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The

Promise

f

Ted opf

Constructivism

n

Internationalelations

Theory

A challenger

to the

continuing dominance

of neorealism and

neoliberal

institutionalism

n

the

study

of nternational elations

n

the United

States,

onstructivism

s

regarded

with

a

great

deal

of

skepticism y

mainstream

cholars.1

While the reasons

for

thisreception re many, hreecentralones are the mainstream'smiscasting f

constructivism

s

necessarilypostmodern

and antipositivist;

onstructivism's

own

ambivalence

about whether

t

can

buy

into

mainstream social science

methods

without

acrificing

ts theoretical istinctiveness; nd, related

to this

ambivalence, constructivism's

ailureto advance an alternative esearch

pro-

gram. In this article, clarify onstructivism's

laims, outline the differences

between conventional

and critical

constructivism,

nd

suggest

a

research

agenda

thatboth

provides alternative

nderstandings

f

mainstream

nterna-

TedHopf s Visiting rofessorfPeaceResearch, he MershonCenter, hio StateUniversity.e is the

author fPeripheralVisions: DeterrenceTheory and AmericanForeign Policy

in

the

Third

World,

1965-1990 Ann Arbor:UniversityfMichiganPress, 1994)

and is

at work

n

Constructing oreign

Policy

at Home: Moscow

1955-1999,

n

which

theoryf

dentitynd

international

elations

s

developed

and tested. e can

be

reached

y

e-mail t

<<[email protected]>>.

I

am most grateful o Matt Evangelista and Peter Katzenstein

who both read and commentedon

many ess-than-inspiringrafts

f

thiswork, nd,

more

mportant,upported my

overall

research

agenda.

I

am also thankful o Peter Kowert and Nicholas Onuf

for

nviting

me

to Miami in the

winter

of 1997 to

a conference

t

Florida InternationalUniversity

t

which

I

was

compelled

to

come

to

grips

with the difference etween critical and conventional constructivisms.

also

benefited

rom

specially

incisive and critical ommentsfromHenrikki

Heikka,

Badredine

Arfi,

RobertKeohane, JamesRichter,Maria Fanis,Ned Lebow,Pradeep Chhibber,Richard Herrmann,

David Dessler, and one anonymous reviewer.

would

also

like to

salute

the members of

my

graduate

seminar

n international

elations

heory

t

the University

f

Michigan,

n

particular,

rfan

Nooruddin,

Frank

Penirian,

Todd

Allee,

and

Jonathan

anedo

helped

me

figure

ut the relation-

ship

between the mainstream

nd its critics.

1. The canonicalneorealistwork

remainsKennethN. Waltz, Theory f

nternationalolitics Read-

ing, Mass.: Addison-Wesley,

979).The debate between

neorealism nd neoliberal nstitutionalism

is presented and

summarized n David

A.

Baldwin, ed.,

Neorealism nd Neoliberalism

New York:

Columbia University ress, 1993).

Constructivist hallengescan be found

n

Nicholas

Greenwood

Onuf, World fOur Making:

Rules and Rule in Social Theory

nd International elations Columbia:

University

f South Carolina

Press,

1989); PeterJ.Katzenstein,

d., The Culture fNational ecurity:

Norms nd dentityn World olitics New York:Columbia University ress,1996); and Yosef Lapid

and Friedrich

V. Kratochwil, ds., The Return f Ctulture

nd Identityn IR Theory Boulder,

Colo.:

Lynne Rienner,

996).

Ihnternationalecurity, ol. 23, No. 1 (Summer 1998), pp. 171-200

?

1998 by the President nd Fellows of Harvard College and the

Massachusetts

nstitute

f

Technology.

171

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Internationalecurity 3:1 |

172

tional relationspuzzles and

offers few examples ofwhat constructivism

an

uniquely bring

to an understanding f world politics.

Constructivism ffers lternative nderstandings

f

a number

of

the central

themes n international

elations heory,ncluding: he

meaning of anarchy nd

balance of power, the

relationship between state identityand interest, n

elaboration

of

power,

and the prospects

for

hange

n

world

politics.

Construc-

tivism tself hould be understoodin its conventionalnd critical ariants, he

latterbeing more closely tied to critical ocial theory.

he conventional con-

structivist esire to present

n alternative o mainstreamnternational elations

theoryrequires a researchprogram. Such a program

ncludes constructivist

reconceptualizations f balance-of-threatheory, he

security ilemma, neolib-

eral

cooperation

theory,

nd the

democraticpeace.

The constructivistesearch

program has its own puzzles

that concentrate n issues of identity n world

politics and the

theorization

f domestic politics

and culture

n

international

relations heory.

Conventionalonstructivism

nd ssues

n

Mainstream

International

elations

heory

Since constructivism

s best

defined

in

relation to

the issues

it

claims to

apprehend, present

ts

position

on

several

of the most

significant

hemes

n

international

elations

heory oday.

ACTORS

AND STRUCTURES ARE MUTUALLY CONSTITUTED

How much do structures onstrain nd enable the actionsofactors, nd how

much

can actors

deviate

from he constraints f structure?

n

world

politics,

structure

s a

set

of

relativelyunchangeable

constraints

n

the

behavior

of

states.2

Although

these

constraints an take

the

form of

systems

of material

dis/incentives,

uch as a balance

of

power

or a

market,

s

important

rom

constructivist

erspective

s

how an

action

does or does not

reproduce

both

the actor

and

the

structure.3

or

example,

to the extent

hatU.S.

appeasement

in Vietnam was

unimaginable

because

of U.S.

identity

as a

great power,

2. Most important or his rticle,

his s the neorealist onceptualization f nternational tructure.

All references o neorealism, nless

otherwisenoted, are fromWaltz,Theoryf nternationalolitics.

3. FriedrichKratochwil uggests that

this difference

n

the understanding

f structure s because

structuralism

ntered international elations

theory

not

through

sociolinguistics,but through

microeconomics. riedrich

V.

Kratochwil,

Is the

Ship

of

Culture

at Sea or Returning? n Lapid

and Kratochwil,

The Return

f

Culture nd

Identity, .

211.





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ThePromisef

Constructivism173

military ntervention onstituted he United States as a greatpower. Appease-

ment

was an

unimaginable

act.

By

engaging

n

the enabled action of

inter-

vention, he United States reproduced tsown identity f great power, as well

as the structure hat gave meaning to

its action. So, U.S. intervention n

Vietnam perpetuated the international

ntersubjective nderstanding

f

great

powers as those states that use military

ower against others.

Meaningful behavior,or action,4 s possible onlywithin an intersubjective

social context. Actors

develop

their relations

with,

and

understandings of,

others throughthe media of norms and

practices.

n

the absence

of

norms,

exercises of

power,

or

actions,

would

be devoid

of

meaning.

Constitutive

norms

define

an

identity y specifying he actions that will cause Others

to

recognize that identity nd respond

to it

appropriately.5

ince structure

s

meaningless

without

ome intersubjectiveet

of norms and

practices, narchy,

mainstream nternational elations

heory's

most crucial structural

omponent,

is

meaningless.

Neither

narchy,

hat

s,

the absence

of

any authority

bove the

state,nor the distribution fcapabilities, an socialize statesto the desiderata

of the international

ystem's

structure

bsent

some

set

of

meaningful

norms

and

practices.6

A

storymany

use in

first-yearnternational elations ourses to demonstrate

the structural xtreme, hat is, a situation

where

no

agency

is

imaginable,

illustrates he point. The scenario is a fire

n

a theaterwhere all run for the

exits.7

But

absent

knowledge

of social

practices

or

constitutive

orms,

struc-

ture,

even

in

this

seemingly

overdetermined

ircumstance,

s still

ndetermi-

nate.Even

in

a theaterwith ustone

door,

while all run for hat

xit,

who

goes

first?Are they the strongest r the disabled, the women or the children, he

aged

or

the

infirm,

r is it

just

a

mad dash?

Determining

he outcome

will

require knowing more about the situation han about

the

distribution

f

ma-

terial

power

or the structure f

authority.

ne

will

need

to know about the

culture,norms, nstitutions, rocedures,

rules,

and social

practices

hatconsti-

tute the actors

and

the

structure

like.

4. The critical istinction etween action and behavior s made by Charles Taylor,

Interpretation

and the Sciences of Man, in Paul Rabinow and William

M.

Sullivan,eds., nterpretiveocial Science:

A SecondLook Berkeley:University f CaliforniaPress, 1987), pp. 33-81.

5. Ronald L. Jepperson, lexander Wendt, nd PeterJ.Katzenstein, Norms,

dentity,nd Culture

in National Security, n Katzenstein,The Culture fNational ecurity, . 54.

6. David Dessler, What's

At

Stake in the Agent-Structureebate? International

rganization,ol.

43, No. 3 (Summer 1989), pp. 459-460.

7. Arnold Wolfers,Discord and CollaborationBaltimore,Md.: Johns Hopkins

UniversityPress,

1962).





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Internationalecurity 3:1 | 174

ANARCHY AS

AN

IMAGINED

COMMUNITY

Given that anarchy

s

structural,

t must

be mutually

constituted

by

actors

employing

constitutive ules

and social

practices, mplying

hat

anarchy

s as

indeterminate s Arnold

Wolfers'sfire.

Alexander

Wendt

has offered con-

structivistritiqueof

this

fundamental tructural

illar

of

mainstream

nterna-

tional relations

theory.8

ut

still more fundamentally,

his

move opens the

possibilityof thinking f anarchyas having multiple meanings fordifferent

actors based on

their wn communities f ntersubjective nderstandings nd

practices.And if

multipleunderstandings f anarchy re possible, thenone can

begin to theorize about different omains and issue areas of international

politics

that

are understoodby actors

as

more,or less, anarchic.

