ABSTRACT
Kuhn (1970a: 180) states that a paradigm governs, in the first instance, not a subject, but a group of practitioners; therefore any research on paradigms should try to locate that group. Applying Kuhn to the discipline of International Relations means locating the scientific community for which realism became the defining paradigm. As this book claims, the search for the substantial core, and for the institutional independence, of the discipline became inextricably linked with the discussions about the relevance of realism, in both directions. For this reason, many attacks of realism have often been targeting not the content but the (narrow) scope of the discipline for which realism stood. Similarly, many substantial criticisms of realism have been misunderstood, and accordingly answered, as undermining the boundaries of the institutional independence.
