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Journal 1Keohane views the nature of theory as a sort of filter, or a set of guidelines, to interpreting international relations. Despite his take on theory as being beneficial to organizing and thinking about international relations, he acknowledges that you cannot rigidly adhere to any one theory alone. He urges those who practice international relations theories to remain skeptical of theories because theories based upon faulty reasoning could lead to miscalculations on the part of practitioners.[1] Keohane seemed to think of theory much in the same way that people typically think of bias; whether they realize it or not, people are always influenced by theory when looking at international relations. According to Keohane, theories allow you to understand the world around you, giving you a basis upon which to categorize and find correlations between events so that you can make conclusions about what you observe.[2]In international relations, theories help you to understand the actions, and the motives behind them, of the various state and non-state actors in the international system.[3] Keohane believes that we must rely on theory in order to interpret international relations but that it is, by nature, also something to be wary of.[4] Because theories do not hold true all of the time, he urges researchers to analyze the theories of international relations and to challenge their assertions so that they can be built upon, or if need be, redefined.[5] At the beginning of his discussion on theory, Keohane tells us of one of the reasons to study international relations theories: to file away useful viewpoints and ideas that could prove useful in the future.[6] If they are understood reasonably well and the scholar has enough of a grasp of historical context, he claims that they can be useful in interpreting those events and similar events like them in the present day.[7] Therefore, Keohane leaves us with a challenge: to digest the assertions of theories in international relations and one day put them to the test. One of Robert Keohane’s contemporaries, Kenneth Waltz, also posited about the nature of theories. Waltz spent much of his time contrasting between the natures of theories versus those of laws. For Waltz, laws were observable and showed associations whereas theories were thoughts and ideas that offered explanations for laws.[8] Theories, along with offering explanations, organized information into groupings that illustrated the similarities between items that were impossible to see without the help or knowledge of the theory.[9] He also shed some light upon how, in his view, laws and theories are created. He proposed that hypotheses were the ‘birthplace’ of laws; once they had been tested repeatedly and confirmed, hypotheses became law.[10] Theories, on the other hand, were created in a less linear manner; the trial and error process of testing your hypothesis in combination with a moment of revelation created theories.[11]Waltz values theory over law because laws cannot offer explanations about the subject that they describe, yet theories can.[12] Waltz also highlighted the temporary nature of theories, often being discarded for more advanced explanations.[13] He and his contemporary Keohane both agreed on the lack of permanence ascribed to theories and on their being essential as a basis to begin thinking intellectually about international relations. Both scholars encourage us to rely on theories to see overarching patterns in our studies but warn us of becoming too dependent upon them due to their temporary nature. Instead of nurturing self-dependence upon theories in international relations, they urge us to challenge them so that we can create better versions of IR theories for the field as a whole.
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