After 1960s, technological and ideological developments contributed to the arising of normative theories.

In 1970s, post-behavioral revolution emerged as a challenge against the so called behavioral revolution of 1960s, since behavioralism could not answer the contemporary needs, and became abstract by distancing from real world and ignoring the ideological elements for consideration of empirical conservatism.

Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all of humanity belongs to a single global community. Every human being was seen as a citizen of the world in his capacity of “reason” regardless of bloodlineage and racial origins.

The rise of Imperialism and Nationalism in the nineteenth century, however, cosmopolitanism was criticized as an unrealistic, utopian vision.

Normative theories, essentially are related with the subjects of philosophy and ethic.

Normative theories rest on value preferences which cannot be tested or verified with factual experiments and this is an important difference from empirical/positivist theories. Moreover, they are not concerned with the proposition related to “what is” but “what ought to be, what should be”.

• Normative theories are claimed to be utopist and idealist and empirical theories too, so they are condemned to be over factual for consideration of being scientific.

• Kantian, utilitarian and social contract insights are approaches that rest on universality of values. However, according to Hobbes, good or bad are relative concepts and consequently there is no absolute good and absolute bad. There are no sensible and objective criteria to divide the good and bad; in contrast, it depends subjectively to the individuals themselves.

They do not accept the universality of some values. Universal law, natural law, universal peace, universal morality, universal human rights are not accepted by them.

These are of necessity harmonious with each other (and, ultimately, the same thing) because both reflect the will of a benevolent Supreme Being who creates and governs the universe.

The moral standards that govern human behavior and which are, in some sense, objectively derived from the nature of human beings and the nature of the world.

Moral universalism (also called moral objectivism) is the meta-ethical position that some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, applies universally, that is, for “all similarly situated individuals”, regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, or any other distinguishing feature. 

Social contract theory depends on the assumption that the individuals might voluntarily bind themselves to the certain principles. From this point, like stag hunt model of game theory, individuals would sacrifice their small satisfactions to reach a highest satisfaction.

Self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law (commonly regarded as a jus cogens rule (compelling law/peremptory norm) binding, as such, on the United Nations as authoritative interpretation of the Charter’s norms. It states that a people, based on respect for the principle of equal rights and fair equality of opportunity, have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no interference. In other words, the right of the people of a particular place to choose the form of government they will have.

The concepts such as “the best”, “very productive”, “just”, or “necessarily good” for the means chosen to reach to foreign policy objectives would define the values and these indicate the impossibility of exclusion of values from foreign policy decisions.

As scientific theories are concerned with the empirical world, normative theories are related to an ideal world that should be. For this reason, normative theories cannot be applied to the problems faced everyday. Therefore, normative theories are interested in an imaginary world, and can be claimed by realists as utopic theories.