ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the major works developed within the rationalist framework, followed by the cultural turn that connected identity and discourse to issues of security. The study of security emerged after the Second World War as a sub-field of International Relations, or International Relations (IR), analysing the ways in which states were threatened by other states through the main theories of IR. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, in a context of increasing disillusionment with power politics, and dominant socio-economic models, the social resistance to war and armament grew stronger, and security progressively became more than conflict and warfare. Rationalist approaches in Security Studies are defined by the assumption that states are rational actors whose behaviour is possible to predict. Writing during the twilight of the Cold War, John Mearsheimer, a leading offensive realist, argued that the end of the bipolar confrontation was bad news for Europe.
