POSITIVISM AND NEOPOSITIVISM IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

By

DAVID OGBEIDI

Abstract: This paper is concerned with understanding positivism andneopositivism as epistemological frameworks in political scholarship.The study seeks to explore the roots of positivism and neopositivism,their general premise, propositions and criticisms. Ultimately, thefocus is to investigate the application of positivism and neopositivismin the field of international relations (IR). The basic message of thepaper is to present the view that the two terms are conflated aspositivism. They represent paradigms of similar evolving thoughtpatterns, only separated by their period of emergence. The workconcludes that although, positivism has contributed significantly tothe philosophy and methodology of research in IR, there is need for amethodological pluralism in IR scholarship, due mainly to positivism’sobservable inherent weaknesses. I argue that since IR isinterdisciplinary in character, the IR researcher should be open to avariety of perspectives and approaches – normative or empirical – inorder to fully explicate and provide an enhanced understanding ofthe phenomenon of international relations.

February 3,2014

Keywords: Positivism, Neopositivism, Post-positivism,

International Relations

Introduction

Broadly speaking, all International Relations (IR) theories can

be divided into one of two epistemological camps: “positivism”

and “post-positivism.”1 These frameworks constitute the duality

of the approach to the discipline. While the positivist aim to

replicate the methods of the natural sciences in understanding

the international system, on the other hand, post-positivist

epistemology is largely normative and rejects the idea that the

social world can be studied in an objective and value-free way.

It rejects the central tenets of positivism because the

scientific method cannot be applied to the social world and

therefore that a ‘science’ of IR is impossible.2

1

The present study concerns itself with understanding the

development, nature, basic propositions and post-positivists

criticisms of the two variants of the positivists’ orientation,

namely: Classical Positivism and Neopositivism. Thus, we begin by

examining the roots of positivism; the intellectual assaults

meted out on classical positivism by the post-positivist

school, which in turn necessitated the need for refinement and

ultimately a paradigm shift to a neoclassical thought. Further,

we shall turn to the relevance of Positivism and Neo-positivism

in the study of International Relations.

A. Positivism

Burrel and Morgan define positivism as an epistemology, which

seeks to explain and predict what happens in the social world

by search for regularities and causal relationships.3 For a

firmer grasp, we shall briefly survey the roots of positivism

as a philosophical framework, its tenets and then examine its

application in International Relations.

The Roots of Positivism

2

Positivism as an epistemological perspective has a long and

rich historical tradition. Kieran Egan in his seminal work,

“The Educated Mind”, observed that the antecedents of positivism

could be found in the longstanding dispute between Philosophy

and Poetry, which was later re-enacted in the quarrel between

the Sciences and the Humanities.4 However, the genesis of

positivism is traceable to the ideas of Rene Descartes and

more prominently, the British empiricists of the seventeenth

and eighteenth century; notable amongst them, Francis Bacon

John Locke, Gorge Berkely and David Hume. As an

epistemological doctrine, empiricism in essence holds that

genuine knowledge of the external world must be grounded in

experience and observation. Empiricism was to lay the

foundation for the birth of the idea of positivism later in

the nineteenth century.

The empiricist, Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857) coined the term

“positivism” in his celebrated compendium, Course on Positive

Philosophy5, followed by the work A General View of Positivism6, where he

argued that all theories, concepts or entities that are

incapable of being verified empirically must be purged from

3

scientific explanations. He stressed that the aim of

scientific explanation is prediction rather than trying to

understand a noumenal realm that lies beyond our senses and is

thus unknowable. To generate predictions, science seeks to

uncover laws of succession governing relations between

observed phenomena, of which gravity and Newton’s laws of

motion were exemplars. Comte also advocated the unity of

scientific method, arguing that the natural and social

sciences should both adopt a positivist approach. Thus, Comte

founded the discipline of Sociology, which he called “Social

Physics.”

Following Comte, positivist thinkers emerged across several

disciplines led by Sociologists. Herbert Spencer (1820 –

1903), a “positivist” in Comtean tradition developed a

biological analogy for Sociology. Much of his work was based

on the application of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution to society.

In his work, The Study of Sociology written in 1873, he viewed

society as a self-regulating system, which can be studied and

understood by examination of its part and how they are

interrelated. Others thinkers such as J. S Mill, Ernst Mach

4

and Richard Avenarius contributed significantly to the

development of positivism. Many investigators of the social

world, relying on positivism, according to White and Haines,

believed that society (civilisation) is progressing ever

forward, and that the social scientist can study society,

provide a more accurate understanding of how society works,

and ultimately provide a rational means of overcoming existing

social problems and ills by using scientific methods.7

General Premise

Jorge Larrain notes that one of the key features of positivism

is precisely its postulate that scientific knowledge is the

paradigm of valid knowledge.8 In support of Larrain’s

contention, Kieran Egan more lucidly explain as follows:

Positivism is marked by the finalrecognition that science provides the onlyvalid form of knowledge and that facts arethe only possible objects of knowledge; …Ethics, politics, social interactions, andall other forms of human life about whichknowledge was possible would eventually bedrawn into the orbit of science.9

5

With the general premise of positivism in mind, at this

juncture, it will make sense to highlight the propositions of

positivism.

Propositions of Positivism

Arising from the underlying premise of positivism, we shall

succinctly highlight six (6) key propositions of positivism.

Unity of Scientific Method

This means that the scientific method is the acceptable

approach for knowledge acquisition, and is valid for all forms

of inquiry.10 It does not matter if the domain of study is

animate or inanimate objects; human, animal or plant life,

physical or non-physical.

Correlation Analysis

Positivists hold that the primary aim of science is to produce

causal explanations grounded in law-like regularities. This

reflects the desire to find regularity and casual relationship

among the elements of the study. The process used is based on

reductionism, where the whole is reduced into its constituent

6

parts. E.g. the consideration of International System as a web

of frequently interacting units, whose constituent parts are

state and non-state actors. The overall aim of identifying

regularities and human casual relationship is to formulate

laws and make predictions about the social world based on

historical records. Eg. Gorge Modelski’s Long Cycle Theory.

