| Article Details : |
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| | | Article Name : | | | Neoclassical Realism: Its Promises and Limits as a
Theory of Foreign Policy | | Author Name : | | | MENTOR BEQA (PhD. Cand.)
| | Publisher : | | | Bridge Center | | Article URL : |  | | | Abstract : | | | The paper constitutes a theoretical analysis of the development
of ‘neoclassical realism’ as a distinct body of theories of foreign policy.
Neoclassical realism is assessed in comparison to its predecessor –
neorealism- in accordance with the criteria established by Imre
Lakatos about scientific development. Lakatos argues that theories
cannot be assessed individually rather as ‘series of theories’. These
series labelled as Scientific Research Programs are composed of two
parts: the hard core of the program and the positive heuristic. The
hard core remains unchanged while the positive heuristic which
consists of auxiliary hypotheses is always under improvement.
According to Lakatos, a series of theories is theoretically progressive if
each new theory has some excess empirical content over its predecessor,
that is, if it predicts some novel unexpected fact. Neoclassical realism
is a branch of realist tradition which integrates neorealist system’s
theory with the more unit based variables of classical realism in an
attempt to construct a coherent theory of foreign policy. It seems that
this ‘series of theories’ bring some new facts on theoretical and
empirical level. This paper argues that when neoclassical realist
contributions are scrutinised; the difference with its predecessor –
neorealism – vanishes because it is difficult to identify ‘some novel
unexpected fact’. Although neoclassical realism constitutes a
progressive development of realism as a framework of foreign policy
analysis, it is unsustainable to pretend that it constitutes a new theory
of foreign policy. | | Keywords : | | | Neoclassical realism, neorealism, foreign policy theory,
international system. |
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