Self-help,

he neorealist nference hat all

states

should

prefer ecurity

nde-

pendence

whenever

possible,

s a

structurally

etermined ehavior of an actor

only

to

the extent hat

a

single particularunderstanding

f

anarchyprevails.9

If

the mplications

f

anarchy

re

not

constant cross

all

relationships

nd

issue

areas of nternational olitics, hen continuum fanarchies s possible. Where

there are catastrophic

onsequences

for not

being

able to

rely

on one's own

capacity

to

enforce

n

agreement,

uch as arms

control

n

a

world of

offensive

military dvantage,

neorealist

onceptualizations

f

anarchy

re

most

apt.

But

where actors do not

worry

much about

the

potential

costs of

ceding

control

over outcomes

to

other states

or

institutions,

uch as

in

the enforcement

f

trade

agreements,

his is a realm of world

politics

where neorealist

deas

of

anarchy

re

just

imaginary.

IDENTITIES AND INTERESTS IN WORLD POLITICS

Identities

re

necessary,

n international

olitics

and domestic

society like,

n

order

to

ensure

at

least some

minimal level

of

predictability

nd

order.'0

Durable

expectations

between states

require ntersubjective

dentities

hat

are

sufficiently

table

to

ensure

predictablepatterns

f

behavior.

A

world

without

8. Alexander Wendt, Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction f Power

Politics, nternational rganization, ol. 46, No.

2

(Spring 1992), 391-425.

9. Elizabeth Kier,

for

example, shows how the same objective external tructural rrangement

of power cannot account

for

Frenchmilitary trategy etween the two

world

wars. Elizabeth Kier,

Culture and FrenchMilitary octrinebeforeWorldWar I, inKatzenstein, heCulture fNational

Security,p. 186-215.

10. The focus on identity oes not reflect lack of appreciationfor ther lements n the construc-

tivist pproach, such as norms, ulture, nd institutions.nsofar s identities re themost proxi-

mate causes of choices,preferences,nd action, concentrate n them, ut withthe fullrecognition

that dentities annot be understood without simultaneous account of normative, ultural, nd

institutional ontext.





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ThePromise

fConstructivism

175

identities s a world of chaos, a world ofpervasive and

irremediable

uncer-

tainty,

world much more

dangerous

than

anarchy.

dentities

perform hree

necessaryfunctions n a society: hey ell you and otherswho you

are and they

tell youwho others re.11n

tellingyou who you are, dentities trongly mply

a

particular et

of

interests

r

preferences

with

respect

to choices of action

n

particulardomains,

and with

respect

to

particular

ctors.

The identity f a state implies its preferences nd consequent

actions.12

A

state

understands

others

ccording

to

the

identity

t

attributes

o

them,

while

simultaneously eproducing ts own identity hrough aily social

practice.The

crucial observationhere

s

that

theproducer

of

the dentitys

not in control f

what it ultimatelymeans to

others;

the

intersubjective tructure s the final

arbiter

f

meaning.

For

example, during the

Cold

War,Yugoslavia

and other

East

European

countries ftenunderstood the

Soviet

Union as

Russia, despite

the fact hatthe Soviet Union was trying ard not tohave that

dentity. oviet

control

over

its own

identity

was

structurally

onstrainednot

only by

East

European understanding, ut also by daily Soviet practice,which of course

included conversingwithEast

Europeans

in

Russian.

Whereas constructivism

reats dentity s an empirical question to

be theo-

rized within a historicalcontext,neorealism assumes that all

units in global

politics

have

only

one

meaningful dentity,

hat of

self-interested

tates.

Con-

structivism

tresses

that

thisproposition exempts

from

heorization

he very

11. Henri

Tajfel,Human Groups nd SocialCategories: tudies n Social Psychology

Cambridge,U.K.:

Cambridge UniversityPress, 1981), p. 255.

Although there are many

accounts of the origin of

identity,offer cognitive xplanationbecause ithas minimal priori xpectations, ssuming only

that dentities

re needed to reduce complexity o some manageable level.

12. Dana Eyre and Mark Suchman, for

example, findthat, ontrolling orrational trategic eed,

domestic coalition politics, and superpower

manipulation, countries

n

the third world prefer

certain

weapons systems over others because of their

understanding of what it means to be

modern

in the

twentieth

entury.

ana

P.

Eyre

and Mark C.

Suchman, Status,Norms,

and the

Proliferation

f Conventional Weapons: An Institutional heory Approach, in

Katzenstein,The

Cultureof

National Security, p.

73-113.

Other examples of empirical research

that

have

linked

particular

dentities o

particular

ets of

preferences

re civilized identities

driving

attitudes

toward

weapons

of mass

destruction;

otions

of

what constitutes humanitarian

haping

deci-

sionsto intervene

n

other

tates;

he

dentity

f a normal

state mplying articular oviet

foreign

policies;

and

antimilitarist

dentities n

Japan

and German

shaping

their

post-World

War

II

foreign olicies.

These

arguments

an be found

n

Richard Price and

Nina

Tannenwald,

Norms

and Deterrence:The Nuclear and Chemical Weapons Taboos, pp. 114-152;MarthaFinnemore,

Constructing

Norms of Humanitarian

Intervention, p. 153-185;

Robert

Herman, Identity,

Norms,

nd National

Security:

he

Soviet

ForeignPolicy

Revolution nd the

End

of the

Cold

War,

pp. 271-316;

and Thomas U.

Berger, Norms,

Identity,

nd

National

Security

n

Germany and

Japan, pp.

317-356. All of the above are n

Katzenstein,

heCulture

f

National

ecurity.

n

identity

and

mutual

intelligibility,

ee

Roxanne LynnDoty,

The Bounds of

Race'

in

InternationalRela-

tions, Millennium: ournal f nternational

tudies,

Vol.

22,

No. 3

(Winter 993), p.

454.





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The Promise fConstructivism177

The consequences of this treatment f interests nd identitieswork in the

same direction s constructivism's ccount of structure, gency, nd anarchy:

states are expectedto have (1) a far wider arrayofpotentialchoices of action

beforethem than is assumed by neorealism, and (2) these choices will be

constrained

by social

structures hat are

mutuallycreated by

states and struc-

tures via social practices.

In

other words, states have more agency under

constructivism,ut that agency is not in any sense unconstrained.To the

contrary,

hoices are

rigorously

onstrained

by

the webs

of understanding

f

the practices, dentities, nd interests f otheractors that prevail

in

particular

historical ontexts.

THE POWER OF PRACTICE

Power is a central heoretical lement forboth mainstream nd constructivist

approaches to international elations theory,

ut

their conceptualizations of

power

are

vastly

different. eorealism and neoliberal nstitutionalismssume

that materialpower, whethermilitary r economicorboth, s the singlemost

important ource of nfluence nd authority

n

globalpolitics.16Constructivism

argues

that both material

and

discursive

power are necessary

for

any

under-

standing

of world affairs.

emphasize

both because oftenconstructivistsre

dismissed as unRealistic for

believing

in

the

power

of

knowledge, ideas,

culture, deology, nd language, that

s,

discourse.17 The

notion that

deas are

a formof

power,

that

power

is

more than brute

force,

nd

that

material and

discursive

power are related

s

not

new.

Michel Foucault's articulation f the

power/knowledge nexus,

Antonio Gramsci's

theory

f

deological hegemony,

and Max Weber'sdifferentiationfcoercion from uthority re all precursors

to constructivism's ositionon power

in

political ife.18Empiricalwork exists

16. A rare effortn the mainstream iterature o break away from his focus on materialpower is

JudithGoldstein and Robert

0.

Keohane, eds., Ideas and ForeignPolicy (Ithaca, N.Y.:

Cornell

University ress, 1993).

17. As R.B.J.Walkerhas clarified, To suggest that ulture nd ideology are crucial for

he

analysis

of world politics

s not

necessarily

o take an

idealist position....

On the

contrary,

t s

important

to recognize hat deas, consciousness, ulture, nd ideology are bound up with more

mmediately

visible kinds of political,military,nd economic power. In R.B.J.Walker, East Wind, WestWind:

Civilizations,Hegemonies,

and World

Orders,

n

Walker, d., Culture, deology,

nd World

Order

(Boulder,Colo.: Westview Press, 1984), p. 3. See also Onuf, World f Our Making,p. 64. Joseph

Nye's conceptualization f soft power could be usefullyread through constructivist

nterpre-

tation. See Joseph S. Nye, Jr., ound to Lead: The ChangingNatureof American ower New

York:

Basic Books, 1991), esp. pp. 173-201.

18. ColinGordon,ed., Power/Knowledge:electednterviewsned therWritinigs,972-1997,

byMichel

Foucault Brighton, ussex, U.K.: HarvesterPress, 1980); AntonioGramsci, electionisrom

he rison

Notebooks,rans. and ed., Quinton Hoare and GeoffreyNowell Smith New York: nternational





8/16/2019 Hopf+1998 (1).pdf



in

both international elations theory

nd

security tudies

that

demonstrates

the

need

to appreciate

both

the material

nd the discursive

aspects ofpower.19

Given that the

operation

of the material

side

of

power

is

familiar

from

the

mainstream iterature, ere

I

concentrate n the discursiveside, the power of

practice

n

constructivism.

The power of social practices ies in their apacityto reproduce

the

ntersub-

jective meanings that constitute ocial structures nd actors alike. The U.S.

military nterventionn Vietnamwas consistentwith a number of U.S. identi-

ties: great power, imperialist, nemy, lly, and so on. Others observing the

United States not

only

inferredU.S.

identity

rom

ts

actions in

Vietnam,

but

also reproduced the intersubjective

web

of meaning about what

precisely

constituted hat dentity. o the extent, orexample, that a group of countries

attributed

n

imperialist dentity

o the

United

States,

he

meaning

of

being

an

imperialist tate was reproduced by the U.S. military

ntervention.

n

thisway,

social

practices

not

only reproduce

actors

through dentity,

ut

also reproduce

an intersubjectiveocial structure hrough ocial practice.A most important

power

of

practice

s its

capacity

to

produce predictability

nd

so, order.

