Many international relation scholars use the three main schools of thought, realism, liberalism and constructivism, to understand and analyze states’ behaviors in the international arena. Each of the three theories uniquely explains the reasons behind a state’s behavior in times of peace or during a conflict. Realism is the school of thought that believes that the international system is anarchic and thus the states try to gain material power. On the other hand liberalism focuses on the power of institutions, which are founded on common values and goals of the state, in the international system. The last theory constructivism believes that state goals are a reflection of social norms, values and history of a state.
In Stephen D. Krasner’s, “Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables,” he defines what regimes are in relation to international politics as well as ascertaining their significance. Krasner compares and contrasts multiple scholarly viewpoints to determine if regimes have a noteworthy impact on international relations. Furthermore, he discusses the different building blocks for which regime development is built on. Krasner defines regimes as “sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations.” Principles are the foundation of a regime and are statements about how the world should work. The second, norms, are standards or guidelines of behavior.
Furthermore, the ontology of this particular social theory is concerned with reality. Reality is thought of as an individual construct dependent to different situations while applied to hermeneutical phenomenological research. Hereafter, it is based on the belief that realities are multiple. In addition, we tackled on two important people who are important in hermeneutical phenomenology. These people were Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.
The notion and the meaning of conflict have evolved with time. Before Coser, conflict was seen more as a source of social change and disintegration. However, the conflict theory we are referring to here is not necessarily an infliction of violence or atrocities, but a conflict that arises due to unequal distribution of power and resources. Theorists consider power to be an important element of conflict theory. For instance, who uses power or where is power located are two of the main concerns of conflict theory.
Norms have played a significant influence on the international politics indirectly (Keck & Sikkink, 2014). It is observed to act this way by constraining the behavior of the agents in a certain way in a framework created by the
According to the Foucault’s (1980) notion of the history of the present, formulation of new ideas constantly challenges existing ones in the dynamic process of linking knowledge and change. Hall (1997) sees representation as a way in which portrayal of present events can lead to coding a set of values, attitudes and social climate. May (2003) theory of research as a “reflexive endeavour” enables this research to make a thorough examination of the selected texts, to discover the level of media and public knowledge on social work in a given period of time. Qualitative interviewing of the focus groups helps detecting individual understandings and interpretations of the same text. This is a substantial part of the theoretical framework, as it focuses on Hall (1997) definition of representation and creation of meaning, which Hall defines as “the process by which members of a culture use language (signs and signifying system) to produce a meaning
Although he brings the argument of Alberto Melucci who consider identity as symbolic manifestation than as a political mobilization, identity in both instances involves the interactive process of forging a collective identity through which the social actors define the meaning of their action (p. 159). Lee argues that the central thrust of identity politics is the politicization by the social actor of non-political terrain of everyday life which could be interpersonal relations, values and beliefs and concern specific to the life
Critical theory: This paradigm shows that reality can be changed through human intervention and research. According to McCarthy, 1991, “Critical theory is a broad tradition based upon the use of the critique as a method of investigation”. This social theory whether worked in an educational research, literature, philosophy, art and business is very important to change the world’s view. It is a form of rationalism. Rationalism is a sort of thought in which a society thinks and transforms the environment.
We can begin by reviewing the character of contemporary globalisation and the processes associated with it. We can then consider how globalisation affects and in turn is affected by human rights. There are two major views in this regard. One says that human rights take on a renewed significance and urgency in the context of this struggle, others argue that globalisation effectively side lines human rights and compels us to the efforts of those seeking to reshape globalisation in the interest of humanity as a
Robert B. McCalla has remarked that a distinction should be made "between a psychological environment – the decision maker 's image of the setting in which decisions are carried out – and an operational environment – the actual setting in which they are carried out". While the first part of McCalla 's statement constitutes 'perception ', 'misperception ' is a situation where there is a mismatch between perception and reality. Yet, perception and misperception play a major role in the outcome of states ' foreign policy making. Their influential role in international politics has been debated by Robert Jervis in his ground-breaking book Perception and Misperception in International Politics whose ideas have been utilised in this book. The way Iranians, particularly their leaders, perceived the British has had a great impact on the formulation of the Iranian attitude towards Britain.