The constructivist focus on norms is important for understanding teleological aspects of its idea of international relations that ideas can change world politics (Hopf 1998). There is considerable confusion in the field on what precisely constitutes social constructivism and what distinguishes it from other approaches to international relations.1 As a result, it has become fairly common to introduce constructivism as yet another substantive theory of international rela- It brought former Warsaw Pact nations into its fold and strengthened convergence around normative issues such as human rights through social learning (Gheciu 2005; Fierke and Wiener 1999). 1999; Jacobsen 2003). The Sandholtz (2008:121) passage quoted above brings together the two types of normative dynamics discussed in this section. March and Olsen introduced the discipline to the notion of behavioral logics in delineating the logic of consequences and the logic of appropriateness, framing their discussion in terms of a rationalist-sociological debate (March and Olsen 1998). Koschut, S. (2014). (2008b). 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. This perspective states that the . The norms-oriented work that followed this initial burst of activity in the 2000s built upon the success that was achieved, but also changed the trajectory of research on social norms in world politics to include broader notions of norm dynamics. Just as liberalism was a response to realism, economic structuralism is a response to liberalism. Introduction: Reconstructing epistemic communities. 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). For philosopher John Searle, language played an equally significant role. Social Constructivism in International Relations and the Gender Dimension . [3] Risse-Kappen, T. (1994). For the Athenians, the refusal of the Melians the much weaker party to submit and their preference for neutrality was an affront to their power. According to this approach, the behaviour of humans is determined by their identity, which itself is shaped by society's values, history, practices, and institutions. 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. Tactical constructivism, method, and international relations. Rasmussen, M. V. (2005). This pivot is an interesting development in norms research for two reasons. Wiener (2004:198) warns us that studying norms as causes for behavior leaves situations of conflicting or changing meanings of norms analytically underestimated. Certainly norms exhibit stability, as they are recognizable by the common expectations that they structure but, paradoxically, norms are also in a constant state of dynamism and flux. 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). 115135). An example here is in what is generally called the laws of armed conflict, such as the Geneva Conventions, which sets the rules for how victims of war are to be treated, and the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907), which addressed the conduct of war, such as the types of weapons permissible in warfare. Chapter 4 Constructivism and Interpretive Theory CCRAIGPARSONS [A constructivist argument claims tear people do one thing and not anurher due co the presence of certain social construct ideas, belies, noms, idenies, or some other iterpreuire fer through which people perceive the wood. 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. After all, these were Cold War institutions whose purpose was now over with the end of superpower politics. This also goes to the foundation of questions of the causes of war. Constructivisms key influences come from sociological and philosophical perspectives on the nature of reality and phenomena, which brings knowledge, language, and social relations to the fore. 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. On the contrary, discursive interventions contribute to challenging the meaning of norms and subsequently actors are likely to reverse previously supported political positions. The current norm contestation literature explores processes through which actors come to understand shared norms differently, contest each others understandings, and how the contestation alters/reifies the norms that constitute a community of norm acceptors together (Hoffmann 2005; Van Kersbergen and Verbeek 2007; Chwieroth 2008; Sandholtz 2008). London: Routledge. This dynamism, it should also be noted, may not always be positive ideas about security can also regress or become less normative or progressive. In addition, the students who took POL487 in fall of 2008 at the University of Toronto provided a wonderful sounding board and inspired feedback for the development of some of the ideas in this essay. Introduction to International Relations Theory 100% (10) 63. The influence of Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant (17241805) on constructivist thought can be seen regarding ideas about knowledge and objectivity, in that knowledge of the world is filtered through frameworks of understanding. Constructing international relations: The next generation. Constructivists say that to understand these sorts of questions, one cannot simply turn to material factors like military power these do not explain why some states are seen as threats and others as benign. 2023 Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Initial constructivist studies of social norms generally clustered into three areas. 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. About us. Structures and agents influence each other. The Pacific Review, 28(1), 122. Constructivism was and remains a very different approach to world politics than its erstwhile competitors. Social constructionism is not the norm. Percy, S. (2016). States may join military alliances to bandwagon with stronger powers, as realists tell us. Social constructivism is a school of thought in International Relations (IR) theory. It matters if one assumes that norms are manipulable by political actors who can reason about them from an external standpoint or if norms (and social structure more generally) more fundamentally constitute actors such that they cannot stand outside the social norms that shape their interests and behaviors. Ideas about whether actors reason about norms or through norms can be linked to behavioral logics, which provide conceptions of how actors and norms are linked. Hoffmann (2005) employs insights from the study of complex adaptation to understand how states that all accepted the norm of universal participation in climate governance came to have different subjective understandings of that norm. Recent efforts to ensure gender equality in militaries represent a normative shift, affecting operations and culture. But the existence of a norm is dependent on continual enactment by communities of actors actors thus also experience norms, at least in part, as internal rules (Hoffmann 2005). Abstract. Two strands of research, on the relations between strategic behaviour and international norms and between rationalism and constructivism, serve as examples of promising research in constructivist international relations theory. This realization was part of what prompted the serious focus on domestic political/normative contexts in much of this literature. (3) Normative emergence how an idea reaches intersubjective status in a community. Norms and identity in world politics (pp. The study and practice of international relations has led international relations scholars to suggest different . Instead, constructivism is held together by consensus on broader questions of social process its position on the agent-structure problem and the primacy of the ideational and the intersubjective aspects of social life (for overviews of constructivism see Onuf 1998; Ruggie 1998; Finnemore and Sikkink 2001; Ba and Hoffmann 2003). 