Social

practicesgreatly educe uncertainty mong actors within socially structured

community, hereby ncreasing

onfidence hat

what actions

one

takes

will

be

followed

by

certain

onsequences

and

responses

from

thers.20

An actor s

not even able to act as its identity

ntil

the relevant

ommunity

of

meaning,

o

paraphrase

Karl

Deutsch,21acknowledges

he

egitimacy

f

that

Publishers,1992); and Max Weber,FromMax Weber, d., Hans Gerth and C. WrightMills (New

York: OxfordUniversity ress, 1946).

19. Price and Tannenwald show that even power as material as nuclear missiles and chemical

artillery ad to be understood and interpreted efore t had any meaning. n Price and Tannen-

wald,

Norms and Deterrence. RobertCox has

provided

an account

of the

rise,reproduction,

nd

demise

of

nineteenth-centuryritish upremacy,

nd the

rise and reproduction f U.S. dominance

in the twentieth entury hrough close reading of the nteraction etween material nd discursive

power.RobertW. Cox, Social Forces, States,and World Orders:Beyond International elations

Theory, Millennium: ournal fnternationaltudies,Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring 1981), pp. 126-155.

20. Onuf sees these reproduciblepatterns f action as the product of reflexive elf-regulation,

whereby gents refer o their wn and other'spast and anticipated ctions

n

deciding how to act.

Onuf,

World

f

Our

Making,

.

62.

21. Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism nd Social Communication: n Inquiry nto the Foundations f

NationalityNew York:MIT Press, 1953), pp. 60-80.Deutsch was a constructivistongahead of his

time to the extent hat he argued that ndividuals could not engage in meaningful ctionabsent

some community-wide ntersubjectivity.notherwork constructivist

n

essence is RobertJervis's

The Logicof mages n International elations Princeton,N.J.:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1970).

Applying Erving Goffmann's elf-presentationheory o international olitics,Jervis ointed out

that state actions, such as gunboat diplomacy,

were

meaningless unless situated

in a

larger

intersubjective ommunity f diplomatic practice.





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The

Promise f

Constructivism179

action,by thatactor,

n

that ocial context.The

power of practice

s

the power

to produce

intersubjectivemeaning

within

social structure.t is a

short tep

from hisauthorizingpower of practice to an

understanding f practice as a

way

of

bounding,

or

disciplining nterpretation,

aking

some

interpretations

of

reality ess likelyto occur or prevailwithina

particular ommunity.22he

meanings of actions of members of the

community, s

well

as the actions of

Others,become fixedthroughpractice;boundaries ofunderstandingbecome

well

known.

In

this

way,

the

ultimatepower

of

practice

s to

reproduce

and

police

an

intersubjectiveeality.23ocial

practices,

o the extent

hat hey utho-

rize, discipline, nd

police, have the power to

reproduce entire ommunities,

including the

international ommunity, s well

as the many communities f

identity ound therein.24

State actions

n

the

foreign olicy

realm

are constrained

nd

empowered by

prevailing social practicesat home and abroad.

Richard Ashley,for example,

writes of a

foreign

olicy

choice as

being

a kind of

social

practice

hat

at

once

constitutes nd empowersthestate,defines tssociallyrecognized competence,

and

secures the boundaries that

differentiate

he

domestic and international

economic

and

political

spheres

of

practice

and,

with

them,

the

appropriate

domains

in

which

specific ctors may securerecognition nd act competently.

Finally,Ashleyconcludes, foreign olicy practice

depends

on the existenceof

intersubjectiveprecedents

nd shared

symbolic

materials-in orderto

impose

interpretations pon events,

ilence alternative

nterpretations,

tructure

rac-

tices,

nd

orchestrate

he

collective

making

of

history. 25

Although

I

have

necessarily

concentratedon

articulating

how discursive

power works in this section, the power to control intersubjective nder-

standing

s not the

only

formof

power

relevantto a constructivist

pproach

to world

politics.Having resources

that

allow oneself to

deploy

discursive

power-the

economic and

military

wherewithal o sustain institutions eces-

22. See Doty, The Bounds of Race, p.

454; and Carol Cohn, Sex

and

Death

in the

Rational

World

of Defense

Intellectuals, igns:Journal

f

Women n Culture nd

Society,

ol.

12,

No. 32

(Summer

1987), pp. 687-718.

23. See Richard K. Ashley, Untyingthe Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy

Problematique, Millennium: ournal

f nternationaltudies,Vol. 17, No.

2

(Summer1988), p. 243,

for discussion of thisprocess.

24. Richard K.

Ashley,

The

Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space: Toward a CriticalSocial

Theory

of

International olitics, Alternatives,ol. 12, No. 4 (October-December1987), p. 409.

25.

Richard

K.

Ashley, Foreign Policyas PoliticalPerformance, nternationaltudiesNotes

1988),

p. 53.





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International

ecurity

3:1

|

180

saryfor

he

formalized

eproduction

f social

practices-is

almost

always part

of

the

story s

well.

CHANGE

IN

WORLD POLITICS

Constructivism s

agnostic

about

change

in

world

politics.26

t restoresmuch

variety nd difference o world affairs nd pointsout the

practicesby

which

intersubjective rder is maintained,but it does not offer ny more hope for

change

n

world politics

han neorealism.

Constructivism's

nsight

hat

narchy

is what statesmake of it,forexample, implies that

there are many different

understandings fanarchy

n

the world,and so

state actions should be more

varied thanonly

self-help.

ut

this s

an

observation f already-existing eality,

or,

more

precisely,

set of

hypotheses

bout the same. These different nder-

standingsof

anarchy

are still rooted

in

social

structures,

maintained

by

the

power

of

practice,

nd

quite impervious

to

change.

What

constructivism oes

offer s

an

account

of how

and

where

change may

occur.

One aspectof constructivistower is thepowertoreproduce,discipline, nd

police.

When such

power

is

realized, change

in

world

politics

is

very

hard

indeed. These

intersubjective tructures, owever,

although

difficult o chal-

lenge,

are not

mpregnable.

Alternative

ctorswith alternative

dentities, rac-

tices,

and

sufficientmaterial

resources are

theoretically apable

of

effecting

change. Robert

Cox's account

of British

nd

American

upremacy, or xample,

perhaps

best

illustrates he

extraordinary taying

power

of

a

well-articulated

ideological hegemony,

but

also

its

possible demise.

And

Walker

rightly b-

serves that

constructivism,

o the extentthat t surfaces

diversity, ifference,

and particularity,pens up at leastpotential lternatives o the current revail-

ing structures.27onstructivism onceives of the

politics

of

identity

s a con-

tinual

contestfor controlover thepower

necessary

to

produce meaning

in

a

social

group.

So

long

as there

s

difference,

here s a

potential

for

change.

Thus, contrary o

some

critics28 ho assert that constructivism

elieves

that

change

in

world

politics

s

easy,

that

bad neorealist tructures eed

only

be

thought way,

n

factconstructivism

ppreciates

the

power

of

structure,

f

for

no other reason thenit assumes that actors

reproduce daily their own con-

straints

hrough

ordinarypractice.

Constructivism's

onceptualization

of

the

26. Criticalconstructivism

enies thisvigorously.

27. R.B.J.

Walker, Realism,Change, and

International olitical

Theory,

nternational

tudiesQuar-

terly, ol. 31,

No.

1

(March1987), pp. 76-77.

28. See, for

example, John J.Mearsheimer,

The False Promise of International

nstitutions,

Internationalecurity, ol. 19,

No.

1

(Winter

994/1995),pp. 5-49, esp. 37-47.





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The Promise f

Constructivism

181

relationship etween agency and

structure rounds tsview

that

ocial change

is

bothpossible

and

difficult. eorealism's

position

that ll

states re meaning-

fully dentical denies a fair mount

of possible change to

its

theoretical truc-

ture.

In

sum, neorealism nd constructivismhare

fundamental oncernswith the

role of

structure

n

world

politics, he effects f anarchyon state behavior, he

definition fstate nterests,he natureofpower,and theprospectsfor hange.

They disagree fundamentally,

owever, on each concern.Contra neorealism,

constructivism

ssumes

that actors and

structures

mutually

constitute

ach

other; narchy

must be

interpreted

o have

meaning;

state nterests

re

part

of

the process of dentity

onstruction; ower

is both

material nd discursive; nd

change

in

world

politics

s both

possible

and

difficult.

Constructivisms:onventionalnd Critical

To thedegree that constructivismreates theoretical nd epistemologicaldis-

tance

between tself

nd

its origins

n

critical heory,t

becomes conventional

constructivism.

lthough

constructivism

hares

many

of the

foundational le-

ments of

critical heory,

t

also

resolves some

issues

by adopting defensible

rules ofthumb, r conventions, ather han

following ritical heory ll the way

up

the

postmodern

critical

path.29 situate

constructivism

n

this

way

to

highlight oth

ts

commonalities

with

traditional

nternational elations

heory

and its

differences

ith

the critical

heory

with which t s

sometimes

mislead-

inglyconflated.30 elow

I

sketch

out the relationshipbetween conventional

constructivismnd critical ocial theoryby identifying oth those aspects of

critical

theory

that

constructivism

as

retained

and

those

it

has chosen to

conventionalize. The

result,conventional

constructivism,

s a

collection

of

principles distilled from critical

social theory

but

without the latter's more

consistent

heoretical

r

epistemologicalfollow-through.

oth

critical nd

con-

ventional onstructivismre on the same side of the

barricades

n

Yosef

Lapid's

characterization

f the

battle zone: the

fixed, natural,

unitary, table,

and

29. Jepperson,Wendt, nd Katzensteindifferentiatehe kindof sociological analysis performed

in

their olume from he radical constructivist

osition of RichardAshley,David Campbell, R.B.J.

Walker,

nd

Cynthia

Weber.