Positivism is anchored on Empiricism

Positivists remain wedded to the view that science is a

fundamentally empirical enterprise. This refers to the

strongly held conviction that the only valid data is that

which is experienced from the senses. This means that

extrasensory experience, conscious imaginations, unconscious

organizing apparatuses, and the like, are not considered

acceptable.

Positivism is Value Free

Positivists typically support value neutrality – the view that

the role of science is to describe and explain the world, not

to make value judgments. This reflects the belief that there

is no intrinsic value position in science. The doctrine of

value neutrality is grounded in the so-called fact/value

7

distinction, which traces its origins to David Hume’s claim

that an ought cannot be derived from an is. That is, factual

statements about the world can never logically compel a

particular moral evaluation.  For instance, based on

scientific evidence, biologists might conclude that violence

and competition are natural human traits. Such a factual claim

itself does not tell us whether violence and competition are

good or bad. According to Max Weber, a central figure in late

nineteenth and early twentieth century sociology and a

defender of value neutrality, insisted that social scientists

can and should keep their ethical judgment of people’s values

separate from their scientific analysis of the nature and

effects of those values.11 Thus, the undertaking of any social

scientific investigation should have no relationship to

political, ideological or moral beliefs as it transcends all

cultural and social beliefs held by the researcher.

Inductive Logic is the Foundation of Science.

Inductive Logic provides the foundation of science. They

provide a universal language and a formal basis for analysis,

8

which is an important weapon in the search for causal

relationship.

Positivism Embraces Realism as its Ontological Position

Ontology refers to our worldview of reality or our

understanding of the nature existence. Realism as an

ontological position postulates that the universe is comprised

of objectively given, immutable objects and structures. These

exist as empirical entities on their own, independent of the

observer’s appreciation. Based on realism, the objective

character of Science demands that its outcomes are concrete

and remain the same under the same conditions for any inquirer

using the same methods. This contrasts sharply with an

alternative ontology called relativism or instrumentalism,

which holds that reality, is a subjective construction of the

mind and that reality varies with different languages and

culture.

According to White and Haines,12 these propositions can be

summarised into three (3): First, positivists are seen to be

neutral observers of the world, and their work is ‘value

9

free’. This is because the world was seen to be ‘out there’,

as an external reality, and the role of the scientist is

merely to record the ‘facts’. Second, the key method of the

positivist is to classify and quantify human experience and

behaviours through a range of objective tests. This means

developing various ways to measure human activity. Third, as

with the natural world, the social world is seen to obey

general laws of operation. The task of the positivist is to

uncover the causal determinants of human behaviour (i.e. to

identify ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ relationships), and thus both to

predict and to modify future outcomes.

Criticisms

Positivism began to face criticism beginning in the later part

of the nineteenth century. Thinkers like Vico, Kant, Fichte

and Hegel provided the background for the anti-positivists

intellectual assaults. Burrell and Morgan capture the spirits

of these critiques, which is worth quoting in details:

In addition to focusing attention upon theessentially complex and problematic natureof human behaviour and experience, thework of this generation of theorists

10

returned to the basic problem ofepistemology identified by Kant; whichconfronted both the natural and socialsciences. The positivist position came tobe seen as increasingly unsatisfactory andproblematic on at least, two counts.First, within the natural sciences(Naturwissenchaften). It became clear thathuman values intruded upon the process of

1 . “International Relations Theory,”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_relations_theory (Accessed 16/02/2014).

2 . Ibid.3 . G. Burrell and G. Morgan, Sociological Paradigms and

Organisational Analysis (London: Heinemann, 1979), 674 .Kieran Egan an educationist, drawing from his extensive

study of the history of various fields, explicates on howthe various forms of understanding have been created anddistinguished over time. See K. Egan, The Educated Mind(Chicago: University of Chicago Press1997), 166.

5 . J. J. Macionis, Sociology, 14th Edition (Boston:Pearson, 2012), 11.

6 . “A General View of Positivism”,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_General_View_of_Positivism; Accessed 16/02/2014

7 . R. White and F. Haines, Crime and Criminology: AnIntroduction (Melbourne: Oxford University Press. 2004), 38.

8 . J. Larrain, The Concept of Ideology (London: Hutchinson,1979), 197.

9 . Egan, The Educated Mind, 36.10 . H. Putnam, Renewing Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 1992), x.11 .M. Weber, Max Weber: Selections in Translation (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1978), 54

11

scientific method and could no longer beregarded as value-free; the frame ofreference of the scientific observer wasincreasingly seen as an active force,which determines the way in whichscientific knowledge was obtained. Withinthe realm of the cultural sciences(Gelsteswisenchaften) a second set ofdifficulties were also seen as arising,since their subject matter wasdistinguished by its essentially spiritualcharacter. It was realized that man, as anactor could not be studied through themethods of the natural sciences, withtheir concerns for establishing generallaws in the cultural sphere; it was heldthat man was not subject to law in thephysical sense, but was free ...13

B. Neopositivism

The first half of the 20th century was characterized by the

debate among positivists’ on whether scientific theories could

contain metaphysical terms, if they do, how to ascertain their

truth, and if they do not, how to explain. To Boyd, 20th

century philosophy of science is essentially a prolonged

discussion about the relation between the use of metaphysical

terms and good science.14 As deficiencies about the

12 . White and Haines, Crime and Criminology, 4013 . Burrell and Morgan, Sociological Paradigms and Organisational

Analysis, 75

12

propositions of positivism came to light, its influence began

to decline and a number of alternative approaches for dealing

with metaphysical terms and truth testing arose, including

historical relativism, scientific realism, post-positivism,

the semantic conception, and postmodernism etc. However,

largely due to the criticisms of the post-positivists about

positivism’s metaphysical content, positivism proved to be

unrealistic in its assumption of the social world and was

gradually usurped by neoclassical thought. Thus, the first two

decades of the twentieth century witnessed the emergence of an

influential version of positivism, known as neo-positivism or

logical positivism.

