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CHAPTER 7 Social Constructivism 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Introduction 192 The Rise of Constructivism in IR 193 Constructivism as Social Theory 195 Constructivist Theories of International Relations 201 7.4.1 Cultures of Anarchy 202 7.4.2 Norms of International Society 203 7.4.3 The Power of International O...

CHAPTER 7 Social Constructivism 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Introduction 192 The Rise of Constructivism in IR 193 Constructivism as Social Theory 195 Constructivist Theories of International Relations 201 7.4.1 Cultures of Anarchy 202 7.4.2 Norms of International Society 203 7.4.3 The Power of International Organizations 205 7.4.4 A Constructivist Approach to European Cooperation 207 7.4.5 7.5 7.6 7.7 Domestic Formation of Identity and Norms 7.4.6 Constructivist IPE Critiques of Constructivism The Internal Debates among Constructivists Integrating International and Domestic Factors KEY POINTS QUESTIONS GUIDE TO FURTHER READING 208 210 211 214 216 217 218 218 Summary This chapter introduces the social constructivist theory of IR. We first clarify where constructivism comes from and why it has established itself as an important approach in IR. Constructivism is examined as both a meta-theory about the nature of the social world and a set of substantive theories of IR. Several examples of constructivist IR theory are presented, followed by reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of the approach, including the way these theories have emphasized international-level and domestic-level factors. 192 MAJOR IR THEORIES AND APPROACHES 7.1 Introduction The focus of social constructivism (in shorthand: constructivism) is on human awareness or consciousness and its place in world affairs. Much IR theory, and especially neorealism, is materialist; it focuses on how the distribution of material power, such as military forces and economic capabilities, defines balances of power between states and explains the behaviour of states. Constructivists reject such a one-sided material focus. They argue that the most important aspect of international relations is social, not material. Consequently, the study of international relations must focus on the ideas and beliefs that inform the actors on the international scene, as well as the shared understandings between them. The international system exists only as an intersubjective awareness, or a common understanding, among people; in that sense the system is constituted by ideas, not by material forces. It is a human invention or creation not of a physical or material kind but of a purely intellectual and ideational kind. It is a set of ideas, a body of thought, a system of norms, which has been arranged by certain people at a particular time and place. Examining this kind of international system requires a humanistic emphasis on understanding rather than a natural science emphasis on material factors (Onuf 2018; see Box 7.1). Some constructivists go one step further and argue that this social reality is not object ive, or external, to the observer of international affairs. The social and political world, including the world of international relations, is not a physical entity or material object that is outside human consciousness. It follows that the international system is not something ‘out there’ like the solar system. It does not exist on its own. We will get back to the distinction between a more moderate (or conventional) and a more radical (or critical) version of constructivism (see Figure 7.1). Suffice here to say that both camps agree that if the thoughts and ideas that enter into the existence of international relations change, then the system itself will also change, because the system consists of thoughts and ideas. That is the insight behind the oft-quoted phrase by constructivist Alexander Wendt: ‘anarchy is what states make of it’ (1992: 394; see also Onuf 2018). The claim sounds innocent, but the potential consequences are farreaching: suddenly the world of IR becomes less fixated on an age-old structure of BOX 7.1 Key Quotes: Defining constructivism Constructivism is an approach to social analysis that (a) emphasizes ideational factors, and not just material ones, in explaining social action and interactions; (b) asserts that the most relevant ideational factors are shared, ‘intersubjective beliefs’ not reducible to particular individuals, and (c) contends that such ideational factors construct the interests and identities of actors. Bertucci, Hayes, and James (2018: 3) SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM anarchy; change becomes possible in a big way because people and states can start thinking about each other in new ways and thus create new norms that may be radically different from the old ones. This chapter introduces the constructivist theory of IR. We first clarify where constructivism comes from and why it has established itself as an important approach in IR over a short period of time. The nature of constructivist theory is examined: is it a meta-theory about the nature of the social world or is it a substantive theory of IR, or is it both? That leads to a brief presentation of the constructivist contributions to IR theory and some reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of the approach. 7.2 The Rise of Constructivism in IR Beginning in the 1980s, constructivism has become an increasingly significant approach, especially in North American IR. During the Cold War there was a clear pattern of power balancing between two blocs, led by the United States and the Soviet Union respectively. After the end of the Cold War and following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the situation turned much more fluid and open. This spectacular reconfiguration of an international system that had seemed very stable gave scholars of IR a renewed interest in the role of human agency, or how the world is constantly remade via human intervention. It soon became obvious that the parsimonious and structuralist neorealist theory was not at all clear about future developments of the balance of power. Neorealist logic dictates that other states will equate with the US because offsetting US power is a means of guaranteeing one’s own security; such equalizing will lead to the emergence of new great powers in a multipolar system. Waltz (2002) argued that it will eventually happen ‘tomorrow’—a prediction that is now two decades old. Another neorealist, John Mearsheimer, argues that the current rise of China and the resurgence of Russia lay the foundation for a multipolar order (Mearsheimer 2019). Other questions came up in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. For instance, it was unclear, based on the material distribution of power, how the US would tackle its unipolar moment. Would it feel free to act unilaterally, would it opt for multilateralism via international institutions, or would it fail to lead at all? The constructivist claim is that the neorealist failure to understand the balance of power outcomes and the dynamics after the Cold War is closely connected to the fact that the theory is overly sparse and materialist. Constructivists argue that a focus on thoughts and ideas leads to a better theory about anarchy and power balancing, and most importantly a better ability to explain changes in world politics such as those sparked by the breakdown of the Soviet Union. For