See

Jepperson,Wendt,

nd

Katzenstein, Norms,

Identity,

nd Cul-

ture, p. 46,

notes

41

and 42.

30. As, forexample, in Mearsheimer, The

False Promise of Internationalnstitutions, wherein

constructivism, eflectivism, ostmodernism, nd poststructuralismre all reduced

to

critical

theory, . 37, note 128.





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International

ecurity

3:1 182

essence-like,

n the one

(mainstream


heory)hand,

and

the emergent, onstructed, ontested,

nteractive,

nd

process-like,

n

the other

(constructivist) ne.31

Conventional and

critical onstructivism

o

share theoretical undamentals.

Both aim to denaturalize the social

world,

that

s,

to

empirically

discover

and reveal how the institutions

nd

practices

and identities hat

people

take

as natural,given,ormatter ffact, re, in fact, heproductof human agency,

of social construction.32oth believe that

ntersubjective eality

nd

meanings

are criticaldata forunderstanding he social world.33

Both insist that all data

must be

contextualized,

hat

s, theymust be related

to,

and situated

within,

the social environment

n

which they

were gathered,

n

order to understand

their

meaning.34

Both

accept

the

nexus between

power

and

knowledge,

the

power

of

practice

n

its

disciplinary,meaning-producing,

mode.35 Both also

accept the restoration f agency to

human

individuals.

Finally,

oth

stress

he

reflexivity

f the

self and society, hat s, the

mutual

constitution f actor and

structure.36

Perhaps

where

constructivisms most conventional s in the area of meth-

odology

and

epistemology.

he authors of

the theoretical ntroduction o

The

Culture

f

National

Security,

or

example,

vigorously,

nd

perhaps defensively,

deny

that

their authors use

any special

interpretivist ethodology. 37 he

authors are careful o stressthat

they

do

not

depart

from normal science

in

this

volume,and none of the contributors

itherdeviates from hatground or

questions

whether it is

appropriate.38

his

position is anathema to critical

theorywhich,

as

part

of its constitutive

pistemology, as

a

lengthybill of

particulars gainst positivism.

31.

Yosef Lapid, Culture's

Ship: Returns nd Departuresin International

Relations Theory, n

Lapid and

Kratochwil,

The

Return f Culture

nd

Identity, p. 3-20.

32.

Mark Hoffman, CriticalTheory and the

nter-Paradigm ebate, Millennium: ournal f

nter-

national

tudies,Vol. 16, No. 2 (Summer 1987), pp.

233-236.

33.

Ashley, The Geopoliticsof Geopolitical Space, p.

403.

34.

In this respect, oth critical nd conventional

onstructivism an be understood as sharing n

interpretivistpistemology,

more generally. ee Taylor, Interpretationnd the

Sciences of Man.

35. James Der

Derian,

On

Diplomacy.

A

Genealogy f Western

strangementOxford,U.K.: Basil

Blackwell, 1987), p. 4.

36. R.B.J.Walker, World Politics and WesternReason: Universalism,Pluralism,Hegemony, n

Walker,Culture, deology,

nd World

Order,p. 195; and

Ashley,

The

Geopolitics

of

Geopolitical

Space, pp.

409-410.

37.

Jepperson,Wendt,

nd

Katzenstein, Norms, dentity,

nd

Culture, p.

67.

38.

The

only,

even

partial,

exceptions

are Price

and

Tannenwald,

Norms and

Deterrence,

nd

Michael N. Barnett, Institutions,Roles, and Disorder:

The Case of the Arab States System,

International

tudiesQuarterly,ol. 37,No. 3 (September

1993), pp. 271-296.





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ThePromise

fConstructivism183

Conventional

constructivism,

hile expecting o uncover

differences,den-

tities, nd multiple

understandings, till assumes

that

t

can specify set of

conditionsunder which one can

expect to see one

identity r another.This is

what Mark

Hoffmanhas

called minimal

foundationalism, ccepting that a

contingent niversalism s

possible

and

may be

necessary.

n

contrast, ritical

theory ejects

ither he

possibility

r

the

desirability

f a

minimal or contin-

gentfoundationalism.39shley chidesall noncriticalpproachesfor anticipat-

ing analysis

coming

to

a close.

In

allowing for such

prematureclosure, the

analyst participates

n

the

normalization

or

naturalization of

what

is

being

observed, and risks

hiding thepatterns f domination that

mightbe revealed

if

closure could

only be deferred.40o reach an

intellectuallyatisfying oint

of

closure,

constructivism

dopts

positivist

onventions bout

sample charac-

teristics,

methods of

difference, rocess tracing, nd

spuriousness checks.

In

making

this

choice,

critical heorists

rgue,

constructivism

an offer n under-

standing

of

social

reality

ut

cannot

criticize he boundaries

of ts

own

under-

standing, nd this s preciselywhat critical heory s all about.41

So,

for

example,

Thomas

Bergermakes claims about

Japanese and German

national

dentities

hat

mply certain utcome for

n indefinite eriod oftime

to come.42

uch

a claim

requires

the

presumed nonexistence frelevantunob-

servables,

s well as the

assumption

that

he

practices, nstitutions,

orms,

nd

power

relations hat

underlay

the

production

of

those dentities

re

somehow

fixed

r

constant.

Critical heoristswould see this s an illusion of

control;

one

of

these

factors an

be

so

easily immobilized for

either nalysisor

prediction.

This

differencemanifests

tself as

well

in how

critical

and conventional

constructivismnderstand dentity. onventional constructivists ish to dis-

cover identities nd their

associated

reproductive

ocial

practices,

nd

then

offer

n

account of

how

those

identities

mply

certain actions.

But

critical

theoristshave a

different im.

They

also

wish

to

surface

identities,

not to

articulate heir

effects,

ut

to

elaborate

on how

people

come to believe

in

a

39.

Mark

Hoffman, Restructuring, econstruction, einscription, earticulation:

our

Voices

in

Critical nternational heory, Millennium: ournal f nternationaltudies,Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring

1991), p.

170. David

Campbell argues

that no

identity or any

other theoretical lement for

that

matter)may be allowed to be fixed rfinal. tmustbe critically econstructed s soon as it acquires

a meaning.David Campbell, ViolentPerformances:dentity,overeignty, esponsibility, nLapid

and

Kratochwil,

The Return

f

Culture nd

Identity, p.

164-166.

See also Stephen J.Rosow,

The

Forms

of Internationalization: epresentation f WesternCulture on a Global Scale, Alternatives,

Vol.

15,

No.

3

(July-September 990), p. 289, fordifferences n this ssue.

40.

Ashley,

The

Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space, p. 408.

41.

Hoffman, Restructuring, econstruction, einscription, earticulation, . 232.

42. Berger, Norms, dentity, nd National Security n Germany nd Japan.





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Internationalecurity

3:1 | 184

single version

of a naturalized

truth.

n other words, critical heory

ims

at

explodingthe

myths

ssociated

with dentity ormation,

hereasconventional

constructivists

ish to treat

hose dentities

s possiblecauses

of action.

Critical

theory

hus claims

an interest

n change,and a

capacity

to

foster

hange,

that

no

conventional

onstructivist

ould make.

In addition,

nd

in

a related

vein,

critical heorists elf-consciously

ecognize

theirown participation n the reproduction, onstitution,nd fixingof the

social

entities hey bserve.43

hey realize

that he

actor nd observer

an never

be separated.

Conventional

constructivists

gnore

this njunction,while

largely

adopting

interpretivist

nderstandings

of the connectivity

f subjects

with

other

ubjects n a web

of ntersubjective

meaning.

The observernever

becomes

a subject

of

the

same self-reflective

ritical nquiry.

Conventional

and

critical onstructivistslso split

over

the origins

of iden-

tity.44

hereas

conventional

constructivistsccommodate

a cognitive ccount

for

dentity,

r offer

o account at

all,

critical onstructivistsre

more

ikely

to

see some form f alienationdriving heneed for dentity. s remarked bove,

conventional

constructivism

ccepts

the

existence

of identities

nd wants

to

understand

theirreproduction

nd effects,

ut critical onstructivists

se criti-

cal social theory

to specifysome

understanding

of the origin

of

identity.

Tzvetan

Todorov and

Ashis

Nandy,

for

example,

assume thatEuropean

iden-

titieswere

incomplete indeed,

everyself s

incomplete

without n other)

until

they ncountered

peoples

in

the

Americasand

India, respectively.45

he neces-

sity

of difference

with an other

to produce one's

own identity

s

found

in

Hegel's

bondsman's tale, where

the more powerful

slaveowner

can

neither

knowhis own identity or exercisehis superiorpoweruntilhis slave,his other,

helps him construct

hat dentity

hrough

practice.Perhaps

conventional on-

structivism ould accept

this assumption: the

need

for

others

to construct

oneself,

but

critical

onstructivism

moves

beyond

this

position

with

the aid

of

Nietzsche,Freud,

and Lacan.46The former

llows

difference o

reign,

whereas

43.

Cynthia

Weber points

this out

as a

very mportant

istinction etween

her approach

to the

state and

more modernist

pproaches.Weber imilarly

eparatesconventional

onstructivists

rom

critical heorists.Max

Weber,Simulatingovereignty:

ntervention,

heState, nd Symbolic xchange

(Cambridge,

U.K.: CambridgeUniversity

ress,1995), p. 3.

44. Fora review of this ssue see FriedrichKratochwil,Is theShipof Culture t Sea orReturning?

pp. 206-210.

45. The discussion of

the

work

of Todorov and Nandy

is

in

Naeem Inayatullah

and David

L.

Blaney,

Knowing Encounters:

BeyondParochialism

n International elations

Theory,

n Lapid

and Kratochwil,

The Return f Culture

nd Identity,p. 65-84.

46. For an account of

identitybased on these

three theorists, ee

Anne

Norton,

Reflections

n

PoliticaldentityBaltimore,

Md.: Johns

Hopkins University ress,

1988).





