DESIGNING SOCIAL INQUIRY YULIIA STEPANETS I36040

QUESTIONS 1.What is interpretivist (or reflectivist) approach in International Relations? 2.How does it differ from positivist approach? 3.Which do you think is the more appropriate research methodology by which we can analyze issues and puzzles in International Relations? 4.What are the main arguments of Kratochwil and Ruggie? 5.What do you think Kratochwil and Ruggie meant by claiming, “epistemology fundamentally contradicts ontology (in regime analysis)? 6.Discuss proper ways to analyze international regime.

INTERPRETIVISM Alternative to scientific inference; Seeks to a specific knowledge/ causal explanation of events; Explains the reasons for or meanings of social action; Illuminates the aspects of human behaviour by employing Verstehen: understanding the meaning or actions and interactions from the members’ own points of view. Requires a deep cultural immersion before formulating research questions.

Clifford Geertz’s analysis:  The winker is communicating; Deliberate action; To someone in particular; To impart a particular message; According to socially established code;  The twitcher is contracting his eyelid; Unintentional action; No signal or message; TWITCH OR WINK

POSITIVISM VS. INTERPRETIVISM AssumptionsPositivismInterpretivism Focus of interestWhat is general, average and representative What it specific, unique and deviant Knowledge generatedAbsolute Laws (time, context and value free) Relative meanings (time, context, culture, value bound) Subject/Researcher relationship Rigid separationInteractive, cooperative, participative Nature of realityObjective, tangible, singleSocially constructed, multiple Goal of researchExplanation, strong predictionUnderstanding, weak prediction Desired informationHow 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 From Pizam and Mansfeld (2009)

TWO APPROACHES IN IR PositivismInterpretivism StrengthsClarity 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 WeaknessDifficulty 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 unobservableconcepts Personal viewpoint and values Inability to falsify descriptive hypotheses Limited evidence within experience

Why international organization theories and international organizations’ practice are mismatched after WW Ⅱ ? Failure to solve substantive problems through the available institutional means; Emergence of international regimes in the 1970s (e.g. the trade regime, the monetary regime, the ocean regime) States coordinate their expectations and organize international behavior in different issue-areas; The emphasis on convergent expectations as the constitutive basis of regimes, which gives them an intersubjective quality; Contradiction between ontology and epistemology! INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION: A STATE OF THE ART ON AN ART OF THE STATE by Kratochwil and Ruggie

What Kratochwil and Ruggie meant by claiming, “epistemology fundamentally contradicts ontology (in regime analysis)? ONTOLOGY & EPISTEMOLOGY Ontology - is the science or theory of being. Epistemology - is the theory of knowledge.

ONTOLOGY & EPISTEMOLOGY Doer: Why Bob Slydell is licking his upper lip during a scene from the 1999 film Office Space? Epistemologist: How did you notice? Why have you suddenly noticed this? Why didn’t you notice yesterday, and today you noticed? Ontologist: How do we call this phenomenon? When the tongue moves forward and backward, or makes a full circle – do these two actions have the same definition?

Ontology - is the science or theory of being. “What is the nature of the international regime?” International regimes are based on norms, so it’s ontology is based on intersubjectivity. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. “view of what we can know about the international regime and how we can know it.” The prevailing epistemological position in regime analysis is almost entirely positivistic in orientation + Positivism posits radical separation of subject and object! Hence, epistemology fundamentally contradicts ontology! ONTOLOGY & EPISTEMOLOGY

“Interpretation” emerged as an alternative to the positivist approach. It’s based on “specific knowledge” and is more context-oriented, while positivism stays loyal to “factual” knowledge gained through observations and measurements. Interpretation techniques make a researcher “immerse himself/herself in the context”, what brings more specific data about the issue. Speaking about which of the two approaches is more appropriate for analyzing issues and puzzles in IR, I have to presume, that it depend on what kind of project is on the stake. A good and qualified research should stay in between of fully positivists’ nature and arbitrary interpretation. It should contain factual-based knowledge, but at the same time provide needed hypothesizes and theories, what will give a way to scientific interpretation. CONCLUSION

Moreover, interpretation is more suitable in analyzing international regimes, because the basis of them is constituted by norms, which, in their turn, are based on the notion of “intersubjectivity”. Therefore, the scholars John Gerald Ruggie and Friedrich Kratochwil made a statement that “epistemology fundamentally contradicts ontology” (in regime analysis). While the epistemological position in regime analysis is positivistic, but ontology in “intersubjective”, it means they are mutually exclusive; what brought to a conclusion, that these two dimensions contradict each other. CONCLUSION