When a discipline begins to reflect on its own
practices there are various resources on which it can
draw and a range of foci upon which the gaze can
be turned. In Chapter 1 of this volume Brian
Schmidt has addressed the history and historiography
of the discipline. Inevitably, many of the issues
deemed important in any historical account of disciplinary
development will necessarily touch upon
issues of relevance to the philosophy of social
science (Gordon, 1991; Manicas, 1987). The philosophy
of social science is inseparable from the
history of social science, and many of the debates
that have shaped international relations (IR)1
have
been concerned with issues integral to the philosophy
of social science. Where Schmidt deals with the
manner in which these issues have historically
(mis)shaped the discipline, this chapter will focus
on their content and attempt a critical analysis of
them in relation to their deployment in terms of disciplinary
development, disciplinary politics and
wider sociopolitical concerns.
A key issue for any social science discipline is
the extent to which it might be considered a
science,2
and Schmidt identifies this question as a
‘defining goal of the field’ (See Chapter 1).
However, where Schmidt sees the development of
IR in terms of a continuing attempt to provide scientific
credentials for its knowledge claims, I see a
discipline that is structured around a set of deep
contestations over the very idea of science itself and
the extent to which IR can, and should, be a science.
The development of IR cannot be understood as the
inexorable march towards science since many
within the discipline are opposed to a science of IR,
irrespective of any benefits that might derive from
the label. What science is and whether IR can or
should be a science is a subject of impassioned
debate within the discipline (Bull, 1969; Ferguson
and Mansbach, 1988; Hollis, 1996; Hollis and
Smith, 1990; Kaplan 1969; Nicholson 1996a,
1996b; Ogley 1981; Reynolds, 1973; Wendt, 1999).
For many working within the philosophy of social
science this issue effectively defines the content of
its subject matter (Bhaskar, 1979: 1; Brown, 1979:
vii; Fay, 1996: 1). Following conventional usage
within the philosophy of social science I shall call
this the problem of ‘naturalism’ (Bhaskar 1979;
Hollis, 1996).3
Within the context of this overarching
question a range of subsidiary issues are typically
subsumed: the nature of explanation, the
nature of causation, the nature of laws and so on
(Bunge, 1996; Nicholson, 1996a; Reynolds, 1973;
Suganami. 1996).
Inevitably, answers to this question have been
legitimated by recourse to the philosophy of social
science. The philosophy of social science, however,
is itself parasitic upon the philosophy of science,
and to a large extent much of the literature that
addresses the science question in IR bypasses the
philosophy of social science completely (Vasquez,
1995, 1998; Waltz, 1979).4
This is a regrettable,
although understandable, development, and the
unreflective importation of the frameworks of
philosophers of science to either legitimate a scientific
IR (Kuhn, Lakatos, Popper), or to defend IR
from science (Kuhn, Feyerabend) has done perhaps
serious damage to the discipline (Ferguson and
Mansbach, 1988). This damage pales in comparison,
however, to that inflicted by the assumption
that what science is, is self-evident.
2
Philosophy of Social Science
and International Relations
C O L I N W I G H T
None of this, of course, is to argue that the
philosophy of social science, and hence by extension
the philosophy of social science in IR, is only concerned
with the question of science. Another fundamental
question has revolved around what is known
in IR as the agent–structure problem (Carlsnaes,
1992; Dessler, 1989; Wendt, 1987; Wight, 1999a).
This issue defies easy definition, and within IR the
confusion over what exactly is at stake in the
agent–structure problem has led one pair of commentators
to suggest that it is not at all clear if the
contributors to the debate in IR are referring to the
same problem (Friedman and Starr, 1997). Whatever
this problem does involve, however, all parties
agree that a substantive element of it concerns a
conundrum best elaborated by Marx: ‘Men make
their own history, but they do not make it just as
they please; they do not make it under conditions
chosen by themselves’ (Marx, 1962). The agent–
structure problem then, is concerned with the relationship
between active and self-reflecting agents
and the structural context in which their activity
takes place.5
There are many aspects to this problem
and it has surfaced under various guises within the
philosophy of social science6
(Singer, 1961). When
combined with the issue of naturalism, it is tempting,
as indeed many have done, to picture these
problems in terms of a matrix such as Figure 2.1
(Hollis and Smith, 1990; Wendt, 1999; see also
Carlsnaes, Chapter 17 in this volume).7
The problems with such pictorial representations
go well beyond the self-evident point that they have
their limitations in terms of how much detail they
can represent (Bourdieu, 1977; Hollis and Smith,
1992: 216; see also Carlsnaes, Chapter 17 in this
volume). The real difficulty with such diagrammatic
devices is that their inability to deal with the
complexity of the issues introduces a high level of
distortion as to what the actual fault lines are. That
is, the matrix provides an image of rigid boundaries
that do not hold when the issue is considered in
other discursive and less dichotomous ways.
Moreover, taking seriously the fact that its practitioners
largely construct IR, we can see how the
fault lines of contemporary IR might themselves be
an artefact of the pictorial representation of them in
two-by-two matrix form. In short, the use of such
devices to explain disciplinary divisions contributes
to their construction. Such devices may be valuable
aids in teaching and understanding complex issues,
but we should always be aware of what Mario
Bunge calls the ‘Myth of Simplicity’ (Bunge, 1963;
see also Carlsnaes, Chapter 17 in this volume).
The aim of the chapter is not simply to outline the
various uses of the philosophy of social science
within IR. Nor is it simply to reiterate the wellworn,
and overused, claim that things are more
complicated than the literature portrays them. The
primary aim of the chapter is to provide an account
of the philosophy of social science within IR in
order to demonstrate that the contemporary theoretical
cleavages that structure the discipline are
unable to contain the weight they are being asked to
bear. In short, the contemporary meta-theoretical
framework the discipline employs is: a bar to constructive
dialogue; a hindrance to much-needed
research into issues of vital concern; a confused
misrepresentation of the issues; and most importantly,
a construct of those working in the field,
hence they have it within their power to change it.
I begin by providing legitimations for taking the
philosophy of social science seriously and give a
brief sketch of the development of the philosophy of
social science. In the following section I briefly discuss
the early development of the discipline in the
context of claims to be a science of social affairs.
The philosophy of social science is largely missing
from this period of the discipline’s development, as,
of course, it must be given that the philosophy of
science had not yet emerged as a sub-discipline of
philosophy. The third section deals with the first
genuine attempt to constitute IR as a science on the
basis of literature drawn from the philosophy of
science and the philosophy of social science. A key
component here will be understanding the role of
positivism and its use within the discipline.8
In the
fourth section I will concentrate on contemporary
debates and will, in particular, attempt to throw
some light onto what is increasingly becoming what
one commentator has called ‘a philosophical
swamp’ (Walker, 2000). Here I demonstrate how the
current ways of framing disciplinary debates are
rapidly deconstructing themselves.9
LEGITIMATION: DOES IR NEED
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE?
The utility of examining the philosophy of social
science within IR is not self-evident. Critical voices
HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS24
Explaining Understanding
Structure
Agents
Figure 2.1 A landscape of philosophical positions in
relation to social study
have often doubted whether the discipline has either
the intellectual resources, or the need, to engage in
such an exercise (Griffiths and O’Callaghan, 2001:
199; Skocpol, 1987). Many would prefer to leave
such esoteric speculation to those more able –
philosophers perhaps (Wallace, 1996). Others
doubt whether philosophy as a different ‘order of
discourse’ can provide the kind of legitimation
claimed on its behalf (Gunnell, 1975: 54; 1998: 6).
Often this skepticism towards disciplinary selfreflection
derives from a belief that such inquiries
lead to the neglect of more substantive forms of
knowledge generation (Gunnell 1998: xii; Halliday,
1996: 320; Mann, 1996; Skocpol, 1987). There are
also legitimate concerns about naïve appropriations
of ‘Gurus’ from cognate disciplines (Hollis and
Smith, 1991).
There is, of course, something deeply ironic in
the fact that the social sciences feel the need to
legitimate their activities in relation to the philosophy
of social science. After all, apart from some
notable exceptions, scientists rarely legitimate their
practices in terms of the philosophy of science
(Gordon, 1991; Gunnell, 1998; Nicholson, 1996a).
Indeed, modern science only emerged as a science
once its autonomy from philosophy was firmly
established (Easton, 1965; Gordon, 1991; Gunnell,
1975; Little, 1980). Given the success of the natural
sciences, allied to the desire to emulate them, some
have argued that it was inevitable that social inquiry
and philosophy would likewise divorce if such
forms of inquiry were to constitute themselves as
sciences (Little, 1980: 3; Nicholson, 1996a: 8–10).
To view this process as inevitable, however, is
probably too strong a characterization. Whilst most
natural scientists were happy to leave speculative
philosophy behind, many concerned with social
inquiry were not (Gadamer 1977; Winch, 1958; in IR
see Bull, 1969; Garnett, 1984; Hollis and Smith
1990; Little, 1980). This is an intellectual split that
still structures the contemporary social sciences, but
it is important to note that it emerges not only out of
a desire to maintain a philosophical presence within
social inquiry, but also from a desire to keep a certain
form of science out (Bull, 1969; Reynolds, 1973). In
general, those who reject a scientific IR are not
against systematic inquiry per se (Garnett, 1984;
Reynolds, 1973). Indeed Vico, often cited as an
authoritative source by those against a social science,
entitled his major work New Science10
(Vico, [1744]
1984). When hermeneutics first emerged as a distinctive
approach to inquiry, its early proponents still
conceived of themselves as being engaged in the
development of a science of meaning (Bauman,
1978; Dilthey, 1976; Husserl, 1982; Outhwaite,
1975). Often the rejection of a science of the social
world is derived from deep-seated fears in relation to
some claimed dehumanizing aspects at the heart of
science itself (Aliotta, 1914; Ashley, 1987, 1989;
Morgenthau, 1946; Thompson, 1981).
The philosophy of science only really emerged as
a recognizable field of study in the 1930s (Dingle,
1952; Gordon, 1991; Gunnell, 1998; Oldroyd,
1986). Early understandings of science were rudimentary
and were generally based upon accounts
developed by Thomas Hobbes, John Stuart Mill,
David Hume and Rene Descartes (Gordon, 1991).
However, conscious reflection on the nature of
human inquiry can be said to have played a role in
the human sciences ever since reflection on the
human condition became a recognizable activity
(Gordon 1991; Manicas, 1987). Thucydides, for
example, is said to have been the first scientific historian
(Abbott, 1970; Gilpin, 1986: 306; Tellis,
1996), or perhaps even a positivist (Bluhm, 1967).
It is doubtful if this characterization of
Thucydides as a positivist can be sustained (Bagby,
1994; Garst, 1989), particularly if one places the
development of positivism in a historical perspective
(Kolakowski, 1969; Oldroyd, 1986). Yet, it
does highlight the manner in which positivism and
science became interchangeable terms in the twentieth
century (Bhaskar, 1986). Equally, it points to
an important reason for considered reflection on the
nature of the knowledge claims of all social
sciences. For despite doubts concerning the ability
of the philosophy of science to provide a justificatory
framework for natural science, the results of
science, particularly in the form of technological
innovation, can hardly be doubted (Gunnell, 1998;
Nicholson, 1996a, 1996b). This success has given
science enormous prestige in modern societies – a
prestige, which despite some dissenting voices, it
still largely holds (Appleyard, 1992; Dunbar, 1995).
If social inquiry is to emulate the natural sciences
it needs to examine its methods, procedures and
underlying rationale. It needs a yardstick against
which claims to be science can be measured. Where
better to look than the philosophy of science? Hence,
whereas the natural sciences became sciences
through an enforced divorce from philosophy, social
science turned to philosophy for legitimation. Since
knowledge claims in social science are almost
always couched in terms of some philosophical
justificatory framework, the various disciplines
have felt the need to examine the status of them
(Reynolds, 1973: 14). Not least because claiming
that one’s research is science is exactly to claim
legitimacy not accorded to other forms of knowledge
(Ashley and Walker, 1990; Smith, 1987).
Gunnell (1975: 54) sees this as an impossible
enterprise and argues that political ‘science must
chart its own methodological route, and that the
defence of that route cannot be achieved by invoking
the authority of science’. There are two problems
with this claim. First, the influence of the
philosophy of science on social inquiry is not
simply methodological, and second, his argument
relies on the assumption that the philosophy of
science can tell us nothing about the practices of
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND IR 25
science; and, of course, if this were the case then he
would be correct. But the philosophy of science
does claim to reflect on the practice of science and
to pronounce on some of its essential elements. No
doubt it will get much wrong, but there is no a priori
reason to assume it will get it all wrong. Since
the philosophy of science does claim some legitimacy
in terms of its understanding of science, then
it is perfectly appropriate for social inquiry to look
to it for resources. If Gunnell’s argument were to be
followed to its logical conclusion, political science
and IR would be excluded from drawing on any
resources other than those developed within the discipline
(see Reynolds, 1973 for arguments counter
to Gunnell’s). Moreover, academic disciplines are
not as hermetically sealed as Gunnell seems to suggest
and include philosophical concepts as essential
elements within their frameworks.