instance, constructivists point to how ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) principles have made headway at the expense of older principles of non-intervention since the 1990s (see Chapter 5), a development that is difficult to understand from a perspective solely emphasizing materialist factors of power balancing. Some liberals (see Chapter 4) have basically accepted neorealist assumptions as a starting point for analysis; they are, of course, vulnerable to much of the critique directed against neorealism by constructivists. Other liberals began to focus more on the role 193 194 MAJOR IR THEORIES AND APPROACHES of ideas after the Cold War ended. When Francis Fukuyama (1989) proclaimed ‘the end of history’, he was endorsing the role of ideas and especially the progress of liberal ideas in the world. But he and other liberals are mostly interested in the concrete advance of liberal, democratic government in the world. Even if constructivists are sympathetic to several elements of liberal thinking (see e.g., Wendt 1992), their focus is less on the advance of liberal ideas; it is on the role of thinking and ideas in general. Some constructivists are strongly critical of what they call ‘liberal-idealism’ (Steele 2007). So, the historical context (i.e., the end of the Cold War) and the theoretical discussion between IR scholars (especially among neorealists and liberals) helped set the stage for the constructivist approach, especially in North America where the neorealist/neoliberal approaches dominated. In Europe, the International Society approach (see Chapter 5) had anticipated the constructivist emphasis on the role of ideas and the importance of social interaction between states. In that sense, there was less intellectual space in Europe for constructivists to fill out. Alexander Wendt’s criticism of the International Society tradition for failing to systematically theorize how social interactions change identities and interests should probably be seen as a reluctant recognition of this fact (see Chapter 5). At the same time, constructivists were inspired by theoretical developments in other social science disciplines, including philosophy and sociology. In sociology, Anthony Giddens (1984) proposed the concept of structuration as a way of analysing the relationship between structures and actors. According to Giddens, structures (i.e., the rules and conditions that guide social action) do not determine what actors do in any mechanical way; an impression one might get from the neorealist view of how the structure of anarchy constrains state actors. The relationship between structures and actors involves intersubjective understanding and meaning. Structures constrain actors, but actors can also transform structures by thinking about them and acting on them in new ways. For example, the development of chemical weapons (in the First World War) and nuclear weapons (in the Second World War) changed the material structures of warfare and international politics; but international actors have subsequently developed what constructivists see as a veritable ‘taboo’ on the use of these weapons, thereby altering the structural constraints they face (Tannenwald 1999; see Chapter 12). The notion of structuration, therefore, leads to a less rigid and more dynamic view of the relationship between structure and actors. IR constructivists, such as Alexander Wendt, used this as a starting point for suggesting a less rigid view of anarchy. We have noted some recent historical and theoretical developments that help explain the rise of social constructivism in IR. But constructivism is not an entirely new approach. It also grows out of an old methodology that can be traced back at least to the eighteenth-century writings of the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico (Pompa 1982) and the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (Hacking 1999: 41; Onuf 2018). According to Vico, the natural world is made by God, but men and women make their own history and even states or state-systems are therefore artificial creations (Pompa 1982: 26). Immanuel Kant argued that we can obtain knowledge about the world, but it will always be subjective knowledge in the sense that it is filtered through human consciousness. Max Weber emphasized that the social world (i.e., the world of human interaction) is fundamentally different from the natural world of physical phenomena. Human beings SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM rely on ‘understanding’ of each other’s actions and assigning ‘meaning’ to them. In order to comprehend human interaction, we cannot merely describe it in the way we describe a physical phenomenon, such as a boulder falling off a cliff; we need a different kind of interpretive understanding, or verstehen (Morrison 1995: 273–82). Is patting another person’s face a punishment or a caress? We cannot know until we assign meaning to the act. Weber concluded that ‘subjective understanding is the specific characteristic of sociological knowledge’ (1977: 15). Constructivists rely on such insights to emphasize the importance of ‘meaning’ and ‘understanding’ (Fierke and Jørgensen 2001). March and Olson’s (1989) distinction between a rationalist ‘logic of consequences’ and a sociological ‘logic of appropriateness’ has also been important in the development of constructivism (Fierke 2010: 181). Actors guided by a logic of consequences have clear preferences and calculate the expected payoff of their actions, choosing those that maximize returns. According to the logic of appropriateness, actors instead take their cue from norms and choose the actions that are seen as appropriate given the specific situation. Martha Finnemore, whose work we review later in this chapter, takes as a starting point that ‘a constructivist logic of appropriateness is just as plausible a predictor of human and state behavior as the rationalists’ logic of consequences’ (Checkel 1998: 330; see also Katzenstein 1996a: 4). 7.3 Constructivism as Social Theory We can distinguish between theories placed at different levels of abstraction. Social theory is a more general theory about the social world, about social action, and about the relationship between structures and actors. Such theory is relevant for the entire field of social science. Substantive IR theory, by contrast, is theory about some aspect of international relations. Constructivism is a social theory but there are also a number of substantive constructivist theories of IR; this section is about constructivism as a social theory; section 7.4 is about constructivist theories of IR. As Barnett (2020) points out, constructivism can be compared to rational choice theory, which is a broad social theory about how people act, given certain preferences and certain constraints. In social theory, constructivists emphasize the social construction of reality. The social world is a world of human consciousness: of thoughts and beliefs, of ideas and concepts, of languages and discourses, of signs, signals, and understandings among human beings, especially groups of human beings, such as states and nations. This is the philosophically idealist element of constructivism which contrasts with the materialist philosophy of much social science positivism (see Chapter 8). The social world is in part constructed of physical entities; note that the quote by Wendt mentions ‘material resources’ among those elements that constitute social structures (see Box 7.2). In that sense, materialism is a part of constructivism. But it is the ideas and beliefs concerning those entities that are most important—what those entities signify in the minds of people. The international system of security and defence, for example, consists of territories, populations, weapons, and other physical assets. But it is the ideas and understandings according to which those assets are conceived, organized, and used—e.g., in alliances, armed forces, and so on—that are most important. 