International Relations. A self-Study Guide to Theory

part of our everyday life. The problems which this field reflects for science 
are more or less the same problems that exist in human thought in general. Of 
course, we do not often reflect on this in our day-to-day lives. 
The same argument holds true for IR theorists who formulate theories 
about international politics. Only rarely do they explicitly reflect upon the 
underlying philosophical positions that shape their theoretical ideas about 
world politics. Instead, these positions are often taken for granted.
When reading about the theories of IR presented in Part 2 of this book, 
you will recognize how important it can be to take the time to look more 

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closely at the meta-theoretical foundations of our thinking about international 
politics. Ontological and epistemological claims both have consequences for 
scientific research and subsequently – and most importantly – for the practice 
of international politics. 
In sum 
Philosophies of science are integrated philosophical complexes. For example, 
the epistemology and methodology of positivism would be meaningless when 
combined with an ontological holist position because, in ontological holism, 
a whole is not reducible to its parts. The whole thus cannot be explained by 
studying its single parts.
Because of their integration of ontological, epistemological and methodo-
logical aspects, I suggest we refer to philosophies of science more generally 
as “orders of thought”. This has been demonstrated, for example, by the dis-
cussion of atomism/particularism/individualism and reductionism as inte-
grated complexes of philosophy of science positions with ontological as well 
as epistemological and methodological aspects. The notion of “orders of 
thought” will be revived in more detail in Unit 3 of the book.
Before we move on to Unit 3, let us briefly reflect on why discussing phi-
losophies of science is relevant for the academic discipline of IR. 
2.3. Competing philosophies of science in IR 
In the academic discipline of International Relations, systematic references to 
the philosophy of science on a larger scale started in the 1950s with the be-
havioral revolution in political science (a good reflection on that is the vol-
ume of Knorr/Rosenau 1969). In the early years there was a lack of legitimi-
zation in terms of the philosophy of science, partly due to the underdeveloped 
state of the field at this time. Since the 1950s, legitimization in terms of the 
philosophy of science has become a typical feature of IR theory. A large part 
of the historical development of IR as an academic discipline after World 
War II thus revolved around establishing a more scientific basis for the disci-
pline. From that point onwards, references to the philosophy of science (in 
the literature you will usually come across references to the work of Thomas 
Kuhn (1962), Karl Popper (1959), Paul Feyerabend or Imre Lakatos (1970)) 
has been a common feature of IR theories. 
The result has been a subsequent embedding of the positivist philosophy 
of science within the academic discipline of IR to such an extent that the 
terms “science” and “positivism” have been used and are still used synony-

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mously. Science became positivist science. The “scientific” study of IR thus 
came to mean a scientific approach based on positivism. There has been a 
continuing attempt to see the discipline’s development up this point in terms 
of increasing claims of “scientific” knowledge. From what we have learned 
earlier in this chapter, it becomes clear why IR scholars claim “cumulative” 
knowledge in the progression of IR as a science. IR derives from the method-
ologically refined study of the separate objects of international politics, split 
into such diverse fields as “foreign policy analysis”, conflict studies, security 
studies, international political economy, international organization, develop-
ment studies, environmental studies, area studies etc.
On the other hand, there have always been deep debates over the very 
idea of science and the extent to which International Relations can be and 
should be a science. This became clear as early as the 1960s, with the wide-
spread controversy between “traditionalists” and “scientists” (positivists) 
over the appropriate methods for studying IR (remember the arguments in the 
texts written by Bull 1969 and Kaplan 1969 from your self-study in Step 1). 
The “classical approach” (Bull 1969) criticized positivism for leaving a large 
and important part of international politics unexamined because of a strict 
epistemological view. 
The latest controversy in IR between positivism and post-positivism has 
been taking place since the 1990s and once again involves the issue of sci-
ence and meta-theory. The debate has become more intense and the positions 
increasingly more diverse. At its core lies the role of positivism in IR, which 
has now become a controversial issue. Since these debates started, conten-
tious discussions about which ontology, epistemology and methodology is 
appropriate for the study of IR have been at the core of the discipline. How-
ever, the commonly used label of “post-positivism” to classify all non-
positivist approaches is misleading, since no such thing as a “post-positivist” 
philosophy of science exists. Rather, the controversy brought to the forefront 
the existence of a wide range of different understandings of science within 
the discipline of IR. All of these understandings critique positivist science. 
However, they draw on different philosophy of science positions such as con-
structivism, realism (such as scientific and critical realism), pragmatism, or 
historicism. From what you know about philosophies of science, it is easy to 
follow that those who reject positivist IR theory do not necessarily oppose 
systematic inquiry or the general idea of science. Rather, the specific under-
standing behind the term “science” differentiates those views. Only very few 
theories of IR are “anti-science”, rejecting the very idea that scientific 
knowledge is possible. What unites most different approaches to IR is an un-
derstanding of science as a systematic inquiry that employs method for the 

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purpose of gaining knowledge about international politics. They provide, 
however, different ontological perspectives on the core subject and how it 
can be studied by IR. In other words, the very idea of science as a system of