International Relations and Scientific Progress

Abstract

International Relations and Scientific Progress: Structural Realism Reconsidered. By Patrick James. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2002. 328 pp., $65.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-8142-0900-9), $24.95 paper (ISBN: 0-8142-5095-5). Progress in International Relations Theory: Appraising the Field. Edited by Colin Elman, Miriam Fendius Elman. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. 400 pp., $48.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-262-05068-4), $24.95 paper (ISBN: 0-262-55041-5). Debates about the philosophy of science have not always received the attention they deserve in international relations scholarship. It is only natural that most research has tended to focus on substantive theoretical and empirical issues. However, as the discipline has matured, deeper questions have emerged about the overall development of knowledge within the field. In a seminal contribution, Robert Keohane (1986) used criteria derived from Imre Lakatos' “methodology of scientific research programs” to appraise progress within the study of international relations. Some twenty years later, Patrick James' International Relations and Scientific Progress and Colin and Miriam Elman's Progress in International Relations Theory represent the next statement in this rich avenue of inquiry. Both books make a comprehensive attempt to evaluate the success of research within the field using a sophisticated range of criteria drawn from debates in the philosophy of science. They not only offer a guide to the state of the art in world politics, but they also provide a model for how the philosophy of science can usefully structure the development of research in the social sciences. Patrick James' International Relations and Scientific Progress mounts a defense of structural realist theory in terms of its ability to generate a progressive social scientific research agenda. The book focuses exclusively on this issue, enabling it to provide an extended treatment of this approach. Colin and Miriam Elman's Progress in International Relations Theory consists of a collection of essays that appraise all the major theoretical schools in the field using criteria explicitly derived from the philosophy of science. Thus, whereas James offers depth of application to a specific theoretical approach, the Elmans analyze a broader range of perspectives. Both books take Lakatosian methodology as their central point of departure. Indeed, an important contribution made by both studies is that they provide …