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. Ideational or even soft power the influence that is exerted that does not rely on hard power but rather attracts others to ideas and values (see Realist International Relations Theory and The Military by Schmidt in this volume) can be effective in global politics and choosing to go to war over ideas rather than material gains or even to not take advantage of material gain and an increase in power, serve as examples. The scope of military conduct can also be institutionalized, and constructivism provides a way to understand such processes. The focus was not on analyzing norms as much as it was using norms as a device to analyze world politics. The goal was to show how a target behavior can be accounted by considering the ideational context, how ideas and norms constitute interests, or how social norms influence actors understandings of the material world. 1999). Social Constructivism Summary Notes. In A. M. Sookermany (Ed. 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. (2016). 3536). 134). Norms are also expectations about behavior (these are called regulatory norms because they define acceptable behavior). (1999). This freezing of norms tended to make them independent from politics as variables in political behavior. 23) and recognized as a medium of exchange for goods and services. 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). (2016). Cooperation and Conflict, 54(1), 2543. In A. M. Sookermany (Ed. 4. Constructivist ideas are present when attention is turned to alliances and security communities. 6061). Hegemony, entrepreneurial leadership, domestic context, framing, moral argument, and epistemic community actions figured prominently in these works as the impetus for emergence (Ikenberry and Kupchan 1990; Haas 1992; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Risse 2000). The literature that has followed this keystone research (e.g., Acharya 2004; Cortell and Davis 2005; Farrell 2005; Mastenbroek and Kaeding 2006; Kornprobst 2007; Capie 2008) moves beyond the boundaries of earlier socialization research, especially the tendency to focus on displacement of local/domestic ideas with international norms through transnational teaching (Finnemore 1996; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999) or to attribute norm diffusion to fit between global and local norms (Cortell and Davis 1996; Florini 1996). Adler, E., & Barnett, M. International Relations employs three theories that political scientists use to explain and predict how world politics plays out.To define the theories of Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism we will explore how each theory views anarchy, power, state interests, and the cause of war. As Luke Glanville illustrates, while there were favorable conditions to ensure a successful R2P intervention (Gadaffi had made clear threats that evoked calls for genocide, the League of Arab States wanted international action and Libya had few allies), [E]ven those states that refused to endorse the resort to military forcerecognized the weight of the imperative to protect Libyan civilianseven if they disagreed over the means with which to do so (2016, p. 193). Not all states respond to external phenomena in the same way, which invokes a need to consider how domestic and cultural factors shape the identity and interests of actors. (2019). In his study of how the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and its constituent states interacted with global norms, Acharya (2004:251) demonstrates that localization does not extinguish the cognitive prior of the norm-takers but leads to its mutual inflection with external norms. International norms are adapted to local circumstances by actors with the ability to observe and manipulate ideas from the external normative context in so doing they alter the substance of the international norm to build congruence. Nonetheless, constructivist approaches to identity, norms, and ideas about the world and its social relations can impact understandings of what it means to be secure. Anarchy is what states make of it: The social construction of power politics. This chapter will concentrate on some of the main elements that have relevance for military studies. 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. At the core of social constructivism is the idea that international politics - and indeed human relations - are "socially constructed" rather than "given." Its core ideas are based around three ontological positions relating to identity, ideas, and mutual constitution. Social norms were conceptualized as aspects of social structure that emerged from the actions and beliefs of actors in specific communities; norms shaped those actions and beliefs by constituting actors identities and interests. As Tannenwald says, [e]ven as states pursue their interests, they do so within a normative structure (2017, p. 17). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Thucydides. Prominent in the initial empirical norms research in this vein were studies that examined how given norms in a particular community diffused to actors outside the community (e.g., Risse-Kappen 1994; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999; Checkel 2001; Johnston 2001). Constructivism, which reached the shores of IR in the 1980s, describes the dynamic, contingent and culturally based condition of the social world. Constructivism is a theory of knowledge which argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning through world interactions and ideas. To be specific, I navigated core tenets of constructivism in terms of its ontology, epistemology, and methodology, respectively. Norm-breaking behavior may be evident but is only problematic for constructivist arguments if norms are specific and static. American Political Science Review, 95(3), 547560. 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). Wiener (2007) has advanced what she is calling a new logic of contestedness and has explored (2004) the dynamics of interpretation and contestation in European responses to the 2003 Iraq War. Constructing institutional interests: EU and NATO enlargement. 