A Kuhnian Account of Paradigms and Paradigm Shifts

Drawing on Thomas Kuhn’s seminal The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), this chapter shows that IR studies conform to the Kuhnian notion of an obsolete paradigm. Kuhn focuses on certain periods of historical singularity wherein some scientists operating within a given paradigm begin to sense that something has gone wrong in their field. For Kuhn, this proves to be a novel discovery in and of itself because it prepares the groundwork for an eventual paradigm shift toward a new understanding of science, something that cannot be achieved overnight or by the work of a single scholar. This chapter shows that we are indeed at that juncture where the paradigm that has informed international relations studies can now be said to have outlived its utility.