Reflectivism

Reflectivism is an umbrella label used in International Relations theory for a range of theoretical approaches which oppose rational-choice accounts of social phenomena and positivism generally. The label was popularised by Robert Keohane in his presidential address to the International Studies Association in 1988. The address was entitled "International Institutions: Two Approaches", and contrasted two broad approaches to the study of international institutions (and international phenomena more generally). One was "rationalism", the other what Keohane referred to as "reflectivism". Rationalists — including realists, neo-realists, liberals, neo-liberals, and scholars using game-theoretic or expected-utility models — are theorists who adopt the broad theoretical and ontological commitments of rational-choice theory.

== Rationalism vs. reflectivism == Keohane characterised rationalism in the following fashion: [Rationalists accept] what Herbert Simon has referred to a "substantive" conception of rationality, characterizing "behaviour that can be adjudged objectively to be optimally adapted to the situation" (Simon, 1985:294). As Simon has argued, the principle of substantive rationality generates hypotheses about actual human behaviour only when it is combined with certain auxiliary assumptions about the structure of utility functions and the formation of expectations. Since this research program is rooted in exchange theory, it assumes scarcity and competition as well as rationality on the part of the actors. Rationalistic theories of institutions view institutions as affecting patterns of costs.