ULUSLARARASI İLİŞKİLER TEORİLERİ I

* “traditional theories, global society theories and neo-Marxist theories”

* “realism, pluralism and globalism”

*  “conservatism, liberalism and radicalism”.

* Machiavellianism, Grotianism and Kantianism

There are some other categorizations which are not mentioned above, such as realist approach, rationalist approach and revolutionary/ cosmopolitan approach.

As it is understood from the classifications and conceptualization, they all set forth the different aspects of the similar approaches. For example, the concepts of traditional classic theories, realism and conservatism are used to explain the basic arguments of the realist approach. Similarly, the theories of global society, pluralism and liberalism can be named under pluralism or liberalism. They can also be named under Kantianism, Grotianism communitarianism, cosmopolitanism and functionalism. The third group, which is classified with neo-Marxist theories, globalism and radicalism can be grouped with the concepts of Third World theories, Neo-Marxist theories, structuralist theories and dependency theories.

There is NO mention of post-modern approach among all these divisions.

Wallerstein, Galtung and Modelski are well known scientists and made real contribution for dependency theories or theories of structural Marxism.

Joseph S. Nye, Robert O. Keohane, Richard W. Mansbach and John A. Vasques who agreed with the description of David Easten for politics as authoritative allocation of values claimed the necessity of changes in the statecentric paradigm.

The others are not related to positivism but other approaches.

It is positivism which is still influential in the field of IR. It is not postmodernism criticised by others for not being influential enough.

Main agenda of post-modernism is to criticize modernism and refute its foundations but not replace it with certain methodological and social approaches. Because postmodernists do not offer alternatives to replace the existing ones -the ones that they criticise, they are themselves criticised.

Finally, Postmodernism actually challenges the scientific standpoints of modernism.

• International relations can be divided into three categories such as “traditional theories, global society theories and neo-Marxist theories” as Holsti accepted.
• It can be named differently such as “realism, pluralism and globalism” (Viotti andKauppi, 1993).
• Barry Buzan identified the theories of international relations as “conservatism, liberalism and radicalism”.
• Indeed, realism, liberalism and Marxism are the fundamental divisions which are very common in different studies.
• On the other hand, Shimko used the basic division of realism and liberalism and further elaborated it with the division as Machiavellianism, Grotianism and Kantianism.

• Realists accept states as rational actors; that behave in accordance with
  certain rules and national interests to realize their objectives and to sustain
  themselves through national capacity (Viotti and Kauppi, 1993: 35; Grieco,
  1995: 153; Buzan, 1996: 54; Senarclens, 1991: 11-12).
• According to all realists, basic agenda of IR are security issues, thus political and military issues are primary topics and top issues in the hierarchy among the topics of the agenda. 
• One of the important premises of realism (particularly neo-realism) is the anarchical structure of the international system.
• There is no central authority to govern the relations among states. In such an international environment, naturally providing security becomes the main concern of states.
• States have to deal with their own security problem that is called as the rule of “self help”

Also, realism, philosophical roots of which depends on Machiavelli and Hobbes, depicted the international politics as a struggle for power and interest.

• Another epistemology is rationalism which is represented by certain philosophers belonging to Cartesian School such as Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza.
• This thought was developed by the scientific revolutions of Newton, Kepler and Galileo.
• Rationalism reached to the top with Hegel.
• Rationalism has adopted deduction as a scientific method that depends on the reason and intuition as well as a source of knowledge rather than observation and experiment and it is called as a
  priori knowledge. 

• Jean-François Lyotard, Roland Barthes, Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze, Luce Irigaray, Paul Feyerabend, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty are among the writers that made valuable contributions to post-modernism.
• Thomas Kuhn and Richard Rorty, contemporary representatives of pragmatism, also point out that a paradigm can only be valid as long as it can solve the problem. For Kuhn, survival of a paradigm depends on its problem-solving capacity.