Introduction

Abstract

Some five to ten years ago, the study of international relations (IR) was flooded with calls to construct new theories and develop new paradigms. These calls were reactions to the perceived inadequacies of the IR theories that had been dominant since the early 1970s: neorealism, pluralism and structuralism.¹ In particular, numerous scholars argued that existing IR approaches had incorporated a number of false dichotomies that had reduced their explanatory and emancipatory power. The dichotomies that were singled out most often included the separation between the domestic/international realms, state/non-state actors, agents/structures, facts/values, idealism/realism and political/economic processes. It was extensively argued that most existing IR approaches had not provided an adequate analysis of their interactions. Many suggestions were made about how to provide new and better perspectives. We were urged to use our ‘international imagination’, to adopt sociological, anthropological, feminist and linguistic approaches, to turn to scientific realism and other ‘post-positivist’ epistemologies, as well as to ground our thinking in normative theory.² All this turned the study of international relations into a lively and exciting debate. However, not all was well. A major concern was raised by Thomas Biersteker in 1989. In his words:

Up to this point, post-positivist scholars have been extremely effective critics but have been generally reluctant to engage in the construction and elaboration of alternative interpretations

or understandings … I am not interested in a decisive proof of the superiority of post-positivism, but rather in a decisive demonstration of the plausibility of an alternative construction of some more concrete issue or subject.³

Biersteker’s words very much resembled concerns raised by Robert Keohane, who argued that as long as the critics of traditional IR approaches lacked a clear empirical research programme they would remain at the margins of the discipline.⁴