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.
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.
Unlike the term reflectivism, the concept of "reflexivity" has wide currency outside of international relations, having come to prominence in social theory in the latter part of the 20th century.
Although the large majority of reflectivists oppose positivism, it might be a mistake to equate reflectivism with post-positivism or anti-positivism, as (conventional) constructivists who are positivist in orientation would nevertheless fall under Keohane's description.
Some mainstream International Relations scholars, dismissing the importance or value of non-positivist approaches to social science, have reframed the rationalism-reflectivism debate narrowly, as a debate between rationalism and ("conventional") constructivism, construed as the two major social theories (or "ontologies") of (mainstream) International Relations theory.
The rationalism-constructivism debate drew considerable attention within the mainstream at the turn of the 21st century, with some rejecting the starkness of the opposition itself and asserting a fundamental compatibility, or possibility of synthesis, between the two approaches.
[20] The main criticisms of reflectivist approaches stem from the epistemological differences between reflectivism and what in the social sciences has come to be known as positivism.
[21] The typical reflectivist rejection of positivist assumptions and methods has led to criticism that the approach cannot make reliable statements about the outside world and even that it has repudiated the entire "social science enterprise".