Session 19: Pros and Cons of Neorealism

This weeks readings concentrated on Neo Realism and it's pros and cons. The poverty of Neorealism by Richard K. Ashley talks about how realism is actually pretty flawed. Being a staunch believer of realism and its concepts, this reading threw me in a quandary because it evaluated Neorealism from a very different lens. There are a few things that I agree with and a few things that I feel are exaggerated and disregarded in the article. But through the course of this subject, one thing that I have learned definitely is that no one school or approach is completely apt or correct in its approach towards the study of International Relations. Through these different theories that we keep on learning, my thought process is evolving.

One part which I disagree with is when the realist school is criticized as being too reductionist because the scholars tend to "attribute actor's subjective perceptions as playing an important role in constituting and reproducing the 'system'." Personally, I don't feel that taking into consideration the different political actors actions is reductionist because a humanist approach towards politics is important because one does not live in isolation and has the tendency to act according to the actions of the different states. Calling such an approach reductionist is akin to telling a human resource manager to make a new policy without taking into consideration how the different people in a company will react. Hence, this point was one that I disagreed with strongly.

However one thing which really stood out and made me ponder over my leaning towards the Realist school this time was that Realists don't give much importance to  economic factors in decision and policy making. Even though personally I don't like Economics, neither do I consider it as the most dominating factor for survival in the world, one cannot completely ignore its importance in decision making when it comes to politics or international decisions.

The introduction of structuralism as a school that takes into consideration the whole system was interesting and a point which really stood out was when the author stated that structuralism emphasized the system and how it exists independent of the parts. This is important and I do agree with the fact that realism lacks in this aspect that it concentrates too much on power and not enough on the structure as a whole. Structuralism was recently introduced to us a week or so ago and it is also definitely a breath of fresh air when it comes to approaching International Relations.