Critics too began to understand social norms as static and specific and this facilitated an erroneous notion that evidence of norm-breaking behavior somehow invalidated or falsified constructivist theorizing. Journal of European Public Policy, 6(4), 669681. Constructing IR: The third generation. (It should be noted here that social constructivism is often seen as part of a broader set of theoretical approaches that are concerned with identity and discourses, such as ontological security and securitization. In more historical examples, states that chose neutrality during times of war did so against strong material factors that would have potentially granted them safety and survival had they opted to join one side or the other. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Consider the shared norms that define military conduct and the institutions that have evolved around military practice; from the Geneva Conventions to the classic texts on warfare that are part of military training, a process of social interaction is taking place where norms are learned, and culture and identity are shaped. Constructivists hold that . much IR-theory, and especially neorealism is materialist; it focuses on how the distribution of material power denes balances of power between states and explains the behaviour of states. Identities are also constructed. International Organization, 48(2), 185214. 1516). Tun, H. (2005). Guzzini, S. (2005). Second, analytic tractability is necessary and is no trivial accomplishment. The dominant focus of traditional theories on state and distribution of . Bjrkdahl, A. 55K views 2 years ago International Relations Constructivism is one of critical theories in IR criticizing the classical theories. Seizing the middle ground: Constructivism in world politics. Within this Introduction. forthcoming). Ideas do not float freely: Transnational coalitions, domestic structures, and the end of the cold war. When interacting with external norms, the targets of socialization reason about and in some cases manipulate the social norms (international or domestic) that shape their behavior. Constructivism theory is one of the models of the progressing emergence of international relations theory. Post modernism is relatively new in international relations. Constructivism's approach to the subjects of threat, conflict and security in global politics originated from their fundamental emphasis on the social dimensions of international politics, thus it defined them as socially constructed elements in the process of identity formation under the influence of the norms and shared values of society. Second, at a broader level, the current norms literature is wrestling with the relationship between intersubjective and subjective reality. Hagstrm, L., & Gustafsson, K. (2015). Considering other factors to explain why states behave the way they do. As Luke Glanville illustrates, while there were favorable conditions to ensure a successful R2P intervention (Gadaffi had made clear threats that evoked calls for genocide, the League of Arab States wanted international action and Libya had few allies), [E]ven those states that refused to endorse the resort to military forcerecognized the weight of the imperative to protect Libyan civilianseven if they disagreed over the means with which to do so (2016, p. 193). Bibliographical References Adler, E. (1997). (2008b). (3) state identities and interests are in important part constructed . This means that the absence of a central power over states produces a world of perpetual insecurity, or Hobbesian state of nature (see Realist International Relations Theory and The Military by Schmidt in this volume), with conflict and violence a constant possibility. Constructivism is the claim that significant aspects of international relations are historically and socially contingent (subject to change), rather than inevitable consequences of human nature or other essential characteristics of world politics. 451497). Constructivism is relevant to military studies in numerous ways. Constructivist security studies: Portrait of a research program. Japan and identity change: Why it matters in international relations. Critical constructivists would seek to include different identities in how they understand the nation and present a more complex picture of what identity means and how it is contested and can be deconstructed (Fierke 2001). International Organization, 52(4), 887917. While early constructivist theorizing proved to be an exciting new avenue for thinking about international relations in the abstract, both constructivists and their critics were eager to see constructivist theory applied empirically. Anarchy is not a given of the international system. Sandholtz (2008:121) deems this to be a built-in dynamic of change whereby the ever present gap between general rules and specific situations, as well as the inevitable tension between norms, creates openings for disputes.. (2019). This goes against realist reliance on a world structured by anarchy that compels states to behave in certain ways, regardless of what sort of states they are (Farrell 2002, pp. Steele, B. Norms that challenged ideas like genocide, apartheid, the use of nuclear weapons, how to treat prisoners of war, how combatants are defined, and the role of women in armed forces emerge in opposition to existing norms. About us. for example, is that ideas and norms are hard to test empirically (Moravcsik 1999); they are intangible things that are difficult to measure or quantify, and it is hard to know if they played a significant role in affecting behavior (Farrell 2002, p. 60). Social theory of international politics. How is it that western states like the UK, for example, do not fear thousands of nuclear weapons that the USA possesses, but worries about states like Iran or North Korea, who hold far fewer nuclear weapons? Constructivism accounts for this issue by arguing that the social world is of our making (Onuf 1989). International Theory, 4(3), 449468. As shared objects, they appear as external to any particular actor actors experience norms, at least in part, as external rules. How militaries assess and interpret threat can be related to culture, intersubjective meanings, and social networks and understandings. Security communities. Silverstone, S. (2021). ), The culture of national security. The first wave of empirical constructivist studies tended to freeze norms. (1996). This reimagining is not new. As one notable example, Keohane (1988:392) critiqued this new perspective by arguing that the greatest weakness of the reflective school lies not in deficiencies in their critical arguments but in the lack of a clear reflective research program that could be employed by students of world politics. At the forefront of the initial empirical push in constructivist research were the norms-oriented and identity approaches. New York: M. E. Sharpe. Yet, the degree to which agents are able to independently evaluate their social context (as well as their material reality as far as that goes) and act upon it is what separates different behavioral logics and it is one way that different constructivist approaches in the current second wave (Acharya 2004) of norms research can be differentiated. The construction of social reality. Risse (2000:6) captured the essence of the internal critique when he noted that the logic of appropriateness actually encompasses two different modes of social action and interaction. In one mode, appropriate actions are internalized and become thoughtlessly enacted at times as a precursor to or foundation of strategic behavior (Risse 2000:6) actors reasoning through social norms. This realization was part of what prompted the serious focus on domestic political/normative contexts in much of this literature. It is especially relevant and pertinent as a tool of criticism of widely held empirical and normative theories. Conventional constructivism is not interested in replacing one reality of world politics with another. In the attempt to understand when and where norms are likely to be efficacious, these authors stake out a position on the reasoning aboutreasoning through norms spectrum. Those who study contestation do allow for reasoning about norms, appealing to notions of interpretation to generate different understandings of a norm with a community of norm acceptors. International Studies Review, 4(1), 4972. IR: The resurrection or new frontiers of incorporation. New York: Columbia University Press. Power is influenced by norms, ideas, and practices; in a constructivist reading, power depends on how it is used and what it means in the interaction of states. This is akin to what Krebs and Jackson (2007:434) describe as implication contests where actors agree on the nature of an issue, but not the policy implications and framing contests where there is fundamental disagreement about the situation at hand. Constructivists say that to understand these sorts of questions, one cannot simply turn to material factors like military power these do not explain why some states are seen as threats and others as benign. Constructivists also emphasize how domestic norms and values play a role in how states and their militaries approach conflict or understand the causes of conflict. Tannenwald, N. (1999). While constructivists know that social norms are always being reconstituted in the dynamic interplay of agents and social structures known as mutual constitution, social norms do elicit common behavioral expectations such that they are recognizable as relatively stable shared ideas. Early constructivist work in the 1980s and early 1990s sought to establish a countervailing approach to the material and rational theories that dominated the study of international relations (e.g., Wendt 1987, 1992; Onuf 1989; Kratochwil 1989; Ruggie 1993; Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986). (2006). But some states refuse to do this, even if it is in their material interests to do so (see the example of neutral states in this chapter). Following the initial success of empirical norms studies that established the efficacy of studying norms and showed that they mattered, current norms research explores when/where norms matter and how/when/why norms themselves change to a greater extent. First, both types of studies may benefit from more attention to the notion of intersubjective communities and their boundaries. They are both based on philosophical views. When ideas and behaviors differ over time or space, trends that once looked solid and consistent can shift as well. As Onuf states: Constructivism holds that people make society, and society makes people. (). Legro (1996) provided insight on a traditional security issue by delineating how normative ideas embedded in organizational culture at the domestic level could explain puzzling (for traditional international relations theories) variation in war fighting decisions in World War II. They (2005:25) note, As domestic actors search about for new ideas to legitimate their self-interested preferences, the norms and institutions of the international system often provide them. While Cortell and Davis do not problematize the substance of