Regionalization and its Impact on the Theory of International Relations

The end of the cold war has presented the field of international relations with an unparalleled challenge. Even if we take an anti-positivistic stand and do not expect the study of international relations to be most of all of prediction but of understanding and interpretation, it is obvious that as a research project international politics has become more difficult to manage. The apparent randomness and unpredictability of the events of the past few years have led many scholars to look for alternative modes of explaining international relations. Thus for instance chaos theory and postmodernism (see Chapter 7) have emerged in the agenda of international relations.1