Constructivism focuses on the social context in which international relations exist. Staff & Defence College, Norwegian Defence University College, Oslo, Norway, Norwegian Defence University College / Norwegian Military Academy, Oslo, Norway. Risse (2000) extended March and Olsens (1998) discussion of the relationship between the logics of consequences and appropriateness to a tripartite linking of three logics. For military studies scholars, his three cultures of anarchy help capture how conventional constructivism relates to military affairs and international security). Glanville, L. (2016). 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. For decades, the theory of International Relations was dominated by two approaches: realism and liberalism. 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). New York: Routledge. By the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, constructivists were engaging with both the small number of big important things that Waltz (1986:329, cited in Finnemore 1996:1) famously claimed for structural realism and the large number of big important things that other approaches ignored (Finnemore 1996:1). 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). (1999). Realist international relations theory and the military. John Dewey (1933/1998) is often cited as the philosophical founder of this approach. It is especially relevant and pertinent as a tool of criticism of widely held empirical and normative theories. Risse-Kappen, T. (1994). 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. In P. J. Katzenstein (Ed. Contrastingly, neorealist prescriptions of power see it as hard, material, military power (such as large military forces or superior weapons) and are concerned with its distribution in the international system. Holding social norms relatively constant in order to do this was deemed an acceptable trade-off. Treating norms as generic has been at the foundation of the recent shift towards the study of contestation. 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. Social theory of international politics. Journal of European Public Policy, 6(4), 669681. (2002). 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. Even though it was opposed by the USA, which did not want to subject its military forces to external war crime trials, it is an example of a constitutive norm (which creates new actors, interests and categories of action (Bjrkdahl 2002, pp. The shared understandings given to objects are referred to as inter-subjective meanings, which Adler explains as collective knowledge (1997). Likewise, culture plays a significant role in international security. In addition to considering how the two types of norm dynamics are related, the current norms literature brings traditional open questions in constructivism into sharp relief. (1996). This standpoint of Constructivism is contrary to the 'atomized' New York: Columbia University Press. 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. Although some debate exists over whether it is more of an approach rather than a theory (McCourt 2016, p. 476), its importance for international relations can be found in its emphasis on social relations between actors; how actors relate to each other shapes international politics. Yet, Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblances helps in understanding why an essence of constructivism need not be found. (2021). Constructing international relations: The next generation. The traditional theories (Idealism and Realism) had diverted all focus to state and Power. Erskine, T. (2012). e. In international relations, constructivism is a social theory that asserts that significant aspects of international relations are shaped by ideational factors. In A. M. Sookermany (Ed. Constructivists interested in norm change have recently begun reconceiving norm dynamics in a different way and have focused on contestation within communities of norm acceptors. In the 1980s and 1990s, efforts to wind back the proliferation of nuclear weapons which by this stage had reached staggering proportions, particularly in the USA and USSR prompted scientists and nuclear experts, civil society organizations, and other actors, to form what is called epistemic communities. (2016). (2016). Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto Scarborough, Establishing Constructivist Social Norms Research, Contestation from Within a Normative Community, Open Questions for the Current Norms Research, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.60, Inter-Organizational Relations: Five Theoretical Approaches, Challenges to Traditional International Relations Theory Posed by Environmental Change, The Practice Turn in International Relations Theory. Katzenstein, P. J. Mitzen, J. Rather than diminishing other major theories, according to its holders and proponents, constructivism theory provides wider illumination a larger explanation for determining the dynamic and the function of world politics. Like its revision of anarchy as an ordering principle in international relations, constructivism also changed perceptions about the relationship between agents and structures, brought attention to how ideas matter as much as material factors, and how identity, norms, and culture shape global relations. Hi!Welcome back to the King's College London International Relations Today Youtube channel. In addition, rather than taking the external norm as given, recent socialization studies examine compliance with international norms as a process by which states (already normatively constituted) interact with, manipulate, and (sometimes) incorporate external ideas in a dynamic fashion. New York: Columbia University Press. Neumann, I. 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 was it all about after all? Social norms were conceived as aspects of social structure that emerged from the actions and beliefs of actors in specific communities and in turn norms shaped those actions and beliefs by constituting actors identities and interests. - Checkel (1998) argues that "without more sustained attention . 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. And while the focus on norms is important, there is an overwhelming tendency to examine good norms theres often the assumption that norms are good or ethical without critically analyzing what makes them good and what they mean for international change (Erskine 2012; Kowert and Legro 1996). Introduction to International Relations Theory 100% (10) 63. Thucydides. 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. (Eds.). More recent constructivist norms scholarship has revisited this perspective on social norms, positing a different set of normative dynamics more focused on contestation over social norms. The norms (both established and potential) meaning, constitutive properties, and behavioral strictures remain unchanged throughout the analysis (Van Kersbergen and Verbeek 2007). Norm contestation during the US War on Terror. 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.. His (2000:2) logic of arguing is designed to clarify how actors develop a common knowledge and how norms and ideas can have a constitutive effect while retaining the reflection and choice Sending (2002:458) deems necessary for mutual constitution and change. How are self-understandings and identity constituted in the international realm? 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. There. ), Handbook of military sciences (pp. Social constructionism is not the norm. 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. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Foreign Policy, 134, 5059. Copy this link, or click below to email it to a friend. forthcoming). 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). In both cases, compliance with an international norm behaving in a way that matches the behavioral strictures of the norm is expressly theorized and variation in compliance is explained not by pitting constructivist and rationalist/materialist variables, but by examining processes by which domestic actors interpret and manipulate international and local norms. Constructivism considers these interactions as a sociological process in which its agents and structures are centered in a reciprocal constitution; a part of society can not be understood without the other ones. Contestation over variants of universal participation then had significant impact on the evolution of the universal participation norm and climate governance outcomes. These initial works laid the theoretical foundation for an approach to world politics that included the assumption that important aspects of politics are socially constructed, a commitment to mutual constitution as an answer to the agent-structure problem, a dedication to the importance of intersubjective reality in contrast to objective/subjective realities, and a focus on ideational and identity factors in analyses of world politics. 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). A further example of norm erosion can be seen in the norm against the use of torture. Koschut, S. (2014). As Tannenwald says, [e]ven as states pursue their interests, they do so within a normative structure (2017, p. 17). Both of these critiques run afoul of constructivist logic yet are legitimate given how norms were conceptualized in the initial wave of empirical constructivist work. 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. ), The culture of national security: Norms and identity in world politics (pp. B., & Heikka, H. (2005). Third, critical scholars argue that constructivism is deeply flawed because it is apolitical, does not adequately analyze categories such as norms, or simply resurrects rationalist ideas. Whether a state is democratic or autocratic, for example, does not seem to matter for neorealists such as Kenneth Waltz (see Realist International Relations Theory and The Military by Schmidt in this volume), because the anarchic structure is what is important for understanding state behavior. Some preexisting knowledge of speech act theory, constructivism, and securitization theory is useful before reading this chapter . Does R2P matter? [1] [3] 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. 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. Constructivists are often too fast and loose with the use of the term norm without a concomitant discussion of what the community of norm acceptors looks like and by what criteria we can identify a community of norm acceptors. Intersubjective facts like social norms only exist within a community of actors that accept them. Critical methodology and constructivism. Handbook of Military Sciences pp 116Cite as, 2 Mearsheimer, J. J., & Walt, S. M. (2003). Bibliographical References Adler, E. (1997). The superior military capabilities of the USA were a significant material advantage that should have compelled Iraq to avoid invasion. It has major implications for an understanding of knowledge, including scientific knowledge, and how to achieve it. 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. 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. Searle, J. R. (1995). The nuclear taboo: The United States and the normative basis of nuclear non-use. Violation of the Geneva Conventions constitutes a war crime. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. (2008a). Norms in international relations: Some conceptual and methodological reflections. Introduction by Finley, John H. New York: Random House. 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. A similar concern motivated Risse (2000) to draw on Habermass work with communicative action and propose a new behavioral logic that would inject agency and more purposive reflection into the process of social construction. Behavioral logics are concrete expressions of how mutual constitution works and what motivates actors to behave they way that they do. International Studies Review, 4(1), 4972. 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. The translation requires interpretation a subjective understanding of the intersubjective context to decide on a behavior. Schmidt, B. forthcoming). McCourt, D. (2016). 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. Identities are also constructed. It derives its name from the . In Searles book The Construction of Social Reality, he opens with a puzzle that concerned him for a long time: that there are portions of the real world, objective facts in the world, that are only facts by human agreementthings that exist only because we believe them to existlike money, property, government, and marriagesThese contrast with such facts as that Mount Everest has snow and ice near the summit or that hydrogen atoms have one electron, which are facts totally independent of any human opinions (1995, pp. Only those with equal power could make such demands, and the Athenians make good on their threat to destroy the Melians, declaring that might is right and the weak suffer what they must (Thucydides 1951, pp. 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. 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. Bjrkdahl, A. Two have become particularly prominent compliance with the strictures of social norms and change in norms themselves. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. (Wendts book is vital reading for all constructivist scholars and his ontological and epistemological position on constructivism is set out more fully here. This perspective states that the . Social Constructivism sees the whole discipline of International Relations as a social construction. 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. ), Handbook of military sciences (pp. Social constructivism emerged out of key debates in international relations theory in the 1980s concerned with agents and structures and has come to be seen as the fourth debate in international relations theorizing, which pitches constructivist against rationalist perspectives (Fierke and Jrgensen 2001, p. 3). 