Many of the concepts developed in the philosophy
of science have been thoroughly integrated into
the fabric of the discipline (Gunnell, 1975: xiii) and,
perhaps more than any other factor, have shaped the
discipline’s self-image and continue to do so
(Nicholson, 1996a, 1996b; Smith, 1995). In this
respect, IR has little alternative but to engage with
the philosophy of social science. This accounts for
the fact that introductory sections and chapters on
this issue feature in almost all textbooks. Another
reason is that conceptual inquiry is a prerequisite to
empirical research (Walker, 1993: 82). Before
empirical research can proceed, researchers need to
have some idea of what it is they are attempting to
explain and how best to explain it. All inquiry
begins from certain premises, and understanding
the basis of these is an essential part of inquiry.
The final reason why such abstract conceptual
inquiries are important is that whereas natural scientists
may disagree on the actual content of specific
explanations, they at least agree on what an
explanation of a given phenomenon would look like
(Nicholson, 1996a: 2; Reynolds, 1973). Social scientists,
on the other hand, do not ( Hollis and Smith,
1990; Reynolds, 1973). For a discipline supposedly
born out of a desire to uncover the causes of war,
not knowing the conditions under which such a discovery
might be made seems a damning indictment
(Nicholson, 1996a: 3). Knowing the causes of war
is one thing; knowing that we know them is an altogether
different matter.
Yet engagement alone does not guarantee success,
and it has to be admitted that many of the complaints
against the use and abuse of the philosophy
of social science within IR have some substance
(Halliday, 1994: 23; Kratochwil, 2000; Wallace,
1996). In general, these problems occur due to a
lack of conceptual clarity, the misuse of key terms
and the naïve appropriation of key concepts developed
in cognate disciplines with little awareness of
the specifics of their use or the context of their
development. The most glaring examples of these
concern the use of terms such as ontology, epistemology
and methodology, although the widespread
and uncritical adoption of Kuhn’s notion of paradigms
comes a close second (Banks, 1985;
Vasquez, 1998). Within the philosophy of social
science and the philosophy of science these terms
have very specific uses and function to maintain
analytical clarity and as ways of delineating very
specific aspects of the field. In IR, on the other
hand, these terms are often thrown around like
philosophical hand grenades, with little consideration
given to how they are deployed, or to what end.
Michael Nicholson, for example, in a series of
otherwise exemplary works, has variously referred
to positivism as an ‘epistemology’ (Nicholson,
1996a, 1996b), a ‘methodology’ (despite the chapter
title being ‘The Epistemology of International
Relations’) (Nicholson, 1996a; Nicholson and
Bennett, 1994), ‘behavioralism’11
(Nicholson, 1996a;
129) and any ‘sort of scientific approach to social
behaviour’ (Nicholson, 1996a: 190) – although
admittedly this latter is with a sense of regret.
Likewise, Steve Smith refers to positivism as: an
epistemology (Smith, 1996: 24); as having an
‘empiricist epistemology’ (Smith, 1996: 22); and as
being the ‘methodology’ that underpins realism
(Smith, 1997: 166). I highlight these two eminent
scholars not as the worst examples of this tendency,
but merely representative ones. But clearly, there is
some confusion here.12
EARLY IR: A SCIENCE WITH NO PHILOSOPHY
There was a time in the discipline’s pre-history
when science was not a problematic term (Bluhm,
1967; Boucher, 1998; Dougherty and Pfaltzgraff,
1996; Tellis, 1996). Early practitioners were perhaps
not clear on how the term was deployed, but
there was a general acceptance that IR could and
should be a science. Ashley J. Tellis argues that the
development of realism from Thucydides to the present
day can be understood as a ‘Long March to
Scientific Theory’ (Tellis, 1996). And despite a
number of critiques questioning the extent to which
Thucydides can be considered a realist, few have
doubted that his discussion of the Peloponnesian
War is ‘severe in its detachment, written from a
purely intellectual point of view, unencumbered
with platitudes and moral judgments, cold and critical’
(Bury, 1975: 252).
Hobbes, of course, had provocative views about
which subjects could be deemed to be scientific, but
there is little doubt that he considered his own work
a science and he perhaps even thought of himself as
the inventor of political science (Ryan, 1996;
Sorell, 1996). Within Hobbes’s notion of political
HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS26
science there were already the seeds of a very
clearly demarcated difference between what he
called ‘political science’ and ‘political prudence’
(Ryan, 1996). According to Hobbes, Thucydides’s
analysis was based at the level of political prudence;
in general it equated to practical wisdom and
was achieved through the best advice we could
draw from a range of historical examples. Political
prudence was a genuine form of knowledge, yet it
is inevitably knowledge of particulars. Charles
Reynolds seems to suggest that all historical explanations
are of this form (Reynolds, 1973). It is a
form of knowledge based upon experience of the
past and of what has happened. It is not, however,
knowledge of how things must work and what must
happen. Science, for Hobbes, must be hypothetical,
general and infallible. But none the less, politics
could, and indeed should, be a science.
Even interwar idealism can be interpreted as
committed to the role of science in human progress
(Carr, 1946; Long, 1995: 306). And insofar as this
period of IR was driven by Enlightenment ideals of
progress based on knowledge, this point seems
hardly in doubt (George, 1994: 74–7). Richard
Little, however, argues that early IR differed from
other social sciences that emerged at the time in that
it did not attempt to model itself on the natural
sciences and was not ‘concerned with uncovering
laws which would assist in the comprehension of an
infinitely complex reality’ (Little, 1980: 7; see also
Smith, 1987). Little’s position, however (see also
Smith, 1987), suffers from two problems.
The first demonstrates the validity of Schmidt’s
claim that bad histories of the discipline can distort
current understandings (See Chapter 1 in this
volume). For Little’s sharp demarcation between IR
and other social science disciplines only makes
sense if one accepts that when the first academic
department was set up in 1919 in Aberystwyth this
constituted a unique moment with no disciplinary
prehistory. What Schmidt very clearly shows, is
that although 1919 does mark the emergence of a
specific academic department of IR, knowledge
production of the subject had a much longer
prehistory. In this respect the disciplines that Little
claims did attempt to model themselves as sciences
were the sources upon which the new discipline
of IR was to draw (Schmidt, 1998; see also
Butterfield, 1951).
The second problem with Little’s analysis is that
he is projecting a very particular account of science
back onto the work of the interwar idealists. He
seems to assume that a normative dimension to
inquiry precludes it from being a science; that
science is concerned with factual analysis and
value-driven inquiry is something different (Little,
1980: 7). This is a very particular, and contentious,
account of the fact/value relationship within
science, and there is no evidence that it is one held
by the early members of the discipline. Moreover,
there are many defenders of a scientific IR who are
committed to providing scientific explanations precisely
in order to bring about social change
(Nicholson, 1996a: 3; 2000: 197; Wright, 1962).
The charge that the early origins of the discipline
were ‘unscientific’ is located within the damning
critique launched by E.H. Carr. In what can only be
considered a strategic polemic, Carr argued that the
‘science of international politics is in its infancy’
(Carr, 1946: 14). According to Carr, realism could
provide such a science through its emphasis on ‘the
acceptance of facts and on the analysis of their
causes and consequences’ (1946: 14). The alternative
to this science, according to Carr, was idealism,
which he characterized as ‘alchemy’ (1946: 14).
Interestingly, despite Carr’s avowed commitment
to science, some have argued that he is best considered
part of the interpretive tradition within the
discipline (Dunne, 1998: 7), whereas others see
him as operating with both a scientific and interpretive
outlook (George, 1994: 77). But whichever
tradition (if indeed there are clear borders) Carr
should be considered to be within, his critique of the
idealists does indicate something important about
the disciplinary politics of such labels. Carr’s claim
that realism was based upon acceptance of the facts
and analysis of their causes and consequences is
mirrored by Norman Angell’s plea for the development
of education about international political
affairs. The lack of such education, claimed Angell,
was a barrier to the ‘impartial search for truth, the
true interpretation of all the facts’ (Angell, 1947:
17); without this belief we render ‘inoperative the
only method by which we can hope to make steady
progress: the correction of social theory and doctrine
in the light of fact and experience; the scientific
method applied to society’ (Angell, 1947: 23). Given
the similarities between Angell’s idealist approach to
IR and Carr’s more realistically inclined tendencies,
Carr’s science/alchemy dichotomy can only be
seen as a conscious attempt to seize some ‘scientific’
high ground – a ground to which Angell also staked
a claim.
Hans Morgenthau is an interesting figure in terms
of this development because he was one of the first
major figures in the discipline to openly argue
against IR as a science. His anti-scientific turn, however,
had very specific origins. His early work was
conceived as an attempt to provide a ‘scientifically
unassailable classification of international disputes’
(Honig, 1996: 289). And this commitment to
science was still evident in his 1940 essay
‘Positivism, Functionalism and International Law’
(Honig, 1996; Morgenthau, 1940). In this piece he
bemoaned the attempt to construct international law
at a technical level devoid of scientific principles
(Morgenthau, 1940: 284). This position was completely
reversed in Scientific Man and Power
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND IR 27
Politics, where he rejects all hope of a scientific IR
(Morgenthau, 1946, 1972). Still, Morgenthau’s clear
renunciation of science and positivism, which he
claimed was fictional, metaphysical and dogma
(Griffiths, 1992), has not stopped scholars from
aligning him with a science of IR (Hollis and Smith,
1990: 23), with some even going as far as to label
him a positivist (George, 1994; Hollis and Smith,
1990: 28; see Bain, 2000 for an alternative view,
Garnett, 1984; Nicholson, 1996a).
The assertion that Morgenthau should be viewed
as committed to a science of IR is generally made
on the basis of his claim that politics was governed
by ‘objective laws that have their roots in human
nature’ (George, 1994: 93; Hollis and Smith, 1990:
23–4; Morgenthau, 1948: 4). But to construe this
claim as supporting a commitment to scientific IR is
to miss the point. In conceding that politics is
governed by objective laws of human nature
Morgenthau is actually saying that there is no need
for a science of IR, because IR is governed by laws
that are explained by biology, not social science
(Griffiths, 1992: 39). There is nothing for a science
of IR to discover. Morgenthau’s theory is best
viewed as a manual for state leaders. It is a technical
guide to policy based on an understanding of the
laws that govern human behavior. More important
is the fact that Morgenthau does not ground his
arguments about human nature in any scientific
content, but in metaphysical ones (Griffiths, 1992:
38, 43; Honig, 1996: 305).
What is interesting about these developments is
the absence of any sustained discussion on the
nature of the science that was either being advanced
or rejected. There was little attempt to legitimate
claims about science by recourse to bodies of literature
developed in other disciplines, and no real
attempt to spell out the actual content of the science
being proposed. Indeed, for someone like Herbert
Butterfield, science simply was traditional forms of
inquiry (Butterfield, 1951; Dunne, 1998: 123). This
lack of legitimation in terms of the philosophy of
science is understandable given the underdeveloped
state of the philosophy of science at the time.
However, developments were moving on rapidly
and a consensus was emerging which was, for
better or worse, to stamp its mark on IR in ways that
could not have been envisaged. The science of IR
was about to rediscover some philosophy.
ADOLESCENT IR: THE LEGITIMATION
OF SCIENCE
The systematic use of the philosophy of science
within IR begins with what John Vasquez terms the
‘behavioral revolt’ (Vasquez, 1998: 39). Although
this ‘revolt’ had been taking place within political
science and other social sciences since the early
1950s, it did not begin to emerge into IR in a substantive
way until the l960s (Knorr and Rosenau,
1969a). There had been calls for its introduction
into IR prior to this (Guetzkow, 1950), and some
argue that works such as Quincy Wright’s 1942
book on war are behavioralist (Knorr and Rosenau,
1969b: 5; Schmidt, Chapter 1 in this volume).
Vasquez, however, sees these developments, whilst
validly described as behavioral in intent, as not substantively
contributing to the coming ‘revolt’
(Vasquez, 1998: 40). Given this periodization of the
‘revolt’, the sources of the ‘behavioral revolt’ are
generally located in Deutsch (1953, 1964), Kaplan
(1957), Schelling (1960) and Snyder, Bruck and
Sapin (1954, 1962); (Hollis and Smith, 1990;
Vasquez, 1998; Schmidt, Chapter 1 in this
volume). Schmidt, however, claims in Chapter 1
that the role of the Chicago School of political
science generally goes unrecognized in the dominant
accounts of the development of behavioralism.
