Neorealism And Appraisal On It

The master's thesis aims to appraise the academic position of Waltz's neorealism in western IR theories in the perspective of philosophy of science. Philosophy of science primarily consists of three kinds of systems of scientific appraisal: Popper's falsificationism, Kuhn's paradigm and Lakatos' methodology of scientific research programs. Illuminated by them, the thesis proposes a standard used to appraise the progress of scientific theories. The standard comprises of two aspects: in one hand, the progressive theory should be falsifiable, parsimonious and logically consistent;in the other hand, in comparison with previous theories, the progressive theory can interpret more phenomena or predict "new facts", though it can't interpret some special phenomena ("anomalies" in the term of philosophy of science). Applying the standard to the appraisal of neorealism, the thesis concludes that neorealism remains to possess powerful explanatory capability and dominate the development of IR systematic theories.The thesis is divided into five parts. The first part mainly introduces the definition, construction and appraisal of scientific theories. The second part analyzes the process of construction of neorealism. The third part, in static perspective, displays falsifiablilty, parsimony and logical coherence of neorealism that is the logical standard with which scientific theories must accord. The fourth part, in dynamic perspective, compares neorealism to neoliberal institutionism and mainstream constructivism in order to specify three theories' explanatory capabilities. The fifth part points out that the end of the cold war does not falsify the "hard core" of neorealism and analyzes neorealist explanation for the end of the cold war and international relations after the cold war.