Adopting a socio-cultural approach to the study of cold war historiography, this master?s degree essay is a comparative study of the two main disciplinary fields of cold war scholarship, diplomatic history and international relations theory (IR). The study applies the theory of scientific development formulated by Thomas Kuhn and the concept of paradigm on the field of cold war research.Diplomatic history and IR shows many similarities in their development, and in the importance different schools has had in scholarly debate. These different schools are analysed as paradigms, a concept that has been more willingly adopted within IR than in diplomatic history. The transition from what historian John Lewis Gaddis has termed Old Cold War History to New Cold War History is discussed in terms of paradigms and paradigm shift.