INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND CHANGE:

Using notions of change developed by Thomas Kuhn, the thesis argues that the rise of globalisation and the end of the Cold War presented the Westphalian or state-centric paradigm of international relations with a Kuhnian paradigm “crisis”. As a result, both the theory and the practice of international relations are in the midst of (what Kuhn calls) a “paradigm shift”. Emerging from this shift is (what is described in this work as) “Access World ” and “Denial World ” – a particular global configuration of the practice of international relations. Kuhn’s idea of “incommensurability ” seems to typify the relationship between the two components of this bifurcated configuration of the international. Both intellectual risk-taking and political courage are required if the ontological struggle raging between “Access World ” and “Denial World” is to be settled. This will pave the way for a new paradigm to emerge. Kuhn provides us with the insight that, to achieve this ontological breakthrough, a fundamental change in our vision of the discipline o