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. Norm contestation during the US War on Terror. Realist international relations theory and the military. While this is obviously a false dichotomy and constructivist studies do not treat norms as exclusively internal or external to actors, the distinction matters for how scholars approach compliance and contestation. Contemporary Security Policy, 26(2), 335355. The construction of social reality. Nordic strategic culture. A key illustration here is the norm of human rights, which is widely accepted by actors (Katzenstein 1996). Zehfuss, M. (2002). Making sense, making worlds: Constructivism in social theory and international relations. 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. (Ed.). Klotz (1995), for instance, chronicled how the anti-apartheid norm shaped the expectations and actions of the US towards South Africa in the 1980s. Moravcsik, A. Constructivism accounts for this issue by arguing that the social world is of our making (Onuf 1989). International Politics, 53(2), 176197. 219227). On the contrary, this analytic device has a deep history in the sociological and economic literatures. This was seen as a backward step and a challenge to the taboo norm that had developed over preceding decades. More info. Constructivism has provided a broader approach to understanding international relations and security beyond rationalist frameworks. Norms and identity in world politics. Cham: Springer. How shared culture and identity matters in international security can be illustrated with the example of nuclear weapons. A number of recent studies have examined just this tension and the range of empirical topics being considered from this perspective is now quite broad. Actors (usually powerful ones, like leaders and influential citizens) continually shape - and sometimes reshape - the very nature of international relations through their actions and interactions. In A. M. Sookermany (Ed. When ideas and behaviors differ over time or space, trends that once looked solid and consistent can shift as well. Constructivism focuses on the social context in which international relations exist. Liberty University International Relations Chapter Four: Theories of International Relations: Economic Structuralism, Constructivism, and Feminism Notes. In eliciting conformance and stabilizing expectations norms do not and cannot define all possible behavior, especially when a norm first emerges. Steele, B. To construct something is an act which brings into being a subject or object that otherwise would not exist. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-saddam-idUSTRE56113O20090702. If it was not, then the international order and what security means could be something completely different. Adler, E. (1997). Sandholtz (2008) himself proposes a cyclical model to explain the evolution of norms prohibiting wartime plunder. Fierke, K. M. (2001). In the context of the global war on terror, US efforts to extract intelligence from suspected terrorists led to the use of enhanced interrogation techniques which was widely seen to have abrogated or contested the global prohibition on the use of torture (Steele 2008a; see also Birdsall (2016) who argues that it worked to strengthen the anti-torture norm). Finally, the third theory of international relations, known as Constructivism, focuses on ideas, shared beliefs and identity as the main drivers of success. What if anarchy was not a given condition that ordered world politics? Yet, the analytic choices made had consequences for how norms were understood and these initial conditions significantly shaped both constructivist analysis and the kind of critiques of norms research that subsequently emerged. While some of the major criticisms of constructivist thought should be at the forefront when considering security and military problems through this lens, the potential to see the world in more dynamic terms is one of constructivisms leading contributions. But a constructivist reading of the Melian Dialogue (Lebow 2001) shows how ideas rather than material factors played a role in the decision of the Melians, even if the outcome was grim (Agius 2006). The essay proceeds by first describing the initial establishment of constructivist norms research and critiques that flowed from the original choices made. To conclude social constructivism believe that reality does not exist outside our consciousness, it only exists as 'intersubjective awareness' among people. At the other end of the spectrum are constructivists who argue that agents reason through social structures. Both compliance and contestation studies have broadened our understanding of norm dynamics allowing norms themselves to change and exploring the conditions under which norms will elicit conformance but they do so in different ways. The Constructivist Approach to Explain National Identity . Onuf, N. (2013). However, this focus did little to advance understanding of how norms themselves change without necessarily being replaced (Van Kersbergen and Verbeek 2007; Hoffmann 2005; Chwieroth 2008; Sandholtz 2008). Put simply, social norms were treated as independent variables explanations for varied behaviors observed in world politics. In P. J. Katzenstein (Ed. Identities are also constructed. 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. 331336). Identity and culture can be problematic categories and distract from other factors that can explain international relations, such as capitalism or patriarchy (Kurki and Sinclair 2010). 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). Birdsall, A. (pp. But the nuclear issue is also important because it shows how competing ideas about norms co-exist or contrast for example, former US President Donald Trump tried to change the norm around the use of nuclear weapons, arguing for the ability to use low yield nuclear weapons and the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review returned to the idea that nuclear superiority mattered (Tannenwald 2018). Japan and identity change: Why it matters in international relations. Hi!Welcome back to the King's College London International Relations Today Youtube channel. 