And from the perspective of the philosophy of
science Schmidt’s point seems broadly correct.
In 1950, Harold Lasswell and Abraham Kaplan
explicitly argued that their attempt to provide a
framework for political science was informed by
developments in logical positivist philosophy of
science (Gunnell, 1975; Lasswell and Kaplan,
1950).13
This turn to the philosophy of science was
validated by David Easton (1953, 1965), who very
clearly did influence the ‘behavioral revolt’ in IR,
and Robert Lane, who argued that ‘the widespread
acceptance of the philosophy of science as a basis
for social inquiry represents a “take off ” phenomenon
in social science, promising sustained growth
in social interpretation’ (Lane, 1966).14
A key component of logical positivism that
served to legitimate the turn to the philosophy of
science was its ‘unity of science thesis’ (Nagel,
1961). This, of course, is self-validating; logical
positivism declares that the sciences can be unified
and logical positivism defines the content of
science. So any social science deserving of the label
science needs logical positivism just as logical
positivism provides the legitimation for the turn to
the philosophy of science (Bhaskar, 1986). This
usurping of the label science was to be an important
move in the ‘great debate’ (Dunne, 1998) between
traditionalists and scientists, because essentially the
label science was conceded to logical positivism.
This is an important point and highlights something
often missed in disciplinary discussions relating
to the study of IR, for the model of science that
underpins the ‘behavioral revolt’ in IR is based
upon a very specific philosophy of science and not
the practices of scientists (Gunnell, 1975: 19).
Despite claims to be following the scientific
method, behavioralism was actually an attempt to
implement a particular philosophy of science that
HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS28
was dominant at that time. The relationship
between the actual practices of scientists and logical
positivism was not yet a question that would be
subject to challenge (Chalmers, 1992). Once IR had
turned to the philosophy of science to legitimate its
practices it was inevitable that when the philosophy
of science began to question the account given by
logical positivism then IR would follow. This has
led to various modifications to logical positivism
and eventually the term ‘logical’ would be dropped
in favor of a less austere version under the label of
positivism (S. Smith, 1996: 14–18).
This also helps explain many of the contemporary
confusions surrounding science in IR, since it
is never clear whether it is science per se that is
being rejected, the logical positivist version, or
other less extreme positivist versions. This problem
is compounded by the fact that there is no longer a
consensus on what positivism is, with one commentator
identifying twelve versions of it
(Halfpenny, 1982). Moreover, the philosophy of
science itself was soon to reject positivism and to
claim that the practices of scientists did not conform
to the positivist model. This held out the rather
paradoxical prospect that all approaches that had
attempted to emulate the positivist model were not
actually following scientific procedures. Yet, whatever
problems emerged in terms of philosophy’s
own quarrel with logical positivism, when the
behavioralists turned to philosophy a consensus had
emerged within the philosophy of science around
the validity of positivism, hence it was perfectly
correct for the discipline to adopt that model. In
fact, given the level of consensus that existed within
the philosophy of science around logical positivism/positivism
it would have been perverse not
to adopt it (Chalmers, 1992).
Before proceeding to examine its reception
within IR it is important to consider something of
the claims being made on its behalf that had a significant
impact on IR. Two in particular stand out:
operationalism and instrumentalism were at the
heart of the ‘behavioral revolt’, and both are firmly
embedded within logical positivism/positivism
(Gunnell, 1975). The commitment to operationalism
is generally well understood: since, the validity
of a theory ultimately rests on the ‘facts’, all concepts
that are considered to be scientific or
empirical must be defined operationally. Within
behavioralism this has generally being taken to
mean the language of observation (Gunnell, 1975;
Nicholson, 1996a). Less well understood is the
closely related instrumentalism that pervaded logical
positivism/positivism.
Instrumentalism was the device employed by
positivists to get around some tricky questions concerning
the status of non-observable terms in
theories. From the instrumentalist perspective,
theoretical concepts are judged not by their truth or
falsity, but by their theoretical utility (Singer, 1969:
76; Waltz, 1979: 8; Wasby, 1970: 66). For the
instrumentalist, theories cannot be taken as assertions
about the way the world is. Theoretical terms
that could not be translated into observational ones
were to be treated ‘as if’ they existed. Facts are
what matter and theory is simply a better way of
collecting them (Gunnell, 1975: 26–7). This incipient
instrumentalism helps explain why a philosophy
so firmly embedded within the requirements of
validity through observation became so adept, and
so insistent, on the need to build models and, in
particular, models of the system.
From this instrumentalist perspective, ‘truth’ was
not part of the lexicon of positivism, nor was any
search for underlying causes (see Griffiths, 1992:
96–8, for an account of why Kenneth Waltz is not
concerned with truth). Indeed, positivism since
Comte had long given up according ontological status
to anything beyond the phenomena or the search for
truth (Comte, [1854] 2000: 28). According to Comte:
In the final, the positive state, the mind has given over
the vain search after Absolute notions, the origin and
destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena,
and applies itself to the study of their laws – that
is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance
… I merely desire to keep in view that all our
positive knowledge is relative, and, in my dread of our
resting in notions of anything absolute … (Comte,
[1854] 2000: 68, 190)
This also helps illuminate how some contemporary
confusions emerge in relation to positivism.
For example, Hollis and Smith’s claim that
Morgenthau’s version of realism is ‘an essentially
positivistic way of analysing events, since it relied
on a notion of underlying forces producing behaviour’
(Hollis and Smith, 1990: 23) is problematic
given positivism’s rejection of the search for underlying
causes.
Underpinned by logical positivism, a more overt
scientific approach took a firm hold in the discipline
(Alker, 1965; Dunne, 1998; Hollis and Smith, 1990;
Hoole and Zinnes, 1976; Rosenau, 1971). When
viewed from the perspective of the philosophy of
social science, four aspects stand out. First, whatever
the merits of logical positivism, behavioralism in IR
was at least consistent with its fundamental principles
and attempted to validate its ‘scientific’ credentials
as opposed to simply taking them as given.
Abraham Kaplan’s The Conduct of Inquiry (1964) is
perhaps the most important work in this respect, but
others had preceded it (Brecht, 1959; Van Dyke,
1960; see also Meehan, 1968). The behavioralists
seemed to understand the philosophy and applied it
consistently; something which could not be said of
many of its detractors, both then and now.
Second, its critique of realism, which it claimed
was not scientific enough, injects a real tension in
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND IR 29
any subsequent account that attempts to claim that
realism is positivist (George, 1994; Smith, 1996).
The behavioralists were scathing about the lack of
rigour within classical realism (Hollis and Smith,
1990: 28). Consistent application of their logical
positivism entailed that assumptions about human
nature were metaphysical, non-observable and
hence unscientific. Given the variations in realism
and the variations in positivism, it is highly unlikely
that a blanket claim that realism is positivist can
be sustained.
Third, the importation of this approach to IR was
not without sustained resistance. At the forefront of
this resistance was Hedley Bull’s polemical attack
on what he called the scientific approach (Bull,
1969: 361). Against this scientific approach, which
he clearly sees embedded within logical positivism
(Bull, 1969: 362), Bull argues for the ‘classical’
approach embodied within the works of Zimmern,
Carr and Morgenthau (for a detailed and sophisticated
treatment of the debate see Dunne, 1998).
Because of the polemical nature of Bull’s attack and
Morton Kaplan’s (1969) rejoinder, there is a tendency
within the discipline to see this ‘debate’ in
terms of a growing rift between American social
science and academic communities in the rest of the
world (Hoffman, 1977; Smith, 1987; see also
Schmidt, Chapter 1 in this volume).
Donald J. Puchala, however, argues that within
American IR the new version of science peddled by
behavioralists was rejected by major American
figures in the field (Ferguson and Mansbach, 1988;
Puchala, 1991). Stanley Hoffmann, in an early critique
characterized as a ‘wrecking operation’, was
scathing about Kaplan’s proposed science of IR
(Hoffman, 1961). But also Leo Strauss (1953)
attacked the onwards march of ‘scientism in political
science’ and Michael Haas (1969) identifies
many American critics. As already noted, an important
aspect of this debate was the manner in which
all of the critics allowed the behavioralists to take
control of the label science. From this point on,
science became inextricably linked to positivism
and any reference to science was taken to imply
positivism.
Fourth, whilst the introduction of behavioralism
was initially hailed as a dramatic stride forward in
terms of the development of a ‘scientific’ IR
(Lijphart, 1974a, 1974b), later accounts now argue
that this debate did not fundamentally change underlying
assumptions and was essentially only a very
limited debate about methodology (Guzzini, 1998;
Hollis and Smith, 1990; Holsti, 1985, 1998;
Vasquez, 1998). This is a problematic claim (Dunne,
1998: 124; see also Schmidt, Chapter 1 in this
volume); debates about science can never simply be
‘methodological’. Positivism is a philosophy of, and
for, science and its adoption requires the taking of a
series of implicit ontological and epistemological
assumptions as well as methodological ones. It is for
partly this reason that contemporary claims that
positivism is an epistemology are wide of the mark
(Nicholson, 1996a).
Positivism embodies certain epistemological
commitments, but it is not itself an epistemology;
unless, that is, one is stretching the use of the term
epistemology to such lengths as to make it meaning-
less15
(Smith, 1996: 17). But one only has to examine
the substance of Bull’s arguments to see that
they were primarily ontological not methodological.
His critique of the scientific approach was
precisely that the following of its methodological
strictures left a large, and important, area of international
politics unexamined. So even though his
target might be considered to be the proposed new
procedures of science, these were based on ontological
assumptions. Moreover, as a philosophy of
science with well-formulated accounts of cause,
explanation, law and the nature of the world, it is
also incorrect to consider positivism as simply a
methodology.
Another neglected aspect of the behavioral revolution
within IR is the extent to which its adherents
conceived of themselves as going beyond social
science and instituting a ‘behavioral science’
(Easton, 1965: 18). The ‘behavioral revolt’ was not
only about placing IR on a more scientific basis, but
about taking part in an ambitious attempt to unify
all of the human sciences into a seamless whole.
David Easton accepted that prior to the ‘behavioral
revolt’ the social sciences were deserving of the
label science (Easton, 1965: 22). He also accepted
that the ‘behavioral revolt’ could not only be about
the introduction of more scientific rigor. Indeed, he
argued that more rigour would mean ‘rigor mortis,
as its critics from the traditional points of view …
have been so quick and correct to point out’
(Easton, 1965: 22). In a very Comteian manner,
Easton saw the behavioral movement as the next
stage in the development of human knowledge,
where the human sciences would be united into one
research programme, centered on the notion of
behavior. This was a very strong version of the
unity of science thesis.
Whatever the overall impact of the ‘behavioral
revolt’ on the discipline, it legitimated the turn
to the philosophy of social science and the
philosophy of science. References to Hempel,
Nagel, Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend and Lakatos
became commonplace. Waltz devoted a chapter of
his Theory of International Politics (1979) to the
philosophy of science, and strongly defended an
instrumentalist treatment of theoretical terms
(Griffiths, 1992: 93). And, of course, Thomas Kuhn
has shaped the discipline in fundamental ways.
Moreover, Kuhn’s framework implicitly continues
to shape the discipline today, even if the language
used is no longer that of paradigms. That Kuhn’s
HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS30
framework was adopted so universally across the
discipline is puzzling when one considers that Kuhn
himself thought that the social sciences were in a
pre-paradigmatic state and doubted whether they
could ever be ‘mature sciences’ (Kuhn, 1962:
164–5; see also Kuhn, 1970: 245; see Ferguson and
Mansbach, 1988 for a critique of the attempt to
apply Kuhn to IR).
Yet, reasons for Kuhn’s success in the social
sciences are not hard to find. Political scientists,
sociologists and anthropologists recognized in their
own practices and disciplinary conflicts Kuhn’s
picture of paradigms. They were delighted to hear
that what had previously been thought an embarrassment
was the way it was done in respectable
sciences. Traditionalists could now portray themselves
as working in a different paradigm, thus
making themselves immune to critiques from the
scientists. The scientists could continue unabashed,
safe in the knowledge that they were actually contributing
to knowledge growth under the guise of
normal science. And dissidents could now portray
themselves as revolutionary heroes of a new paradigm.
Here was a philosophy of science that not
only seemed to put science in its place, but legitimated
what social scientists already did and
required little in the way of change. Kuhn’s
ambiguous terminology was also a key factor.
His master concept, that of paradigm, was particularly
subject to various interpretations; Margaret
Masterman (Masterman, 1970) identified twentyone
different ways Kuhn used the term – a criticism
Kuhn accepted (Kuhn, 1970). This ambiguity
allowed the framework a large measure of flexibility
and ensured its welcome into disciplines that
made definitional debate a key component of their
research practices.
