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Have the major international relations paradigms declined as much as has been asserted? Some scholars view paradigmatic theory and theory in general as on the decline as hypothesis-testing now apparently dominates published research. Such scholars argue that professionalization provides disincentives to theorize. This article demonstrates that these arguments are based on perceptions rather than on the data, on speculation about what professionalization incentivizes and how that influences research production. This article examines several datasets to consider these assertions. The article addresses what is being published, how scholars see themselves and the field, and what is being cited. Because scholars are publishing more articles compared to in the 1980s, the changes that some scholars have observed about the decline of certain approaches and the rise of others are relative and not …