Abstract :
In the so-called Third Debate, proponents of post-positivist approaches were criticised for the lack of a clear research programme. On the basis of a discussion of the vague term ‚positivism’, this article tries to identify the respective research programmes of neo-gramscian (Cox), feminist (Enloe, Peterson) and post-structuralist (Campbell) authors by examining their metatheoretical – epistemological, ontological and methodological – as-sumptions as well as their concrete methods. The analysis asks whether they form a co-herent alternative, compares the different approaches and discusses their differences and commonalities.