Kuhn’s framework was almost universally
adapted. Arend Lijphart saw the ‘great debates’ of
the discipline in terms of paradigms (Lijphart, 1974a,
1974b). From the 1980s onwards, IR caught the
paradigm bug so comprehensively that paradigms
and Kuhn became part of the unreflective subconscious
of the discipline. Textbooks were organized
according to paradigms, and Kuhn was perhaps cited
more than home-grown disciplinary figures (Banks,
1984; Hollis and Smith, 1990; Little and Smith,
1991; Viotti and Kauppi, 1987). But Kuhn’s framework
came with two related and major problems.
The first was an incipient conservativism
(Guzzini, 1993: 446; Smith, 1992: 494; Wight, 1996).
Science progressed, argued Kuhn, in periods of normal
science (Kuhn, 1962; see Toulmin, 1970 for a
critique). This claim had normative force. It meant
that if progress in terms of knowledge production
were to be achieved, then IR scholars needed to find
themselves a dominant paradigm. Realism seemed
an obvious candidate, but it would have come as
no surprise to Kuhn to see competitors quickly
emerging. The inter-paradigm debate that developed
in IR vindicated Kuhn’s assertion that the social
sciences were pre-paradigmatic (Kuhn, 1962:
164–5). But if IR scholars were to achieve progress
and move into normal science then the discipline
needed a dominant paradigm. This meant that pluralism
could be seen as a threat to progress. But
Kuhn had already built into his framework a mechanism
where paradigms could flourish, even if
progress could not.
This was the issue of incommensurability (in IR
see Guzzini, 1993; Neufeld, 1995; Nicholson,
1996a; Rengger, 1989; Waever, 1996; Wight, 1996;
see also Sankey, 1994, 1997). Kuhn had seemed to
suggest that the move from one paradigm to another
was a revolutionary process and that there was no
way to compare paradigms (Kuhn, 1962, 1970).
Paradigm choice, Kuhn seemed to suggest, was a
matter of faith; or what Imre Lakatos would call
‘mob psychology’ (Lakatos, 1970: 178). This made
any notion of an inter-paradigm ‘debate’ oxymoronic
(Nicholson, 1996a: 82). Which, of course, did
not deter people from continuing as if there was a
debate. However, incommensurability became
another Kuhnian buzzword that seemed to offer
non-mainstream approaches some shelter. After all,
did not incommensurability leave the world safe for
critical theory?
Dissenting voices, however, were soon to see the
perils in the incommensurability thesis (Guzzini,
1993; Waever, 1996; Wight, 1996). Incommensurability
not only provided a safe haven for critical
theory, but also for the mainstream (Guzzini, 1993).
If incommensurability meant that cross-paradigmatic
conversation was in principle impossible, how could
the critics critique the mainstream (however
defined)? Steve Smith, invoking ontological grounds
for incommensurability, argued that it meant that
proponents of different paradigms literally lived in
different worlds (Smith, 1992, 1996). If so, there is
little point in trying to critique the world of the mainstream
from another world. However, it is very
doubtful if Smith’s reading of incommensurability
was Kuhn’s interpretation of it. Kuhn went to great
lengths to dispel the idea that incommensurability
meant that theories were non-translatable (Kuhn,
1970, 1982, 1990). Also, some in the discipline
began to challenge the philosophical grounds of the
incommensurability thesis itself (Wight, 1996).
There is little doubt that Kuhn’s work has fundamentally
– for better or worse – shaped the discipline.
However, the discipline has typically seen this
as a resource to be mined as opposed to displaying
any awareness of either the complexities of his
ideas, or the many trenchant critiques of his position.
Even in those instances where the difficulties
are acknowledged these are brushed aside in the
attempt to apply the framework (Vasquez, 1998; see
Katzenstein et al., 1998 for similar treatment of
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND IR 31
Lakatos). Often, Kuhn’s notion of paradigms was
grafted onto a Lakatosian framework for theory
choice with little in the way of justification
(Christensen and Snyder, 1997; Elman and Elman,
1997; Vasquez, 1997; for a critique see Waltz,
1997). Philosophy of science was now in IR and the
discipline needs to consider it much more carefully if
it is to play such a fundamental role. Unfortunately,
before the discipline could reflect on its turn to the
philosophy of science there was to be an explosion of
alternative philosophical sources of inspiration.
CONTEMPORARY IR: PHILOSOPHY,
BEGINNING AND END?
If the Kuhnian experience within the discipline
once again vindicated the turn to the philosophy of
science then the philosophy of social science was
surely everywhere. Unfortunately this was not the
case. Despite a vast body of literature on the philosophy
of social science the number dealing with
these issues specifically in relation to IR is small
(George, 1994; Hollis and Smith, 1990; Neufeld
1995; Mackenzie, 1967, 1971; Nicholson, 1983,
1996a; Reynolds, 1973; Sylvester, 1993). There are,
of course, many references to the philosophy of
social science, but these are scattered around the
discipline in fragments (Alker, 1996; Campbell,
1988; Carlsnaes, 1992; Dessler, 1989; George and
Campbell, 1990; Wendt, 1987). Hollis and Smith,
in the first sustained presentation of this argument
within IR, argue that the discipline could do better
than turning to the philosophy of science and that
there were models of social science not based on the
natural sciences that might be more appropriate
(Hollis and Smith, 1990: 68–91). The philosophical
inspiration for their argument is Peter Winch,
although they also draw on a range of hermeneutic
thinkers as well, particularly Weber (Weber, 1949;
Winch, 1958).
In fact, Hollis and Smith’s argument had already
played a fundamental role in structuring the discipline,
even if those arguing against a science of IR
have never specifically located their argument in a
sustained engagement with the philosophy of social
science. Reynolds (1973) perhaps stands out as a
notable exception, but his work is concerned with
the distinction between science and history, as
opposed to that between science and hermeneutics.
Moreover, Reynolds still draws heavily on the philosophy
of science and includes no specific references
to Winch, although Winch’s book does
appear in his bibliography (Reynolds, 1973). More
importantly, and contrary to Hollis and Smith,
Reynolds argues that the traditionalists and the scientists
have ‘more in common than their advocates
have perhaps realized’ (Reynolds, 1973: 15).
Likewise, W.J.M. Mackenzie (1967, 1971) might
also be considered an early contributor but he sees no
fundamental conflict in the attempt to integrate a
scientific IR with more traditional forms of inquiry.
Even Bull’s attack on a ‘scientific’ IR is notable for its
lack of references to a philosophical rejection of the
natural science model, though his arguments seem to
imply an awareness of the issues (Bull, 1969).
Hollis and Smith’s book emerged in the context
of what has come to be called the post-positivist turn
(Biersteker, 1989; George, 1989, 1994; Holsti,
1989; Lapid, 1989), and has given the anti-science
wing of the discipline a series of formidable philosophical
arguments on which to draw. Hollis and
Smith argue that one can have either an explanatory
account (based on scientific principles), or an understanding
account (based on hermeneutic principles);
what one cannot have is some combination of the
two (Hollis and Smith, 1990, 1994). In reality,
Hollis and Smith’s ‘two stories’ thesis is not wholly
consistent with that of either Winch or Weber
(Hollis and Smith, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1994, 1996).
Winch (1958) had rejected all attempts to construct
a science of the social, and Weber (1949) had
insisted on the necessity of both forms of analysis.
Weber rejected both the positivist contention that
the cognitive aims of the natural and the social
sciences were basically the same and the opposing
historicist doctrine that it is impossible to make
legitimate generalizations about human bevavior
because human actions are not subject to the regularities
that govern the world of nature. Against the
historicists Weber argued that the method of
science, whether its subject matter be things or men,
always proceeds by abstraction and generalization.
Against the positivists, he took the view that the
explanation of human behavior could not rest only
on its external manifestations, but required also
knowledge of the underlying motivations. Hence
Weber’s definition of sociology as that science
which aims at the interpretative understanding
(Verstehen) of social behavior in order to gain an
explanation of its causes its course and it effects.
According to Weber, what distinguishes the natural
and social sciences is not an inherent difference in
methods of investigation, but rather the differing
interests and aims of the scientist. Both types of
science involve abstraction. Hence there is no insurmountable
chasm between the procedures of the
natural and the social scientist; they differ only in
their cognitive intentions and explanatory projects
(Weber, 1949).
Weber saw the notion of interpretative understanding
as only a preliminary step in the establishment
of causal relationships. The grasping of
subjective meaning of an activity, he argued, is
facilitated through empathy (Einfuehlung) and a
reliving (Nacherbleben) of the experience to be
analyzed. But any interpretative explanation
HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS32
(verstehende Erklaerung) must become a causal
explanation if it is to reach the dignity of a scientific
proposition. Verstehen and causal explanation are
correlative rather than opposed principles of
method in the social sciences (Weber, 1949).
Given the philosophical justification of the arguments
of Hollis and Smith, however, the only alternative
is a philosophical refutation, not simply a
rejection of the position, or a creative redescription
(Suganami, 2000; see Patomäki, 1996 for a philosophical
engagement). This task is complicated by
the fact that many of the labels currently being
deployed in the discipline are not clearly delineated,
or the content of them sufficiently explained
(see Smith, 1995 for an account of the discipline’s
self images; see also Waever, 1996). In this
respect, despite the appearance of philosophical
sophistication, the discipline has moved from
throwing philosophical hand grenades to a largely
untargeted artillery barrage against an ill-defined
series of enemies.
Often this phase of disciplinary development
is called the ‘third debate’, (Dougherty and
Pfaltzgraff, 1996; George, 1989; Lapid, 1989;
Neufeld, 1994, 1995; Sylvester, 1993) but there are
problems with such a designation. In particular, it is
not clear what the content of the ‘third debate’ is, or
who the debaters are (Smith, 1995: 14; Vasquez,
1995: 217–18; Waever 1996). Mark Neufeld, for
example, claims both that the ‘third debate’ is the
‘inter-paradigm debate’ between realism, pluralism
and structuralism (Neufeld, 1994: 19; see also
Banks 1984, 1985), and that it represents the discipline’s
attempt to move beyond the positivist orthodoxy
(Neufeld, 1994: 19). Christine Sylvester treats
it as simply the move beyond positivism (Slyvester,
1993: 140–68). Ole Waever provides a solid
critique of the confusion surrounding the ‘third
debate’ (Waever, 1996).
The dominant way the discipline views this
period is in terms of a vehement set of reactions to
a scientific IR; or what has been called a postpositivist
phase (Biersteker, 1989; Holsti, 1989;
Lapid, 1989). Many of the current meta-theoretical
debates are primarily concerned with the extent to
which the positivist model of science can, or
should, be applied to IR (Hollis and Smith, 1990;
King, et al., 1994; Kratochwil, 2000; Nicholson,
1996a; Smith, 2000; Wendt, 2000). And all of the
contributors to the current meta-theoretical debates
have addressed the nature of inquiry itself, as
opposed to the nature of the international system, or
some other chosen object of inquiry (Ashley, 1987;
Biersteker, 1989; Hollis and Smith, 1990; Holsti,
1989; Lapid, 1989; Nicholson, 1996a, 1996b).
However, as Yosef Lapid suggests, this period is not
simply a continuation of debates about the relevance
of the philosophy of science to IR, but is also the
‘confluence of diverse antipositivistic philosophical
and sociological trends’ (Biersteker, 1989; Holsti,
1989; Lapid, 1989: 237). For the purposes of this
last section I will label this the ‘post-positivist turn’
and attempt to indicate the contemporary landscape
of IR, highlight some of the problems, and indicate
some potential avenues of future research.
The post-positivist turn began in the mid-1980s.
Just as Kuhn was becoming well embedded within
the literature a number of other developments were
being imported into IR. Often these interventions
would include references to Kuhn and Feyerabend
as ways of delegitimating claims to science
(George, 1989: 271; Neufeld, 1994: 14); with
defenders of science tending to draw on Kuhn,
Popper or Lakatos (Dougherty and Pfaltzgraff,
1996: 5; Herman and Peacock, 1987; Keohane,
1989; King et al., 1994; Nicholson, 1996a;
Vasquez, 1998). But the philosophy of science no
longer provided the only fertile ground for sources
of legitimation. Moreover, the overturning of the
positivist orthodoxy within the philosophy of
science now meant that there was no ‘secure’
account of a scientific methodology on which to
draw (Chalmers, 1992; Hollis and Smith, 1990;
Oldroyd, 1986; Stockman, 1983; Trigg, 1993;
Tudor, 1982). This meant that a range of disparate
positions was now being imported into the discipline,
with the relationships between them being
unclear and unspecified.
