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The Kuhning of reason: Realism, rationalism, and political decision in IR theory after Thomas Kuhn

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2015

NICOLAS GUILHOT
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Abstract

Beyond the initial infatuation with his work, Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions has had a lasting impact on the field of International Relations. The article analyses the reception of Kuhn in IR and suggests that it contributed to overcoming the ‘second debate’ by making science and realism fully compatible. More importantly, Kuhn offered a vision of science in which scientific communities operated on the basis of realist principles. This not only consolidated the academic hold of neorealism, but transformed realism into a theory of knowledge, which its critics have failed to acknowledge. This lasting transformation is analysed by looking at Kuhn’s influence on the classic studies of strategic decision-making by Graham Allison and Robert Jervis.

Type
Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 3 - 24
Copyright
© 2015 British International Studies Association 

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Footnotes

*

I have benefitted greatly from the comments of three anonymous reviewers and the editors of the Review of International Studies. I am grateful to John Mearsheimer for his comments on the article during a panel at the 2013 ISA convention in San Francisco. Robert Jervis and Ronald Rogowski kindly accepted to talk to me about their use of Kuhn. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) Grant Agreement no. 284231.

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97 Ibid., pp. 169, 7. He later acknowledges that there is ‘no way to draw a neat, sharp line between that degree of holding to existing beliefs and disparaging information that is necessary for the intelligent comprehension of the environment and that degree that leads to the maintenance of beliefs that should be rejected by all fair-minded men’, p. 177.

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