International Relations as Scientific Endeavor: What is Positivism? Designing Social Inquiry International Relations as Scientific Endeavor: What is Positivism? Jaechun Kim

TRACING THE HISTORY OF “POLITICAL SCIENCE” AND “INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS” Genealogy of Political Science Intl Relations is usually studied as a sub-field of Political Science… Origin and Evolution of Political Science (Study of Politics) Political Science (Study of Politics) started as part of legal studies and study of history; Studying politics belonged to the realm of law and history… Political Science was not a separate discipline…

Advent of Behavio(u)ralism in Study of Politics We should do more than just studying laws and histories; We should observe how the states behave… and how politicians behave… Look inside the system!: Observe what’s really going on! Analytic focus should be on the informal aspects of political life…  Behavioral Revolution  Positivism  Political Science Reaction to traditional legal and historical approaches to studying politics…

Intl Relations as a distinct subfield of Political “Science” IR (as with the study of politics) used to be the study of international laws and history of international relations (i.e., diplomatic history) Impact of behavioral revolution on IR  IR as a sub- discipline of Political Science Behaviouralism  Positivism as dominant epistemology in the study of politics… Be like natural scientist! Or economist! Invent and test positive theories (hypotheses, rather)… Positive theory vs. Normative Theory: The Difference?

Positivism in International Relations – We can study IR in scientific manner? Can we? KKV  We can! Is it possible to study IR scientifically? (We will tackle this question next week…)

WHAT IS SCIENTIFIC METHOD OR POSITIVISM? WHAT IS SCIENCE? One of the methods that lead us to find the truth… Science is not a panacea: Activities including human interactions and emotions are difficult to answer with scientific methods...

Other methods to find truths about social life?? Intuition; Feel; Superstition Divine revelation; Epiphany Science – Having skeptical structure of mind; skeptical attitude

Scientific knowledge can be accumulated; communicated; and the scientific method can be replicated; procedures should be public Goal of Science is to explain; to make inferences… Explanation usually involves causation… IV (Independent Variable) CV (Causal Variable) EV (Explanatory Variable) DV (Dependent Variable)

QUANTITATIVE VS. QUALITATIVE METHODS Quantitative – large number of cases; N>20 – large N studies. Qualitative – one or several cases KKV – Both quantitative and qualitative researches can be systematic and scientific; Qualitative study can be scientific as well! It really depends on the nature of research questions…

COMPONENTS OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH DESIGN Choosing a good research question - what is your puzzle? Should have real world implications (should be important in real world)…in global affairs… Should be related to the existing scholarly literature…  literature review… Choose a specific question rather than a broad one! Clarification of concepts

Building hypothesis What is hypothesis? Reasoned speculation to your research puzzle Building theories or theoretical (analytic) framework What is theory? Reasoned speculation about your hypothesis

Good theory (or hypothesis) should be testable (falsifiable) be generalized have observable implications be parsimonious

Testing your hypotheses Case analysis (single case study, multiple case studies, comparative case studies…) Statistical analysis Collecting Data What is data? Data – systematically collected elements of information about the world (KKV) You will have to report data collection process Use footnotes, etc. Validity: your data collection method should be valid Reliability: your data collection method should be also reliable

Be modest about your findings! It’s OK to be wrong!