The philosophy of social science has played an important role in the formation, development,
and practice of IR as an academic discipline. Often issues concerning the philosophy of social
science are described as meta-theoretical debates. Meta-theory does not take a specifi c
event, phenomenon, or series of empirical real world practices as its object of analysis,
but explores the underlying assumptions of all theory and attempts to understand the
consequences of such assumptions on the act of theorizing and the practice of empirical
research. One way to think about this is in terms of theories about theories.
The role of meta-theoretical debates is frequently misunderstood. Some see metatheorizing
as nothing more than a quick precursor to empirical research. Others see it as a
distraction from the real issues that should concern the discipline. However, it is impossible
for research to proceed in any subject domain in the social sciences in the absence of a set
of commitments embedded within positions on the philosophy of social science. In this