ABSTRACT
The first debate within the discipline of International Relations, between realism and idealism, took place between the wars and immediately following the Second World War. The 1960's witnessed a new great debate, this time not about central theoretical tenets, but about the scientific status of the discipline. Generally, scholars in International Relations had cut their teeth in international law and diplomatic history. During the heyday of the behavioralist revolution in the social sciences, however, this traditional International Relations came under severe fire. Behaviouralists attacked what appeared to them as unreflected assumptions and woolly hypotheses. Without the rigour of a scientific approach, the critique run, traditional International Relations was nothing more than either purely descriptive history or normative theory.
