International Relations Theories: Energy, Minerals and Conflict
Publisher: Polinares - EU Policy on Natural Resources
Author(s): Roland Dannreuther
Date: 2010
Topics: Conflict Causes, Conflict Prevention, Cooperation, Extractive Resources
IR theories seek to identify key regularities and patterns of interaction in the realm of international politics and to provide parsimonious models to explain the nature and underlying structures of that interaction. These theories generally have, whether implicitly or explicitly, a normative dimension – they say something about how international politics should be conducted and what the world should look like. IR theories have traditionally been seen as competing and incommensurate, as representing alternative ‘paradigms’, and their historical evolution often involves critiquing the perceived flaws of alternative theories. The traditional division of IR theories, which was common in the Cold War period, was between realism, liberalism and Marxism/structuralism. Since the end of the Cold War a dominant new theoretical approach is that of social constructivism, which emerged as a critique of both realism and liberalism (or more precisely neo-realism and neo-liberalism) and filled a gap with the decline of the intellectual appeal of Marxism. However, this radical dimension has been increasingly filled by a variety of theories – critical theory, feminist IR theory, historical sociology, post-structuralism. The overall picture is currently quite complex with an array of differing methodological, explanatory and normative theoretical approaches.