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The Promise

fConstructivism185

the latter mplies eithertheassimilation of

the

other,

f

deemed equal, or his

oppression,

f

nferior.47

Critical

theory's pproach toward

identity

s

rooted

in

assumptionsabout

power.48 ritical

theorists ee power being exercised

n

every social exchange,

and there s

always

a

dominant ctor

n

that

xchange.

Unmasking

these

power

relations s a

large part

of

critical heory's

ubstantive genda; conventional

constructivism,n theotherhand,remains analyticallyneutral on the ssue

of

power

relations.

Although conventionalconstructivistshare

the idea

that

power is

everywhere,because they believe that social

practicesreproduce

underlying ower

relations, hey

re

not

necessarilynterested n

interrogating

those

relations. Critical

theory's

assumption

that all social

relations are

in-

stances

of

hierarchy,

ubordination,

r domination

ronically ppears similar

to the

expectations

of

realists and

neorealistsabout

world

politics.49 he dif-

ferent

conceptualizations

of

power imply different heoretical

agendas.

Whereas conventional

constructivism s

aimed at

the

production

of

new

knowledge and insightsbased on novel understandings, critical heory na-

lyzes

social

constraints nd cultural

understandings

from

supreme

human

interest

n

enlightenment

nd

emancipation. 50

Although

conventional nd critical onstructivism

hare a number of

posi-

tions-mutual

constitution f actors and

structures, narchy

as a social con-

struct, ower

as both

material

nd

discursive,

nd state

dentities

nd

interests

as

variables-conventional constructivism oes not

accept

critical

theory's

ideas about its own

role

in

producing change

and

maintains

fundamentally

different

nderstanding

f

power.51

47. Inayatullah and

Blaney, Knowing Encounters, p. 65-66. For a very useful analysis of how

differentccounts of

dentityhave made theirway through eminist heorizing, ee Allison Weir,

Sacrificialogics:

Feminist heory nd theCritique f dentityNew York:Routledge, 1996).

48. My views on the differences eparating critical nd

conventionalconstructivist ositions on

power were shaped

in

conversationwith JimRichter.

49.

See

Arturo

scobar,

Discourse and Power in

Development:

Michel Foucault and

theRelevance

of His Work to the Third

World, Alternatives,

ol.

10, No.

4

(October-December 1984), esp.

pp. 377-378.

50. This s takenfrom

Andrew Linklater, The Question

of the

NextStage

n

International elations

Theory:

A

Critical-Theoretical

oint of

View,

Millennium:

ournalf

nternational

tudies,

Vol.

21,

No. 1

(Spring 1992), p.

91,

and

is

based

on

his

interpretation

f

Jurgen

Habermas. For a view on

precisely he point ofthe emancipatory ower of critical heory,ee Chris Brown, 'TurtlesAll the

Way Down':

Anti-Foundationalism, riticalTheory, nd International elations, Millennium: our-

nal of nternational

tudies,

Vol.

23,

No. 2

(Summer 1994), p.

219.

51. For an alternative

ccount

of

international elations heory rom critical heoryperspective

in

which conventionalconstructivism's ositions can be found

as well, see Richard

K.

Ashley,

Three Modes of

Economism,

nternational tudies

Quarterly,

ol.

27,

No. 4

(December 1983),

pp. 477-491. On the construction f

anarchy,

n

particular,

ee

Ashley, Untying

the

Sovereign





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International

ecurity 3:1 |

186

A Constructivistesearch

genda

This sectionaims at moving constructivism rom

he margins52

y articulating

a

loosely

Lakatosian

research

program

for a constructivist

tudy

of interna-

tional relations.53present

his

research

genda

in

three ections.

The

first

tep

is

to show that constructivismffers

ompetingunderstandings

f

some key

puzzles frommainstream nternational elations heory. he secondmove is to

suggest what new and innovative

puzzles

constructivism

romises to raise.

The last step is forconstructivism

o point out its own weaknesses.

MAINSTREAM

PUZZLES,

CONSTRUCTIVIST SOLUTIONS

Constructivism an providealternative ccounts of the

balance

of

threat, ecu-

ritydilemmas, neoliberal

nstitutionalistccounts of cooperation under anar-

chy, nd theliberal theory fthe

democraticpeace.

BALANCE OF THREAT. Neorealism

tells

us

that states ally against power.

Steven Walt rightly bserved that this is empiricallywrong. He suggested,

instead,that

states ally against threats.The attempted

fix

was

to

claim that

states will balance, not against

power, but against particularkinds of power.

The latter

is the power possessed by a relatively

capable, geographically

proximatestate

with

offensive

military apabilities

and

perceived

hostile in-

tentions.54

hereas geographical

proximity

nd offensive

military apacitycan

be

established a priori,perceived intentions hreaten

autology.

everal

con-

structivistcholars have

pointed

to balance of threat s one of the

mainstream

State,

p.

253.

In

addition, conventional onstructivisms more

willing

to

accept the ontological

status of

the state when theorizing,

whereas critical heorydemands that the state remain a zone

of

contestation,

nd should be

understood as

such;

its autonomous existence should not

be

accepted. For the

former onventional

view,

see

Alexander

Wendt, Constructing

nternational

Politics,

nternationalecurity, ol. 20, No. 1 (Summer 1995), p. 72.

For the criticalview of the

state,

ee

Ashley, Untying he SovereignState, pp. 248-251.

52. For

the challenge

to

constructivists

o

develop

a

research program

or

be marginalized, ee

Keohane, International nstitutions, . 392. For criticism n a

similar vein, see Thomas J. ier-

steker,

Critical Reflections n Post-Positivism n

InternationalRelations, nternational tudies

Quarterly,

ol. 33, No.

3

(September1989), p. 266.

53. It is a

loose adaptation because, while I

adopt

Lakatosian criteriafor what

constitutes

progressive nd degenerative hift

n

a research

program,

do not

adopt

his

standards of falsifica-

tionism rtheir ssociated protective elts ofauxiliaryhypotheses. ee Imre Lakatos, Falsifica-

tion and

the Methodology of ScientificResearch Programmes,

in Imre Lakatos and Alan

Musgrave,

eds.,

Criticism nd the

Growth

f Knowledge Cambridge,

U.K.:

Cambridge University

Press,

1970), pp. 91-196.

54.

Stephen

M.

Waltz,

The

Origins f

Alliances

Ithaca,

N.Y: Cornell

University ress, 1987,p.

5.

By

acknowledging that one cannot determine priori .

.

which

sources of threatwill be most

important

n any given case; one can say only that all of them are

likely to play a role, Waltz

does not offer

nontautologicalmeans

for

pecifying hreat.Quotation on p. 26.





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The Promise fConstructivism

187

accountsmostsusceptible o

a constructivistlternative.55

hat s missinghere

is a theory

of threatperception, nd this

is precisely what

a constructivist

account of identity ffers.

Distribution

f power cannotexplain the alliance

patterns hat

merged after

World War II; otherwise, he

United States

would have been balanced against,

not the Soviet

Union. Instead,the ssue

must be how France,Britain,Germany,

and the United States came to understand Soviet military apabilities and

geographicalproximity

s threatening.

he neorealist ccount

would

be

that

the Soviet

Union demonstrated y

its

behavior

that t was an objective threat

to

Western

urope.

A constructivistccount would be thatthe state dentities

of

Western

Europe,

the United States,and

the

Soviet

Union,

each rooted

in

domestic ociocultural

milieus,produced understandings

fone anotherbased

on differences

n

identity

nd

practice.

The potentialadvantage

of this

ap-

proach is that t

is

more likely

to surfacedifferences

n

how

the Soviet

threat

was constructed

n different ites than

is

the neorealistapproach,

which ac-

cordsobjectivemeaningto Soviet conduct.

Let

us

imagine,

for example, that the United States

balanced against the

Soviet Union because

of

the latter's

ommunist

dentity,

nd

what that meant

to

the United

States. ftrue,

t

means thatother

possible

Soviet identities, uch

as

an

Asian,

Stalinist,Russian,

or

authoritarian

hreat,

were not

operative.

So

what?

First,

ow the

United

States

understoodthe Sovietthreat,s communist,

notonly explainsthe anticommunist

irection f U.S. actions

n the Cold War,

but

t

also tells

us

that he

United Statesunderstood tself s

the anticommunist

protector f

a particular et of values both at

home and abroad. Second, how

the United Statesconstructed he Soviet communist hreatneeds to be under-

stood

in

relation to

how

Western

Europeans

understood

that

threat. f,

for

example,

France understood the Soviet

threat s a Russian

threat,

s an

in-

stance of superior

Russian

power

in

Europe,

then

France would not readily

join

in

U.S.

anticommunist entures

against

the

Soviet

Union. In

particular,

whereas

the United States saw the

thirdworld

during

the

Cold War as an arena

for

battling

ommunism,

s

in

Vietnam,Europeans very

rarely

understood

t

in

those terms,

nstead

regarding

hird

world states as economic actors

or as

former olonies.

55. See Thomas

Risse-Kappen,

Collective

Identity

n a Democratic Community:

The Case

of

NATO, in Katzenstein,

The Culture f NationalSecurity,p. 361-368; Barnett, Identity

nd

Alli-

ances,

pp. 401-404; Peter J. Katzenstein,

Introduction:Alternative

Perspectiveson

National

Security,

n Katzenstein, he Culture

fNational ecurity,p. 27-28;

Jepperson,

Wendt, nd Katzen-

stein, Norms,

dentity,

nd Culture,p. 63; and Wendt,

Constructing nternational

olitics, p.

78.





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SECURITY

DILEMMAS.

Security

dilemmas are the

products

of

presumed

un-

certainty.56hey are assumed

to be

commonplace

in

world

politics

because

states presumably

cannot

know,

with

sufficient

ertainty

r

confidence,

he

intentions f others.