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. The shared understandings given to objects are referred to as inter-subjective meanings, which Adler explains as collective knowledge (1997). The Washington Quarterly, 41(3), 89109. Is something rotten in the state of Denmark? Constructivism and European integration. Social constructivism is not among the most popular theoretical approaches used in forecasting in International Relations. Second, there is a division between what is generally called conventional and critical constructivism (Hopf 1998), largely over questions of state centricity and treatment of identity. The rise of social constructivist thought in international relations theory as part of the fourth debate (see International Relations and Military Sciences by Roennfeldt in this volume) represented one of those break through moments that challenged some of the orthodoxy and key assumptions that guided the discipline. Constructivism had been marginalized by these mainstream theories because it focused on social construction instead of material construction (Barkin, 2017). Constructivism argues that culture, social structures and human institutional frameworks matter. Social Constructivist International Relations and the Military, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02866-4_105-1, Springer Reference Political Science & International Studies, Reference Module Humanities and Social Sciences, Realist International Relations Theory and The Military, International Relations and Military Sciences, Liberal International Relations Theory and The Military, Poststructuralism in International Relations: Discourse and the Military, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-saddam-idUSTRE56113O20090702, https://doi.org/10.1080/23340460.2018.1533385, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Likewise, understanding sovereignty means recognizing the principle of non-interference in another states internal affairs, recognition of a state as an entity and associated rights that come with that: all states recognize each other as sovereign, despite the huge differences in their ability to exert internal control and exercise international power (Farrell 2002, p. 54; Wendt 1992; Hopf 1998). Percy, S. (2016). (1999). To be sure, the international relations literature still contains healthy debate and sparring between constructivism and realism/liberalism (e.g., Petrova 2003; Fehl 2004; Williams 2004; Goddard and Nexon 2005; Srenson 2008). 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. PS: Political Science and Politics, 50(1), 7174. (1992). This was a vastly different kind of theorizing than was current in the mainstream of international relations that was locked in the neorealist/neoliberal debate (e.g., Krasner 1983; Keohane 1984, 1986; Baldwin 1990; Grieco 1990). The category of social norm was not an invention of constructivism. Rather it seeks to explore how the current reality evolved (Farrell 2002, p. 59). 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). The Athenians demand that neutral Melos side with them against Sparta. This chapter will also cover the different branches of constructivist thought and the main critiques of constructivism to highlight its key contributions and the problems it also raises. Prominent in this part of the literature was Finnemore and Sikkinks (1998) development of the norm life cycle whereby normative entrepreneurs (see also Nadelmann 1990) work to persuade states of the appropriateness of a new norm and serve as a catalyst for a cascade of new normative understandings. This perspective states that the . London: Routledge. Early empirical approaches did engage with normative dynamics and change (e.g., Finnemore and Sikkink 1998), but the understanding of dynamics and change was relatively circumscribed. ), Do the Geneva Conventions matter? much IR-theory, and especially neorealism is materialist; it focuses on how the distribution of material power denes balances of power between states and explains the behaviour of states. Social phenomenon such as states, alliances or international institutions, are not thought to exist independent of human meaning and action. Constructivists provided empirical studies on a full range of topics important to the international relations discipline both in areas largely neglected by mainstream international relations like human rights (Klotz 1995; Risse, Ropp and Sikkink 1999), development (Finnemore 1996), and areas directly relevant to mainstream concerns like security (e.g., Legro 1996; contributors to Katzenstein 1996; Price 1997; Tannenwald 1999). Scholars working in this vein often begin by critiquing the analytic move to freeze the content of 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. The concept of power: A constructivist analysis. It derives its name from the . Post Cold War Era- Provided much diverse approach to understand and analyze international relations. Within this Pouliot (2008:259) argues that most of what people do in world politics, as in any other social field, does not derive from conscious deliberation or thoughtful reflection. 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). - Ikechukwu Aloysius Orjinta - Google Books Sign in Try the new Google Books Books View sample Add to my library. Mitzen, J. An example of this can be seen in the case of Libya in 2011, which is broadly hailed as a successful R2P intervention. This has implications for the concept of anarchy, the agent-structure relationship, and national interests, but all three of these areas of research are also approachable through non-constructivist means. Rebuttals to constructivist arguments used evidence of behavior that was inconsistent with the specific and unchanging strictures of norms in question to claim that nonconstructivist (usually material or rational) factors must be the driving catalyst of political behavior and outcomes (Shannon 2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02866-4_105-1, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02866-4_105-1, eBook Packages: Springer Reference Political Science & International StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social Sciences, Over 10 million scientific documents at your fingertips, Not logged in 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. But norms are never static and this meaning has also changed over time for instance, with the rise of Responsibility to Protect (R2P), sovereignty as an institution has become contingent on states fulfilling certain criteria such as not committing human rights abuse. Constructivism in international relations: The politics of reality. 