Name : Sri Rezeki

Student Number : 0806322962

Reference : Steve Smith, The Forty Year’s Detour: The Resurgence of Normative Theory in
International Relations, http://mil.sagepub.com

WELCOMING BACK THE NORMATIVE THEORY WITHIN THE DOMINANCE OF

POSITIVISM IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS DICIPLINE

International relations discipline has been dominated by the positivism thought for long time. It
looks like a bizarre detour-a detour that old fashioned which the goal of general theory was to be
achieved by value-free social science. For the vast majority of students of International Relations
educated during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, the dominance of positivism is obvious, so obvious that its
assumptions were rarely questioned. Values and analysis has to keep apart. This orthodoxy means that
normative concerns were marginalized. In good Weberian fashion, International Relations analysis
tried to keep values and analysis apart, this allowed American academics to pour scorn on Realist
assumptions about (unverifiable) human nature, and resulted in normative approaches being
marginalized as best and delegitimized at worst.
But then there is a change in seeing the world of international politic itself. In the last decade,
international theories are in the way to re-establish normative concern in the subject. The orthodoxy,
that could portray idealism as stressing what should be rather than what was, has itself be shaken by
what Yosef Lapid has termed the post-positivist revolution. The implication of the main strands of
post-positivism-critical theory, post-modernist, feminist theory, and historical sociology-has been not
simply that subject needs to concern itself more with normative issues rather than more problematic
thought that the subject is unavoidably normative.
The publication of the books by Brown and Griffiths provides us with an opportunity to take a
stock of situation facing international political theory. There are two main points here, first is that the
various strands of the post-positivist revolution have in common assault on the reified concept of the
discipline. The discipline has been blinkered not simply by an epistemology of positivism but also by
the dominance of epistemology over ontology. Such what positivism believes in, if he can’t measure it
then it doesn’t exist. This is the logic that leads to normative concerns being marginalized. It’s the
same deep logic that is involved in much of the backlash to post-positivism, especially against its
feminist and post-modern variants.
The debate over normative issues in the United States around the end of the 1960s was over the
role of theory and the values that the subject should promote. For example, what should USA do about
the Vietnam War? But this was a limited debate. Implying that normative concerns were to do with the

