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The discipline evolves around debates.The first "Great Debate".The discipline was established with the foundation of the first University department in Wales, Aberystwyth.Classical diplomacy and the balance of power.
Despite the efforts of Wilson, liberalism failed. It was ontological debate, concerning the subject matter of the discipline.Liberals sought to answer the question what ought to be done to avoid war, while the realists wanted to understand the nature of power politics.The myth of a great debate between the realists and the idealists gave the discipline its identity in the post WWII years. -
The second "Great Debate". Epistemological debate.
Debate between ‘behaviourism’ and ‘traditionalism’.Many scholars, particularly in United States in the 1960s, believed that Morgenthau’s theoretical framework was too impressionistic.The scientific turn led to a major disciplinary debate in the 1950s in which scholars argued that international politics were not susceptible to scientific enquiry.Development of the study of IRs during the 1960s and 1970s.Academic departments and centres appeared in the US, Britain and mostly in Europe. -
The “third great debate.” Ontological debate
This debate was called the neo-neo debate or the interparadigm debate.Kenneth N. Waltz’s neo-realist theory is one of the most prominent approach still today.Complex argument about the philosophy of social sciences and the achievements of Economics to explain international politics.International state-system and the struggle for power and security as central puzzle.The rise of study of international interdependence.Robert O. Keohane, John Burton, Ernst Haas as proponents of neo-liberal approach. -
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„The inter-paradigm debate”
For neo-Marxists reality was a system of global dominance and dependence which divided the world between North and South. Main representatives are Robert Cox and Immanuel Wallerstein. The phrase, „the inter-paradigm debate” was used in the 1970s and 1980s to show that an early consensus about the nature of the discipline (which was always incomplete) had been replaced by a broad spectrum of contending approaches. -
The fourth “Great Debate.” Epistimological debate.New reflective critical ideas started gaining ground, which were a departure from the mainstream realist, liberal and the critical Marxist thinking in IRs.
New debates have arisen in IR addressing methodological as well substantial issues.The new voice was identified as post-positivist approach.The participants: constructivism and rationalism or positivism.Constructivism as a post-positivist approach offers an other way of method to study the international realm. Constructivism insists that facts in social sciences are not objective.Constructivist: Alexander Wendt: “Social Theory of International Politics”(1999),
initiator of the fourth debate.
