The Theoretical Evaluation Of Structural Realism And Its Development

Since the end of the Cold War, the theory status of Structural Realism was in question. Many scholars criticized it for its lack of explanatory power. It could not explain some significant phenomena such as the changes of power distribution brought by the end of the Cold War and the absence of balance under unipolar system. Furthermore, some repudiated its theoretical value and development potentials completely by way of theory evaluation and thought it would be washed out finally. The Structural Realism camps argued all these criticisms were overstated without scientific evidence, thus were unconvincing. Theory of international relations thereupon is mired in a never ended controversy which leads to theoretical research being bogged down. To break this deadlock, it's of great urgency to make a comprehensive, rational evaluation of Structural Realism, to reveal its range of interpretation, its success and failure, thus doing away with all notions which hinder the development and pushing forward the theory innovation. The central question of this study is whether Structural Realism can be a progressive Research Program. If yes, how to develop it?Research Program is composed of a series of cluster theory, including the hard core, protective belt, positive heuristic and negative heuristic. Through strict comparison, Methodology of Scientific Research Program is selected as the principle standard of theory evaluation to measure the progressiveness of Structural Realism. Based on Methodology of Scientific Research Program, a theory is qualified as a progressive one only when it matches the following two requirements:first, to be progressive on the theoretical basis, it should be able to predict the novelty; second, to be progressive on the empirical basis, it should be able to confirm some of the novelty. According the characters of social science and on the premise of overall logic of Research Program, this study defines the novelty in international relations as the facts neglected by or contradicted with the competitors which is demonstrated by (verifiable) hypotheses. Waltz proposed the original theory of Structural Realism, stipulating its core, positive heuristics and negative heuristics which lay the solid foundation for the formation and development of such Research Program. The original theory can be extended to be a research Program only with strong explanation power and wide heuristics. Structural Realism performed well on this respect. On the one hand, it provided an integral interpretation for international politics, maximized the scope of interpretation of international relations theories and offered unique explanation for the significant international phenomena such as balance of power, which helped itself to achieve the dominant position. On the other hand, it designed the flexible, powerful positive heuristics and strict, specified negative heuristics, which provided methodological support for the follow-ups. Enlightened by the original theory, Gilpin and Mearsheimer added auxiliary hypothesis sequentially under the framework of the program of Structural Realism. Their arguments were referred as theory of transformation of international politics and theory of great power politics respectively. They came to be progressive with extending interpretation scope of Structural Realism and pushing the development of the theory.Through the systematic evaluation of the theory, this study concludes that Structural Realism possesses the extraordinary explanation power and pushes the theory toward progressiveness during the evolution process. It's a progressive Research Program, which deserves in-depth exploration. On the basis of theoretical evaluation, this study tries to activate the positive heuristics of Structural Realism and probes its innovation in the empirical and theoretical field. Structural Realism provided systematical and rational explanation for the operating mechanism and trend of unipolar system and strengthened its explanation power toward the important practical issues. At the same time, it promoted the theoretical status of foreign policy theory and pushed the construction of such a theory belonging to Structural Realism which would be beneficial to solving the conundrum of theorization of foreign policy studies and achieving new development of it.This study contributes to the theory development in the following three aspects: firstly, it evaluates the theoretical value and development prospect of Structural Realism Research Program; secondly, through the application of Methodology of Scientific Research Program, it reveals the role which philosophy of science plays in the evaluation and development of international relations theories; thirdly, it initially contributes to the development of foreign policy theory by initially clarifying its construction path.