ABSTRACT
Since the 1960s, both consolidation in the realist and neo-realist paradigms and a growing movement to develop theories that go beyond these traditional schools have occurred simultaneously. One school of researchers, particularly in the United States, continues to develop Waltz’s theories (e.g. Gilpin, Greco, Jervis and Mearsheimer). But a number of theorists are more innovative and attempt to understand the important implications of relevant empirical phenomena that are underestimated by neo-realists. The theoretical debates fostered by these new schools of research can be divided into three main trends:
Neo-realists are critiqued by several streams of cooperation theorists, including studies on the active role of international law, transnationalism, the theories of international regimes, and the theory of complex interdependence. Individually, and in their interconnections, these theories began to subtly undermine the classical Westphalian paradigm and ultimately developed into a largely alternative paradigm: “neo-institutionalism”, which highlights variables that explain the limitations and shortcomings of state sovereignty and multiple forms of cooperation between states and among social and economic actors. It is so pluralist and various that it can include previous theoretical alternatives within its framework. Various theories of global governance – hyperglobalist, post-Westphalian and neo-medievalist – radically and totally question the concept of state sovereignty by new perspectives which either consider the economy paramount or follow post-modern trends. Constructivist approaches try to substitute the cleavage between neorealism and neo-institutionalism with the theoretical opposition between positivist theories (including both neo-realists and neo-institutionalists) and post-positivist theories, which focus on international relations as a social construction.
