Discussing the “Core Themes” and “Principal Assumptions” of Realism – the Nuances of Post-Cold War International Relations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article discusses “core themes” and “principal assumptions” in the realist study on international relations. It identifies some fundamental claims that distinguish realism from other theoretical perspectives. Moreover, it believes that the debate on the core of realism helps to clarify its understanding of contemporary international affairs. Yet the evolution of realism reveals a number of ambiguities in the picture of its “principal assumptions”. It warns that the list of realism’s “core themes” must be cautious and avoid simplifications. The article outlines some theoretical challenges that realism faces in the post-Cold War international reality and their impact on realism’s essence. It argues that further debate on realism’s “core themes” is valuable yet it needs a more nuanced attitude – far from simplified conclusions. Finally, the article proposes a nuanced catalogue of realism’s “principal assumptions” which reflects the complex nature of contemporary international relations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.032 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".