Critical theorists criticized mainstream commitments
to science (Cox, 1981; Hoffman, 1987;
Linklater, 1990; see also Habermas, 1988;
Horkheimer, 1982, 1993; Morrow and Brown,
1994). The extent of this critique, however, is not
clear. For some, critical theory is seen as a replacement
for a positivist form of social science
(Brown, 1994; S. Smith, 1996: 24). Yet, as Mark
Hoffman points out, critical theory did not denigrate
positivism, but rather aimed to show how
scientific knowledge aimed at mere technical control
was not the only legitimate type of knowledge
(Hoffman, 1987: 236; see also Adorno et al., 1976).
Certainly, Habermas viewed positivist, hermeneutic
and critical research as legitimate components of
all social inquiry (Habermas, 1988). Likewise,
Andrew Linklater seems to accept the validity of
positivist informed research, whilst rejecting the
idea that it exhausts the possibilities (Linklater,
1990). Positivism as a valid philosophy of science
is accepted and only the boundaries of its legitimate
use within social science are disputed. As such, a
critical theory approach to social science will incorporate
elements of positivism as well as hermeneutics,
but attempt to go beyond them in terms of
emancipatory potential (Morrow and Brown, 1994).
Feminist approaches in IR, as in other social
science disciplines, critiqued science on the basis of
its male-centered assumptions and lack of attention
to gendered forms of knowledge construction
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND IR 33
(Elshtain, 1997; Enloe, 1990, 1993; Sylvester, 1993;
Tickner, 1992; Zalewski, 1993). However, while
many seem happy to view feminism as a project
dedicated to the critique of something called the
‘positivist mainstream’, there is within feminist
approaches very little in the way of agreement about
appropriate standards of inquiry within feminism
(Zalewski, 1993; see also Tickner, Chapter 14 in this
volume). Some feminists view their work in terms of
science, even if they would not accept the label positivist
(Enloe, 1990; Harding, 1991; Hartsock,
1983). In general, the discipline, following Sandra
Harding’s framework, tends to divide feminists into
empiricist, standpoint and postmodern positions
(Zalewski, 1993), although it is doubtful whether
this characterization comes close to engaging with
the nuances of this important body of work
(Harding, 1991).
Often described as the most radical attack on the
assumptions of social science, postmodernism and
post-structuralism are difficult bodies of thought to
characterize (Ashley, 1987, 1989; Ashley and
Walker, 1990; Campbell, 1998a; Der Derian and
Shapiro, 1989; Devetak, 1996; George, 1994; Jarvis,
2000; Rosenau, 1990, 1992; Smith, 1995; Walker,
1993). Also, the discipline seems unable, or unwilling,
to attempt to make any differentiation between
postmodernism and post-structuralism, and tends to
treat the two terms as synonymous (Rosenau, 1990:
84–5; Vasquez, 1995). This is problematic in terms
of the philosophy of social science.
Post-structuralism emerges out of a general critique
of structuralism (Harland, 1987). It is critical
of structuralism’s attempt to develop an objective
science of social structures, but equally important is
that post-structuralism expresses no desire to return
to a form of inquiry based upon the subjectivity of
agents (Harland, 1987, 1993; Rabinow, 1982;
Rosenau,1990). Structural forms of inquiry had
come to dominate many forms of social science
(Althusser and Balibar, 1970; [1938] Durkheim,
1964; Harland, 1987, 1993). Structuralism proposes
that understanding social practices requires the
decentering of individual subjectivities and a focusing
of attention on the structural modalities and
organizing principles within which social practices
are framed (Harland, 1987, 1993; Kurzweil, 1980).
Structuralism was an attempt to scientifically
describe the structural principles under which
activity could be explained (Harland, 1993;
Jackson, 1991). Waltz’s structural realism, although
not specifically embedded with a structuralist
meta-theory, can be understood as a structuralist
theory of IR (Waltz, 1979; see Ashley, 1984 for a
critique of Waltz that makes this explicit).
Post-structuralism departs from two central
tenets of structuralism (Harland, 1987, 1993). First,
the logic of structures, which structuralism had
thought was clear and determinate, is challenged
(Derrida, 1988). For post-structuralism, structures
do not operate according to one organizing principle
or logic (Harland, 1987). Indeed, for poststructuralism
there is no underlying logic to
structures and hence there is structural indeterminancy
(Doty, 1997; Harland, 1987; see Wight,
1999b for a critique). Social outcomes, which are
products of social structures, are also indeterminate
(Doty, 1997). Attempts to ascribe a logic to social
activity must necessarily either fail or impose a
logic on the situation through claims to some form
of legitimacy – generally science (Derrida, 1988).
But science, as a social practice dependent upon
structures, also falls to the same logic, and its outputs
are either indeterminate, or such determinacy
that does emerge can only be the outcome of practices
that attempt to tame the indeterminacy of
structures (Ashley, 1987, 1989; Ashley and Walker
1990). This means that all claims to scientific objectivity
are actually social practices imposing order
through practices of power (Ashley, 1987, 1989;
George, 1994; Walker, 1993). Postmodernism
expands on this post-structuralist position and grafts
onto it various other wholesale critiques of reason,
reality, truth and so forth (Brodribb, 1992;
Callinicos, 1990; Dews, 1987; Eagleton, 1996;
Farrell, 1996; Nicholson, 1993; Owen, 1997; in IR
see, Brown, 1994; Devetak, 1996; Jarvis, 2000;
Rengger and Hoffman, 1990; Vasquez, 1995).
The fourth source of influences and ideas that
began to be imported is that of social theory. This
position has been labelled constructivism within the
discipline (Adler, 1997; Guzzini, 2000; Hopf, 1998;
Kratochwil, 1989; Onuf, 1989, 1998; Ruggie, 1998;
Vasquez, 1997a; Wendt, 1987). This is a very problematic
term because there are some very conflicting
positions being imported under this label
(Adler, 1997; Hopf, 1998; see also Chapter 5 in this
volume; Ruggie, 1998). The confusion is evident
when one considers that John Ruggie, in his typology
of constructivism, includes post-structuralism
(Ruggie, 1998: 35; see also Adler, Chapter 5 in this
volume), whereas Smith sees a clear demarcation
between them (Smith, 1995, 1996, 1997). David
Campbell likewise sees certain forms of
constructivism as inimical to his version of poststructuralism
(Campbell, 1998a, 2001).
The philosophy of social science can help throw
some light on this situation. In relation to the
science question, Ruggie’s neoclassical constructivism
and Alexander Wendt’s scientific realist
version are united; both are committed to the idea of
social science (Ruggie, 1998: 35–6).16
Friedrich
Kratochwil, on the other hand, is much closer to
Winch’s anti-science perspective (Kratochwil,
1989, 2000). Why Ruggie draws such a firm distinction
between his neoclassical constructivism
and Wendt’s more naturalistic form is not immediately
clear. Ruggie sees the work of philosopher
HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS34
John Searle as playing a fundamental role in his
neoclassical constructivism (Ruggie, 1998: 35).
Yet, there is very little in Searle’s The Construction
of Social Reality (1995) that Wendt and other
scientific realists would find objectionable (compare
Bhaskar, 1979; Outhwaite, 1987).
Indeed, Searle begins with a statement that could
function as a leitmotif for scientific realism: ‘We
live in exactly one world, not two or three or
seventeen. As far as we currently know, the most
fundamental features of that world are as described
by physics, chemistry, and the other natural
sciences’ (Searle, 1995: xi). Moreover, Searle
openly declares his hand with both philosophical
realism and science (Searle, 1995: xiii). Equally,
Weber’s attempt to combine eklaren and verstehen
into one seamless account is exactly the project that
scientific realists, such as Roy Bhaskar, are engaged
in (Bhaskar, 1979; Weber, 1949). Indeed, Ruggie
actually accepts ‘relational social realism’ as an
accurate description of his account, of international
structure (Ruggie, 1998: 34; for a scientific realist
account, see Porpora, 1987).
This raises the question of just why Ruggie feels
it so necessary to distinguish his neoclassical constructivism
from that of Wendt. The answer, of
course, is the label ‘scientific’, in scientific realism.
Kratochwil also objects to Wendt’s constructivism
on similar grounds (Kratochwil, 2000). Ruggie’s
depth of engagement with scientific realism,
however, does not seem to extend any further than
an almost verbatim restatement of Hollis and
Smith’s rejection of it (Hollis and Smith, 1991;
Ruggie, 1998: 36). And Hollis and Smith can
hardly be said to have provided a sustained assessment
of it (Hollis and Smith, 1991; S. Smith, 1996).
As a philosophy of science that is non-positivist,
scientific realism is very poorly understood within
the discipline and this is certainly one area where
much research is still required.
Wendt (1987, 1999) and David Dessler (1989,
1991, 1999) provide good introductions to scientific
realism (see also Shapiro and Wendt, 1992). Ashley
J. Tellis (1996) writes of something called ‘scientific
realism’ and aligns it with Karl Popper’s ‘critical
rationalism’. It seems unlikely, however, that by
‘scientific realism’ Tellis means the philosophy of
science version of it, and his scientific realism can
only be political realism that attempts to be scientific.
None the less, precisely because the labels are
deployed with little clarification, confusion abounds.
Kratochwil provides a recent attempt to address
scientific realism, but ultimately his treatment lacks,
an understandable, depth of analysis (Kratochwil,
2000; see also Doty, 1997, and the critique by Wight,
1999a, and the subsequent exchange: Doty, 1999;
Wight, 2000). Heikki Patomäki and Colin Wight
have begun what might be a closer examination of
scientific realism, although the tenacity of the view
that science equals positivism is a serious obstacle to
any serious evaluation of alternative views of science
(Patomäki and Wight, 2000; see also Patomäki, 1996,
2001; Lane, 1996; Wendt, 1999).
Smith calls scientific realism an epistemology,
which is a strange reading given that scientific realism
is a philosophy of science that does not privilege
any particular epistemological stance (S. Smith,
1996). The problem here is the use of the term epistemology
within the discipline. Smith, for example,
talks of something called a ‘postmodern epistemology’,
and of postmodern work on epistemology
being diverse (Smith, 1996). But this can only be to
misuse the word epistemology, since epistemology
is the branch of philosophy concerned with the
theory of knowledge and not a philosophy of
science; or an account of the reality (Haack, 1993;
Taylor, 1987). In fact, very few books on epistemology
include references to positivism (Haack,
1993; Taylor, 1987).
The main problems with which epistemology is
concerned include: the definition of knowledge and
related concepts; the sources and criteria of knowledge;
the kinds of knowledge possible and the
degree to which each is certain and the exact relation
between the one who knows and the object known
(Haack, 1993; Taylor, 1987). Epistemological questions
are typically concerned with the grounds we
have for accepting or rejecting beliefs. Insofar as
many postmodern positions reject these as valid
questions they also reject epistemology; which
is evident in Smith’s own table, since he indicates
‘no’ in every category pertaining to postmodern
positions on criteria of assessment (S. Smith, 1996).
In short, postmodernism as yet has no epistemology,
and is unwilling to advance one (see the debate
between Campbell, 1998b, 1999 and Wight, 1999b;
and between Doty, 1999 and Wight 2000; also
Osterud, 1996, 1997; Patomäki, 1997; Smith,
1997). It is for this reason that Peter Katzenstein,
Robert Keohane and Stephen Krasner argue that it
falls outside the social science enterprise
(Katzenstein et al., 1998: 678; Sørenson, 1998: 88).
Equally, however, Smith locates Michel Foucault
as representative of postmodernism, which would
seem to imply he had no criteria of assessment,
whereas Foucault declared himself an empiricist
(Foucault, 1990: 106). No doubt he was being
‘ironic’! Unfortunately the discipline tends to use
epistemology to mean any generalized approach to
study. But this only serves to hide a range of hidden
ontological assumptions.
A key factor that the discipline has yet to take
seriously is that the demise of the positivist orthodoxy
within the philosophy of science now means
that there is ‘no definitive or agreed cannon of scientific
explanation’ (Hollis and Smith, 1990: 67).
This means that science is not synonymous with
positivism. This should have been the lesson drawn
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND IR 35
from developments within the philosophy of
science (Vasquez, 1995). Yet the discipline seems
tenaciously wedded to the idea that science is
positivism (Nicholson, 1996a, 1996b, 2000;
S. Smith, 1996). Even Hollis and Smith, despite a
highly sophisticated discussion of this issue, draw
the line between explaining and understanding on
positivist principles (Hollis and Smith, 1990). This
demonstrates the problem with simplistic diagrammatic
representations of complex theoretical landscapes
(see Figures 2.1 and 2.2). Explaining,
for Hollis and Smith, seems to suggest a unitary
scientific approach, whereas recent work within the
philosophy of science shows just how untenable
this is (Chalmers, 1992), with many, including Paul
Feyerabend and Roy Bhaskar, maintaining that
there is no generalized account of the ‘scientific
method’ that could facilitate the drawing of such a
line (Bhaskar, 1978; Feyerabend, 1975).
