Abstract

COSTA, Lara Denise Góes da  and  RESENDE, Erica Simone Almeida. The discipline of International Relations in times of paradigm crisis: contributions to the debate on the study of foreign policy. Relações Internacionais [online]. 2019, n.63, pp.53-79. ISSN 1645-9199.  https://doi.org/10.23906/ri2019.63a05.

In the last two decades, the discipline of International Relations (IR) has been at crossroads. If, on one hand, dominant theories have converged into explaining world politics within the so-called “neo-neo synthesis”, on the other hand, the unexpected end of the Cold War has brought about the acknowledgement that those theories needed to be reconsidered. More specifically, the premises of the discipline needed urgent rethinking as they were at a crisis, but if it is true, this crisis is extended to foreign policy and the way the states think about their selves as policy makers. Just like the crisis between the Great Wars have made possible the birth of the discipline, the current crisis invites us to dare, to create, to reflect upon concepts and models, to challenge conventions and to propose alternative ways to understand realities. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to conceive alternatives to foreign policy analysis in times of crisis. In the first part we will analyze the current deconstructive critiques of the dominant theories of the IR and in the second part, we will apply some of those perspectives to the analysis of foreign policy.

Keywords : International Relations; post-modernity; International Relations theories; foreign policy analysis.

        · abstract in Portuguese     · text in Portuguese     · Portuguese ( pdf )