CIAO DATE: 11/03

The State of International Relations Research and Perspectives in Germany

Gunther Hellmann, editor
August 2003

The Epistemology of IR: Observations on the State of the "Third Debate" by Peter Mayer

Abstract

The chapter addresses IR’s „Third Debate“ in which positivists and post-positivists argue about the epistemological foundations of the discipline. It covers three interlocking controversies or problematiques: (i) the „naturalism issue“ referring to the question of whether or not IR should adopt the methodology of natural science; (ii) the „value issue“ revolving around the question of whether IR is (or should be) value-free and whether or not normative theory has an essential place in IR; and (iii) the „foundationalism issue“ centering on the question of whether or not there are sufficiently firm foundations for IR theorists to ground upon their claims about features of the events and processes they study. Finally, the chapter puts forward an hypothesis about why German students of international relations – although intensely involved in the disputes about the relative merits of rationalist and constructivist approaches to IR – showed relatively little interest in the "Third Debate".