sciences as a whole, thus agreeing with Jim George that IR is not independent of wider theoretical debate in the social sciences.  Within the scope of this essay it is not possible to give a full overview of the breadth of post-positivist approaches, which include post-modernism, constitutive analysis and more, but I will outline the benefits of some of their corresponding characteristics, and particularly focus on ‘critical theory’.  Firstly however, it will be necessary to briefly outline what we mean by positivism more generally.  I will then move on to question the relationship between positivism and post-positivism in IR by identifying positivism with the realist and neorealist paradigm most common in the discipline, demonstrating the comparative benefits of post-positivism for showing the myths that realism is built on.  I will then turn to some of the problems that arise from post-positivism itself.  This essay contends that IR can benefit from both positivism and post-positivism; rather than discussing the strengths and weaknesses of post-positivism in IR, it is best to consider the complementary strengths of post-positivism and positivism together.

Explanation: