(2016). Post modernism // Refer political theory (section 1A) also. While neorealists argued that attacking Iraq was not in the national interests of the USA and that containment was more effective (Mearsheimer and Walt 2003), neoconservative hawks determined otherwise. Shannon (2000:294) makes a sophisticated argument along these lines, claiming that due to the fuzzy nature of norms and situations, and due to the imperfect interpretation of such norms by human agency, oftentimes norms are what states (meaning state leaders) make of them. Such an interpretation of constructivist thought moves him to make a familiar argument about the split between norm-based and interest-based behavioral impulses (Shannon 2000:298302; Van Kersbergen and Verbeek 2007). 134). Constructivism considers the relations between states (and other actors) as a social realm; less about the distribution of resources and power and more about the distribution of ideas. For neoconservatives, Saddam Hussein represented a threat because he was seen as an irrational actor that has been hostile toward the USA (Tun 2005). What does it derive its name from (it's fundamental proposition)? ), Handbook of military sciences (pp. Social Constructivism, especially after the 1980s, has become a common approach in dealing with and examining different issues in the field of humanities and social sciences. It will then consider some key criticisms of this approach and conclude with a short summary. For liberals, the belief that liberal ideas such as democracy and the free market are ideas to be shared to make the world a better place suggests a transfer of ideas rather than an exchange of ideas. It is especially relevant and pertinent as a tool of criticism of widely held empirical and normative theories. 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. Today's video is the third in our IR 101 series in which we discu. This social learning aspect differs from realisms prescriptive approach that says nations will follow the strongest militaries to develop their strength and technological prowess with the anarchic structure of the international system guiding this logic. (1999). In this sense, power is a social category. The nuclear taboo: The United States and the normative basis of nuclear non-use. Alexander Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics has been predicted to gain a status similar to that which Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics is thought to have enjoyed in the 1980s. Tannenwald, N. (2017). Neumann, I. If it was not, then the international order and what security means could be something completely different. (1996). The goal of most norms-oriented studies in the initial wave of empirical constructivist work was to explain something about how world politics functions. (2019), and Kessler and Steele (2016) for recent advanced debates.) (1999). Scholars such as Adler (2008), Pouliot (2008), and Hopf (2002) found this reflective aspect of the logic of appropriateness to allow for too much independence between agents and structures. Central to constructivism are concepts such as norms, institutions, and culture. While constructivists do not deny the importance of material factors, they also argue that ideas also matter, and in some cases, matter more. Baylis revision International Relations. 23) and recognized as a medium of exchange for goods and services. Assuming that actors reason through social norms means beginning analysis with the understanding that the very way that actors view and understand the world is shaped by social norms. Anarchy is not a given of the international system. 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. Mitzen, J. He argued: If behavior in the real social world can almost always be located in some of the intermediate spaces between the corners of the triangle, one single metatheoretical orientation will probably not capture it. Steele, B., Gould, H., & Kessler, O. 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. Norms and identity in world politics. The goal was to show how a target behavior can be accounted by considering the ideational context, how ideas and norms constitute interests, or how social norms influence actors understandings of the material world. The Constructivist Approach to Explain National Identity . Self-identity and the IR state. Constructivism is a theory of knowledge which argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning through world interactions and ideas. 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. 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. To conclude social constructivism believe that reality does not exist outside our consciousness, it only exists as 'intersubjective awareness' among people. Constructivism (International Relations) For decades, the international relations theory field was comprised largely of two more dominant approaches: the theory of realism, and liberalism/pluralism. The logic of arguing has inspired the development of significant empirical research (e.g., Muller 2004; Bjola 2005; Leiteritz 2005; Mitzen 2005) and it is the foundation for some approaches to reasoning about social norms (the logic of consequences is also implicated in approaches that consider that actors reason about norms). Social constructivism is well suited to address continuous changes in European integration. General norms must be operationalized or translated into specific actions for specific situations. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, You can also search for this author in Other articles where constructivism is discussed: international relations: Constructivism: In the late 20th century the study of international relations was increasingly influenced by constructivism. In K. M. Fierke & K. E. Jrgensen (Eds. The empirical studies in this area were diverse. All of this came about through processes of socialization and persuasion, where interested groups such as NGOs, epistemic communities, and other actors not only successfully changed the norm around the treatment of civilians and combatants in warfare but instigated this norm as part of identity, and how states define right behavior. 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. Journal of European Public Policy, 6(4), 669681. Sookermany, A. M. (2021). Throughout the chapter, reference will be made to constructivisms epistemological (how we know it), ontological (what we know), teleological (what is the purpose), and methodological (the tools we use to study) standing, where it is located in IR theorizing, and what it can mean for understanding military phenomena (see Philosophy of Military Science by Sookermany in this volume). Gheciu, A. Countering hybrid warfare as ontological security management: The emerging practices of the EU and NATO. 5. Norms and Social Constructivism in International Relations | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies Social norms were conceptualized as aspects of social structure that emerged from the actions and beliefs of actors in specific communities; norms shaped those actions and beliefs by constituting actors' identities and interests. What if behavior was due to factors other than norms or ideas? Social norms were considered, in many ways, the medium of mutual constitution. Norm contestation during the US War on Terror. (1999). Wendt, A. It is ideas, according to constructivists, that play a large role in determining how actors act. 317356). 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. Identity and culture can be problematic categories and distract from other factors that can explain international relations, such as capitalism or patriarchy (Kurki and Sinclair 2010). London: Routledge. This recent research speaks to and is driven by broader questions of conceptualizing the relationship between actors and norms whether actors reason through or about social norms. The ability to apprehend what is going on inside actors heads to understand motivations and interpretations is currently a matter for debate (Cederman and Daase 2003; Jackson 2004; Wendt 2004; Krebs and Jackson 2007) but, that debate notwithstanding, the notion that different actors within the same normative community i.e., a group structured by the same norm(s) could have different and contested understandings of that norm is at the foundation of the recent work on norm contestation. Constructivism in international relations: The politics of reality. (2001). Constructivism and the nature of international relations Constructivism efforts to give a better understanding of international relations by its method which is based on social theory. Constructivism had been marginalized by these mainstream theories because it focused on social construction instead of material construction (Barkin, 2017). The Pacific Review, 28(1), 122. Some constructivists stress reflection and consider that agents are able to reason about the various pulls on their possible behavior (either solely normative/ideational pulls or those in addition to material/strategic pulls). International Politics, 53(2), 176197. 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. 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. 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. Anarchy is what states make of it: The social construction of power politics. 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. Not all states respond to external phenomena in the same way, which invokes a need to consider how domestic and cultural factors shape the identity and interests of actors. 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. But NATO transformed itself into something more than a military alliance. Constructivism sees power in terms of what it does and means (Guzzini 2005); ideas have power (e.g., that democracies are good). Germany and Japan, for example, had antimilitaristic strategic cultures after the Second World War which impacted their military engagement and organization (Berger 1996; Hagstrm and Gustafsson 2015). 115135). 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. Constructivists hold that . After making the case that norms matter and developing a number of theoretical frameworks to show how norms emerge, spread, and influence behavior, norms-oriented constructivists have shifted their attention to a new set of questions, and in particular compliance with the strictures of social norms and change in norms themselves. Moreover, for some, constructivism is problematic because it is seen as apolitical and its efforts to form a via media with rationalism bring the state back in (Weber 1999; Zehfuss 2002). In discursive terms, language can convey meaning and associations, and define what is considered within and outside the norms (see Poststructuralism in International Relations: Discourse and the Military by Baumann in this volume). 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. For military studies scholars, his three cultures of anarchy help capture how conventional constructivism relates to military affairs and international security). 331336). Finally, the sociology of the discipline faced by early empirical constructivist studies virtually forced constructivists to adopt a focus on static norms. In A. M. Sookermany (Ed. Constructivism is the new approach to International Relations. Constructivism is a structural theory of the international system that makes the following core claims: (1) states are the principal units of analysis for international political theory; (2) the key structures in the states system are intersubjective rather than material; and. Norm shift around the idea of sovereignty can be seen in the pillars of R2P that say that if a state cannot or will not stop human rights abuses within its own territory, other states have a compelling reason to intervene. 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. A notable example that Searle uses to explain this is money. Special issue. (2005). Allowing the meaning of social norms to vary in the course of analysis can quickly devolve into an expository morass. 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. A key illustration here is the norm of human rights, which is widely accepted by actors (Katzenstein 1996). (1) Normative behavior how an extant norm influences behavior within a community. Conventional constructivists like Wendt see similarities between constructivism and rationalist perspectives and methodologies. (2017). In addition, norms-oriented research and the constructivist literature writ large has begun to concern itself more with research questions that fall out from constructivist thought independently without as much reference to competing approaches (Checkel 2004). Intersubjective facts like social norms only exist within a community of actors that accept them. Part of Springer Nature. This suggests that there is something beyond the timeless wisdom of realism that offers only a tragic view of world politics that will never change. - Checkel (1998) argues that "without more sustained attention . Constructivism can explain how identity shapes interaction in the international realm for instance the assumption that when states regard each other as liberal democracies they are less likely to go to war with each other. 124). This aspect of the literature is more focused on how actors understand the norms that constitute them and alternatively consider how actors that reason through norms can contest and reconstruct the norms that bind communities together. New York: Routledge. This analytic move facilitated conversation and competition with rational/material theoretical competitors. (1996). It then turns to a discussion of two directions currently being explored in social norms research and the open questions that remain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. FBI says Saddams weapons bluff aimed at Iran. Constructivism in international relations: The politics of reality. This realization was part of what prompted the serious focus on domestic political/normative contexts in much of this literature. forthcoming). The belief that reality is socially constructed leads constructivists to place a greater role on norm development, identity, and ideational power than the other major theoretical paradigms. Cooperation and Conflict, 40, 1. (2021). For neorealists, who take a structural explanation of international relations and argue that anarchy shapes world politics, states are like units distinguished only by their distribution of power and capabilities states were primed to behave the same way because the anarchic structure instructs them so. Critical constructivists prefer to examine state identity in terms of its wider story (Fierke and Jrgensen 2001). 1516). Practice theory and relationalism as the new constructivism. We dont do that: A constructivist perspective on the use and non-use of private military contractors by Denmark. (2016). Prominent in this part of the literature was Finnemore and Sikkinks (1998) development of the norm life cycle whereby normative entrepreneurs (see also Nadelmann 1990) work to persuade states of the appropriateness of a new norm and serve as a catalyst for a cascade of new normative understandings. forthcoming). This was a vastly different kind of theorizing than was current in the mainstream of international relations that was locked in the neorealist/neoliberal debate (e.g., Krasner 1983; Keohane 1984, 1986; Baldwin 1990; Grieco 1990). Social Constructivism sees the whole discipline of International Relations as a social construction. Other scholars deemed the logic of appropriateness (as well as the logics of consequences and arguing) to be too agentic to fit well with constructivist tenets. (2) Socialization how an extant norm or a nascent norm from one community diffuses and is internalized by actors outside that community. PubMedGoogle Scholar. While states may choose to participate in war or not for strategic or material reasons, it is often ideational justifications (i.e., related to justice, values or existential threat) that provide the compelling argument for or against war. Moreover, social constructivism emphasizes social relations in global politics, and sees security and international politics as determined by ideas as well as material factors. International Organization, 48(2), 185214. Perhaps this is simply a matter of what questions are being asked. The Athenians demand that neutral Melos side with them against Sparta. This also goes to the foundation of questions of the causes of war. This chapter will explore what constructivism is, and its underlying claims and key influences, while comparing its core tenets to theories such as realism (see Realist International Relations Theory and The Military by Schmidt in this volume) and liberalism (see Liberal International Relations Theory and The Military by Silverstone in this volume). The concept of power: A constructivist analysis. Discourse has power because language can shape how we view phenomena simple acts such as defining a conflict as one of terrorism, for example, then calls into effect a range of policy options associated with countering terrorism. 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. Cooperation and Conflict, 40(1), 523. 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. In P. J. Katzenstein (Ed. European Review of International Studies, 3(3), 713. Despite their position of material weakness, the Melians argued that freedom and justice are more important. (). Instead of calculating what is best for improving its utility, an actor motivated by the logic of appropriateness will instead reason what actors like me should do. Yet Saddam did not want to appear weak to enemies such as Iran (Allen 2009). The current literature on compliance with social norms has taken a question that motivated the socialization studies of the 1990s Why do some transnational ideas and norms find greater acceptance in a particular locale than in others? (Acharya 2004:240) in new directions. Prominent in the initial empirical norms research in this vein were studies that examined how given norms in a particular community diffused to actors outside the community (e.g., Risse-Kappen 1994; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999; Checkel 