Critical Theory

Science 1950s’, critical theory was applied to IR, criticize the neorealism in epistemology, ontology and methodology.

Critical theory in IR has many different categories. According to the academic approach that from critical philosophy to critical theory, it can be divided into two branches, the Frankfurt School and Gramscianism. Conceptually, critical theory includes broad and narrow sense. The broad sense of critical theory refers to almost all the international relation theories, except the neorealism and neoliberalism, including postmodernism, mild critical theory, neo-Marxist, feminist, etc.; narrow sense of critical theory refers to the international relation theories that influenced by Marxism and European sociology.

There are three basic concepts in critical theory, democracy, Emancipation and Justice and Equality.

Firstly, critical theorists criticize the liberal democratic capitalist form of democracy, and they believe that a more democratic form, which they call “Radical Democracy”, should be established.

The task of radical democracy, Mouffe claims, is to deepen the democratic project of modernity.[12]

Habermas, for example, “opposes substantive democracy, by which he means a system where the majority can change the very nature of the Government; can redefine the basic rights of the citizen; can impose its own notions of justice, property, the right to inherit, education, of right and wrong, on all of the people.” Critical theorists claim that democracy, in means of liberal democracy, is not open to any differences in the society, hence actually a form of domination of the majority over any kind of minorities.[13]

Radical democracy, on the other hand, demands the recognition of difference and maximum pluralism without destroying the community.

Critical theorists basically aim to transform the contemporary capitalist democracy into a more consensual form of democracy which they call radical democracy.    

Critical theorists...