Summary:
- The article discusses the ongoing debate within the field of International Relations (IR) between positivist and post-positivist approaches to research and theory-building.
- It argues that while post-positivism has gained some traction in IR, it has not yet become the dominant or "normalized" approach, with positivist methods and assumptions still widely prevalent in the discipline.
- The article suggests that for post-positivism to become more widely accepted, IR scholars need to engage in more self-reflection, challenge the discipline's positivist biases, and embrace a plurality of methodological and theoretical perspectives.