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. 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. PubMedGoogle Scholar. 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. From this perspective, the logic of appropriateness, as it was developed through engagement with the logic of consequences foil, allowed the socially constructed ideational/normative world to play a role by providing cues as to what behaviors were appropriate. Norm emergence studies were concerned with how ideas come to achieve normative status (e.g., Nadelmann 1990; Klotz 1995; Finnemore 1996; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) and why some ideas become norms and others do not (e.g., Cortell and Davis 1996, 2000; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Legro 2000; Payne 2001). Rasmussen, M. V. (2005). Having made the case that norms matter and having developed a number of theoretical frameworks to show how norms emerge, spread, and influence behavior, normsoriented constructivists have begun to turn their attention to a new set of questions. 451497). The simplification of social norm dynamics at the foundation of the initial wave of constructivist norms writing contributed to the meteoric rise of social constructivism within the international relations literature. The work of Cortell and Davis (2005) and Acharya (2004) are relevant examples of this type of compliance research. 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). Correspondence to Moreover, social constructivism emphasizes social relations in global politics, and sees security and international politics as determined by ideas as well as material factors. The first is endogenous contestation actors that accept a general norm and are constituted by it nevertheless have different understandings of it or operationalize its strictures differently, leading to disputes and change in the meaning of the norm from within. In addition, taking constructivist thought to its logical conclusion, there is no such thing as nonnormative behavior or pure material self-interest independent of a normative context. The Athenians demand that neutral Melos side with them against Sparta. 317356). Yet the logic of appropriateness appears to cede the ground of purposeful, goal-oriented behavior to rationalist perspectives (whether it actually cedes this ground is an additional, and crucial question). Haas, P. M. (2016). However, some scholars found the mode of action where actors consciously reason about what is appropriate to be a problematic foundation for constructivist thought. By Fizza Hameed Khan, Mahnoor Iqbal, Malaika Shahbaz, Sidra Noor, Raniya Ishtiaq. 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. Guzzini, S. (2005). Philosophy of military sciences. Theories of International Relations. What is the main argument of constructivism? Constructivist International Relations theorists tend to use concepts of socially constructed identities, ideas and norms to empirically and analytically examine . First, norms are relatively stable if they were not, it would be hard to justify or observe this analytic category. Within this Beginning with the assumption that actors reason about social norms means considering norms to be (at least somewhat) external to actors, part of their social context, but at least potentially manipulable by actors. Van Kersbergen and Verbeek (2007:221) go so far as to posit that this vagueness is actually designed into norms to facilitate maximum adherence. How militaries assess and interpret threat can be related to culture, intersubjective meanings, and social networks and understandings. 6061). While realists would argue that decision to go to war are based on rational state interests, constructivists would argue that the Geneva Convention represents the idea that war is a social and cultural practice and driven by moral considerations. A Social Constructivist Interpretation of the Liberal Argument," European Journal of International Relations 1 (December 1995)CrossRef Google Scholar. Pouliot and Adler draw on Bourdieu to develop a logic of practice and Hopf devised a logic of habit to reflect these concerns. In the other mode, actors actively consider their normative context in an attempt to reason about the best (appropriate) course of action actors reasoning about social norms. Constructivism can produce richer understandings of the very basic questions that construct military studies: enemy perceptions, how identity drives threat/amity/cooperation in international relations, how states and actors respond to threat and the meanings that certain types of warfare involve, the stories told about war and what it means to be secure. 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. (1992). 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. forthcoming). 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. 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. The Constructivist Approach to Explain National Identity . To be specific, I navigated core tenets of constructivism in terms of its ontology, epistemology, and methodology, respectively. Reviewing the complementary identity-oriented approaches is beyond the scope of this essay, but its neglect here in no way reflects the importance of this crucial aspect of constructivist theorizing (on identity see, e.g., Hall 1999; Hopf 2002). It is through human agreement that a piece of paper, metal, or even cryptocurrency is seen as a form of money, which is assigned a certain value (Searle 1995, pp. As Johnston (2001:494) clarifies, socialization is aimed at creating membership in a society where the intersubjective understandings of the society become taken for granted. These studies generally began from the perspective of a single, established norm and posited mechanisms (arguing, bargaining, persuading, and learning) for how the community of norm acceptors could be enlarged (Acharya 2004). At the same time, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) had successfully pushed for the UN to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2020. Fierke, K. M. (2001). The main empirical focus tended to be on either the development of a European polity (e.g., Checkel 2001) or on attempts at socializing Southern states into (relatively) universal international norms like human rights and sovereign statehood (Finnemore 1996; Risse et al. Of this approach conventional constructivism relates to military affairs and international security social constructivism international relations constitutes a crime... Acceptable trade-off back to the social constructivism international relations # x27 ; s College London international Relations was dominated by approaches... Of practice and Hopf devised a logic of practice and Hopf devised a logic of practice and Hopf a., Wittgenstein & # x27 ; New York: Random House and it is possible. 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