TENABILITY OF THE RESEARCH PROGRAM OF REALISM IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

LIŠANIN Mladen (Istraživač saradnik u Institutu za političke studije, Beograd), mladen.lisanin@yahoo.com

It is the author’s intention to explore the realist theory in International Relations in the context of Imre Lakatos’s Methodology of Scientific Research Programs. To this end, after defining the notion of realism in IR and exposing the foundations of Lakatos’s analytical pattern, relevant findings of several authors who took part in the debate on this issue from the area of philosophy of science (John Vasquez, Kenneth Waltz, Stephen Walt, Thomas Christensen and Jack Snyder, Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman, Randall Schweller, William Wohlforth) will be presented and critically analyzed. In that sense, there are two key lines of dispute: about whether Lakatos’s methodology is properly utilized in evaluating realist theory, and whether it represents an adequate tool for such a metatheoretical endeavor in the first place. In the concluding part of the article, author’s findings which point toward tenability of the realist research program, along with a limited scope of applicability of Lakatos’s methodology in the field of International Relations.

Keywords: International Relations, Realism, Philosophy of Science, Research Program, Scientific Paradigm