For Bhaskar, and other scientific realists, there
cannot be one scientific method, or one appropriate
epistemology, because each of the sciences is concerned
with differing object domains, and no one
method, or epistemology, could be expected to fit
all cases (Bhaskar, 1978; Mackinnon, 1972; Psillos,
1999). For scientific realists, the correct epistemological
stance is one of epistemological opportunism.
As Einstein put it, ‘[c]ompare a scientist
with an epistemologist; a scientist faces a complicated
situation. So in order to get some value in this
situation he cannot use a simple rule, he has to be an
opportunist’ (see Feyerabend, 1995). Equally, given
that there is no agreed cannon of scientific explanation,
post-positivism should not be interpreted as
anti-science.
The term ‘post-positivist’ is ambiguous as to
whether it constitutes an outright rejection of positivism,
an outright rejection of science, or a reformulation
of the idea of science on the basis of new
developments within the philosophy of science
(Laudan, 1996). Indeed, many of the developments
within the philosophy of science that deserve the
label ‘post-positivist’ are certainly not anti-science,
although they may well be anti-positivist (Bhaskar,
1978, 1986; Kuhn, 1962, 1970, 1982, 1990;
Laudan, 1996). This opens up the possibility of a
non-positivist, yet still scientific IR; a science of IR,
that is, that does not follow positivist principles.
There is little doubt, however, that for many
within the discipline a commitment to science still
remains a commitment to positivism (Nicholson,
1996a, 1996b, 2000). Even Wendt, whilst advocating
a scientific realist philosophy of science, can
declare, ‘I am a strong believer in science … I am a
“positivist”’ (Wendt, 1999: 39). This is an impossible
position to hold. One cannot be both a scientific
realist and a positivist; the two accounts of science
are diametrically opposed on some very fundamental
issues (Bhaskar, 1978; Feyerabend, 1981;
Hollis, 1996; Mackinnon, 1972; S. Smith, 1996).17
Positivism, in this sense, has lost all meaning.
Indeed, the discipline’s understanding of positivism
seems a caricature of what is a very sophisticated,
although in my opinion highly flawed, philosophy
of science.
This confusion surrounding the meaning of positivism
threatens to destabilize any attempt to employ
it (Nicholson, 1996a, 2000; S. Smith, 1996). And if
positivism cannot be given coherent content, then
post-positivism is equally meaningless. Many seem
to equate positivism with realist (in the philosophical
sense) accounts of science (Campbell, 2001;
George, 1994); or treat it as meaning any approach
that relies on a belief in a ‘world out there’ – a form
of philosophical realism (Campbell, 2001; George,
1994). However, Hollis argues that positivism,
insofar as it is committed to an empiricist epistemology,
is actually an anti-realist (in the philosophical
sense) philosophy (Hollis, 1996: 303; George also
admits this, 1994: 53).
There have been some serious attempts to clarify
the content of positivism in the discipline (compare
HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS36
Understanding
=
Post-positivism
=
Reflectivism
Explanation
=
Positivism
=
Rationalism
The middle ground
=
Constructivism?
Figure 2.2 Contemporary IR
George, 1994; Hollis, 1996; Nicholson 1996a,
1996b, 2000; S. Smith 1996), but it is doubtful,
given the disciplinary baggage surrounding the
label, if there is anything to be gained from its continued
deployment (Nicholson, 1996a, 1996b,
2000). Smith provides a good account but one that
omits many of the most fundamental issues – particularly
positivism’s commitment to a Humean
account of cause; its anti-realism and associated
phenomenalism and instrumentalism; and the covering
law model of explanation (S. Smith, 1996; see
Kowlakowski, 1969, for a more in-depth account of
positivism).
More problematic is that Smith’s (1996)
own positivistic (on his own terms) attempt to spell
out four essential characteristics of positivism simply
begs the question of how many of the chosen
principles a given theorist need commit to before
being deserving of the label?18
Is it a case of ‘three
strikes and you’re out’, or are you a positivist if you
just accept one of them? Nicholson (1996a, 1996b)
also produces a good account, but it suffers from
the conflation of positivism with empiricism (see
Smith, 1996, for a critique of this conflation).
Hollis makes an often-missed point in his claim that
all positivists are naturalists, but not all naturalists
are positivists (Hollis, 1996: 303).
All of this adds up to a very confused picture in
terms of the philosophy of social science. IR has
struggled to incorporate an increasingly diverse set
of positions into its theoretical landscape. In general,
the discipline has attempted to maintain an
unsophisticated and outdated two-category framework
based on the science/anti-science issue. The
terminology of this framework may have changed,
but ultimately contemporary disciplinary categories
seem to be mirror images of a Carr’s distinction
between science and ‘alchemy’. Currently there are
three continuums that the discipline seems to consider
line up in opposition to each other. The first of
these is the explaining/understanding divide
(Hollis and Smith, 1990). The second is the
positivism/post-positivism divide (Lapid, 1989;
Sylvester, 1993). The third is Keohane’s distinction
between rationalism and reflectivism (Keohane,
1989). The newly emerging constructivism claims
the ‘middle ground’ in between (Adler, 1997; Price
and Reus-Smit, 1998; Wendt, 1999). This constitutes
a field configured as in Figure 2.2.
The problems with such a framework should
be evident from the above discussion, but it is particularly
worth noting the irony of aligning something
called ‘rationalism’ with positivism.
Particularly if the claims that positivism embodies
an empiricist epistemology are correct (Nicholson,
1996a, 1996b; S. Smith, 1996); rationalism and
empiricism are normally considered epistemological
opposites19
(Haack, 1993). Moreover, if the
‘science = positivism’ equation is accepted this
would mean that post-positivism is necessarily
anti-science. But, this cannot be the case since
many post-positivist positions are pro-science.
Moreover, Marxist approaches to IR sit uneasily
in this framework as they are also committed
to science, but not positivism (Maclean, 1981;
H. Smith, 1996). There is a move within some
sections of the discipline to substitute the rationalist/
reflectivist axis for a rationalist/constructivist one,
and this is certainly evident in many of the chapters
in this volume. However, this can only make sense
if the category of constructivism is further disaggregated
into competing, and sometimes incompatible
positions (see Chapter 5 by Adler in this
volume for an attempt to construct just such an
account). It is difficult to see what is gained by
such a move since to use one label to cover a range
of positions can only be of benefit if they share
substantial elements in common.
Another complicating factor is that of causation
(Harré and Madden, 1975; Lerner, 1965; Suganami,
1996; Wright, 1974). Hollis and Smith ultimately
reduce the distinction between explaining and
understanding, and by implication positivism and
post-positivism, to the issue of causation: ‘To
understand is to reproduce order in the minds of
actors; to explain is to find causes in the scientific
manner’ (Hollis and Smith, 1990: 87). This would
suggest that all causal accounts are necessarily
positivist. Indeed, David Campbell, in accepting
the logic of this framework, argues: ‘I embrace the
logic of interpretation that acknowledges the
improbability of cataloguing, calculating and
specifying the ‘’real causes’’’ (Campbell, 1992: 4).
This seems to suggest that interpretative (understanding)
accounts eschew causation. But what
kind of causation is being rejected here? Hollis and
Smith view cause in Humean positivist terms,
whereas Campbell offers no explanation of what he
means by ‘real causes’ (Hollis and Smith, 1991:
407; 1994: 248–50).
Ruggie, presumably still on the post-positivist/
reflectivist side, is committed to causation, but discusses
it in the context of the covering law model of
explanation and contrasts this with a narrative form
of explanation (Ruggie, 1998: 34). Hidemi Suganami
has also addressed the issue of cause in a very similar
manner, but the ontology of his account is
unclear and he seems to imply that the narration
itself is the cause (Suganami, 2000). This is a very
idealistic account of cause, and would seem to suggest
that Thucydides’s narrative of the Peloponnesian
War was actually its cause (Patomäki and Wight,
2000; Suganami, 2000). Missing from Suganami’s
discussion is the difference between ‘narration-ofcauses’
and ‘narration-as-cause’. Both are equally
valid in terms of social science, but the distinction
is important in temporal terms. A narration of
the causes of the First World War cannot literally
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND IR 37
be the cause of the First World War, whereas a
narrative that portrayed certain groups as inferior
could be part of the cause of their being treated as
inferior. Dessler (1991) has a good discussion of
cause from a non-Humean position and contrasts
this to correlation.20
The distinction between constitutive and
explanatory theory is another issue that has
emerged within the discipline as a result of the contemporary
way of framing the issues (Burchill and
Linklater, 1996; Smith, 1995; Wendt, 1999). Steve
Smith sees this as the main meta-theoretical issue
facing the discipline today (Smith, 1995: 26).
Smith clearly sees explanatory theory as being
essentially positivist in orientation and constitutive
theory as post-positivist (Smith, 1995: 26–7).
According to Smith, explanatory theory seeks to
offer explanations of international relations,
whereas constitutive theory sees ‘theory as constitutive
of that reality’ (Smith, 1995: 26–7). It is difficult
to know how to interpret this distinction.
Smith formulates it as a basic ontological difference
embedded within competing visions of the
social world (Smith, 1995: 27). But underlying
Smith’s formulation is still the science/anti-science
schema; is the social world to be ‘seen as scientists
think of the “natural” world, that is to say as something
outside of our theories, or is the social world
what we make it’ (Smith, 1995: 27)?
But just whom does the ‘we’ refer to here?
Setting this distinction in opposition to explanatory
theory that attempts to explain international relations,
we can presume that Smith means ‘we’ IR
theorists, not ‘we’ members of society. But this
seems implausible. It seems to suggest that ‘we’ IR
theorists make the world of international relations.
On the other hand, if the point is simply that the
world is socially constructed then it would be difficult
to find many social scientists, whether on the
science wing or not, who think otherwise (Holsti,
1998: 29; Searle, 1995). Even such a mainstream
scholar as Kenneth Waltz accepts that the social
world is socially constructed (Waltz, 1979: 48).21
It may well be that academic theories eventually
filter down into society and fundamentally change
it, but as yet, there is little to suggest that ‘we’ are
in a privileged enough position to say ‘we’ IR theorists
make the world we study. Wendt’s reply to
Smith on this issue seems basically sound, and even
though social objects do not exist independently of
the concepts agents have of them, they do exist
‘independent of the minds and bodies of the individuals
who want to explain them’ (Wendt, 1999:
75). Wendt rejects Smith’s science/anti-science
framing of this issue, and argues that both explanatory
theory and constitutive theory transcend the
natural–social science divide (Wendt, 1999: 78; see
Smith, 2000 for a reply). According to Wendt, constitutive
theory is concerned with ‘how’ social
objects are constituted, and what is ‘X’ (Wendt,
1999: 78). State theory would be a good example
here. It asks ‘what is a state?’ and does not attempt to
link causes in time (Bosanquet, 1899; Jessop, 1990;
Laski, 1935). Wendt also argues that some of the
most important theories in the natural sciences are
constitutive – the double helix model of DNA for
example (Wendt, 2000: 107).
The issue of constitutive theory and explanatory
theory is often linked to that of whether reasons can
be causes (Hollis, 1994; Smith, 2000). This used to
be a major issue of concern for the philosophy of
social science (Winch, 1958, although compare
Winch, 1990; Davidson, 1963; MacIntyre, 1973).
Today the construal of reasons as causes is generally
accepted as a necessary component for interpretative
accounts; although Smith suggests that it is still
hotly disputed, but does not indicate by whom
(Smith, 2000: 158). In general, understanding reasons
as causes has come to be seen as necessary in
order to preserve the difference between action and
behavior (Bhaskar, 1979; Carlsnaes, 1986; Collin,
1985; Davidson, 1963; Porpora, 1987).
For if the reason for an act is not part of the
causal complex responsible for the act, then the
contrast drawn between an act and a bodily movement,
upon which hermeneutic accounts insist, is
negated; such as that between signalling to a friend
or scratching one’s head, for example (Bhaskar,
1979: 169–95). The difference between a waving
arm and signalling to a friend depends upon the
possession, by an agent, of a reason to wave one’s
arm in that manner, namely, the desire to signal to a
friend. In this respect, the desire to wave to one’s
friend can rightly be considered as part of the causal
complex responsible for the waving of the arm in
the appropriate manner (Carlsnaes, 1986; Patomäki,
1996). If reasons are stripped of their causal function,
behavioralism beckons.