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questions one studied or the values contained in one’s analysis. What happened in 1980s and 1990s is
more destabilized than the last decade, it’s due to some attempts to maintain the distinction between
normative and non-normative theory. For years Marxism was excluded from the subject because it
said nothing about the “real” issues, post-modernist which labeled as non-relativistic and feminism
that calls as unacceptable consequences. Regardless, these post-modernist and feminist are coming
back to the real world.
The second main point is about the discipline has long relied on gate-keepers to protect
something from radical intervention. The reasons why normative theory or post positivism is rejected
due to positivist believes that post-positivist don’t relate to the world as it’s understood. There are
three paradigms that really common in this last decade, they are realism, pluralism, and globalism. But
the main question here is do they share the same world or they obviously have different world? This
response has been echoed in inter-paradigm debate in International Relations. The three paradigms
may be incommensurable up to a point, but there is a reality that does allow for choice between them.
The three of them each explain part of reality.
The social world is like an object to be viewed from one angle then another, but it remains one
object and difference in the viewpoints can be explained by differing theoretical assumptions. Then,
the inter-paradigm itself is complicated due to offering a “pick and mix” solution, a superficial
liberalism which implies that you can choose a paradigm which best explain the things you are
interested in. Thus, to deal with war, we can use realism, whereas to explain state’s behavior within
the European community we can use Pluralism, and for the North-South split we can use Globalism.
Normative issues are involved in your choice of issue to study, and therefore in your choice of
paradigm, but all the three paradigms refer to the same world. Martin Griffiths attempts to show that
Morgenthau and Waltz is not realist at all. He thinks that they are rather to idealist. It’s because
Griffiths concerns to Berki’s definition about realism. Berki argues that realism is an attribute of
thought which presupposes reality or experience as dialectical interplay between necessity and
freedom. In contrast, idealism is reification necessity and freedom. It’s spent the distinction in more
detail. In simple way, according to Berki, the realist is knower and informed actor, brave person who
defines necessity and eliminates obstacles, the idealist is not the dreamer or the fanatic, but the dupe
who acquiesces meekly in being led, being hemmed in by circumstance outside.
It will even harder nut to crack because of the current fashion of relativism. The fundamental
normative issue itself in the subject is the conflict between foundationalism and anti-foundationalism.
The question again is about how can we discuss about security, if we don’t have an idea of what and to
whom it refers? What good is talked about justice or ethics if we can not both base our conceptions on
something firm and show the normative implications of dominant conceptions? Smith thinks that now
the time to return to the normative roots of the discipline, also he also thinks that it could be hard to
make it true, but still he thinks the discipline has to come back to the main road however hard it is.
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 Writer believes that the resurgence of normative theory is needed right now. What has
happened today-the imbalances is consequently come from dominance of positivism which denied
some values that offered by the normative theory. As Dougherty has written in his book, International
relations has been marked by efforts to establish linkages between theory on the one hand and
empirical-analytical theory on the other. The question of a value-free study of politics is of long-
standing interest to students of politics, although it is a matter of debate whether such an objective is
either desirable or attainable. Given the nature of the objects with which international relations deals
and the enormously important questions associated with war and peace, normative theory can be
expected to remain central to this field.1
One of the leading proponent of quantitatively based scientific theory of the 1960s, Rudolp
Rummel raised fundamentally important questions for the conduct of scientific research about
international behavior.2 Can the human being be studied scientifically, for example as one would study
the interaction of elements in a test tube? If people are guided in their political behavior by some
objectives, is there an inherent and logical contradiction in the idea of a value free study of politics?
Does the very selection of the object or topic to be studied represent a value choice on the part of the
student or researcher?3
Empirical-analytic theories in themselves can not provide adequate answers to the questions of
the kinds of political institutions, practices, and values appropriate to the world of the future. In almost
dialectical reaction against the behavioral revolution, there was a new revolution of postbehavioralism
that pointed toward the postmodernist critique of positivism that we have discussed elsewhere in this
text. According to David Easton, this resurgence of interest was based on the following arguments:4
1. It is more important to be relevant to contemporary needs than to be methodologically
sophisticated
2. Behavioral science conceals an ideology based upon empirical conservatism
3. Behavioral research, by its focus upon abstraction , loses touch without reality
4. The political scientist has the obligation to make knowledge available for the general benefit of
society.
Postmodernists began asking questions about language, contextually, the foundations of
knowledge, the structure of authority and the relationship between power and the agenda. 5 There are
many thing that could not be answered by positivism due to it is rational things. Biased in
International Relations might happen because a discipline can not be separated by values. Values-free
1
James E. Dougherty and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., Contending Theories of International Relations: A Comprehensive
Survey Fourth Edition ( United States of America: Longman, 1996) p. 570.
2
Rudolph J. Rummel, “The Roots of Faith” in James N. Rosenau, ed., In Search of Global Patterns, op. cit., p.30.
3
Ibid.
4
David Easton, “The New Revolution in Political Science,” American Political Science Review, LXIII (4) (Desember
1969).
5
Ken Booth and Steve Smith, International Relations Theory Today ( Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1995) p. 338.
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is absolutely nothing. Values will always taking part in any discipline. It is uncover the deep structures
of power knowledge. Reinventing discipline, a subject put back together again, an international
relations theory for the future. There are three main reasons why this is an important project.6
First, world politics is the appropriate academic site for the discussion of the crucial human
questions for the future. Second, whatever its faults, no one could criticize traditional international
relations for not being hard nosed. Students of international relations have always embraced the
responsibility of speaking power to truth. Third, another special quality of academic international
relations is that since its birth it has been a policy science.
Although power will still remain as the highest top talked in international relations, but power
could be no longer that dominance. People will start to talk about another aspect outside the power,
humanity or environmental for instances. According to Ferguson and Mansbach, normative arguments
and commitments lie at the core of discussion about which concepts, actors, variables, or level of
analysis should be studied. The object chosen for investigation are derived from value based-interested
and concerns.7

Conclusion

In the writer point, Smith may not believe that normative and self-reflected issues are not taken
seriously in our discipline, as if the “real” world didn’t admit it, but actually what our world needs
right now is the resurgence of the normative thing. It’s might be even harder to make such thing in this
hostile world where the concept of relativism is still in hand but then, normative theory actually
involved inside, and the growth is faster. People starts to consider that today’s issue is not only about
traditional issue anymore, there are some change, people welfare and environmental issue is now
become the center of issues. We can’t deny some issues that directly connected into us. There is a
continuing pursuit of the normative due to discipline could not be separated to the values.
Values could always make a justice, and then this justice that taught in International Relations
discipline could be spread globally. In the name of state, power, and sovereignty, there is something
that can not be explained by empirical or positivist theory. Human is explore about human, before
facing state for instance, a man has to face a kind of humanity, values, language, etc. Here therefore
inevitably calls the resurgence of normative theory that has been put in its heyday in 1920s to this
third millennium, after dominating by positivism in1960s. There will always a debate over it, between
people who agree and who are not, but then the important thing is, welcoming back the normative
theory might be a choice to face a more hostile world in this third millennium.

6
Ibid.
7
Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach, The State, Conceptual Chaos, and the Future of International Relations
Theory (London: Lynne Rienner Publisher, 1989) p. 216.
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