Positivism, Critical Theory and

Postmodern and Feminist

Understandings of International
Relations
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Espin, Toni Rose H.

 Table of contents

01 Positivism

02 Critical Theory

Postmodern and Feminist

03
Understanding

04 Interrelation
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Positivism

 Positivism Theory – This is a doctrine in the International

Relations that seeks to transfer the methods of natural sciences
to social sciences and identify causal relationships between them
or international relations.

 This involves development and testing of hypotheses against

reality.

 They concentrate on features of international relations such as

state relationships, size of armed forces and balance of power.
 Critical Theory

 They challenge conventional wisdom and provide alternative frameworks for

understanding the world and explores the deficits of systems theory by invoking ethical
standards through discourse analysis.

 Unlike from the other theories, this one doesn’t have a particular perspective.

 They are focuses on revealing how important the hidden sources of domination in a
particular theory are since some are not as effective in explaining why they've been
able to establish a mainstream perspective.
 According to them the states' actions can be different in a way that depends on whom
and when it is dealing with.
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Postmodern Understandings

 It is the era of modernism. It began with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648,

where states became the key actors in the international structure, looking
beyond states and recognizing the significant role of non-state actors in
shaping their nature.

 Their primary tasks are to criticize the classical theories in a way that the
certain group they introduce are visible just for the example is groups of
women and minorities which had been ignored by them.
 Postmodern Understandings
 They aim to deconstruct such structures as governments, the
international system and the claims that objectively represent
the essence of international relations from the classical and
sees reality not as reflected in scientific knowledge, but
rather than its people who discover their own nature.

 They believed that states are nothing but a social construct

or form and consider that their borders are not real, but they
are mere abstractions. Hence, they do not believe in the
existence of national interest and the tangible terms that are
the major power in the classical theories.
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Feminist Understandings

 They addresses gender as a structural problem, not a biological one, and

opposes the supremacy of male institutions in international relations,
which is fundamentally a belief in the political, economic, and cultural
equality of women embedded in modern existence.

 The focus of this theory is to point out the exclusions and biases from the
mainstream perspective from all the other views in International
Relations.

 Through this approach, they can make women visible as social,

economic, and political subjects in International Politics and empower
them as subjects of knowledge in building theoretical understanding of
International Relations and their lived experiences.
 Interrelations
These approaches are essential in International Relations in the
sense of looking at the foundation of how the political actors
behave and what are the driving forces that make them act that
way they want.
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Thank You!