But as

important

s the

security

dilemma

is

to

under-

standing

conflictual elations

among states,

we do

not

see

much

evidence

of

security ilemmas among many pairs

or

groups

of states:members f the same

alliance, members of the same economic institution, erhaps two peaceful

states

or

two neutralstates, nd so on.

In

the study

of world

politics,

uncer-

taintymightbe best treated

s a

variable,

not

a

constant.Constructivism an

provide

an

understanding

of

what happens

most of

the time in relations

between states, namely, nothing threatening t

all.

By providing meaning,

identities

educe uncertainty.57

States understand different tates differently.oviet and French nuclear

capabilities

had

differentmeanings

forBritish ecision makers. But of

course

certainty

s not

always

a source of

security. nowing

that another state

s an

aggressorresolves thesecurity ilemma,but only by replacing t withcertain

insecurity,n increased confidence hat the otherstate is

in

factthreatening.

As Richard

Ashley,bowing generously

to

Karl Deutsch, pointed out, politics

itself

s

impossible

n

the absence of a background

of

mutual understandings

and habitual

practices

that orients and limits

the mutual

comprehension

of

practices, he signification

f

social action. 58

onstructivism's

mpirical

mis-

sion

is to

surface the background

that

makes uncertainty variable to

understand,

ather han a constant o

assume.

NEOLIBERAL COOPERATION.

Neoliberalism offers compelling arguments

about how states can achieve cooperation among themselves. imple iterative

interaction

mong states,

ven when

they prefer

o

exploit

one

another,may

still ead to

cooperative

outcomes.

The

conditions

minimally ecessary

for uch

outcomes nclude

transparency

f

action, apacity

to

monitor

ny noncoopera-

tive behavior and punish the same

in

a predictablefashion, sufficiently

ow

discount

high appreciation)rate forfuture ains

from

herelationship,

nd an

expectation

hat the

relationship

will not end in the

foreseeablefuture.59

56. RobertJervis,

Cooperation

under the

SecurityDilemma,

World

olitics,

ol.

30,

No. 2

(March

1978), pp. 167-214.

57.

I

thankMaria Fanis forbringinghome tome the mportance f

thinking bout world politics

in this way.

58. Ashley, Three

Modes, p. 478;

see

also Ashley, The GeopoliticsofGeopoliticalSpace, p. 414.

59. Kenneth A. Oye, Explaining Cooperation under Anarchy:

Hypotheses

and

Strategies,

n

Kenneth

A.

Oye, ed., Cooperation nderAnarchyPrinceton,N.J.:

PrincetonUniversity ress, 1986),

pp. 1-24.





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The Promise f

Constructivism189

International

nstitutions, hether n the formof

regimes, aws, treaties,

r

organizations, help

provide these

necessary conditions for cooperation.

By

having rules about

what constitutes

violation of a relationship, nstitutions

help increase theconfidence feach

state that

t will

not be exploited and that

its

own cooperativemove will be

reciprocated.Byestablishing ormalmecha-

nisms

of

surveillance,

nstitutions nable states to see what

other states are

doing, again enhancing confidence hata defectionwill be seen and a coop-

erative action will

be followedby the same.

By creating ules and

procedures

for

surveillance and

sanction,

all

parties can

have greater confidence that

violations will be

punished. By formalizing hese

relationships, nstitutions

help reduce each

state's discount rate for futuregains

while increasingeach

state's expectation

hat

the relationshipwill

continue

nto

the future.60

Constructivism

haresneoliberalism's

onclusionthat ooperation s possible

under

anarchy,

but

offers very different ccount of how

that outcome

emerges.

Robert Keohane

presents

as the

heart

of

neoliberalismtwo funda-

mentalassumptions:there re potentially eneficial greements mong states

thathave not been

reached, and they

are

hard

to achieve.61

A

constructivist

approach

mightbegin by investigating ow

statesunderstand their nterests

within

particular

ssue

area. The distribution f dentities nd

interests f the

relevantstates would then

help

account for

whethercooperation s

possible.

The

assumption

of

exogenous interestss an

obstacle to developing a theory

of

cooperation.

Sitting

down to

negotiate tradeagreement

mong

friends

as opposed

to

adversaries or

unknowns)

affects

state's

willingness

to

lead

with

a

coopera-

tivemove. Perhaps twould no longerunderstand ts nterests s the unilateral

exploitation

f

the other

tate. nstead

it

might

ee

itself s

a

partner

n

pursuit

of some

value otherthan narrow

strategic

nterest.

n

Logicof

Collective

ction,

Mancur Olson bracketed host of situations

wherecooperationwas

relatively

easy,despite large

numbersof

players,

he

absence

of a

group large enough

to

provide

a

public good,

but

sufficiently

mall to avert coordination

problems

(a

k-group),

o

hegemonic eadership,

nd so on.

These were

situations

where

communities

f

identity

xisted such that

the

players

were

not in

a

noncoop-

erative

game

in

the

first

lace.

Too little

ttention

as

been

paid

to this

nsight.

60. The regimes literature s vast. For

an early foundational volume that includes

theoretical

specification,mpirical llustration,

nd

some self-critique,ee StephenD. Krasner, d., nternational

Regimes Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University ress, 1983). Elaboration of the marketfailure ogic

is in

Robert

0.

Keohane, After egemonyPrinceton,N.J.:PrincetonUniversity ress, 1984).

61. Keohane, Internationalnstitutions,

. 386.





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A

constructivistccount of cooperationwould reconstruct

uch

intersubjective

communities

s a matter

f course.

When

a

neoliberal

writesof

difficulty

n

reaching

n

agreement,

he

usually

has one particular problem

in

mind:

uncertainty.Many

of the institutional

mechanismsdescribed

above are aimed at

reducinguncertainty mong

states:

provision of transparency; acilitation f iteration; nabling

of

decomposition;

and of course thedevelopmentofrules,monitoring apabilities, nd adjudica-

tion procedures.

A

constructivist ould agreethat hese are all very mportant,

but that a prior ssue must be raised: Is it not likelythat the level of certainty

is

a variable associated

with

dentity nd practice, nd that, eterisparibus,the

less certainty ne has, the more institutional evices are necessaryto produce

cooperation,

he

harderthat ooperation

will

be

to

achieve,and the more ikely

it will be to

break

down?

Neoliberalism

has concluded that n

important art

of

ensuring ompliance

with

agreements s thedevelopment

of

reputations

or

reliability.62ne of the

mostimportant omponentsofdiscursivepower is thecapacityto reproduce

order and predictability

n

understandings nd expectations.

n

thisrespect,

identities re a

congealed reputation,

hat

s,

the

closest

one can

get

in

social

life to being able

to

confidently xpect the same actionsfrom nother actor

time

after ime. Identities ubsume reputation;being a particular dentity s

sufficient o

provide necessary diagnostic

information bout a

state's

likely

actions

with

respect

to other states

n

particular

domains.63

On the other

side

of

the life

cycle,

neoliberals

argue

that institutions

ie

when membersno

longer

have incentives o maintain

hem. 64

ut

one of the

moreenduringpuzzles forneoliberals swhy these nstitutionsersistpast the

62.

On

the

critical mportance

f

a

theory

f

reputation

o

account for conomic transactions, uch

as

contracts,

ee David M.

Kreps, Corporate

Culture

and

Economic

Theory,

n

James

E. Alt

and

Kenneth A.

Shepsle, eds., Perspectives

n Positive olitical

Economy Cambridge, U.K.:

Cambridge

University ress, 1990), pp.

90-143. Formal

game-theoretic

ork on

reputation onsistently hows

that t should matter, nd it does, but

only when assumed to do so. Empiricalwork ninternational

relationshas shown thatreputations o

not work as hypothesizedby most nternationalelations

theory. ee JonathanMercer,Reputationnd

Internationalolitics Ithaca, N.Y.: CornellUniversity

Press, 1996); Ted Hopf, Peripheral isions: eterrence heory nd American oreign olicy n the

Third

World,

965-1990

Ann

Arbor:

University

f

Michigan Press, 1994);

Richard Ned

Lebow,

Between

Peace and War: The Natureof

nternational risis Baltimore,Md.: JohnsHopkins University ress,

1981); and Jervis, ogicof mages n International elations.

63.

For a

recognition

hat

shared focal

points, a

la Thomas

Schelling,

have much in common

with intersubjective eality nd its

capacity to promote cooperative solutions to iterative

games,

see Geoffrey arrett nd BarryR.

Weingast, Ideas, Interests, nd Institutions: onstructing he

European Community's nternalMarket, in Goldstein and Keohane, Ideas and Foreign

Policy,

pp. 173-206.

64.

Keohane, International nstitutions,

.

387.





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ThePromise

fConstructivism

I

191

point

that

great powers

have an

apparent

interest

n

sustaining them.

Their

answers

nclude

lags

caused

by domestic

political

resistance

o

adjustment, he

stickiness

f

institutional

rrangements,

nd

the transaction

osts entailed in

the

renegotiation f agreements

nd

the establishment f a

new order.65

n

alternative

onstructivistypothesiswould

be that

f

the identities

being re-

produced

by the social practices

onstituting

hat

nstitution ave gone

beyond

the strategicgame-playingself-regarding nits posited by neoliberals,and

have

developed an

understanding f each

other s partners n some

common

enterprise,

hen the nstitution

ill

persist, ven

if

apparentunderlying

ower

and

interestshave shifted.66 uncan

Snidal,

in

his

formalrepresentation f

what

is most

ikely ohappen as

a

hegemonfalters,ncludes as

an

untheorized

variable

interest

n

the regime, with the

obvious positive

relationshipbe-

tween interest

n

the

regime

and

willingness

to

expend

resourcesto maintain

it

afterhegemonic decline.67

Constructivist

esearch,through

exploring the

nature

of

the norms,practices,

nd

identities onstituting

membership

n

some

institution,an provide some measurablesubstantive ontent or hatvariable.

