MAKING SENSE OF IDEATIONAL AND DISCURSIVE FACTORS IN WAR MEDIATION THROUGH POST-POSITIVIST TRADITION IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Abstract

This paper offers insightful study of the role of ideas and their intelligible employment in foreign policy discourse especially in war mediation by taking war as subjective and discursive phenomenon. In claiming so, it draws heavily on the post-positivist tradition in International Relations like critical constructivism, critical theory and post-structuralism without sharp rejection of positivist tradition in the study of International Relations. Along the same lines, it maintains, and substantiates that ideas have constitutive and performative role in foreign policy politics as well as in war mediation.  Grounded in various theoretical currents in post-positivist turn in the discipline of IR, this paper warrants the post-positivist tradition significant promise to make sense of foreign policy politics and war mediation. In sum, substantiating war as ideationally and discursively mediated phenomenon, this paper argues for the centrality of ideational and discursive factors in our understanding of foreign policy politics and war mediation.