195 196 MAJOR IR THEORIES AND APPROACHES BOX 7.2 Key Concepts: Wendt’s constructivist conception of social structures Social structures have three elements: shared knowledge, material resources, and practices. First, social structures are defined, in part, by shared understandings, expectations, or knowledge. These constitute the actors in a situation and the nature of their relationships, whether cooperative or conflictual. A security dilemma, for example, is a social structure composed of intersubjective understandings in which states are so distrustful that they make worst-case assumptions about each other’s intentions, and as a result define their interests in self-help terms. A security community is a different social structure, one composed of shared knowledge in which states trust one another to resolve disputes without war. This dependence of social structure on ideas is the sense in which constructivism has an idealist (or ‘idea-ist’) view of structure. Wendt (1995: 73) The physical element is there. But that element is secondary to the intellectual element which infuses it with meaning, plans it, organizes it, and guides it. The thought that is involved in international security is more important, far more important, than the physical assets that are involved, because those assets have no meaning without the intellectual component; they are mere things in themselves. Wendt illustrates the constructivist view with the following statement: ‘500 British nuclear weapons are less threatening to the United States than 5 North Korean nuclear weapons’ because ‘the British are friends and the North Koreans are not’ (Wendt 1995: 73). Therefore, it is less the material fact of numbers of nuclear warheads that matter; what matters is how the actors think about each other; i.e., their ideas and beliefs. Mater ial facts enter the picture but are secondary to ideas. Therefore, it is helpful to emphasize the contrast between a materialist view held by neorealists and neoliberals and the ideational view held by constructivists. According to the materialist view, power and national interest are the driving forces in international politics (Wendt 1999: 92). Power and interest are seen as ‘material’ factors; they are objective entities in the sense that, because of anarchy, states are compelled to be preoccupied with power and interest. In this view, ideas matter little; they can be used to rationalize actions dictated by material interest. Constructivists do not have a problem with the notion that states pursue their interests. But they argue that these interests have been socially constructed in the first place (Hurd 2008: 310). In the ideational view held by social constructivists, ideas always matter. ‘The starting premise is that the material world is indeterminate and is interpreted within a larger context of meaning. Ideas thus define the meaning of material power’ (Tannenwald 2005: 19). This constructivist view of ideas is emphasized by Wendt in Box 7.3. The core ideational element upon which constructivists focus is intersubjective beliefs (and ideas, conceptions, and assumptions) that are widely shared among people. Ideas must be widely shared to matter; nonetheless, they can be held by different groups, such SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM BOX 7.3 Key Arguments: The social constructivist view of ideas The claim is not that ideas are more important than power and interest, or that they are autonomous from power and interest. The claim is rather that power and interest have the effects they do in virtue of the ideas that make them up. Power and interest explanations presuppose ideas, and to that extent are not rivals to ideational explanations at all . . . Let me [propose] a rule of thumb for idealists: when confronted by ostensibly ‘material’ explanations, always inquire into the discursive conditions which make them work. When Neorealists offer multipolarity as an explanation for war, inquire into the discursive conditions that constitute the poles as enemies rather than friends. When Liberals offer economic interdependence as an explanation for peace, inquire into the discursive conditions that constitute states with identities that care about free trade and economic growth. When Marxists offer capitalism as an explanation for state forms, inquire into the discursive conditions that constitute capitalist relations of production. And so on. Wendt (1999: 135–6) as organizations, policy-makers, social groups, or society. ‘Ideas are mental constructs held by individuals, sets of distinctive beliefs, principles and attitudes that provide broad orientations for behaviour and policy’ (Tannenwald 2005: 15). There are many different kinds of ideas. Nina Tannenwald identifies four major types: ‘ideologies or shared belief systems, normative beliefs, cause–effect beliefs and policy prescriptions’ (2005: 15); they are described in Box 7.4. Constructivism is an empirical approach to the study of international relations— empirical in that it focuses on the intersubjective ideas that define international relations. If the social and political world consists, at base, of shared beliefs, how does that affect the way we should account for important international events and episodes? Constructivists, as a rule, cannot subscribe to mechanical positivist conceptions of causality. That is because the positivists do not probe the intersubjective content of events and episodes. For example, the well-known billiard ball image of international relations is rejected by constructivists because it fails to reveal the thoughts, ideas, and beliefs of the actors involved in international conflicts. Constructivists want to probe the inside of the billiard balls to arrive at a deeper understanding of such conflicts. The constructivist approach argues that a further development of basic concepts is needed in order to allow for the full analysis of ideas and meaning. A study by Barnett and Duvall of power in global governance provides an example of this. The authors note that their subject: requires a consideration of different forms of power in international politics. Power is the production, in and through social relations, of effects that shape the capacities of actors to determine their own circumstances and fate. But power does not have a single expression or form. It has several. (Barnett and Duvall 2005: 3) 197 198 MAJOR IR THEORIES AND APPROACHES BOX 7.4 Key Concepts: Four types of ideas Ideologies or shared belief systems are a systematic set of doctrines or beliefs that reflect the social needs and aspirations of a group, class, culture, or state. Examples include the Protestant ethic or political ideologies such as liberalism, Marxism, and fascism. Normative (or principled) beliefs are beliefs about right and wrong. They consist of values and attitudes that specify criteria for distinguishing right from wrong or just from unjust and they imply associated standards of behaviour, [for example] the role of human rights norms at the end of the Cold War. Causal beliefs are beliefs about cause-effect, or means-end relationships. They . . . provide guidelines or strategies for individuals on how to achieve their objectives . . . [for example,] Soviet leaders’ changing beliefs about the efficacy (or more precisely nonefficacy) of the use of force influenced their decision in 1989 not to use force to keep Eastern Europe under Soviet control. Finally, policy prescriptions are the specific programmatic ideas that facilitate policymaking by specifying how to solve particular policy problems. They are at the centre of policy debates and are associated with specific strategies and policy programs. Tannenwald (2005: 15–16) The authors go on to identify four different forms of power; they are presented in Box 7.5. The claim is that a full consideration of power in international relations needs to address all four dimensions. Constructivists generally agree with Max Weber that they need to employ interpretive understanding (verstehen) in order to analyse social action (Ruggie 1998). But they are not in agreement about the extent to which it is possible to emulate the scientific ideas of the natural sciences and produce scientific explanations based on hypotheses, data collection, and generalization (Bertucci, Hayes, and James 2018). We need to take note of a general division between a more conventional and a more critical camp within constructivism. As mentioned above, all constructivists agree that the social world is constructed by ideas. This is an ontological point, that is, it concerns what the social world is made of. However, the more moderate or mainstream constructivists combine this with a standard scientific epistemology. They accept that the world, socially constructed as it is, can be analysed in an objective way using standard scientific methods (Fierke 2010: 183–4; see Jørgensen 2010; Jackson 2016) (see Box 7.6). This body of scholarship has been called ‘conventional’ constructivism (Hopf 1998) and it is represented by such scholars as Peter Katzenstein (1996a); Christian ReusSmit (1997); Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (1998); John Ruggie (1998); Alexander Wendt (1999); Ted Hopf (2002); Martha Finnemore (2003); Alistair Johnston (2014); and Samuel Barkin (2010). Checkel (1998) captures this mainstream constructivism when he notes that ‘constructivists have rescued the exploration of identity from postmodernists’ (325) because constructivists ‘do not reject science or causal explanation; their quarrel with mainstream SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM BOX 7.5 Key Concepts: The concept of power in constructivist analysis Power does not have a single expression or form. It has several. In this volume we identify four. Compulsory power refers to relations of interaction that allow one actor to have direct control over another. It operates, for example, when one state threatens another and says, ‘change your policies, or else’. Institutional power is in effect when actors exercise indirect control over others, such as when states design international institutions in ways that work to their long-term advantage and to the disadvantage of others. Structural power concerns the constitution of social capacities and interests of actors in direct relation to one another. One expression of this form of power is the workings of the capitalist world-economy in producing social positions of capital and labour with their respective differential abilities to alter their circumstances and fortunes. Productive power is the socially diffuse production of subjectivity in systems of meaning and signification. A particular meaning of development, for instance, orients social activity in particular directions, defines what constitutes legitimate knowledge, and shapes whose knowledge matters. These different conceptualizations, then, provide distinct answers to the fundamental question: in what respects are actors able to determine their own fate, and how is that ability limited or enhanced through social relations with others? Quoted from Barnett and Duvall (2005: 3–4) BOX 7.6 Key Concepts: Ontology and epistemology Ontology concerns the nature of the social world; epistemology concerns how we can obtain knowledge about this world. Ontology thus has to do with how the social world is constructed and who the key actors are (e.g., individuals, classes, states, or civilizations). This is where the question of causality comes to the fore. For instance, constructivists subscribe to the notion that the social world is made up of ideas whereas positivists argue that only material facts (for instance, military capabilities) matter. Epistemology, on the contrary, has to do with how we comprehend and analyse this social world. This is where the question of the methods that we use come to the fore. For instance, conventional constructivists accept that standard scientific methods can be used to analyse social processes created by ideas and norms whereas post-positivists argue that it is impossible to mimic natural scientists in this way in order to treat the social world as a laboratory for testing theories (see also Figure 7.1). theories is ontological, not epistemological’ (327). Fierke (2010: 183) seems to have the same point in mind when arguing that ‘conventional constructivism’ ‘has occupied a “middle ground” between rationalist and poststructuralist approaches to IR’. Patrick Thaddeus Jackson (2016: 60) similarly notes that some constructivists are satisfied with making ideational factors yet another variable that can enter standard causal analysis. 199 200 MAJOR IR THEORIES AND APPROACHES According to more radical versions of constructivist philosophy, the social world is not something ‘out there’ that exists independently of the thoughts and ideas of the people involved in it. It is not an external reality whose laws can be discovered by scientific research and explained by scientific theory, as positivists and behaviourists argue. That means that sociology or economics or political science or the study of history cannot be objective ‘sciences’ in the strict positivist sense of the word. Such ‘critical’ or ‘post-positivist’ constructivists argue that ‘truth claims’ are not possible because there is no neutral ground on which we can decide about what is true (Hurd 2008: 307). Hypotheses about the social world are simply not amenable to testing because there is no data independent of the observers’ point of view to hold it up against (Jackson 2016: 173–4). What we call truth is always connected to different, more or less dominant, ways of thinking about the world. As the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1977) famously argued, truth and power cannot be separated; indeed, the main task of critical constructivism is to unmask that core relationship between truth and power, to criticize those dominant versions of thinking that claim to be true for all. This distinction between conventional and post-positivist constructivism is illustrated in Figure 7.1. The figure is inspired by Jackson’s (2016) attempt to capture different methodological approaches to IR. We have further developed these distinctions to illustrate the main theoretical divide between the conventional constructivist theories covered in this chapter and the post-positivist theories covered in Chapter 8. The difference between conventional constructivism and critical constructivism to a large extent