This issue again demonstrates the tenacity of the
positivist vision of science, for Smith’s rejection of
reasons as causes is derived from his acceptance of
a positivist account of cause. Winch accepted that
his rejection of causal accounts in social explanations
was based on a Humean/positivist account of
cause, and that devoid of such an account causal
talk was not only appropriate, but necessary for
social explanation (Winch, 1990). Because of this
Wendt has suggested that Hollis and Smith’s ‘two
stories’ thesis is ‘a legacy of positivist conceptions
of explanation’ (Wendt, 1991: 391).
The explanatory/constitutive divide is linked to
the rationalist/reflectivist dichotomy by a number of
authors (Adler, 1997; Laffey and Weldes, 1997;
S. Smith, 1996; Wendt, 1999). The division of the
discipline into rationalist and reflectivist camps is
generally attributed to Robert Keohane (Keohane,
1989), although in recent years it has played less of
a role, with many within the discipline preferring
HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS38
to talk of a rationalist/constructivist divide. The
original distinction was specifically formulated by
Keohane to capture the difference between two
approaches to international institutions, but the
terms have rapidly come to signify two radically
opposed approaches to the study of IR itself
(Keohane, 1989; S. Smith, 1996; Wendt 1992).
According to Keohane, rationalists are theorists
who accept what he calls a ‘substantive’ conception
of rationality. By this he means that behavior can
be considered rational insofar as it can be adjudged
objectively to be optimally adapted to the situation
(Keohane, 1989: 160). Reflectivists, on the other
hand, take a ‘sociological approach to the study of
institutions’ and stress the ‘role of impersonal
social forces as well as the impact of cultural practices,
norms, and values that are not derived from a
calculation of interests’ (Keohane, 1989: 160).
Reflectivists emphasize ‘the importance of “intersubjective
meanings” of international institutional
activity’ (Keohane, 1989: 161).
As formulated, this is an ontological difference,
not an epistemological or methodological one.
Keohane claims that the study of international
politics will require both approaches if empirical
research is not to suffer (Keohane, 1989: 161).
Keohane’s rationalist/reflectivist distinction can be
understood as one in which rationalists focus their
attention on how institutions function; whereas
reflectivists are more interested in how institutions
come into existence, how they are maintained and
how they vary across cultural and historical contexts
(Keohane, 1989: 170). According to the
reflectivist critique, rationalist theories are said to
be one-dimensional, static, universalistic, ahistorical
and decontextualized (Keohane, 1989: 170–3).
Keohane acknowledges all of these limitations, yet
argues against a wholesale rejection of rationalist
approaches in favour of a broadening of the
research agenda to incorporate the reflectivist perspective
(Keohane, 1989: 171). The problem is that,
although these reflectivist critiques of the rationalist
perspective seem telling, the reflectivists have
yet to develop what Keohane calls a ‘research program’
able to demonstrate the veracity of their
claims (Keohane, 1989: 173). Without such a
‘research program’ reflectivist criticisms of the
rationalist mainstream will remain marginal to the
discipline (Keohane, 1989: 173).
In essence, Keohane’s Lakatosian call for a
‘research programme or perish’ intervention can be
understood as a plea, or perhaps challenge, to
reflectivist scholars to move beyond incessant critique
and to demonstrate empirically the validity of
their claims (Katzenstein et al., 1998). The reflectivist
response has, predictably enough, been to ask
on whose terms (S. Smith, 1996)? After all, isn’t the
demand to develop a ‘research programme’ based
upon empirical validation an appeal to exactly those
same positivist principles that the reflectivists are
challenging (George, 1994)? To many reflectivists
still wedded to an outmoded view of science this is
to accept positivism. It is in this manner that positivism
comes to be aligned with rationalism.
There is something to this alignment at the level
of ontology. Positivism, in all its varied manifestations,
has always been ontologically coy, preferring
to either remain agnostic about the ontological
status of theoretical terms, or denying outright that
they have any ontological status. This, of course, is
its instrumental treatment of theoretical terms.
Keohane’s rationalists do not believe that any
actual agents meet the rational man model; any
more than economists think that any firms are perfectly
rational utility maximizers (Katzenstein
et al., 1998; Keohane, 1989). Rationality is an
assumption deemed necessary in order to get
research under way. Reflectivist critics can be interpreted
as either rejecting the validity of the ‘as if’
(assumptive) mode of theorizing, or merely rejecting
the particular assumptions being made; or
perhaps both.
Whereas Keohane originally based the distinction
on ontological grounds and accepted the need
to broaden the ontological horizon of investigation,
the reflectivist reaction to it is based upon the epistemological
criteria that Keohane sees as nonnegotiable
(Keohane, 1989: 174; Katzenstein et al.,
1998). That the reflectivist reaction to Keohane’s
position has been primarily based upon epistemological
issues demonstrates the depth of the
science/anti-science split within the discipline.
Moreover, the fact that the vast majority (if not all)
of so-called reflectivists within the discipline do
indeed supply empirical support for their claims
throws yet more doubt on the validity of this particular
cleavage (Campbell, 2001; Wendt, 1999: 67;
2000: 173). If the distinction between a rationalist
and a reflectivist is made on these epistemological
grounds alone then there are simply no practicing
reflectivists in IR today. Even the severest critics
of Keohane’s epistemological concerns enlist
empirical support for their arguments (Ashley,
1987, 1989; Ashley and Walker, 1990; Campbell,
1998b, 2001; George, 1994; Smith, 1997;
Walker, 1993).
There is one final dichotomy that demonstrates
the inability of this crude framework to contain the
weight it is being asked to bear. This is the material/ideational
split. There is little constructive to be
said about the way the discipline currently frames
this issue. From a philosophy of social science perspective
it makes little sense. Rationalists, explainers
and positivists are said to concentrate on material
factors; reflectivists, understanders, constructivists
and post-positivists are said to focus on ideational
ones (Laffey and Weldes, 1997; Ruggie, 1998;
S. Smith, 1996, 2000; Wendt, 1995, 1999, 2000).
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND IR 39
HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS40
This issue again is derivate of the science/
anti-science split. But there is simply no philosophy
of science position that can legitimate this split.
Positivists of all sorts of persuasion can legitimate
analysis of ideational factors; it is how they treat
them that matters (Haas, 1991: 190; Laffey and
Weldes, 1997). Likewise, non-positivist philosophies
of science and social science can privilege
material factors (Marx, 1966). Of course, different
theorists can focus their attention of these factors to
varying degrees, but even in these instances this
would be an ontological choice related to the object
of inquiry, not one derived from an a priori commitment
to some mythical epistemological position.
If the difference between rationalists and reflectivists,
or positivists and post-positivists, or even
constructivists and rationalists, is based on the
material versus ideational issue, then Keohane,
given his claim that ‘institutions can be defined in
terms of their rules’, is not a rationalist or a positivist
(Keohane, 1989: 163).
Many on the so-called non-rationalist/postpositivist
side of the current landscape seem to
assume that Wendt’s argument for maintaining a
social science embedded within nature suggests that
only material factors matter (Campbell, 2001: 445).
But Wendt is not suggesting this (1999). What he is
suggesting is that IR should leave open the possibility
that material factors play a role; why this
should be interpreted as saying that only material
factors matter is not clear, although understanding
the logic of the contemporary framework partially
explains it since the framework sets up an either/or
distinction. Ultimately, however, this issue is not
helped by the lack of conceptual clarity that is
deployed when discussing it. David Campbell, for
example, can both claim that ‘nothing exists outside
of discourse’ (Campbell, 2001: 444), and that the
‘undeniable existence of that world external to
thought is not the issue’ (Campbell, 2001: 444).
There may, of course, be coherent ways in which
these two claims can be reconciled, but this would
require much greater conceptual clarity. Moreover,
despite the commitment to objects external to
thought, Campbell is still essentially advocating a
form of philosophical idealism in tying the existence
or those objects to discourses; without humans no
discourses; without discourses no objects; in a sense
a version of positivism. To say more on the
material/ideational issue within IR would confer on
it a legitimacy that it clearly does not deserve. It
does, however, demonstrate how the current way of
framing the issues throws up such absurdities.
CONCLUSION
Mervyn Frost once declared IR the ‘backward discipline’
(Frost, 1986). It was ‘backward’, he argued,
due to a lack of self-conscious reflection concerning
its analytical and research endeavors (Frost, 1986:
39). On these grounds IR can hardly be considered
‘backward’ today. However, it would be a mistake
to consider that self-reflection necessarily constitutes
progress. It may be that Holsti’s characterization
of the discipline as dividing is a more accurate
description (Holsti, 1985). And even then there is
the difficult question of where the dividing lines are
and whether division is something the discipline
desires? When positivism dominated the philosophy
of science the choice for the discipline was
simple, but stark. Either science, or not science;
which effectively translated into ‘positivism or perish’.
When the positivist orthodoxy began to crumble
hopes were high for a more pluralistic IR: one
less grounded in austere visions of a deterministic
science and one much more amenable to the introduction
of alternative patterns of thought. Is this
where we are today?
Unfortunately not. Unable to shake the positivist
orthodoxy because it never really understood it, the
discipline simply poured the newly emerging patterns
of thought into the old framework. But, as any
mathematician could testify, a ‘thousand theoretical
flowers’ into two will not go, and hence the current
framework bursts at the seams. Simply adding a
new ‘middle ground’ category does not help and
nor does subsuming a range of differing categories
under one label. And so the current framework ‘disciplines’
and demands that one declares one’s allegiance.
Once declared, one’s analytical frame of
reference is specified and one’s identity firmly
fixed. As a rationalist you will privilege material
factors, causation and science; as a postpositivist/reflectivist
you will privilege ideational
factors, deny causation and are anti-science. Any
attempt to challenge this categorization is tamed
and forced into one or other extreme. This is exactly
the reaction from both sides of the divide to
Wendt’s attempt to occupy the middle ground. The
idea that one has to declare which tribe one belongs
to and that this determines one’s ontological frame
of reference, epistemology and appropriate methods
seems a bizarre way for a discipline to proceed.
However, some within the discipline have begun to
question the validity of the framework itself
(Ashley, 1996; Patomäki and Wight, 2000;
Sørenson, 1998; Waever, 1996).
These objections notwithstanding, and given the
long history of the discipline’s attachment to this
framework, its rejection looks unlikely. Part of the
explanation for this deeply embedded attachment is
surely a form of disciplinary identity politics that
stakes out borders over which only the foolhardy
might tread (Campbell, 1998a, 2001). After all,
without borders what would the border police do? If
this is the result of the philosophy of social science
in IR, then perhaps the discipline can do without it.
But such an assessment would miss the point. The
philosophy of social science is not something the
discipline can use or discard in that manner. The
subject we study is not wholly empirical, hence philosophy
constitutes part of what we study, part of
what we are and helps inform what we do. In this
case, perhaps the best we can hope is that we can do
it better. In the final analysis, it is worth keeping in
mind that meta-theoretical debate on the issues I
have covered in this chapter tend to be much more
tribalistic in language than in practice. When it
comes to concrete empirical research it is doubtful
if anyone could consistently occupy any one of the
positions and still maintain coherence. Hopefully
the following chapters in this volume will demonstrate
the veracity of this claim.
Notes
1 Throughout this chapter the abbreviation IR refers to
the institutionalized academic discipline of international
relations.
2 It would be normal to indicate the contested nature
of this label by enclosing it in ‘inverted commas’. Given
that this chapter is centrally concerned with the meaning
of the term such a form of enclosure seems unnecessary.
3 The problem of ‘naturalism’ is concerned with the
extent to which society can be studied in the same way as
nature (Bhaskar, 1979: 1).
4 The success of modern science led to the emergence
of the philosophy of science. The philosophy of science
reflects on the practice of science and attempts to examine
what is distinctive about scientific explanations and theoretical
constructions; what marks science off from guesswork,
speculation and pseudo-science; what makes the
predictions of science worthy of confidence; and, to question
whether science reveals a hidden truth about an objective
reality. In short, the philosophy of science attempts to
grasp the nature of science. The philosophy of social
science attempts to grasp the nature of social science.
Both attempt to give a generalized account of what might
constitute the practice subsumed under the label. It should
be noted, of course, that given the success of science,
philosophies of science are not simply explanatory
schemes, but represent normative claims. A philosophy of
science that claims to grasp the nature of scientific practice
implies that if you want to practice science you
‘ought’ to follow the principles explicated in the philosophy.
Equally, it should be clear that any philosophy of
science will include ontological claims (claims about existence);
epistemological considerations (claims about what
would constitute a valid knowledge claim, and the
grounds for such claims); and methodological implications
(if you believe in X (ontology) and wish to
ground the claim re X in Y (epistemology) then you should
follow method Y). It is for this reason that a philosophy of
science is much more than an epistemology or methodology.
There are no ontologically neutral philosophies of
science.
