The Perils of Paradigm Mentalities: Revisiting Kuhn

A common theme in the Centennial Issue of the American Political Science Review was how subfields have grownmore specialized and insulated from one another. In this essay I argue that this trend has been hastened by the inappropriate incorporation of para-digm mentalities, first presented by Thomas Kuhn and later developed by Imre Lakatos. I show how paradigm mentalities help justify rigid opposition to theoretical alternatives and limit critical insight.While paradigmmentalities may be fitting for disciplines that demonstrate Kuhn’s concrete scientific achievements, they constrain the study of political science and international relations in particular. I begin with a primer that compares Kuhn and Lakatos to Karl Popper. Next, I point to harmful consequences resulting from applying paradigm mentalities to the study of international relations. Among these is the tendency to act as if realism has earned the status of a paradigm and then invoke criteria of incommensurability and “subsumption ” to deflect criticism. I conclude by discussing how Popper’s model of science provides a better platform for the study of politics by encouraging theoretical and methodological pluralism. The clash between Popper and Kuhn is not about a mere technical point in epistemology. It concerns our central intellectual values... —Imre Lakatos1 The member of a mature scientific community is, like the typical character of Orwell’s 1984, the victim of a history rewritten by th