Policy Issues and Fields of Cooperation

When I began my graduate studies in international relations thirty years ago, I was immediately immersed in the work of Thomas Kuhn and his book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”.The intent was to begin our approach to the study of global affairs with some questions about the role of what Kuhn called paradigms: Paradigms understood as maps of the theory, methods and standards used to understand problems and challenges. Changes in those paradigms, Kuhn argued, caused shifts in the criteria determining the legitimacy of problems and proposed solutions. What caused those changes constituted the revolutionary process when one paradigm could no longer explain the world and another was needed.