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. ), The culture of national security. An example of this can be seen in the case of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which was created in 2002 to hear cases of war crimes. Norms and regulatory instruments around the use of PMSCs and in what capacity they are used have emerged with the view to regulating them (Percy 2016, p. 221). Realist international relations theory and the military. According to constructivism the priority is for social features instead of material. (2001). Violation of the Geneva Conventions constitutes a war crime. 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. 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. The social construction of Swedish neutrality: Challenges to Swedish identity and sovereignty. In A. M. Sookermany (Ed. On the contrary, the two parts of the norms literature described above tend to find themselves on different ends of the reasoning about normsreasoning through norms spectrum. Countering hybrid warfare as ontological security management: The emerging practices of the EU and NATO. About us. forthcoming). They demonstrated that constructivism consisted of more than a metatheoretical critique of rational/material approaches and could indeed be used to structure rigorous empirical investigations across the spectrum of issues in international relations. Issues such as those discussed immediately above raise the third criticism about constructivism, that "a weak or at least a controversial epistemology has become the basis for a strong pedagogic policy" (Phillips 1995, p. 11)).The primary influence underpinning much of the theoretical commitments of constructivist pedagogy was a highly influential paper written by Posner et al. Wiener (2004:203) argues that the interpretation of the meaning of norms, in particular, the meaning of generic sociocultural norms, cannot be assumed as stable and uncontested. Initial constructivist norm studies thus tended to focus on how behavior in a community coalesces around a norm or is reconstituted when a norm emerges. ), The culture of national security: Norms and identity in world politics (pp. 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. Cham: Springer. Culture can refer to symbolic or evaluative standards that guide relations and provide meaning. (2010). 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. 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). The shared understandings given to objects are referred to as inter-subjective meanings, which Adler explains as collective knowledge (1997). (2021). Norms and identity in world politics. European Journal of International Relations, 3(3), 319363. This standpoint of Constructivism is contrary to the 'atomized' From this mainly structural perspective, social norms were conceptualized as an alternative to rationalist/materialist variables in explanations of world politics. 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. To gain acceptance and make the case that constructivist ideas mattered empirically, constructivists endeavored to demonstrate how their ideational perspective could provide superior understanding and explanation of political phenomena. Guzzini, S. (2005). Bruner (1990) and Piaget (1972) are considered the chief theorists among the cognitive constructivists, while Vygotsky (1978) is the major theorist among the social constructivists. The 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). Constructivism is relevant to military studies in numerous ways. Anarchy is not a given of the international system. This criticism over methodology, it should be noted, does not wholly apply to the conventional strand of constructivism, which Wendt says can employ positivist scientific methods to verify or falsify claims (Wendt 1999); for example, to know something about a states military culture, one could look to opinion polls, regulations, training manuals, and the curricula at military academies that can provide data or information about how ideas and norms inform approaches to military organization and culture (Farrell 2002, pp. ), Handbook of military sciences (pp. 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. Empirical norms studies have both drawn on these debates and fueled them with empirical data supporting different claims. Introduction. People who share an identification are then assumed to share unique traits and attributes. 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. 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. Conventional constructivism is not interested in replacing one reality of world politics with another. Kowert, P., & Legro, J. These dual visions of normative dynamics are likely related, but the norms literature has yet to describe how. Seeing the world in this way as mutually constituted, driven by the interests of actors which relies on their ideas of themselves and others, and their approach to phenomena brings about different possibilities in international relations and security. 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 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. But Wendt also identified a Lockean culture that demonstrated some restraint in warfare and a Kantian culture that was guided more by cooperation (Wendt 1999). Constructivism, which reached the shores of IR in the 1980s, describes the dynamic, contingent and culturally based condition of the social world. In P. M. Haas (Ed. Th e article argues that constructivism suff ers from the same . Constructivism focuses on the social context in which international relations exist. London: Penguin. Moreover, how NATO made this successful transition and ensured its survival relied on the dominant ideas about how the Cold War ended. These works argue that norms do not provide fully specified rules for every situation, and especially not for novel situations. The article argues that constructivism suffers from the same limitations as any other paradigm in IR, therefore, there is no reason to exclude this theory from forecasting effort. Critics too began to understand social norms as static and specific and this facilitated an erroneous notion that evidence of norm-breaking behavior somehow invalidated or falsified constructivist theorizing. It has major implications for an understanding of knowledge, including scientific knowledge, and how to achieve it. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, You can also search for this author in 5. Altmetric. As Farrell tells us, liberals and realists do not agree on what prevents war is it democracy (as liberals would contend?) He considers that existing norms constrain the possibilities for action, but that different understandings of those norms inevitably arise in the community of norm acceptors. Perhaps this is simply a matter of what questions are being asked. The second generations focus on norms emerged in the 1990s and a third generation extends constructivisms scope to bring in critical theory, emotions, and political psychology, among other approaches(See Steele (2017), Steele et al. Comprised of a series of conventions that go back to 1864, it is now a part of customary international law, so it applies to all states during warfare. (1996). Steele, B., Gould, H., & Kessler, O. These initial waves of constructivist writing met the challenge issued by Keohane and played a significant role in vaulting constructivism into prominence during the 1990s and early 2000s (Checkel 1998, 2004). Yet, the degree to which agents are able to independently evaluate their social context (as well as their material reality as far as that goes) and act upon it is what separates different behavioral logics and it is one way that different constructivist approaches in the current second wave (Acharya 2004) of norms research can be differentiated. However, the separation between the two kinds of norms research discussed above may ultimately be artificial. What if anarchy was not a given condition that ordered world politics? 451497). Despite their position of material weakness, the Melians argued that freedom and justice are more important. 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. Wendt, A. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. (1999). Allowing the meaning of social norms to vary in the course of analysis can quickly devolve into an expository morass.