Post-modern International relations approaches have been part of international relations

International relations

International relations is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations , international nongovernmental organizations , non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations...

 scholarship since the 1980s. Although there are various strands of thinking a key element to postmodernist theories is a distrust of any account of human life which claims to have direct access to the "truth". Post-modern international relations theory critiques theories like Marxism

Marxism

Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

 that provide an overarching metanarrative

Metanarrative

A metanarrative , in critical theory and particularly postmodernism, is an abstract idea that is thought to be a comprehensive explanation of historical experience or knowledge. According to John Stephens, it "is a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge...

to history. Key postmodern thinkers include Lyotard, Foucault and Derrida.

Criticism

A criticism made of post-modern approaches to international relations is that they are too theoretical and not concerned with the real world.