Neopositivism emerged after German scientists concluded that

metaphysical terms did not mix with good science.15 According

to Suppe logical positivism emerged, in part, in response to

the “metaphysical excesses of Hegel” and his successors.16 Will

14 .R. Boyd, “Confirmation, Semantics, and the Interpretationof Scientific Theories,” in R. Boyd, P. Gasper and J. D.Trout (eds.), The Philosophy of Science (Cambridge, MA:Bradford/MIT Press, 1991), 3−35.

13

Durant best captures the dominance of Hegel’s idealism in his

1926 book, The Story of Philosophy:

By the mid-19th century, Hegel’s philosophyof “the identity of reason and reality” hadproclaimed that only “reason” is “real,”thereby denying the existence of tangibleentities such as earth, water, and fire.The world is purely perception, a matter ofthe mind. Hegel “...ruled the philosophicalworld as indisputably as Goethe the worldof literature and Beethoven the realm ofmusic.”17

Neopositivism originated in a group called the Vienna Circle in

Austria and Germany during the 1920s. The Vienna Circle was a

group of physicists, mathematicians and social scientists, who

met every week in Vienna under Moritz Schlick (1882–1936).

Schlick was a philosopher at the University of Vienna, whose

main aim was to counteract the arguments of the anti-

positivists: German idealism in particular and metaphysical

doctrines in general. Neo-positivism was later carried forward

15 .For overviews, see F. Suppe, The Structure of Scientific Theories,2nd ed., (Chicago: University of Chicago Press., 1977),231. See also R. Cooper and G. Burrell, “Modernism,Postmodernism and Organizational Analysis: AnIntroduction,” Organization Studies, 9, 1988: 91−112.

16 . Ibid., 6−1517 . W. Durant, The Story of Philosophy (New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1954), 222

14

by such group members as Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Philipp

Frank, Kurt Gödel, Victor Kraft, Otto Neurath, Friedrich

Waismann and others. Through the travels of Ludwig

Wittgenstein (1889–1951) and Alfred Ayer, there was a relation

of mutual influence between Vienna and Cambridge, and due to

the emigration of various Vienna Circle group members as a

result of Hitler’s rise to power, neo-positivism later spread

also to the United States.

General Premise

Only statements verifiable either logically or empirically

would be cognitively meaningful.

Propositions of Neopositivism

Classical positivism, despite being anchored on scientism had

generally permitted statements that were inherently laden with

several unclear languages and unverifiable claims and

neopositivism sought to prevent confusion rooted in linguistic

ambiguities and compartmentalizing all claims to distinguish

verifiable claims from unverifiable.18 Thus, neoclassical

15

positivist thought introduced the following shifts in

classical positivism:

Only the Verifiable Knowledge is Scientific

Neopositivism looked to Ernst Mach, a physicist and professor

of philosophy in Vienna, as one of its precursors. Mach,

through his phenomenalism, added the notion that scientific

statements must be empirically verifiable. Mach tried to

promulgate a view that scientific statements were nothing more

than “abbreviated descriptions of sensations.”19 Unverifiable

claims were deemed unscientific, cognitively meaningless

“pseudostatements” – metaphysics, emotive, or such – not

candidate to further review by philosophers, newly tasked to

organize knowledge, not develop new knowledge. Verification of

what is considered empirical as introduced by the neo-

positivists relegated a slew of traditional philosophical

questions to the category of meaningless. It also called into

question the validity of employing unobservable theoretical

entities, processes and forces in natural scientific theories.

18 . M. Friedman, Reconsidering Logical Positivism (New York:Cambridge University Press, 1999), xiv

19 . Suppe, The Structure of Scientific Theories…, 10

16

Thus, Mach rejected the existence of God, as it could not be

generated as sense data.

Unity of Science via Reductionism

Another important component of neopositivism was the way in

which the positivists’ notion of Unity of Science could be applied.

In this regard, Rudolf Carnap, gave a systematic explanation

of how, in general, propositions expressed in the terms of one

science, say biology, could be reformulated into equivalent

propositions in the terms of another, say physics.20 Although

the propositions of physics could conceivably be reduced to

those of biology as well as the other way, in practice it was

assumed that physics would be the ultimate goal of all

reductions.

The thesis of physicalism maintains that the physical language

is a universal language of science — that is to say, that

every language of any sub-domain of science can be

equipollently translated into the physical language. From

this, it follows that science is unitary system within which

20 .R. Carnap, “Meaning and Synonymy in Natural Languages,”Philosophical Studies, 6, 1955: 33−47.

17

there are no fundamentally diverse object-domains, and

consequently no gulf, for example, between natural and

psychological sciences. This is the thesis of the unity of

science.21 Further, Wittgenstein was to provide the neo-

positivists with a starting point for their objectivist

programme of unified science, which included a programme of

the reduction of the social sciences to so-called ‘behavioural

sciences’.

Logic and Mathematics as a Scientific Language

Neopositivist attempted to clarify the language of science by

expunging metaphysical terms not amenable to direct sensory

testing and by insisting that logic terms be verified as to

cognitive meaning and truth, thereby “ridding it [science] of

meaningless assertions by means of the verifiability principle

and reconstructing it through formal logic into a precise,

ideal language”.22 Neopositivism emphasized and refined the

logical and linguistic implications of Comte’s empiricism,

holding that meaningful statements about the world are limited

21 . Ibid.22 . S. D. Hunt, Modern Marketing Theory: Critical Issues in the

Philosophy of Marketing Science (Cincinnati, OH: South-Western.1991), 271

18

to those that can be tested through direct observation (i.e.

experimentation). Breaking with classical positivist,

Wittgenstein for instance, presented the first radical and

therefore influential neo-positivistic language model. Rather

than being concerned with things, events, facts or nature as

such, he shifted the focus to the language in which things,

events or facts are captured. However, since everyday language

was vague and misleading, his concern was with scientific

language, the one inter-disciplinary language of science. His

aim was to discover the logic of language, the true logical

structure of all the sentences of the language of science.