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). But some states refuse to do this, even if it is in their material interests to do so (see the example of neutral states in this chapter). For neorealists, who take a structural explanation of international relations and argue that anarchy shapes world politics, states are like units distinguished only by their distribution of power and capabilities states were primed to behave the same way because the anarchic structure instructs them so. Perhaps more fundamentally from a feminist perspective, Locher and Prugl contend that the objectivist stance of many constructivist scholars is inconsistent with their social ontology. 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. In other words, they worry that mutual constitution implies that actors have a difficult time stepping outside the bounds of their social/normative context to decide what is right to do. In addition, the use of norms to study international relations directly challenged the orthodox assumption that the international realm was one largely devoid of sociality, merely a system of power calculations and material forces (a challenge also issued by the English school; see Bull 1977). Regional order and peaceful change: Security communities as a via media in international relations theory. (Ed.). They do not simply replace bad norms but become established through what Finnemore and Sikkink (1998) call a norm cycle where new ideas and shared understandings emerge, become instituted and normalized. CrossRef In A. M. Sookermany (Ed. 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. Cortell and Davis (2005) still invoke fit or congruence between the local context and global norms in explaining compliance with an international norm, but their twists on this theme are: (1) to examine socialization of a powerful actor Japan; and (2) to conceive of fit not as a given, but rather the result of conscious domestic political activity. 1516). Social Constructivism or Constructivism is a theory in International Relations which holds that developments in international relations are being constructed through social processes in accordance with ideational factors such as identity, norms, rules, etc. Two have become particularly prominent compliance with the strictures of social norms and change in norms themselves. They posited the LoA as a corrective. 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). Further, constructivists became more cautious about basing their analyses on the logic of appropriateness. Fierke, K. M., & Wiener, A. The second is compliance or diffusion actors from different normative communities seek to enlarge their communities or to hold on to extant norms in the face of external normative challenges and disputes that arise can lead to normative change in both communities. Constructivist International Relations theorists tend to use concepts of socially constructed identities, ideas and norms to empirically and analytically examine . Essentialism believes that our identities are linked to a fixed, universal, innate 'essence'. 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. International Theory, 4(3), 449468. 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. To dig deeper into what makes an agent or what structures global politics, constructivists look to norms and culture to make sense of what represents or guides behavior and how ideas of self inform that. The growth of Private Military Companies (PMCs) or Private Military Security Contractors (PMSCs) in the 1990s and their increased use in conflicts has been a consequence of a range of different factors: increasing neo-liberalization, cuts to defense budgets and a desire for states to outsource security. How militaries assess and interpret threat can be related to culture, intersubjective meanings, and social networks and understandings. Doing so has opened up the field to bring in different explanations of global politics that can delve deeper into how culture and identity play a role in determining state interests. 3. In essence, they theorized norm diffusion as taking place from a community of Western states constituted by compliance with universal human rights norms to individual Southern states. International relations require various perspectives to comprehend the complexity of the interactions that take place in the international sphere. 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. Constructivism theory is one of the models of the progressing emergence of international relations theory. 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. Yet Saddam did not want to appear weak to enemies such as Iran (Allen 2009). 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). What makes the UK feel safe in the matter of the USAs nuclear arsenal is that these states have a shared identity centuries of connection, friendship, shared beliefs and language, and similar cultures. 451497). One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. Keywords Constructivists International norms International relations Rationalism Strategic behaviour The culture of national security. After making the case that norms matter and developing a number of theoretical frameworks to show how norms emerge, spread, and influence behavior, norms-oriented constructivists have shifted their attention to a new set of questions, and in particular compliance with the strictures of social norms and change in norms themselves. Initial constructivist studies of social norms can be divided into three areas: normative, socialization, and normative emergence. Cham: Springer.
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