By the mid-1980s, Ashley had adopted a postmodernist and subversive approach to international relations theory, exemplified by his influences: Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Ashley received his Bachelor of Arts degree from University of California, Santa Barbara in 1970,[1] after which he entered graduate school in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) studying political science.
[2] He received his Doctorate of Philosophy from MIT in 1977,[3] with a dissertation titled Growth, Rivalry, and Balance: The Sino-Soviet-American Triangle of Conflict (1976),[4] supervised by Nazli Choucri.
[6] Other influences include Jacques Derrida, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Foucauldian discourse analysis,[7] and Jürgen Habermas.
[10] All Ashley's major writings from this phase of the first half of the 1980s can be characterized as a critique of technical rationality in the study of international relations and advocacy of emancipatory ways of knowing.
[15] Indeed, Ashley's critique of microeconomic analogies employed by neorealists made him a key figure in the inter-paradigm debate in international relations theory.
[19] According to Darryl S. L. Jarvis, "the undiminished allure of postmodernism [in international relations theory] is plainly attributable to ... Richard Ashley, and to a lesser extent, [R. B.