It is noteworthy at this juncture to assert that despite Ernst

Mach’s contribution to verificationism, it had its own

shortcomings. For instance, Mach’s approach, which included a

rejection of mathematics, were denied by Reichenbach (the

Berlin School), Schlick (The Vienna Circle), and Whitehead and

Russell (1910−1913) in their Mathematica Principia, resulting in a

modified neo-positivism23 that still held to verifiability as a

basis of assuring truth but included mathematics as an

23 . Suppe, The Structure of Scientific Theories…, 11

19

appropriate expression of scientific laws. A basic assumption

here was that there was an isomorphic or mapping relation

between this ideal language and reality. If scientific

language is suitably constructed it could, through its logical

structure, capture the very logical form of the world. It was

further assumed that the capacity of language to depict the

world was such that it made the thinking human subject

superfluous, which implied that only the sentences of the

natural sciences were meaningful or inter-disciplinarily

verifiable.

Positivism could be Ethical

Unlike positivism, neopositivists brought the question of

ethics to the fore of philosophical discussion. Moritz Schlick

was the most interested in ethics and tried to align ethics

with the propositions of positivism. 24 He maintained that

ethics is a descriptive scientific theory and that statements

about ethics are not normative statements prescribing how

people ought to behave, because in this case they were

24 . M. Schlick, “Positivism and Realism,” in R. Boyd, P.Gasper and J. D. Trout (eds.), The Philosophy of Science(Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT Press, 1991), 23−55.

20

meaningless by virtue of verifiability principle. He avers

that statements about ethics are indeed descriptive statements

relating to the origin and evolution of ethical principles in

human society. Sclick asserted that human beings naturally

prefer conditions that do not produce pain and do produce

pleasure; thus in a first time, good is simply whatever that

gives pleasure and no pain. Hence, egoistic behaviour always

comes before altruistic behaviour.

Criticisms

Neopositivism benefitted from the criticism of scholars like

Karl Popper, which led to the refinement of verifiability to

conformability or falsifiability. According to this view,

commitment to knowledge in the form of covering laws that

provide the framework for propositions that lend themselves to

falsification is the most desirable. Karl Popper stresses that

the line demarcating science from non-science is empirical

falsifiability. In the words of Popper:

The problem I have tried to solve was neitherproblem of meaningfulness or significance, nor aproblem of truth or acceptability. It was theproblem of drawing a line (as well as this canbe done) between the statements or systems of

21

statements, of the empirical sciences and allother statements – whether they are of thereligious or of metaphysical character orpseudo-scientific.25

In effect, if there is no imaginable empirical test that could

show a theory to be false, then it cannot be called a

scientific theory. In other words, theories can and should be

scrutinized by decisive experiments. Producing empirically

falsifiable theories in turn necessitates creating techniques

for systematically and precisely measuring the social world.

In response to Popper, much of twentieth century social

science involved the formation of such tools, including

figuring out ways to operationalize social phenomena – that

is, conceptualize them in such a way that they can be

measured. The data produced by operations in turn provide the

raw, empirical material to construct and test theories. At the

practical level, ensuring that scientific theories are subject

to proper empirical rigor requires establishing an

institutional framework through which a community of social

scientists can try to test each others’ theories.

25 . K. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of ScientificKnowledge (New York: 1963), 39

22

Another criticism of neo-positivism and the verifiability

principle from a cultural perspective is the impossibility of

a theory of ethics. Statements about ethics are neither true

nor false. They are expressions of feeling. If ethics is

meaningless, what is the origin of ethical principles? Moritz

Schlick was one positivist who considered ethics as a

descriptive scientific theory: good is whatever gives

pleasure and no pain. To Schlick therefore, the first ethics

impulse is an egoistic one. However, it is possible that in a

society, an altruistic action is more beneficial than a purely

egoistic one. The positivist’s elimination of these kinds of

ethical arguments and theories, which are useful in building

the foundations of societies, marginalizes the human mind and

forces culture into a mindless, sterile world. Losing

intuition, emotion, metaphysics and ethics is a very negative

consequence of strict logical positivism. Positivism may have

usefulness as a scientific tool, but the loss of other

intellectual arenas of thought become restrictive. Science can

tell us things about the world as they are, but metaphysics

and ethics tell us which questions to ask. Intuition provides

23

the unconscious insight for discoveries and is an interesting

area of study as to how science really occurs, as well as

providing some guidance for human behaviour.

Similarities and Differences between Positivism and

Neopositivism

Positivism and neopositivism share certain similar features.

First, they share the same view of the world (ontology) and,

crucially, the same view of what counts as reliable knowledge

about that world (epistemology). Thus, they remain wedded to

the view that science is a fundamentally empirical enterprise.

Second, the two schools hold that the primary aim of science

is to produce causal explanations grounded in law-like

regularities. Both schools of thought typically support value

neutrality – the view that the role of science is to describe

and explain the world, not to make value judgment.

Despite the striking similarities between positivism and neo-

positivism, at least three (3) major differences are

observable. First, while positivism proposes that, the

scientific method is the acceptable approach for knowledge

24

acquisition, and is valid for all forms of inquiry (i.e. it

does not matter if the domain of study is animate or inanimate

objects; human, animal or plant life, physical or non-

physical), neopositivism argues that not every phenomenon can

be studied scientifically (i.e. only the verifiable counts).

To this end, and drawing from Francis Bacon’s “Novum Organum,”

teleological explanations in science tended to be deliberately

avoided because whether they are true or false is argued to be

beyond the ability of human perception and understanding to

judge.26 Second, positivists were satisfied with explanatory

statements that could be understood by sensory perception, but

the neopositivists insist that in addition, all theoretical

explanations should be capable of being understood in

mathematical and logical terms. Third, positivism is value-

free while neo-positivism admits ethical explanations. These

represent neopositivism’s point of departure from classical

positivism.