overlaps with what Hurd (2008) identifies as two different constructivist research strategies: an empirical and a conceptual or philosophical. The ‘downstream’ empirical branch FIGURE 7.1 Conventional constructivism versus post-structuralism Phenomena of interest to scholars can be directly observed Many phenomena of interest to scholars cannot be directly observed World exists independently of observer Conventional constructivism World does not exist independently of observer Critical constructivism (post-structuralist approaches) Inspired by Jackson (2016: Table 2.1) SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM ‘applied the insights of constructivism to understand interesting patterns, behaviors, and puzzles. The philosophical branch went upstream—it sought to understand the reasons for, and implications of, the differences between constructivism and other approaches to social phenomena’ (2008: 299). In this chapter, our presentation of constructivist scholarship focuses on ‘conventional’ constructivism because it is this strand of constructivism that has done most in terms of developing new substantive theories of IR; ‘critical’ constructivism, which we label post-structuralism, is discussed in Chapter 8. 7.4 Constructivist Theories of International Relations Constructivism was introduced to IR by Nicholas Onuf (1989), who coined the term. It gathered a larger following among scholars with a series of influential articles and a book by Alexander Wendt (1987, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1999). Friedrich Kratochwil, John Ruggie, and Raymond (Bud) Duvall should also be mentioned as founding fathers of constructivism in IR (Onuf 2018). In section 7.3, we have described constructivism as a social theory. Section 7.4 introduces constructivist theories of international relations. Key terms of these theories are summarized in Box 7.7. We begin with Wendt’s seminal contribution. BOX 7.7 Key Theories: Social constructivism: key terms and language • Focus of constructivism: ideas and beliefs that inform the actors on the international scene. • Material facts are secondary to ideas: ‘500 British nuclear weapons are less threatening to the United States than 5 North Korean nuclear weapons’ because ‘the British are friends and the North Koreans are not’ (Wendt 1995: 73). That is to say, it is not the material fact of numbers of nuclear warheads that ultimately matter; what matters is how the actors think about each other; i.e., their ideas and beliefs. • Structures and actors: ‘[S]tructures exist only through the reciprocal interaction of actors. The means that agents, through acts of social will, can change structures. They can thereby emancipate themselves from dysfunctional situations that are in turn replicating conflictual practices’ (Copeland 2000: 190); because ideas can change, states do not have to be enemies: ‘anarchy is what states make of it’ (Wendt 1992). • The emphasis is on meaning: is the patting of another person’s face a punishment or a caress? We cannot know until we assign meaning to the act. Constructivists rely on such insights to emphasize the importance of ‘meaning’ and ‘understanding’ (Fierke and Jørgensen 2001). • Identity: for neorealists, identities and interests are a given; states know who they are and what they want before they begin interaction with other states. For constructivists, it is the very interactions with others that ‘create and instantiate one structure of identities and interests rather than another’ (Wendt 1992: 394). Constructivists argue that we can only discover the intentions of states by studying identities and interests as they are shaped in interactions between states. • Knowledge about the world: one group of ‘conventional’ constructivists believe that we can explain the world in causal terms; that is, we can find out ‘why one thing leads to another’; 201 202 MAJOR IR THEORIES AND APPROACHES we can understand ‘how things are put together to have the causal powers that they do’ (Wendt 1999: 372). According to this view, constructivist analysis ‘depends on publicly available evidence and the possibility that its conclusions might in some broad sense be falsified’ (Wendt 1999: 373). • Another group of ‘critical’ or ‘post-positivist’ constructivists argue that ‘truth claims’ are not possible and truth and power cannot be separated; therefore, the main task of critical constructivism is to unmask that core relationship between truth and power and to criticize those dominant versions of thinking that claim to be true for all. 7.4.1 Cultures of Anarchy The core of Wendt’s argument is the rejection of the neorealist position, according to which anarchy must necessarily lead to self-help. Whether it does or not cannot be decided a priori; it depends on the interaction between states. In these processes of interaction, the identities and interests of states are created. For neorealists, identities and interests are a given; states know who they are and what they want before they begin interaction with other states. For Wendt, it is these very interactions that ‘create and instantiate one structure of identities and interests rather than another; structure has no existence or causal powers apart from process’ (1992: 394). States want to survive and be secure; neorealists and constructivists agree about that. But what kind of security policy follows from this? Do states seek to become as powerful as possible or are they content with what they have? Wendt argues that we can only find out by studying identities and interests as they are shaped in the interaction between states (see Box 7.7). In concrete terms: if the United States and the Soviet Union decide that they are no longer enemies, ‘the cold war is over’. It is collective meanings that constitute the structures which organize our actions. Actors acquire identities—relatively stable, role-specific understanding and expectations about self—by participating in such collective meaning. (Wendt 1992: 397) Wendt’s 1999 book further develops the argument introduced in the earlier articles. His point of departure is the same as Waltz’s: interaction between states in a system characterized by anarchy. However, anarchy need not lead to self-help; that calls for further study of the discursive interaction between states in order to discover what specific ‘culture of anarchy’ has developed between them. Wendt suggests three major ideal types of anarchy: Hobbesian, Lockean, and Kantian (1999: 257; see also Guzzini and Leander 2006). In the Hobbesian culture, states view each other as enemies; the logic of Hobbesian anarchy is ‘war of all against all’. States are adversaries and war is endemic because violent conflict is a way of survival. Hobbesian anarchy, according to Wendt, dominated the international system until the seventeenth century. In the Lockean culture, states consider each other rivals, but there is also restraint; states do not seek to eliminate each other, they recognize the other states’ right to exist. SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM FIGURE 7.2 Cultures of anarchy and degrees of internalization DEGREE OF INTERNALIZATION 3rd 2nd 1st Hobbesian Lockean Kantian DEGREE OF COOPERATION Adapted from Wendt (1999: 254) Lockean anarchy became a characteristic of the modern states system after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Finally, in a Kantian culture, states view each other as friends, settle disputes peacefully, and support each other in the case of threat by a third party (Wendt 1999: 299). A Kantian culture has emerged among consolidated liberal democracies since the Second World War. The three different cultures of anarchy can be internalized to different degrees; that is to say, the way states view each other may be more or less deeply shared. Wendt makes a distinction between three degrees of ‘cultural internalization’ (Wendt 1999: 254): the first degree is a relatively weak commitment to shared ideas; the third degree a strong commitment. We get a three-by-three table of ‘degrees of cooperation’ and ‘degrees of internalization’ respectively (see Figure 7.2). Wendt drives home the point that constructivism is not merely about ‘adding the role of ideas’ to existing theories of IR. Material power and state interest are fundamentally formed by ideas and social interaction. Therefore, states in an anarchic system may each possess military and other capabilities which can be seen as potentially threatening by other states; but enmity and arms races are not inevitable outcomes. Social interaction between states can also lead to more benign and friendly cultures of anarchy. 7.4.2 Norms of International Society Wendt’s analysis is systemic; it focuses on interaction between states in the international system and disregards the role of domestic factors. Martha Finnemore has proposed another variant of constructivist, systemic analysis in her book, National Interests in International Society (1996; see also Sloss 2006; Terechshenko, Crabtree, Eck, and 203 204 MAJOR IR THEORIES AND APPROACHES Fariss 2019). Her starting point is the definition of states’ identities and interests. Instead of looking at the social interaction between states, her focus is on the norms of international society and the way in which they affect state identities and interests. State behaviour is defined by identity and interest. Identity and interests are strongly influenced by international forces; that is, by the norms of behaviour embedded in international society. The norms of international society are transmitted to states through international organizations. They shape national policies by ‘teaching’ states what their interests should be. Finnemore’s analysis contains three case-studies: the adoption of science policy bureaucracies by states after 1955; states’ acceptance of rule-governed norms of warfare; and states accepting limits to economic sovereignty by allowing redistribution to take priority over production values. The first case-study argues that the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has taught states how to develop science bureaucracies. Science policy bureaucracies did not exist in many states prior to the mid-1950s. At that time, UNESCO began a drive to establish them, with considerable success: they were set up in merely fourteen countries in 1955; by 1975, the number had increased to nearly ninety. UNESCO successfully propagated the idea that in order to be a ‘modern civilized’ state, having a science policy bureaucracy was a necessary ingredient. The second case-study is about how states came to accept rule-governed norms of warfare. Again, the argument is that an international organization was instrumental in promoting humanitarian norms in warfare; in this case the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The ICRC succeeded in prescribing what was ‘appropriate behaviour’ for ‘civilized’ states involved in war. This would appear to be a ‘hard case’ for the constructivist approach, because the ICRC could push through new norms in an area that neorealists would consider critical for national interests, namely the right to unconstrained use of force during times of war. The third and final case-study concerns the acceptance by developing states of poverty alleviation as a central norm of economic policy. Until the late 1960s, the overriding objective of economic policy was to increase production by focusing on economic growth. By the early 1970s, welfare improvement through economic redistribution became a principal goal of economic policy. Finnemore argues that this normative shift was pushed by the World Bank. The bank’s president—Robert McNamara—played an essential role; he was convinced that the bank should actively promote poverty alleviation in developing countries. Martha Finnemore thus argues that international norms promoted by international organizations can decisively influence national guidelines by pushing states to adopt these norms in their national policies. To make the case for this, Finnemore uses two different kinds of empirical evidence: ‘(1) correlations between the emergence of new systemic norms and changes in state interests and practice; and (2) analysis of discourse to see if actions are justified in ways consistent with the values and rules embedded in the norms’ (Checkel 1998: 330). Against neorealism, she argues that the changes unearthed in the case-studies cannot be explained by pure national interests in powermaximation. They need to be explained by a constructivist analysis emphasizing the central role of norms in international society (see Box 7.8). SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM BOX 7.8 Key Quotes: Martha Finnemore on norms in international society The fact that we live in an international society means that what we want and, in some ways, who we are, are shaped by the social norms, rules, understandings, and relationships we have with others. These social realities are as influential as material realities in determining behaviour. Indeed, they are what endow material realities with meaning and purpose. In political terms, it is these social realities that provide us with ends to which power and wealth can be used. Finnemore (1996: 128) In his book, Alistair Johnston (2014) seeks to demonstrate the processes by which norms in the international system change the behaviour of states. During the period 1980–2000, China was facing an increasingly unipolar system, dominated by the United States. At the same time, China was traditionally oriented towards Realpolitik. Still, the country opted to participate and cooperate in international organizations, protocols, and treaties. Johnston argues that this is due to a practice of socialization involving ‘mimicking’, ‘social influence’, and ‘persuasion’. In other words, processes of social learning take place in the interaction of policy-makers from different states. These processes are less connected to material power and have more to do with ‘pro-social’ or ‘good’ behaviour, where Chinese representatives adopt norms which help increase their image and standing in relation to the standards of international society pursued by the representatives of other countries. 