Feminist approaches to international politics have only been allowed into the discipline of International Relations as ‘good girls.’ Several scholars have made an argument along these lines, with Weber’s (1994) response to Keohane’s (1989) article on contributions by different feminist theories to the study of International Relations (IR) being one of the most cited positions on the issue. Keohane evaluates feminist standpoint as having the greatest potential for supplementing the mainstream (including, but not limited to, neorealist and neoliberal) IR in the short run (hence Weber’s categorisation of Keohane’s representation of this theory as a ‘good girl’), feminist empiricism as having a promise of supplementation in the long run (hence a ‘little girl’) and feminist post-modernism as having no such promise at all (hence a ‘bad girl’). Weber (1994:338) argues that Keohane ‘mutilates’ the feminist body of literature threatening to overflow the established boundaries of IR; the result being not just a partial representation, but a complete transformation, of the three theories. This can be seen in Keohane’s identification of standpoint feminism with his own project of neoliberal institutionalism, despite the former’s ontological and epistemological assumptions, as epitomised by Hartsock’s (1983) historical materialist strand of the theory, being contrary to the latter’s.

When it comes to my own position on the issue (i.e., the kind of feminist approaches that have been allowed into the discipline of IR), I see IR as consisting of multiple functionally and/or geographically defined sub-disciplines (hereafter referred to as ‘camps,’ a term coined by Sylvester in Zalewski 2008). Following from this multifaceted understanding of IR, I argue that both ‘good girls’ and ‘bad girls’ exist in IR (albeit my definition of these categories differs from Weber’s), with some ‘camps’ being dominated by ‘good girls’ (alongside other positivist approaches) and others by ‘bad girls’ (alongside other interpretivist, hereafter referred to as post-positivist, approaches).

I focus on the ‘camp’ of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), which I see as more representative of the scholarship and practice of IR (hereafter referred to as global IR) than other ‘camps.’ I use the term global IR as a descriptive term for the multitude of IR scholarships and practices in/from countries across the Global North and the Global South, which should not be confused with the normative project of ‘Global IR’ proposed by Acharya (2014). When it comes to feminism, I argue that the Foreign Policy Analysis and practice are dominated by ‘good girls’ in both the Global North and the Global South. Although this essay focuses on the ‘camp’ of FPA and feminist theories, the core/peripheral positions of ‘good girls’ and ‘bad girls’ within FPA can be seen as representative of all positivist and post-positivist approaches within not just the ‘camp’ itself but global IR.

In terms of structure, the main body of this essay consists of two sections. The first section focuses on IR scholarship, providing details about my own understanding of IR (including its ‘camps’ and theories) against the background of its disciplinary development. The second section focuses on the practice of IR in relation to the scholarship. Here, I use examples of (both explicit and implicit) feminist foreign policies (FFPs) to illustrate the predominance of ‘good girls’ in not just foreign policy scholarship but also practice.

‘Camps’ in International Relations

My understanding of IR has been informed by several developments that have occurred since the early debates between mainstream and feminist IR scholars (see the exchanges between Keohane 1989 and Weber 1994 or Tickner 1997 and Keohane 1998), which had tended to position all mainstream theories on the positivist end of the IR spectrum (conceptualised as materialist, universalist and problem-solving) and all feminist theories on the post-positivist end (conceptualised as idealist, particularistic and critical). One such development concerns the proliferation of post-colonial and decolonial approaches that have not only criticised the ethnocentric presuppositions within both mainstream and feminist theories, thus transcending the binary oppositions between the two but have expanded the boundaries of IR scholarship whilst becoming dominant in certain ‘camps’ of the discipline.

IR now consists of several ‘camps’ (including, but not limited to, International Political Economy, Foreign Policy Analysis, Security Studies, and Area Studies), all of which employ a variety of positivist and post-positivist theories, albeit some are more inclined to employ the former and others the latter. It may thus be more useful to think of IR theories as being at the core/periphery within individual ‘camps,’ although this is not to deny that positivist theories prevail across the ‘camps’ (i.e., in global IR). Indeed, my decision to focus on the ‘camp’ of FPA is due to its representativeness of global IR, which, despite the increasing proliferation of post-positivist theories within certain ‘camps’ (e.g., Area Studies), continues to be dominated by positivist approaches (and so does the ‘camp’ of FPA). In fact, the ‘camps’ that can be seen as dominated by post-positivist (including ‘bad girl’) theories, remain at the periphery of global IR (Kaczmarska and Ortmann 2021). Foreign policy practice, which is discussed in the second section of this essay, is further demonstrative of the continued power differentials (re. knowledge production and dissemination) between positivist and post-positivist approaches.

When it comes to my categorisation of feminist IR theories, I see some as positivist on both ontological and epistemological fronts (e.g., feminist empiricism and liberal feminism), some as such only in terms of their ontologies (e.g., strands of standpoint and decolonial feminism) and others as post-positivist on both fronts (e.g., post-modern and post-colonial feminism). I refer to all feminist theories that adopt positivist ontologies as ‘good girls’ and those that adopt post-positivist ontologies as ‘bad girls,’ making the category of ‘little girls’ redundant.........

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