Terminological Conflation: The Unity of Neopositivists and theirOlder Positivists Cousins

26 . E. Partridge, Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of ModernEnglish, (Rutledge, 1977), 4187

25

Neopositivism can be regarded a stage in the development of

positivism. For this reason, the neoclassical thinkers in IR

are yet called positivists. Thus, although the Neopositivist

School developed in response to weaknesses inherent in

positivism; ultimately usurping it, neo-positivism however

does not represent any schism with classical positivism, but

merely challenges its afore-discussed classical assumptions

with intent to improve on it. For this reason, adherents of

these schools are generally called positivists and because the

distinctions between positivism and neopositivism appear to be

superficial, it has become imperative that the two terms be

intentionally conflated for the sake of conciseness. Thus,

since the twentieth century, many IR scholars have tended to

conflate the classical and neo-classical variants of

positivism.27

Having discussed positivism and neo-positivism as broad

epistemological frameworks, the focus of the study now shifts

to examining in more detail positivism and neo-positivism as

27 .

http://www.mcgraw-hill.co.uk/openup/chapters/0335208843.pdf; Accessed 16/02/2014.

26

epistemological frameworks that underpin the practice of

inquiry in the field of IR.

C. Positivism in International Relations

As already noted in the preceding discussion, positivism rests

on the view that every form of knowledge can be built with the

same model as the natural sciences (Unity of Science). Our

focus here is to examine from a historical perspective, how

the positivist framework emerged in the discipline of

International Relations and its relevance as an

epistemological doctrine.

The development of the discipline of International Relations

(IR) owes much to the international tensions that emanated

from Europe in the nineteenth century, and spilled into the

twenty century, culminating in the First World War. World War

I was a watershed event in human history; more so as it

generated widespread intellectual interest in international

affairs. Crucially, policy-makers were interested in precisely

the kind of expertise opinions that the intellectual community

were willing to offer to achieve international peace and

27

security. Of course, the pursuit of international peace and

security after the war as well as the formulation of IR dogma

can viewed as integral to the early development of the

discipline and as the basis for all other IR theoretical

repertoires that has evolved to explain international

phenomenon. Thus, IR was born with a pacific agenda.28

According to Hedley Bull the origins of the distinct

discipline of International Relations dates back to the

formation of the first department of the discipline at the

University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1919 and the nature of the

scholarly debate within that field in the interwar period.29

The new field of study was dominated by scholars with

background in History, Political Science, Sociology, Law and

Economics and each had sought to examine IR from its own

intellectual prism. The fact that entry into the field was an

‘all comers’ affair also meant that there were bound to be

methodological and epistemological concerns. This is so

28 .K. Salomon, “What Is The Use of International History?”,Journal of Peace Research, 30 (4), 1993, 375-389

29 .H. Bull, “The theory of International Politics, 1919–1969”, in B. Porter (ed.), The Aberystwyth Papers: InternationalPolitics 1919–69 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 30–55.

28

because every discipline specifies not only its object of

study but also the methods of its enquiry and of course, the

analytical tool with which it comprehends that object. In the

present circumstance, it was inevitable that IR would be

inherently characterized by methodological diversity,

variation in scope and contending theoretical orientations.30

Even though the distinct discipline of International Relations

did not emerge until 1919, the school of positivism in

International Relations is traceable to the early 1900s

through the writings of Prof. Charles Edward Merriam. In his

masterpiece, A History of American Political Theories31, he emphasized

value free inquiry of the world of politics through rigorous

scientific and statistical methods. At this time,

International Politics, the forerunner of IR, was an integral

subject of Political Science.32 He reechoed the epistemological

views of Henri de Saint Simon concerning the method of

30 . K. Holsti, The Dividing Discipline: Hegemony and Diversity inInternational Theory (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985), 86.

31 .C. E. Merriam, A History of American Political Theories (New York:MacMillan, 1903), 87 – 88.

32 .B. M. Russett, “The Young Science of InternationalPolitics,” World Politics 22, 1 (1969): 87- 94.

29

knowledge production for political science. Saint-Simon had

once declared that that political science can only be

understood and synthesized as the “science of production.” 33

Positivism in International Relations was an attempt to adopt

natural science methods and concepts in the study of

international phenomena, and attempting to quantify and

systematise inter-state events and experiences in the

anticipation that such systematic intercession could obviate,

remedy or mitigate its unsavory aspects. Merriam’s advocacy

did not gain widespread following and for many years following

the birth of IR in the early 1920s, as non-empiricist

philosophical traditions dominated the depth of intellectual

paradigms in the discipline. Early scholars of British

extraction analysed IR through detailed historical studies

that were qualitative and thus devoid of experimentation,

statistical analysis and sampling and predictive patterns etc.

Scholars concerned with normative or moral dimensions studied

the great texts of international history, diplomatic and legal

33 . “Claude Henri de Rouvroy, come de Saint-Simon,”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Henri_de_Rouvroy,_comte_de_Saint-Simon; (Access 18/02/2014)

30

philosophy, seeking insights into the purpose of interaction

among states and the activities governments of states should

undertake if they were to attain a prosperous world without

wars. Nonetheless, the events of the interwar years (1919 –

1939) generated a rich discussion of the nature of the

international system revealing gaps between prescriptive

statements and practice. This led a search for newer methods

of examining international politics, one that would be more

realistic of the situation. At this time, the seeds of

behavioural revolution in the US had begun to germinate by the

1930s and 40s. Scholars began to seek for empirical analysis

of global affairs within this period.

