POLI 244 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Peter Feaver, Andrew Moravcsik, Fareed Zakaria
12 Mar 2016
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Notes on jeffery legro and andrew moravcsik, is anybody still a realist? . Realism is in trouble, and the enemy is within. In attempts to address anomalies, its proponents have in fact made it theoretically less determinate, less coherent, and less distinct. They advance the very causal claims that realism traditionally rejects. These secondary factors (state preferences, beliefs, and international institutions) are often treated as more important even than power. This minimal realism is left with only two core assumptions anarchy and rationality. Thus any rational influence on state behavior is now acceptable. The fact that minimal realists, using these, subsume the explanations of other paradigms is hidden by the fact that they test there new midrange theories are generally tested only against other forms of realism. A paradigm must be coherent and distinctive in order to be conceptually productive. Coherence means that a paradigm does not include internal logical contradictions that allow for the derivation of contradictory conclusions.