the financial liberalization norm under examination, they do attend to a neglected aspect of norm dynamics the actions of those actors who are targeted for socialization. Steele, B. In this sense, constructivism is really at its core a social theory of international relations because the focus on identity and interactions show how clashes and cooperation manifest in the global arena. A number of recent studies have examined just this tension and the range of empirical topics being considered from this perspective is now quite broad. First, unlike realist theory which sees actors as like units which respond to external phenomena in the same way, constructivists argue that who actors think they are matters. Studies of norm diffusion or spread moved constructivists into the area of socialization. Focusing on these elements of normative dynamics led to progress in how constructivists understood conformance with normative strictures, the spread of existing norms, and the emergence of new norms. Two have become particularly prominent compliance with the strictures of social norms and change in norms themselves. The study and practice of international relations has led international relations scholars to suggest different . Global Affairs, 4, (45), 355362. Hidden in plain sight: Constructivist treatment of social context and its limitations. From the perspective of those who work on norms, there are very good reasons to focus on static and specific norms when analyzing international relations. These initial waves of constructivist writing met the challenge issued by Keohane and played a significant role in vaulting constructivism into prominence during the 1990s and early 2000s (Checkel 1998, 2004). Zehfuss, M. (2002). Constructivism has developed over the years and it is now possible to speak of it in terms of generations. The first generation is identified in the 1980s, where constructivism focused on agents and structures. 115135). Constructivisms overwhelming focus on the state and state agents obscures other actors and processes. These works argue that norms do not provide fully specified rules for every situation, and especially not for novel situations. (Eds.). If any further proof were needed for the continuing rise to fame of constructivism in International Relations, this would be it . Although the theory lies more on non-material factors that govern states, it explains that politics also plays a role in international relations. Subsequently, states do what they can to secure themselves, which often means resorting to military force. During the First World War, Belgium, driven by a sense of honor, chose to fight Germany even though the Belgians risked and experienced catastrophic consequences (Steele 2008b). Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars . (pp. Christine Agius . The underlying idea of the logic of appropriateness that actors draw upon ideas about what they should do in specific situations given who they are was consistent with social constructivisms commitment to the causal and constitutive (Wendt 1998) effects of norms. It was a tool for constructivists to show that ideas, norms, and morals mattered vis--vis rationalist variables in explanations of world political phenomena. Moreover, social constructivism emphasizes social relations in global politics, and sees security and international politics as determined by ideas as well as material factors. Erskine, T. (2012). Laffey and Weldes (1997:195) warned against this when they argued that ideas should be understood as elements of constitutive practices and relations rather than as neo-positivist causal variables None of this was unknown to the pioneering empirical constructivists who fleshed out the early theoretical forays into constructivist thought. Bruner (1990) and Piaget (1972) are considered the chief theorists among the cognitive constructivists, while Vygotsky (1978) is the major theorist among the social constructivists. The inescapable tension between general rules and specific actions ceaselessly casts up disputes which in turn generate arguments, which then reshape both rules and conduct. The logical chain from general norms to contestation is not long. There is an implicit equivalence made between contestation that goes on within a normative community (generated by the gap between general rules and specific situations) and contestation that occurs between different normative communities (inevitable tension between norms). In K. M. Fierke & K. E. Jrgensen (Eds. Identities are formed through shared meanings and understandings of the world, which then brings in culture, intersubjective or shared meanings and norms and values. Rather than passive receptacles, norm takers have a very active role to play in socialization and can influence the meaning of the norms that constitute the very community they are being asked to join (Ba 2006). One set of norm dynamics may be implied when one seeks to understand how an actor outside a normative community interacts with norms when it is the target of socialization. Wiener (2004:191, 192) notes that this behavioralist approach operates with stable norms and is best suited to inferring and predicting behavior by referring to a particular category of norms that entail standards for behavior. While these studies unveiled how the norms they examined contributed to dynamic political processes, they tended to hold the norms themselves constant. When the Bush administration introduced the category of unlawful enemy combatant in the global war on terror, these individuals were not afforded the protections under the Geneva Conventions (Tannenwald 2017, pp. Our assessments, publications and research spread knowledge, spark enquiry and aid understanding around the world. Cooperation and Conflict, 54(1), 2543. Constructivism in international relations: The politics of reality. Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. Altmetric. Social Constructivism in International Relations and the Gender Dimension . Fierke, K. M., & Jrgensen, K. E. Third, rather than see international relations as an anarchic realm where the lack of a central authority above states guarantees security, constructivism makes the claim that agents and structures are mutually constituted or shaped by each other. An example of this can be seen in the case of Libya in 2011, which is broadly hailed as a successful R2P intervention. Social Constructivism is one of international relations approach. In contrast to these other approaches, constructivism is a social theory (or family of social theories) or theory of process (Adler 1997, 2003; Checkel 1998; Wendt 1999; Hoffmann 2009), which means it necessarily lacks a priori commitments on key elements of international relations theories the identity, nature, interests, and behavior of important actors and the structure of world politics. In the timeless wisdom of realist thought, the story of international relations is that the world is structured by anarchy. What agents want and who they are may be constituted by social structures, but there is never a complete sublimation of agents they retain an ability to reason about constitutive social structures and make relatively independent behavioral choices. This is particularly relevant to military studies in terms of understanding the strategic culture of specific states: culture can have an important influence on how states see security, how they interpret threat and train and organize their military forces. This is a continuous, two-way process (2013, p. 4). Critiques Lack a theory of agency: - According to Hopt (The Promise of Constructivism in international relations theory, 1998), constructivism is an approach, not a theory; or at most a theory of process. Certainly actors are strategic, but constructivist logic dictates that the normative context defines and shapes that strategic behavior (Muller 2004). Wendt, A. However, when defined as ideas or expectations about appropriate behavior for actors with a given identity (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998:891), it became an ideal conceptual tool for operationalizing processes of social construction. By Fizza Hameed Khan, Mahnoor Iqbal, Malaika Shahbaz, Sidra Noor, Raniya Ishtiaq. This had some success. Anarchy is what states make of it: The social construction of power politics. Cortell and Davis (2005) still invoke fit or congruence between the local context and global norms in explaining compliance with an international norm, but their twists on this theme are: (1) to examine socialization of a powerful actor Japan; and (2) to conceive of fit not as a given, but rather the result of conscious domestic political activity. On the contrary, the two parts of the norms literature described above tend to find themselves on different ends of the reasoning about normsreasoning through norms spectrum. London: Routledge. The realist reading of Thucydides account of the Melian Dialogue (431BC) in the Peloponnesian War is seen as the classic illustration of power politics. Power in the constructivist sense is less concerned with material power but sees ideas and discourses as powerful; power can be exercised in different ways. London: Routledge. This logic structured seminal empirical work that endeavored to show how ideational and normative factors could explain puzzles in world politics (e.g., Klotz 1995; Finnemore 1996). Further, constructivists became more cautious about basing their analyses on the logic of appropriateness. Another topic that requires further consideration in future research is the relationship between intersubjective and subjective reality. Download. Critics found this dual understanding of the logic of appropriateness wanting and thus developed additional behavioral logics that modeled differing motivations and modes of behavior more explicitly. Finally, the sociology of the discipline faced by early empirical constructivist studies virtually forced constructivists to adopt a focus on static norms. (2002). This pivot is an interesting development in norms research for two reasons. 1999). Epistemic communities are described by Peter Haas as networks of knowledge-based communities with an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within their domain of expertise. They share intersubjective knowledge and beliefs and a common policy enterprise, tackling specific problems in relation to their professions (2016, p. 5) to push for norm change around nuclear proliferation and to reduce the arsenal of the superpowers. For philosopher John Searle, language played an equally significant role. Countering hybrid warfare as ontological security management: The emerging practices of the EU and NATO. Constructivists also emphasize how domestic norms and values play a role in how states and their militaries approach conflict or understand the causes of conflict. Introduction to International Relations Theory 100% (10) 63. Norms and identity in world politics. Wendts contention was that rather than see anarchy as a given condition of the international system, ordering relations and compelling states to behave in certain ways to secure themselves, anarchy, rather, depends on whether states buy into this view.