D. Neo-positivism in International Relations

The emergence of the discipline of IR coincided with the

emergence of neo-positivism in the early 1920s. During the

1920s, new centres, institutes, schools and university

departments devoted to teaching IR were created in Europe and

North America. As noted in the preceding section, normative

epistemology – championed by British scholars had been the

dominant approach in the early period and thus provided a

31

widely accepted framework of inquiry in International

Relations. However, political scientists in the United States

had begun to come under neo-positivistic influences of the

behaviouralists and hoping the discipline would gain

respectability only if they patterned themselves upon the

model of the natural sciences. According to Nicolai Petro,

“behavioralists generally felt that politics should be studied

much in the same way hard sciences are studied.”34 For a

considerable period during the twentieth century, they

embraced the recommendation to seek scientific respectability

by subjecting themselves to positivism such that by the 1930s,

the behaviouralist movement began to gain prominence in the

United States.35

The events of the Second World War provided the catalyst for

the behavioural revolution of the 1950s. The years 1950s and

60s and beyond witnessed the influx and influence of American

behavioural scientists in the field of International

34 . N. Petro, The Rebirth of Russian Democracy: An Interpretation ofPolitical Culture (Harvard University Press, 1995), 6

35 . “Behaviouralism,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioralism; (Accessed19/02/2014)

32

Relations, which spawned new strands of thought patterns in

the discipline. The rise to global power of the US reflected

in the global export of positivism as IR scholars looked to

philosophy of science in addressing the basis of knowledge and

the advancement of intellectual thought in the discipline.36

For instance, in 1977, Political Scientists like Stanley

Hoffmann argued that IR problems can be solved by the

scientific method and that this will result in progress;

secondly, that IR as a social science benefited from the

prestige accorded both to the natural science and to

economics.37

The early clamour for a science of International Relations

came not from Political Scientists alone. Historians, such as

F. H Hensley, argued that the study of International Relations

was too rudimentary and should be raised to “a more scientific

level.”38 Prominent among these Historians was Edward Hallett

36 . D. Sanders, “Behavioural Analysis,” in D. Marsh and G.Stoker (eds.), Theory and Methods in Political Science (London:Macmillan, 1995), 58-75.

37 .S. Hoffmann, “An American Social Science: InternationalRelations” in S. Hoffmann (ed.), Janus and Minerva: Essays in theTheory and Practice of International Politics (Boulder, CO: WestviewPress, 1987), 6–7.

33

Carr, whose book, The Twenty Years’ Crises, first published in 1939,

was an eloquent defence of the need for such a science. The

net effect of the forgoing was the creation of a ‘science’ of

International Relations. Carr wrote that “the teleological

aspect of the science of international politics has been

conspicuous from the outset. It took its rise from a great and

disastrous war; and overwhelming purpose which dominated and

inspired the pioneers of the new science was to obviate a

recurrence of this disease of the international body

politic.”39 For much of the twentieth century, universities

from the United States dominated the agenda of IR and foreign

policy studies. The competition of ideas driven by Cold War

politics tended to become narrowly defined, focusing on easily

measureable variables and difficult to refute theoretical

principles. 

By the early 1980s, the study of international relations had

become inundated with theories embedded in the positivistic

framework. The work of Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics,

first published in 1979, which aims to develop a scientific

international theory, provoked a variety of debates and

counter-arguments that developed within the positivistic

34

framework. According to Robert Cox, Waltz has sacrificed the

interpretative richness of classical realism as a critical

theory in order to transform it into a positivistic problem –

solving theory.40

E. Contributions of Positivism and Neo-positivism to the Fieldof International Relations

Scholars of IR who adopted the ‘scientific’ approach to the

understanding of International Relations are generally called

positivists – despite being mainly neo-positivist – because

neo-positivism is regarded as a continuation of positivist

thought. (See terminological conflation in the preceding sections) Indeed,

positivist scholars have contributed significantly to the

field of International Relations because the positivist

38 . F. H Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace: Theory and Practicein the History of Relations Between States (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1963, 6. See also E. H. Carr, The TwentyYears’ Crises, 1919 – 1939 : An Introduction to the Study of InternationalRelations, 2nd Ed. (London: The Macmillan Press), 9.

39 . Ibid.40 . Sisi Lain, International Politics as Social Science: Neorealism and

Neoliberalism. Available onlinehttp://ccline.wordpress.com/2007/11/08/international-politics-as-social-science-neorealism-and-neoliberalism/(Access: 17/02/2014)

35

framework of IR makes it essential to quantify and establish

evidence proving specific related outcomes. In this way,

knowledge based on positivism is clear and difficult to refute

because it is factual in nature. Furthermore, the general

language construct of the positivist framework imply to the

reader that it accurately describes the way things are.  For

instance, the use of language like realism or neorealism to

describe the social world gives off an air of correctness.

Essentially, positivism has brought to the intellectual fore

two threads of IR theory, namely: realism and neo-realism.  These

can be further delineated by specificity in the debate between

offensive realism or defensive realism; and regime theory or

complex interdependence theory etc.

Positivism is a problem-solving approach in that its

analytical framework orients itself towards the solutions of

the real world problems relying on specificity, facts and

figures rather than interpretation of historical prose or

values from classical texts. Positivists are expected to sate

in clear terms the nature of the problem, available data, the

range of solutions and which solution most suitably resolves

the problem. In this regard, a notable scholar whose

36

contributions exemplify the place of positivism in IR is John

Mearsheimer. Mearsheimer is associated with the structural

realist approach to IR. Structural Realism, also known as

Offensive Realism or Neo-realism, views the world as offering

absolute gains, wherein nations gain at the expense of others.

Mearsheimer’s article “The False Promises of International

Institutions”41 explains that the quest for power is the only

structure or ordering principle in an anarchic system.

His observations are of a world where the dominant nations

spend up to one-half of their gross domestic product on

military and defensive strategies. The fundamentals of his

contention is clear – kill or be killed!  This adequately sums

up Mearsheimer’s offensive realist approach within the

positivist framework. Drawing on relevant historical examples

Mearsheimer explains a state must adequately fortify its own

economic, military and political position in order to protect

and maintain the prominence of their position within the

global hierarchy.42

41 . J. Mearsheimer, “The False Promises of InternationalInstitutions”, International Security, Vol. 19, No. 3 (1994):5 –49.

