1. Designing Social Inquiry
Week 3. Critiques and alternatives to positivism
I34012 Sohyoun Ham

2. Questions
What is interpretivist (or reflectivist) approach in International Relations?
How does it differ from positivist approach?
Which do you think is the more appropriate research methodology by which we can analyze issues and puzzles in International Relations?
What are the main arguments of Kratochwil and Ruggie?
What do you think Kratochwil and Ruggie meant by claiming, “epistemology fundamentally contradicts ontology (in regime analysis)?
Discuss proper ways to analyze international regime

3. ‘Interpretivist’ approach in IR
Alternative to scientific inference
To explain the reasons for or meanings of social action
Employ Verstehen: understanding the meaning or actions and interactions from the members’ own points of view
Relate to the whole set of the concepts and practices
Standards of evaluation : coherence and scope
Require a deep cultural immersion before formulating research questions
Interpret one to search of meaning

4. Positivism vs. Interpretivism from Pizam and Mansfeld (2009)
Assumptions
Positivism
Interpretivism
Focus of interest
What is general, average and representative
What it specific, unique and deviant
Knowledge generated
Absolute Laws (time, context and value free)
Relative meanings (time, context, culture, value bound)
Subject/Researcher relationship
Rigid separation
Interactive, cooperative, participative
Nature of reality
Objective, tangible, single
Socially constructed, multiple
Goal of research
Explanation, strong prediction
Understanding, weak prediction
Desired information
How people think and do a specific thing, or have a specific problem
What some people think and do, what kind of problems they are confronted with, and how they deal with them

5. Two approaches in IR Positivism Interpretivism Strengths
Clarity of theoretical relationships
Unambiguous
Definition of terms
Explicit concern with bias
Depth study of culture, issues of ethics and leadership
Validated data
New concepts and insightful hypotheses
Weakness
Difficulty of quantification; imprecision; inability to measure core concepts
Reliance on data gathered for other purposes
Different realities and interpretations co-exist and are the norm in IR
Correlations do not demonstrate causality; need for counterfactual simulations
Simplistic, unrealistic
Ambiguous with unobservable concepts
Personal viewpoint and values
Inability to falsify descriptive hypotheses
Limited evidence within experience
Preparing careful descriptions, gaining deep understandings of the world, asking good questions, formulating falsifiable hypotheses based on theories, collecting evidence to evaluate hypotheses

6. International organization: a state of the art on an art of the state by Kratochwil and Ruggie
Why international organization theories and international organizations’ practice are mismatched after World War Ⅱ?
Conventional epistemological approaches do not and cannot suffice in studying international regimes
Sudden emergence of international regime studies in the 1970s (e.g. the trade regime, the monetary regime, the ocean regime)
States coordinate their expectations and organize international behavior in issue-areas
Involve a normative element, an intersubjective meaning

7. ‘epistemology fundamentally contradicts ontology’ in regime analysis
International
regimes
Norms
Rules
Decision-making procedures
Principles
Regime analysis
Epistemological position: How we know?
Positivism
Subject / Object
Intersubjective meaning is inferred from behavior
International regimes are social institutions around which expectations converge in international issue areas with principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures
The ontology of regimes rests upon a strong element of intersubjectivity
The prevailing epistemological position in regime analysis is positivistic
Positivism posits a radical separations of subject and object and focuses on the ‘objective’ forces that move actors in their social interactions
Intersubjective meaning is inferred from behavior
‘intersubjective’

8. Problems in the practice of regime analysis
Actor behavior fails adequately to convey intersubjective meaning
Intersubjective meaning would have considerable influence on actor behavior
In the simulated world, actors cannot communicate and engage in behavior
Norms can be problematical in positivist explanations
Standards of behavior are inappropriate as ‘causing’ occurrences
Norms are counterfactually valid

9. What options?
1. Interpretive epistemology - stress the intimate relationship between validation and the uncovering of intersubjective meanings 2. Intersubjective ontology -e.g. consumption behavior, ‘revealed meaning’ for ‘objective’ surrogates that can capture ‘intersubjective’ reality 3. More interpretive strains

10. An interpretive epistemology in ‘organization-design’ approach
What range of international policy problems can best be handled by different kinds of institutional arrangements?
An interpretive epistemology emphasizes
Transparency of actor behavior and expectations
Legitimation struggles
Epistemic politics
- This can lead to focus on the study of international organizations itself

11. Conclusion
Even if positivist approach provides a powerful frame to study social inquiry such as objective reality, hypothesis testing, empirical evidence, it shows insufficient to explain norms in international regimes. To compensate this weakness, it would be appropriate to employ interpretivists approach for better understanding

12. Thank you for listening
Q & A