علی اصغر کاظمی

The unpredictability nature of politics has made it fit to marry with quantum theory which by definition stands upon this characteristic. In recent years, “chaos and quantum theories” have attracted academics and scholars as alternative research methodology across a wide range of social science discipline including politics and international relations. Traditionally, we understand political phenomena and international relations in terms of positivist approaches based upon Newtonian worldview, which is mechanistic and reflecting “systemic determinism” governed by eternal universal laws. This is how we used to explain for instance the concept of “Balance of Power” and a host of other theories during the cold war. The post cold war period, and most particularly the unpredictability of the September 11 events, proved the methodological insufficiency and inadequacy of this approach. In recent years many authors have questioned the wisdom of continuing to rely on the Newtonian philosophy to deal with the emerging problems in world affairs and domestic issues which no longer respond to the conventional epistemological and ontological views of the past. Reliance on mere cause and effect, two dimensional “space and time,” political determinism, structure, interaction, order, sovereignty and the like are not responsive to our present methodological requisites. This paper is an attempt to explain the matter through a new methodological approach built on chaos and ‎quantum theories