Although constructivists

nd

neoliberals agree

that

anarchy

does not

pre-

clude

cooperation among states,how

they

understand

the

emergence

and

reproduction f such cooperation

yields very differentccounts and

research

agendas.

THE

DEMOCRATIC PEACE. The

observation that

democratic states have not

fought

each other is an

empiricalregularity

n

search of

a

theory.

Neither

structural or normative

ccounts fare

very

well.68 he former

equires

ssum-

ing

a

consistently

ellicose executive

being

constrained

y

a

pacificpublic

and

itsduly-elected epresentativenstitutions-butonlywhen democratic dver-

65. On lags and stickiness, ee Stephen D. Krasner, tate Power and the Structure f nternational

Trade, World olitics, ol. 28, No. 3 (April 1976), pp. 317-343. On transaction osts, see Keohane,

After egemony.

66.

Another onstructivist ypothesis ffers tselfhere: nstitutionalized ooperationwill be more

likely

to endure to the extent hatthe

dentities f

the

membersof

that

nstitution re understood

as common and they are reproduced by a thick array of social practices. This is meant as a

continuum,

with narrow self-interest

eing arrayed

t one end of the

spectrum,

eoliberal nstitu-

tionalization f self-interestedooperation n the middle, community f dentity oward the other

end, and harmony t the otherpole.

67. Duncan Snidal, The LimitsofHegemonic Stability heory, nternationalrganization,ol.39,

No. 4 (Autumn 1985), esp. pp. 610-611.

68.

For

a

comprehensivereview of the most recent iterature n the democraticpeace, and an

empirical

test that

shows

that

satisfaction

with

the status quo (a variable subject to constructivist

interpretation)s the single most important actor ffecting he use of force, y democracies and

authoritarian tates alike, see

David L.

Rousseau, ChristopherGelpi,

and

Dan Reiter, Assessing

the Dyadic Nature

of

the Democratic Peace, 1918-1988,

American

olitical cienceReview, ol. 90,

No. 3

(September1996), p.

527.





8/16/2019 Hopf+1998 (1).pdf



saries

are about. The latterhas more

promise,

but

its

naturalization f certain

aspects

of

liberalism-the market,

nonviolent resolution of

differences,

he

franchise, he

First

Amendment-and

its crucial

assumption

that these norms

actually matter o decision makers

n

democratic tates

when

making choices

about

war and

peace

with

other

democracies,

are

untenable

and

untested,

respectively.

Constructivism s perfectlyuited to the task oftesting nd fundamentally

revisingthe democraticpeace.69 ts approach

aims at

apprehending how the

social

practices

nd norms of states construct he dentities nd

interests

f the

same.

Ergo,

f

democracies

do not

fight

ach

other,

hen t

must be

because

of

the way they understand

each

other,

heir

ntersubjective ccounts of each

other,

nd the socio-international

ractices

that

accompany

those accounts.70

But

constructivism ould offer more general account of zones of peace, one

not imited

o

democracies.Different eriods of the histories

f

both Africa

nd

Latin America have been marked by long stretches f little or no warfare

between states. These pacific periods are obviously not associated with any

objective indicators

of

democracy.By investigating

ow African nd Latin

American states constructed hemselves

and

others,

t

might

be

possible

to

understand these neglected zones of authoritarian eace.

Constructivistuzzles

Constructivism ffers

n

account of the

politics

of

dentity.71

t

proposes

a

way

of

understanding

how

nationalism, thnicity,ace, gender,religion,

nd

sexu-

ality, nd other ntersubjectivelynderstoodcommunties, re each involved n

an account of

global politics. Understanding

how identities re

constructed,

what

norms

and

practices ccompany

their

reproduction,

nd how

they

con-

struct ach other s a

major part

of

the constructivist esearch

program.

69. For a very well developed researchdesign to

test constructivist ersus mainstream ccounts

of the democratic eace, see Colin Kahl,

Constructing Separate Peace: Constructivism, ollective

Liberal Identity, nd the Democratic Peace, Security tudies forthcoming).

70. For accounts of the

democraticpeace

that

focus on its contextual ntersubjective haracters,

see Ido Oren, The Subjectivity f the Democratic' Peace: ChangingU.S. Perceptions f Imperial

Germany, nternationalecurity, ol. 20, No. 2

(Fall 1995), pp. 147-184; Thomas Risse-Kappen,

Cooperation mong Democracies, . 30; and Risse-Kappen, Collective Identity n a Democratic

Community, p.

366-367.

71.

I

do not try o compilea comprehensive et of

questions for onstructivists,ut nstead merely

elaborategeneralthemes

for

research, hemes that

do

not have a

prominent lace

in

mainstream

international elations heory.





8/16/2019 Hopf+1998 (1).pdf


ThePromise f

Constructivism193

Althoughnationalism

and

ethnicity re receivingmore

attention

n main-

stream nternational

elations

heory,

ttention

o

gender, exuality,

ace,

and

religionhave

received much

less,

and

certainly one of

them s part of

either

neorealist or

neoliberal accounts of how the

world

works.72Constructivism

promises to deal

with these issues, not

merely because they are

topical or

heretofore

ndervalued,but because as

varietiesof dentity,hey re

central o

how constructivismeneratesunderstandings f social phenomena. Construc-

tivism

assumes,

a

priori,

hat

dentities re

potentially art

of

the

constitutive

practicesof the

state,

nd

so, productiveof

its actions at home and

abroad.73

One

of the most

mportant y-products f this

concernwith dentity

olitics

is the returnof

differencesmong states.The

same state is,

in

effect,many

different

ctors

n

worldpolitics, nd different

tatesbehave

differentlyoward

otherstates,based on the

identities

of each. If

true,

then we

should

expect

different

atterns

f

behavior across

groups

of

states

with

differentdentities

and

interests.74

lthough

t is

tempting

o

assert that

similarity

reeds

coop-

eration, t is impossibleto make such an a prioriclaim. Identitieshave much

more

meaning

for

each state than a mere label.

Identitiesoffer

ach state

an

understanding

f other

states, ts

nature,

motives, nterests, robable

actions,

attitudes,

nd

role

in

any given

political

context.

Understanding

nother tate as

one

identity,

ather han

another,

as conse-

quences

for the

possible

actions

of

both. For

example,

Michael Barnetthas

speculated

that the

failure of deterrence

gainst Iraq

in

Kuwait

in

1990 is

because Saudi Arabia

was seen as

an

Arab,

rather han a

sovereign,

tate.

Iraq's

understanding

of

Saudi Arabia as an Arab state

implied

that

Riyadh

would never allow U.S. forces o deploy on Arab territory.f, nstead, raq had

72. For a critical iew of neorealism'sbelated

efforts o capture nationalism, ee Yosef Lapid

and

Friedrich

Kratochwil, Revisitingthe

National': Toward an IdentityAgenda in Neorealism?, n

Lapid

and

Kratochwil,

The Return

f Culture nd

Identity, p. 105-126. For

a most imaginative

criticalconstructivist

reatment f nationalism, ee Daniel Deudney, Ground

Identity:Nature,

Place, and

Space

in

Nationalism,

n

ibid., pp.

129-145; see also Roxanne LynnDoty, Sovereignty

and the

Nation: Constructing he Boundaries of National Identity, n

Thomas J. Biersteker

nd

Cynthia

Weber, ds.,

State

Sovereignty

s Social Construct

Cambridge,

U.K.:

Cambridge University

Press, 1996) pp.

121-147.

73. For

example,J.Ann Tickner bserves that

ontemporary

masculinized

Western nderstandings

of

themselves ead to feminizedportrayals f the South as emotionaland

unpredictable. ickner,

Identityn International elations Theory:FeministPerspectives, n Lapid and Kratochwil,The

ReturnfCulturend dentity,p. 147-162.

74.

Forexample,Risse-Kappen, Collective

dentity

n

a

DemocraticCommunity, inds common

identity

within he NorthAtlanticTreaty

Organization; ee also Iver

B.

Neumann and Jennifer .

Welsh, The Other in

European

self-definition,

eview

of

nternational

tudies,

Vol.

17, No.

4

(October

1991), pp. 327-348, for an explorationof Christian and

European states versus

Islamic Asiatic

Turkey.





8/16/2019 Hopf+1998 (1).pdf



understoodSaudi Arabia as

a

sovereign tate,

n a

realistworld, t would have

perhaps expected Saudi balancing against Iraqi actions

in

Kuwait, including

U.S. military ntervention,

nd

would have been deterred.75

n

other

words,

neorealistpredictions

f

balancing behavior, uch as

that

of

Saudi

Arabia, rely

on a single particular dentity eing

ascribed to that

countryby Iraq.

But

if

alternative dentities re possible, as constructivismuggests,the neorealist

world is smaller thanalleged.

Or another tatemaynot be seen as another state

at

all,

but instead as an

ally, friend, nemy, co-guarantor, hreat, democracy,

nd

so on.76 Finally,

constructivism's xpectationofmultiple dentities or actors

n

world politics

rests on

an

openness to local historical ontext.This receptivity o identities

being generatedand reproduced empirically, ather

han

resting n pregiven

assumptions, opens up

the

study

of world

politics

to

different

nits alto-

gether.77 ypothesizing

differences

mong

states

llows formovement

beyond

the typical binary characterizations

f

mainstream internationalrelations:

democratic-nondemocratic,reat power-non-greatpower, North-South, nd

so forth.While

these

common axes of

analysis

are

certainly elevant,

onstruc-

tivism promises to explain many other meaningful ommunities

of

identity

throughout

world

politics.

A

thirdconstructivist

romise

is to return ulture

and

domestic

politics

to

international

elations

heory.

o

the

extent

hat

constructivisms

ontologically

agnostic-that is,

it

does

not

include

or exclude

any particular

variables

as

meaningful-it

envisions no

disciplinary

divides

between international

ela-

tions

and

comparative

ubfields

or any

fields

for hat

matter).