5 Again, subsumed under this question are a range of
issues relating to the nature of the entities; for example,
what is a ‘person’; the collective action problem; the
nature of social structures and so on.
6 Although this debate was labelled the agent–structure
debate, it has been argued that this was simply a different
terminology for what used to be called the
individual/society problem, or the macro/micro problem.
However, although these problems are related there are
good grounds for considering them as distinct problems
(see Layder, 1994).
7 Figure 2.1 is said to represent four possible positions
that can be taken when the problem of naturalism is combined
with the agent–structure problem. The top left box,
where explanation meets structure, can be understood as a
scientific approach to social study that concentrates its
attention on structural forces. The bottom left box (explanation
and agents), a scientific approach focussing on
agents. The boxes on the right-hand side of the diagram represent
a non-scientific approach to social study (hermeneutics
perhaps), which, of course, can either focus on
structural factors (top right) or agential ones (bottom right).
8 I view positivism as a philosophy of science. As
such, it is only one account of what constitutes science.
There are many other accounts of science that reject many
of the central tenets of positivism. As should be clear, one
of the main aims of this chapter is to problematize the
idea that positions such as positivism can be given a
clear and unequivocal meaning. There are many versions
of positivism and much that divides those who claim to
be positivists. However, these caveats aside, positivism
can be characterized in the following manner. (i) Phenomenalism:
the doctrine that holds that we cannot get
beyond the way things appear to us and thereby obtain
reliable knowledge of reality – in other words, appearances,
not realities, are the only objects of knowledge.
(ii) Nominalism: the doctrine that there is no objective
meaning to the words we use – words and concepts do not
pick out any actual objects or universal aspects of reality,
they are simply conventional symbols or names that we
happen to use for our own convenience. (iii) Cognitivism:
the doctrine that holds that no cognitive value can be
ascribed to value judgements and normative statements.
(iv) Naturalism: the belief that there is an essential unity
of scientific method such that the social sciences can be
studied in the same manner as natural science (see
Kolakowski, 1969). From these philosophical assumptions
most positivists adhere to the following beliefs about the
practice of science. (1) The acceptance of the ‘coveringlaw’
model of explanation (often referred to as the D–N
model). An explanation is only valid if it invokes a law
which covers, in the sense of entailing, all cases of the
phenomena to be explained. (2) An instrumentalist treatment
of theoretical terms. Theoretical terms do not refer to
real entities, but such entities are to be understood ‘as if’
they existed in order to explain the phenomena. There is,
however, no epistemological warrant (grounds for belief)
that such entities really exist. The proper way to evaluate
theoretical concepts and propositions is not through the
categories of truth and falsity but through judging their
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND IR 41
effectiveness. (3) A commitment to the Humean account
of cause. To say that event a necessitated event b need be
to say no more than when a occurred, so did b. This leads
to causal laws being interpreted as ‘constant conjunctions’.
(4) A commitment to operationalism, which entails
that the concepts of science be operationalized – that they
be defined by, and their meaning limited to, the concrete
operations used in their measurement. For example, the
meaning of a mental term is exhausted by the observable
operations that determine its use. So ‘P is thirsty’ means P
says she is thirsty if asked, drinks water if given the
chance, and so on.
9 My analysis is an Anglo-American perspective on
the issues, and it might be argued that Continental
European IR would address the issues in a different manner.
However, many of the anti-science positions that I
address in this chapter take their inspiration from German
idealism, and in this respect, one could argue that the
underlying issues are the same even if the terms of debate
might differ (see Jørgenson, 2000).
10 The original title of the text was Principles of a New
Science Concerning the Common Nature of Nations.
11 Adopted from political science, behavioralism in IR
is a strictly behavioral approach in which explanations are
based on agents’ overt, expressed and observable behavior;
on ‘what is really going on’ rather than on nonmeasurable
values and motives. Behavioralists emphasize
that theories should be ‘operational’; that is, capable of
being empirically tested.
12 It is important to maintain the distinctions between
ontology, epistemology and methodology. Ontology, in
philosophical terms, was originally understood as a branch
of metaphysics; it is the science of being in general,
embracing such issues as the nature of existence and the
categorial structure of reality. In the philosophy of science
and the philosophy of social science, it is used to refer to
the set of things whose existence is claimed, or acknowledged,
by a particular theory or system of thought: it is in
this sense that one speaks of ‘the’ ontology of a theory, or
of a theory having such-and-such an ontology (for example,
an ontology of anarchical structures, or of material
substances). The term epistemology comes from the Greek
word epistêmê, meaning knowledge. In simple terms,
epistemology is the philosophy of knowledge or of how
we come to know. Methodology is also concerned with
how we come to know, but is much more practical in
nature. Methodology is focused on the specific ways – the
methods – that we can use to try to understand our world
better. Epistemology and methodology are intimately
related: the former involves the philosophy of how we
come to know the world and the latter involves the practice.
It is common in IR for these aspects to be conflated
and confused. Adler (in Chapter 5 of this volume), for
example, claims that ‘Materialism is the view that material
reality exists, regardless of perception or interpretation,
and that what we know is a faithful representation of reality
out there.’ It should be clear that two claims are being
advanced here; two claims that do not necessarily follow
from one another. First, there is the ontological claim that
‘material reality exists’; second, is the epistemological
claim that what we ‘know is a faithful representation of
reality’. But it is important to see that a materialist might
accept the first ontological claim, without necessarily
accepting the second epistemological claim. Materialism
is a theory of existence (an ontological claim) and the
epistemological claim is either superfluous, or will require
further support. However, I doubt that anyone within
IR would argue that what we ‘know is a faithful
representation of reality’.
13 Logical positivism, sometimes also known as logical
empiricism scientific empiricism and consistent
empiricism, was a school of philosophy founded in
Vienna during the 1920s by a group of scientists, mathematicians
and philosophers known as the Vienna Circle.
Among its most prominent members were Moritz Schlick,
Rudolf Carnap and Kurt Godel. They derived much of
their inspiration from the writings of Ernst Mach, Gottlob
Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and George
Edward Moore. The logical positivists made a concerted
effort to clarify the language of science by showing that
the content of scientific theories could be reduced to truths
of logic and mathematics coupled with propositions referring
to sense experience. Members of the group shared a
distaste for metaphysical speculation and considered
metaphysical claims about reality to be meaningless. For
the logical positivists only two forms of knowledge were
valid; that based on reason and that based on experience.
The main theses of Logical Positivism may be briefly
stated as follows. (1) A proposition, or a statement, is
factually meaningful only if it is verifiable. This is understood
in the sense that the proposition can be judged probable
from experience, not in the sense that its truth can be
conclusively established by experience. (2) A proposition
is verifiable only if it is either an experiential proposition
or one from which some experiential proposition can be
deduced in conjunction with other premises. (3) That
which cannot be experienced cannot be said to exist.
Theoretical entities are treated instrumentally, ‘as if’ they
existed. (4) A proposition is formally meaningful only if it
is true by virtue of the definitions of its terms – that is, tautological.
(5) The laws of logic and mathematics are all
tautological. (6) A proposition is literally meaningful only
if it is either verifiable or tautological. (7) Since metaphysical
statements are neither verifiable nor tautological,
they are literally meaningless. (8) Since ethical, aesthetical
and theological statements also fail to meet the same
conditions, they too are cognitively meaningless –
although they may possess ‘emotive’ meaning. (9) Since
metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of religion and aesthetics
are all eliminated, the only tasks of philosophy are clarification
and analysis. Thus, the propositions of philosophy
are linguistic, not factual, and philosophy is a department
of logic; hence the label logical positivism.
14 Easton, in a claim that is a mirror image of contemporary
calls for a ‘return to normative theory’ (Frost,
1986, 1996; Smith, 1992), argued that ‘the dominance of
historical and ethical theory’ had excluded empirical
theory from the discipline (Easton, 1953, 1965: ix).
HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS42
15 Understanding why positivism came to be referred
to as an epistemology is a simple task once one understands
the manner in which logical positivism claimed
only scientific knowledge could be considered real
knowledge (a position few positivists would hold today;
Nicholson, 1996a). There are two important reasons why
this conflation of epistemology and positivism should be
rejected. First, those working on issues related to the
philosophy of social science within IR should be able to
take a much more sophisticated approach, and second
positivism should no more be allowed to appropriate the
label knowledge (epistemology) than that of science.
16 Again, as with positivism and other such positions,
there is no easy definition of scientific realism. However,
within the philosophy of science scientific realism has
been the dominant alternative to positivism. Hence, one
way to understand scientific realism is as a non-positivist
philosophy of science. As such it rejects the tenets of positivism
outlined in notes 5 and 12. Scientific realism is the
belief that the objects posited in scientific theories should
be considered to be real and their ontological status subject
to test. Scientific theories and hypotheses, even about
unobservable entities, are attempts to grasp the nature of
real entities and processes that are independent of our
theories about them – even non-observable ones.
Scientific realism does not deny that theories are dependent
on minds (or languages or judgements) if only
because such theories have to be expressed by minds and
in languages. It accepts that we construct theoretical
accounts of the world, but it denies that these theoretical
accounts exhaust the world. As should be clear, scientific
realism is not committed to the view that all the objects
posited in theories exist. Whether or not an entity posited
in a theory exists is what science tries to discover. Some
theories simply get the world wrong. Its point is that, and
contrary to a positivist philosophy of science, scientists, in
their practices, do treat theoretical entities as real. It has a
fallibilist view of knowledge, since knowledge claims
constructed in scientific theories are of a realm independent
of specific claims. This means that scientific realism
accepts epistemological relativism; all knowledge claims
are socially constructed. Moreover, given that the world is
populated by a diverse range of objects that science tries
to grasp, no one epistemological and/or methodological
position can be privileged. This is essentially what
Feyerabend meant by ‘anything goes’ (Feyerabend,
1975). However, since competing knowledge claims are
claims about a realm of independent objects, then some
claims may be better than others. This means that despite
the acceptance of epistemological relativism, judgmental
rationalism (the possibility of rational judgement) may
well be possible. Social realism refers to the assumption
that social reality – social structures and related social
phenomena – has an existence over and above the existence
of individual members of society, and independent
of our conception or perception of them. Contrary to
positivists, social realists consider that the purpose of
science is to provide explanatory knowledge. For the realist,
there is an important distinction between explanation
and prediction, a distinction which positivism conflates.
Social realists believe that explanation should be the primary
objective. They claim that explanation in both the
natural and social sciences should entail going beyond
simply demonstrating that phenomena are instances of
some observed regularity, and uncovering the underlying
and often-invisible mechanisms that causally connect
them. Frequently, this means postulating the existence of
unobservable phenomena and processes that are unfamiliar
to us. Realists believe that only by doing this will it be
possible to get beyond the mere ‘appearance’ of things to
deeper forms of explanation.
17 The most important of which are: (i) the treatment
of theoretical terms; (ii) the account of causation – scientific
realists reject Hume’s account and focus their
attention on causal mechanisms rather than constant conjunctions;
(iii) no epistemological position is privileged in
scientific realism. In fact, the only thing scientific realism
shares with positivism is a commitment to science. Where
they differ, however, is what they think science entails
(Psillos, 1999).
18 Adler (Chapter 5 in this volume) accepts Smith’s
account. However, Smith’s own account is essentially
positivist in his own terms; (i) Smith must believe that
there are people who regularly hold such views (his own
regularity principle); (ii) Smith can only be understood as
asserting that his account of positivism accurately reflects
something of the ‘facts’ of the position and these four
principles are not simply a reflection of his values (the
fact/value distinction); (iii) Smith supplies empirical evidence
in support of his factual claims (the commitment to
empirical validation); (iv) Smith applies all of these principles
to a social object (positivism) (the commitment to
the unity of science). Hence, Smith’s account of positivism
is a positivist account if his definition is correct.
The point of this is not to demonstrate that positivists
would reject Smith’s four criteria. In fact, most positivists
would accept them. But then again so would many others
who would not wish to be considered positivists (including
Smith himself ).
19 Empiricism is the philosophical belief that all
knowledge is ultimately based on experience, that is,
information received through the senses. It is opposed to
rationalism and denies that we have any a priori knowledge
or innate ideas: we owe all our concepts to experience
of the world. Rationalism is the opposite
epistemological position that claims that reason rather
than sense-experience is the foundation of certainty in
knowledge (Aune, 1970).
20 See King et al., 1994, Nicholson, 1996a, and
Patomäki, 1996 for alternative discussions of cause; see
also Deutsch, 1996.
21 Waltz’s acceptance that the social world is socially
constructed problematizes the use of the label ‘constructivist’
to indicate that those falling under the label share at
least one thing in common – the idea that the social world
is socially constructed; if this is the key factor, then Waltz
is also a constructivist – a conclusion few constructivists
would be willing to accept.
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND IR 43
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