7.4.3 The Power of International Organizations The traditional realist view of international organizations (IOs) emphasizes that they exist to carry out important functions for states; they ‘provide public goods, collect information, establish credible commitments, monitor agreements, and generally help states overcome problems associated with collective action and enhance individual and collective welfare’ (Barnett and Finnemore 2005: 161; see also Barnett and Finnemore 2004; Adler 2013; Cupac 2014). This is the way IOs have been viewed by liberals such as Keohane (see Chapter 4) and by mainstream American IPE (see Chapter 10). Barnett and Finnemore’s analysis makes the argument that IOs are much more than servants of states. On the one hand, they are autonomous actors who might exercise power in their own right; on the other hand, they ‘construct the social world in which cooperation and choice take place. They help define the interests that states and other actors come to hold’ (Barnett and Finnemore 2005: 162). IOs are powerful because they are bureaucracies and because they pursue liberal social goals considered attractive by other major actors. The power of IOs can be analysed on several of the dimensions introduced in Box 7.5. IOs have compulsory power in that they control material resources that can be used to influence others. For example, the World Bank has money and the UN peacekeepers 205 206 MAJOR IR THEORIES AND APPROACHES have weapons; another form of compulsory power is made up of normative resources. The European Union, for example, ‘is hard at work persuading members to reconfigure domestic institutions and practices in ways that harmonize with European and international standards’ (Barnett and Finnemore 2005: 176). Institutional power of IOs stems from their ability to guide behaviour in more indirect ways. One major example is the agenda-setting activities of IOs. The organizations are often able to determine the agenda of meetings and conferences held under their auspices. Therefore, they significantly influence what is discussed and what is eventually decided. For example: the UN Secretary-General’s decision to make humanitarian intervention a defining theme of his 1999 address to the General Assembly shaped subsequent discussions. EU officials are renowned for possessing this sort of influence . . . World Bank officials are directly involved in drawing up the agenda for meetings. In this significant way, IO staff can help to orient discussions and actions in some directions and away from others. (Barnett and Finnemore 2005: 178) Finally, productive power refers to the role of IOs in constituting the problems that need to be solved. In this respect, IOs act as authorities who formulate, define, and present certain problems to others; they also contribute to solving problems by offering solutions and convincing others to accept them. Box 7.9 presents an example of this process; it concerns organizations involved in economic development. By defining the solution to development problems as one of ‘more market’, they help define what counts as progress and they change social relations in the villages and the families. In sum, IOs are not purely innocent servants of states; they are frequently powerful actors because they are bureaucracies that promise to deliver goals that others want. But being powerful, IOs are not always necessarily a force for good; they may also follow narrow interests of their own and ‘run roughshod over the interests of states and citizens that they are supposed to further’ (Barnett and Finnemore 2005: 184). BOX 7.9 Key Arguments: IOs and productive power Development agencies have a readymade solution to the problem of development—more market mechanisms. If development is not occurring, then it is because the economy and polity are not organized properly. So, the development agencies propose various policies that are designed to institutionalize market mechanisms but also to teach producers how to respond efficiently and properly to market signals. In this way, they view their goals as transforming self-sufficient ‘peasants’ into market-dependent ‘farmers’. Although development officials see the introduction of the market as a technical solution to the problem of development, the consequence of this technical solution is deeply political because it completely upends social relations in the family, between producers and consumers, and between the village and the state apparatus. Quoted from Barnett and Finnemore (2005: 180) SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM 7.4.4 A Constructivist Approach to European Cooperation Various aspects of European cooperation have been a central theme in constructivist analyses. Constructivists argue that their approach is particularly relevant for the study of European cooperation. This is because Europe is a complex setting, with many issues on the table and a large number of informal linkages among the actors involved. Under such circumstances, ideas and discourses—the prevailing ways of speaking and thinking that shape how the world is perceived (see Chapter 8)—will have a significant impact. Rather than pursuing fixed preferences, the actors mutually influence each other in their interactions. The study of these processes is well suited for a constructivist approach (Saurugger 2013). Kenneth Glarbo, for example, studied the common foreign and security policy (CFSP) of the European Union. According to realists, the history of European cooperation in this area is a dismal one. Due to diverging national interests—so runs the realist argument—integration and close cooperation in the high politics area of foreign and security policy will remain blocked, and occasional progress in the field is merely tactical manoeuvring. Taking a constructivist approach, Glarbo tells a different story. His argument is that foreign policy cooperation is not simply the product of national interests; it is due to processes of social interaction, ‘the results of national diplomacies intentionally and unintentionally communicating to themselves and to each other their intents and perceptions of political co-operation’ (Glarbo 1999: 635; see also Chebakova 2008; Richmond 2020). Social interaction builds intersubjective structures that help further cooperation. In other words, EU Member States may not agree on important aspects of foreign policy; but in spite of this, day-to-day practices of political cooperation significantly promote a shaping of common perspectives and mutual coordination. In sum: integration does prevail within European political co-operation, or at least within the CFSP of recent years, even if this does not totally refute the importance of national interest. Despite interest, however, constructivist theory argues that political co-operation leaves room for a social integration that stems from diplomatic communication processes set up through political co-operation history, and which is not easily discernible from the intergovernmentalist formal codes of CFSP. (Glarbo 1999: 636) Studies of this kind have led constructivists towards the analysis of socialization and learning; that is, the ways in which collective understandings are adopted and organized by groups of actors. In other words, how does a norm become a general reference and ‘not just an idea or ideological position of one single individual?’ (Saurugger 2013: 894). Empirical research on this mainly concentrates on specific professional groups active in the EU realm, such as European civil servants, the committee of permanent representatives (COREPER), or members of interest groups. In a book on European Identity, edited by Jeff Checkel and Peter Katzenstein (2009), it is demonstrated that the ‘single European identity’ project pursued by European elites is up against serious obstacles. European publics are sceptical, and a single European identity is not in the making. Rey Koslowski (1999) offers a constructivist approach to 207 208 MAJOR IR THEORIES AND APPROACHES understanding the European Union as a federal polity. He attempts to move on from trad itional debates on federalism and the EU, which tend either to advocate the transformation of the EU into a federal state, or anticipate a roll-back towards more conventional intergovernmental cooperation. His argument is that a constructivist approach better reveals European cooperation for what it is rather than the ‘either or’ perspectives of federalism or intergovernmentalism. Overall, there is now a large number of research projects concerning aspects of EU studies or Europe that take a constructivist starting point. Constructivists claim that they can add nuances and insights to the analysis of European cooperation which are played down or overlooked in conventional analyses of that complex process. For example, Rebecca Adler-Nissen (2014) shows how even opt-outs—such as those granted to the UK and Denmark in the areas of Economic and Monetary Union and Freedom, Justice, and Security by the 1992 Maastrict Treaty—have tended to strengthen European integration. It has done so by stigmatizing the opting-out strategy and what are seen as inappropriate claims about national sovereignty in the day-to-day interactions of political and administrative elites in Brussels. The UK and Denmark have thus been punished for holding back in these areas, which has sent a strong signal about the costs of staying out of common EU policies. So, rather than creating a ‘Europe in bits and pieces’ (Adler-Nissen 2014: 2), the opting-out has welded Europe together by stigmatizing ‘outsiderness’. According to Adler-Nissen, this has been ignored by traditional IR and European integration theories, which focus on national interests. To fully understand these dynamics, European integration must instead be seen as a social process driven by norms and everyday practices, with a life of its own. At the same time, the process of Brexit underlines the importance of identities rather than material interests of both the UK and the EU (Gibbins 2020). Self-images play a very important role, as emphasized by Tim Oliver (see Box 7.10). 7.4.5 Domestic Formation of Identity and Norms Systemic constructivists such as Finnemore and Wendt stress the importance of the international environment in shaping state identities. Other constructivists put more BOX 7.10 Key Quotes: Tim Oliver on Constructivism and Brexit (2017) In the context of Brexit, the national interests of Britain or the EU will be shaped by whom they think they are and what role they think they should pursue in the world. For Constructivists, any understanding of Brexit will require an explanation of the way in which the UK and the remaining EU’s [sic] construct their identities and how these play out vis-à-vis each other. Britain’s self-image of itself as a great power and ideas of ‘parliamentary sovereignty’ can be used to explain its approach, as will the EU’s commitment to ‘ever closer union’ or ideas over the free movement of people. Oliver (2017) SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM emphasis on the domestic environment. They try to pry open the black box of the state in order to understand how—based on a focus on norms and ideas—international pressures are filtered by domestic factors, and how this makes states pursue different foreign policy goals. One way of moving in this direction is to study how international norms have dissimilar effects in different states and then speculate about the domestic factors responsible for such variation. A volume edited by Thomas Risse et al. (1999) takes on this task in the area of international human rights norms. The authors demonstrate how regime type, the experience of civil war, and the presence of domestic human rights organizations impinge on the degree to which states are ready to comply with international human rights norms. Peter Katzenstein has written a book on Japan which develops a constructivist argument that culture, norms, and identity matter, also in the core area of national security (Katzenstein 1996a; see also Katzenstein 1996b). This book is part of Katzenstein’s general attempt to bring domestic-level variables into the study of IR, which we return to in Chapter 10. Systemic theorizing is inadequate, says Katzenstein, because it does not sufficiently appreciate how the internal make-up of states affects their behaviour in the international system. The emphasis in his analysis is on the domestic normative structure and how it influences state identity, interests, and policy. A major puzzle addressed is the shift from a militaristic foreign policy before 1945 to a pacifist foreign policy after the world war. The analysis explains why there was a broad consensus favouring a militaristic foreign policy before the war and how the norms on which that consensus was based became profoundly contested as a result of the war. The military’s position within the government was severely weakened; furthermore, the new constitution committed Japan to a policy of pacifism and put a low ceiling on defence expenditures (1 per cent of the national income). Again, the argument is constructivist, but a systemic analysis is rejected in favour of an analysis of the domestic environment (see Box 7.11). Ted Hopf has made a study of Soviet and Russian foreign policy that also focuses on the domestic formation of identity in order to understand how national interests are defined and what foreign policies they lead to (Hopf 2002). He seeks to provide ‘an BOX 7.11 Key Quotes: Peter Katzenstein on the importance of culture and identity Today’s problem is no longer that of E. H. Carr, one of avoiding the sterility of realism and the naïveté of liberalism. Our choice is more complex. We can remain intellectually riveted on a realist world of states balancing power in a multipolar system. We can focus analytically with liberal institutionalists on the efficiency effects that institutions may have on the prospects for policy coordination between states. Or, acknowledging the partial validity of these views, we can broaden our analytical perspective . . . to include culture as well as identity as important causal factors that help define the interests and constitute the actors that shape national security policies and global insecurities. Katzenstein (1996b: 537) 209 210 MAJOR IR THEORIES AND APPROACHES account of how a state’s own domestic identities constitute a social cognitive structure that makes threats and opportunities, enemies and allies, intelligible, thinkable, and possible’ (Hopf 2002: 16). State identity is expressed by key decision makers. The identity of key decision makers is uncovered through textual sources, including archives, journals, newspapers, memoirs, and textbooks. Two case-studies are undertaken: Moscow 1955 and Moscow 1999. The claim is that the reconstructed domestic identities go a long way in explaining Soviet/Russian foreign policy in 1955 and 1999 (see Box 7.12). Even if constructivists have a debate about the relative importance of domestic versus international environments, the disagreement between them should not be exaggerated. Constructivists are united by much more than what divides them; especially, they all emphasize the importance of culture and identity, as expressed in social norms, rules, and understandings (Chul Cho 2012). The social and political world is made up of shared beliefs rather than physical entities. For constructivists, that must always be the starting point for analysis. 7.4.6 Constructivist IPE Constructivism has also made its entry in to the study of international political economy (IPE, see Chapter 6 and Chapter 10). Leading scholars of IPE such as Peter Katzenstein and Kathleen R. McNamara att