42 . Ibid.

37

His approach is positivist because of his focus on empiricism.

In another article “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe

after the Cold War”43 he clearly delineates the variables of

his focus. These variables are then used to make predictions

as to why a ‘Long peace’ ensued during the Cold War and what

this could possibly mean for the future of Europe.  Isolating

three key factors: (1) the bi-polar nature of the conflict,

capitalism versus communism or USA versus USSR, was easier to

manage than the relatively unordered multi-polar world that

existed pre-WWI; (2) equal amounts of power balance each

other; (3) the proliferation of nuclear weapons makes the cost

of war excessively high and will therefore decrease the

potential for its occurrence.44 Central to this realist

approach is the need for power in the international arena.

Gorge Modelski’s approach is also positivist because of his

focus on empiricism and it’s predictive character. Modelski

43 . J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability inEurope after the Cold War”, International Security, Vol. 15, No.1 (1990):5 – 56.

44 . Ibid.

38

investigated long cycles, or long waves by a rigorous

exploration of the ways in which world wars have recurred, and

lead states such as Britain and the United States have

succeeded each other in an orderly manner.

Propositions of Positivism in IR

Positivism presents a neatly informed position, in which the

following propositions can be distilled.

Statism

According to Jack Snyder, a basic assumption of positivism is

statism.45 Positivism is a state-centric approach; where the

state is the primary actor of international

relations. Although neo-positivists are willing to accept the

influence and existence of other actors to varying degrees,

the states are considered as the most consequential and

terminal of all groups in international relations.  Most

scholars who pursue these goals work in the Realist and

liberal paradigms, although by no means all Realists and

liberals are neopositivists.

45 . J. Snyder, “One World, Rival Theories”, Foreign Policy, 145,2004: 52 -59

39

Power is the Currency of International Politics

Second, power is a key element for the positivist approach.46 

The structure of the international system is based up on the

inherent nature of anarchy; as no overarching authority exists

and power prevails.  While cooperation may be possible among

nation states, in any event anarchy is likely to prevail

because absolute gains in the international arena outweigh

relative gains. 

International Relations is Empirical and Predictive

Third and perhaps, most importantly to the positivist approach

is that any intellectual inquiry should be investigated with

scientific rigor, looking out for patterns of law-like

regularities backed by theoretical explanations. These

theories are based on observable events and patterns, and give

rise to, or explain, observable regularities. A prerequisite

for the tentative explanation envisaged is, however, that it

should, at least, be pragmatic and enrich the theoretical

repertoire by serving as a means to an end rather than

46 . Ibid.

40

purporting to be an end in itself. It is believed that

research can uncover uniformities in state behaviour, which

can be measured and tested for consistency and the basis for

making predictions.

Value-free Research is Ideal

Particularly, neo-positivism assumes a world independent of

its observer’s biases, who thoroughly document his results

with clearly defined terms, concepts and well-document

occurrences of events devoid of normative judgements; which in

turn could become law-like statements of universal

applicability. For instance, the positivists are not primarily

concerned about morality in International Relations. Questions

like, “was the out of proportion bombing of Hiroshima and

Nagasaki good?” do not arise in the positivists’ analysis.

Criticisms

Several scholars have challenged many characteristic arguments

and conclusions of Positivism (Neopositivism) in IR.

Particularly, the post-positivists deny that its assumptions

and goals are applicable to the social world. They point out

41

that any regularities discovered by scholars tend to be weak,

short-lived and useless for purposes of prediction, as most

outcomes are context-dependent. Robert Cox has argued that the

positivist error consist in taking a particular phase in

history (and thus a particular structure of social

relations).47 A good example is the positivist orientation of

Long Cycle Theory. The 120 years period of long cycles,

suggested by Gorge Modelski has been exceeded by the present

hegemon – the United States.

In addition, the positivist framework in IR falls short

because it primarily focuses on the state and issues of

security. This leaves the framework unable to answer the

bigger questions of human existence.  Instead, positivism

typically is a descriptive account of human occurrences

limited by the level of analysis of the framework.  The

limited focus of positivism excludes other disciplinary

focuses like economics, sociology, and anthropology.

47 . R. Cox, “Social Forces, States and World Orders, in R.Cox and T. Sinclair (eds.), Approaches to World Order(Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 92

42

Surprisingly, two key founders of “Realism” developed within

the positivist framework, Hans Morgenthau's and Edward Hallett

Carr are leading critiques of positivism in the study of IR.

E.H. Carr’s “What is History” was a deliberate critique of

positivism, and Hans Morgenthau's aim in “Scientific Man vs Power

Politics” was to rubbish any idea that international

politics/power politics can be studied scientifically.48 Other

critics who point to practical obstacles, impeding efforts to

model to the social inquiry on the natural science were

thinkers like Pareto, Weber, and Durkheim. These key

criticisms are highlighted below:

Scientific theories have inherent deficiencies.

The positivist approach has been contested from the outset. A

good number of Popper’s philosophical efforts have been

directed against the positivist quest for certainty, i.e. that

theory should be built ‘from below’ on a secure foundation of

indisputable facts. Popper’s rejection of induction has been

re-echoed in Kenneth Waltz’s concept of theory, to wit:

48 . “International Relations”,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_relations(Accessed 18/02/2014)

43

The construction of theory is a primarytask…. To believe that we can proceedotherwise is to take the profoundlyunscientific view that everything thatvaries is a variable. To proceed bylooking for associations without at leastsome glimmering of a theory is likeshooting a gun in the general direction ofan invisible target.49

Popper’s doctrine of metaphysical realism asserts that reality

exists independently from our language and theories about it

(contrast: idealism, relativism, and instrumentalism). It is

labelled ‘metaphysical’ by Popper, since it is not refutable

as a scientific theory should be.50 Arguments can be given in

its favour, however: ‘human language is always essentially

descriptive…and an unambiguous description is always of

something—of some state of affairs which may be real or

imaginary…. Rationality, language, description, argument, are

all about some reality’.51

49 . K. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw Hill,1979), 15

50 K. Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (London:Fontanna/Collins1973), 41.

51 . Ibid.