2001; Johnston 2001). Norms in international relations: Some conceptual and methodological reflections. The rest of this section explores this distinction in greater detail, discussing the behavioral logics at the foundation of the about/through spectrum before examining the recent compliance and contestation literatures that are developing new ideas about norm dynamics. Sending goes so far as to claim that the logic of appropriateness is incompatible with constructivist thought because it violates the tenets of mutual constitution and does not allow for change he contends (2002:458) that in the logic of appropriateness, social structure has objective authority over actors, not allowing for the kind of reflection necessary for mutual constitution and change. The nuclear taboo is another example of a regulative norm (prescribing non-use), but it was also a constitutive norm (associating the taboo with the idea that civilized nations would not resort to using nuclear weapons) (Tannenwald 1999). For March and Olsen, the logic of consequences where agents undertake actions on the basis of rationally calculating the optimal (usually materially) course of action remained an insufficient foundation for theorizing behavior in international relations. These criticisms are predominantly about where constructivism claims to fit in IR (as the middle ground between rationalist and reflectivist approaches) and its methodological commitments. Actors can see and interpret the world and approach it differently therefore, anarchy is what states make of it. For Wendt, different cultures of anarchy were possible, which meant that the neorealist idea of a self-help system was limited to just a Hobbesian version that depended on military power for security. 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. The compliance literature is most often concerned with the actions of actors (Japan in the Cortell and Davis piece or the Southeast Asian nations in Acharyas work) who have yet to accept or internalize international norms (financial liberalization and cooperative security/humanitarian intervention). Steele, B. Captured by Alexander Wendts now-famous maxim anarchy is what states make of it, social constructivism is the idea that the world out there is not given, as realists would argue, but rather, socially constructed. In doing so, social constructivism places a focus on the importance of mutual constitution: international politics is shaped by both structures, such as anarchy, or agents, such as states and other actors. Whereas Morgenthaus classical realism described interests in terms of power as a truism of international relations, in empirical terms, power might not be a driver for states interests and actions. Norms are born anew every day as actors instantiate them through their beliefs and actions and, as Sandholtz (2008:101) notes, normative structures, in other words, cannot stand still.. Where liberals would declare that the west won, proving capitalism and democracy were the only workable ways to organize societies, in a constructivist reading, the end of the Cold War was largely down to the changes that were taking place in the former Soviet Union under Gorbachev (Risse-Kappen 1994). Interpreting the impact of a norm. They do not simply replace bad norms but become established through what Finnemore and Sikkink (1998) call a norm cycle where new ideas and shared understandings emerge, become instituted and normalized. 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. About us. How are self-understandings and identity constituted in the international realm? In the last decade the development of constructivist thought and empirical research has been occurring more on terms defined by constructivism itself (Checkel 2004). Berger, T. U. In A. M. Sookermany (Ed. The logic of anarchy is but one way in which it is possible to imagine how the international system works. Norms are shared beliefs, knowledge, and practice about the world in this sense, they are intersubjective, meaning a norm can be understood and shared amongst actors. Psychology and Constructivism in International Relations: An Ideational Alliance. Acharya (2004) goes further in that he allows for the substance of international norms to be molded to fit local contexts localization. After all, these were Cold War institutions whose purpose was now over with the end of superpower politics. Quintessentially, Finnemore and Sikkink (1998:914) noted the highly contingent and contested nature of normative change and normative influence in their examination of the norm life cycle. At the other end of the spectrum are constructivists who argue that agents reason through social structures. The construction of social reality. Download. Just as liberalism was a response to realism, economic structuralism is a response to liberalism. Constructivist thought makes it clear that social norms do not exist independently of communities of actors that believe in and enact them. Constructivism theory is one of the models of the progressing emergence of international relations theory. Cham: Springer. In the context of the global war on terror, US efforts to extract intelligence from suspected terrorists led to the use of enhanced interrogation techniques which was widely seen to have abrogated or contested the global prohibition on the use of torture (Steele 2008a; see also Birdsall (2016) who argues that it worked to strengthen the anti-torture norm). Manchester: Manchester University Press. In other words, they worry that mutual constitution implies that actors have a difficult time stepping outside the bounds of their social/normative context to decide what is right to do. Those facts that rely on human agreement (institutional facts) differ from brute facts (like mountains, for example), which do not need human institutions for their existence. 1. Clearly this is a continuum because if agents were truly independent from or entirely dependent upon social structures, we would not be talking about constructivism. 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