44

Theories are causal explanations and systematic attempts to

make predictions based on the observed events. According to

Kenneth Waltz, “a theory, while related to the world about

which explanations are wanted, always remains distinct from

that world. Theories are not descriptions of the real world;

they are instruments that we design in order to apprehend some

part of it.”

Issues of State are not the Most Important Issues

As world issues evolved over time, an awareness of the greater

impact of actions beyond issues of the state and security came

into focus as more and more areas were studied.  These post-

positivist approaches address a variety of issues ranging from

the environment, human rights and gender equality to name a

few. Thus, feminism, reconstructivism, or radicalism have come

under the purview of international relations.  Instead, this

demonstrated the common elements among post-positivists that

are: Cooperation is possible because relative gains are

acceptable.  This means that in some instances a nation may

45

have to submit to the will of international factors because of

the greater good.

Positivists are Wrong in Excluding Moral Considerations in International

Relations

By the 1980s, post-positivist, critical, or post-modern

theories became a growing trend in IR intellectual circles.

The post-positivist side of the IR theory is a response to the

obvious deficiencies of the positivist approach.  Post-

positivism developed through   a tide of consensus developed

over the lack of values and ethical questioning in the

theoretical examination of international relations offered by

positivism.  Although, by no means is the inclusion of values

and ethics in the philosophy of IR theory a new concept. 

However, the viewpoint was not adequately represented or given

much thought in meaningful or mainstream circles of IR theory.

The study of human morals, values and ethical foundations are

not typically empirically testable.  This is fundamentally at

odds with the positivist approach that requires factual

observations of the laws of nature.  To demonstrate

46

understanding of the source of values and the scope of

obligation of one person to another is prone to

generalizations and normative considerations.

For the post-positivists values are an observable fact of

study.  Where:

norms matter in world politics;

the relativity of these values affects issues of inclusion

in the international processes and outcomes;

purposeful action is morally bound – which makes any

intention either good or bad. The post-positivist framework

provides a basis for which to take our current understanding

of the world and apply human principles as a basis to

improve the human condition.

For instance, Michael Walzer the existence of state

sovereignty is very important to determine the just or unjust

nature of war.52  He declares that war is just when 1)

sovereignty is violated, and 2) in defense of human rights. 

52. M. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977),

40 – 46

47

Walzer’s communitarian perspective rests on state sovereignty

and state rights. Walzer’s six criteria of a just war provide

a normative approach to IR theory.  It provides adequate

guidelines for nations to act and react within the

international community.  It provides an outline of what is

morally correct and how nations out to act.

The Primary Actors in IR are NOT only the States but also MultinationalCorporations (MNCs)

Intellectuals like Charles Beitz argue that the primary actors

in IR are the state and multinational corporations.53  Power is

based upon inequality.  Humans are interdependent on each

other and as such, co-operation is possible.  However, the

very idea of state sovereignty rejects the idea that economic

interdependence will transcend the world community to a single

moral order.  That is, the traditional constraints of the

positivists: that the understanding of the state as the unit

of the international system limit the transcendence of

humanity to some degree.

F. Conclusion53 . C. R. Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 47

48

Since the Cultural Revolution of the Seventeenth century in

England, which spread to France and the rest of Europe and

Americas, society has been considered subject to natural laws

akin to the physical world.54 August Comte coined the term

positivism, in which he advocated for the application of the

methods of the natural sciences to the social science.

Following Comtean tradition, his disciples have propagated and

defended the notion of scientific study of human affairs. On

the hand, neo-positivism refers to a revival of (or new

version of) classical positivism as espoused by Auguste Comte.

A morphological breakdown of the term into its component parts

shows that the prefix, “neo” means “a revival of or a new version of an old

or classical phenomenon.” The propositions of the positivists and

their neopositivist descendants have definitely shaped the

study of International Relations since the 1960s. Positivism,

as a scientific approach in International Relations

contributed much in the field of IR in that it produced a way

of generalization and prediction through theories. Policy-

54 . I. Barens (ed.), Political Events and Economic Ideas(Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2004), 206 – 207

49

makers were drawn to the positivist belief in the underlying

regularity of human affairs.

The epistemological framework has structured research in the

field, thereby permitting a huge body of vital information to

be produced concerning IR. They have often facilitated the

creation of theoretical perspectives that more suitably

attempt to explain the complex and multi -dimensional IS.

Despite the regularities in human affairs, it is impossible to

construct a completely neutral theory that valid across time

and space. It is too difficult to formulate the International

Relations theory that allows us to predict in the same way as

takes place in the natural science. A multitude of diversity

and transition of the International Relations theories so far

have testified this difficulty. Hence, positivist attempt of

“generalization” is effective only in a limited sense that we

can recognize a pattern within international relations and to

formulate a general proposition.

The possibility of prediction of actual human behaviour by

theories, which is a starting point in examining international

50

relations, is fairly limited, much less of control of the

action. Although, causal properties are the key to explanation

in both the physical and social worlds, the important — and

still unanswered question— is the extent to which one must

adopt the scientific method and its ontology to conduct more

meaningful investigations of human affairs. Thus, the

limitations of the scientific method, makes other approaches

desirable. In addition, correlation analysis has greatly

enhanced social scientists’ understanding of the social world,

but it is hampered by serious limitations. In particular, it

can never tell researchers whether one variable causes changes

in another variable. This is so even if a one-to-one

correspondence between variables is uncovered.

In view of the forgoing, methodological pluralism is

recommended for the study of international relations. This

means that given the interdisciplinary nature of the

discipline, research should gravitate towards a synthesis of

plausible fundamental schools of thought that have

historically evolved in the IR theoretical discourse and

necessarily, therefore, be eclectic in nature.

51

Endnotes

52