Constructivism

has no inherent ocus on second image accounts of world politics. n fact,

an

appropriate

criticism

would

be

that it

has remained

far

too

long

at

the

systemic

evel

of

analysis.78 evertheless,

onstructivism

rovides

a

promising

75. Michael N. Barnett, Institutions, oles, and Disorder: The Case of the Arab StatesSystem,

InternationaltudiesQuarterly, ol. 37, No. 3 (September1993), pp. 271-296.

76. See Risse-Kappen, Collective dentity

n

a DemocraticCommunity,

nd

Michael N. Barnett,

Sovereignty,Nationalism,

and

Regional Order

in

the

Arab

System,

nternational

rganization,

Vol.

49,

No.

3 (Summer 1995), pp. 479-510, forexamples.

77.

Yale Fergusonand Richard Mansbach, forexample,offer rich variety f polities, such as

city-states, ivilizations,polis, empires, kingdoms, caliphates, each

of which had

and,

in

some

cases, has and will have, meaningful dentities n world politics. Fergusonand Mansbach, Past

as

Prelude, pp. 22-28,

and

Sujata Chakrabarti asic, Culturing nternational elations Theory,

both in Lapid and Kratochwil,

The

Return f Culture nd Identity, p. 85-104.

78. Keohane, in International nstitutions, . 392, has made this observation bout reflectivist

scholarship.. or similar aments, ee Dessler, What's At Stake, p. 471;

and

Barnett, Institutions,

Roles, and Disorder, p. 276. Alexander Wendt acknowledges he has systematically racketed

domestic factors n Wendt, Anarchy s What States Make of It, p. 423.





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The Promise

f

Constructivism

195

approach for

uncoveringthose features fdomestic society, ulture, nd poli-

tics

that

hould matter

o

state

dentity

nd

state

action n

global politics.There

are many

different ays in which

a

constructivistccountcan operate at the

domestic evel.

I

mentiononly several here.

Any state identity n world politics is

partly the product of the social

practices

hat

constitute hat

dentity

t home.79

n

this way, dentity olitics

t

home constrain nd enable state dentity,nterests,nd actions abroad. Ashis

Nandy

has

written

bout

the close connectionbetween VictorianBritish

gen-

erational nd

gender

dentities t

home

and the colonization

of ndia. Victorian

Britain rew a

very trict ine between the sexes

and

also between generations,

differentiatinghe

latter nto young and old, productive and unproductive,

respectively. ritish olonial dominance was understood

as masculine

n

rela-

tionship

to Indian's feminine

ubmission,

nd Indian

culturewas understood

as infantile

nd

archaic.

n

these ways

Victorian

nderstandings f tselfmade

India comprehensible o Britain n a

particularway.80Whereas conventional

accounts of colonialismand imperialism elyon disparities nrelativematerial

power

to

explain

relations

of

domination

and

subordination, onstructivists

would

add that

no account of such hierarchical

utcomes

s

completewithout

exploring

how

imperial

identities are constructedboth at home and with

respect o the

subordinatedOther broad.81 ven ifmaterialpower is necessary

to produce

imperialism,

ts

reproduction

annot be

understood without nves-

tigatingthe social

practices

that

accompanied

it and

the discursive power,

especially

n

the form f

related

dentities, hey

wielded.

Within the

state

itself

might

exist areas

of cultural

practice, sufficiently

empoweredthroughnstitutionalizationnd authorization, o exert constitu-

tive or causative

influence on state policy.82 he state's assumed need to

construct

national

dentity

t

home to

legitimize

he

state'sextractive uthor-

ity

has effects n state

dentity

broad.

A

more critical onstructivistccount

79.

Two works

that

make the connection etween domestic dentity

onstruction

t

home

and

state

identity re Audie Klotz,

Norms n internationalelations: he

truggle gainst partheidIthaca,

N.Y.:

Cornell UniversityPress, 1995); and Peter

J.

Katzenstein,CulturalNorms

and

National

Security

(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University ress, 1996).

80.

Inayatullah

nd

Blaney, Knowing Encounters, p.

76-80.

81. Compare this,forexample,to RichardCottam'svery nterestingccount of imperialBritish

images of Egypt. The critical difference s that Cottam does not see

British constructions f

themselvesor their ociety'sparts as relevant o an understanding fBritish mages of Egyptians.

Richard Cottam,Foreign olicyMotivation: General heory nd Case Study

Pittsburgh: niversity

of

Pittsburgh ress, 1977).

82. One

might ay

this

about the Frenchmilitary etween World Wars and

II.

See Kier, Culture

and

FrenchMilitaryDoctrinebeforeWorld War II.





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Internationalecurity 3:1 |

196

mightbegin by positing

the state's

need

for

an Other

n

world

politics,

o as

to justifyts own

rule at home.83

A

last promise

of

constructivism

oncerns

not

so

much

research ssues

as

research strategy. onstructivism

ffers heterogamous

research

approach:

that s, t readilycombines

with differentields nd disciplines.Constructivism

itself s the product

of

structural

inguistics, ostmodernpoliticaltheory,

riti-

cal theory,ultural nd media studies, iterary riticism, nd no doubt others.

Far from laimingprimacy s a theory f nternational olitics,

onstructivism

lends itself ocollaborationwithother pproaches,

both within

political cience

and outside. Literatures

n

decision making,politicalculture,

ocialization,

nd

experimental ognitive

nd social

psychology

would seem to be

most

promis-

ing partners.

CONSTRUCTIVIST PROBLEMS

A

constructivistesearchprogram,

ike all others,has unexplainedanomalies,

but their xistenceneed notnecessitate he donningofprotective elts of any

sort.Conventional

constructivism as one

large problem

thathas several

parts.

FriedrichKratochwilhas observed

thatno

theory

f

culture

an substitute or

a

theory

of

politics.84

aul

Kowert and

Jeffreyegro

have

pointed

out

that

there s no causal theory f dentity

onstruction ffered y anyof the authors

in the

Katzensteinvolume.85

Both

criticisms

re as accurate as they re differ-

ent,

and

imply

different

emedies.

Kratochwil's statementreinforces he point

that

constructivism

s

an

ap-

proach, not a theory.

And if it is a theory, t is a theoryof process,

not

sub-

stantiveoutcome. In order to achieve the latter, onstructivismmust adopt

some

theory

f

politics

to

make it work. Critical

theory

s farmore advanced

in this

regard

than conventional

onstructivism,

ut it

comes

at a

price, price

that

one

may

or

may

not be willing

to

pay,depending

on

empirical, heoretical,

and/or aesthetic nterests.

have described how

differently

ritical nd

con-

ventional constructivism

reat he

origins

of

dentity

nd the nature

of

power.

83. This is done by

David

Campbell, Writing ecurity:

nited tates

Foreign olicy

nd the

Politics

ofdentityMinneapolis: University f Minnesota Press, 1992)

and JimGeorge,Discourses fGlobal

Politics:A Critical Re)Introductiono nternational elations Boulder,Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 994).

84. Kratochwil, Is the Ship of Culture at

Sea or

Returning? .

206.

85. Paul Kowert and Jeffreyegro, Norms, dentity, nd TheirLimits:

A

TheoreticalReprise,

n

Katzenstein, he Culture fNational ecurity, . 469. For other ritical

eviews of constructivismnd

world politics, ee Jeffrey

.

Checkel,

The

Constructivist

urn n International elationsTheory,

World olitics, ol. 50, No. 2 (January 998), pp. 324-348, and Emanuel

Adler, Seizing the Middle

Ground: Constructivismn World Politics, European ournalfnternational elations, ol. 3, No. 3

(1997), pp. 319-363.





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The Promise fConstructivism197

It is here thatcritical heory

inds ts animating heory f politics.By

assuming

that the identitiesof the Self and Other are inextricably ound up in a rela-

tionship of power, and that the state is a dominating instrument, ritical

theorists an offer heoreticallynformed ccounts of the politicsof dentity: t

least along the dimensions specified, hatof hierarchy,ubordination, omina-

tion,emancipation, nd state-society truggle.

The price paid for such theories of politics,however, s an ironic one that

naturalizes certain realities, privileging ocial relations of dominance and

hierarchy. f course, critical heory sserts ts ultimateopenness to variation

and change,but the point here is that ts theoryof politics, priori, s more

closed than thatof ts conventional ersion,whichstands accused oftheoretical

underspecification. he problem of underspecification xists because conven-

tional constructivism,s a theory f process,does not specify he existence, et

alone the precise nature or value,

of

its main causal/constitutive lements:

identities, orms,practices, nd social structures.nstead, constructivismpe-

cifies how these elements are theoretically ituated vis-a-vis each other,pro-

viding an understanding of a process and an outcome, but no a priori

predictionper se. The advantages of such

an

approach are in the nonpareil

richness of its elaboration of causal/constitutivemechanisms in any given

social context nd its

openness (and

not

ust

in

the last

instance,

s

in critical

theory) o the discoveryof other ubstantive heoretical

lements t work. The

cost here, however, s the absence of

a

causal theory

f

identity.

The dilemma s thatthe more conventional onstructivismmoves

to furnish

such

a

causal

theory,

he more

it

loses the

possibility

of

maintaining

the

ontological openness that ts nterpretivist ethodsafford. utthe dilemma is

a

continuum,

ot a

binaryopposition.

Conventionalconstructivistsan

and do

specifytheir theoreticalelements

in advance in

practice. Just

to take

one

example,

not a

single

author n the Katzensteinvolume assessed

gender, lass,

or race

in

any

of their

nalyses.

This observation

not criticism)

s intended

to

underline how conventional onstructivists

lready

bound

their

priori

theo-

retical domains

according

to

empirical

nterest

nd theoretical

priors.

More-

over,

conventionalconstructivists

an make

predictions,

f

they

choose. Their

onlyconstraints just

how durable

they

believe

the

social

structures

o

be

that

theyhave demonstrated re constraining hereproduction f dentities,nter-

ests,

norms,

and

practices,

n

some social context.

For

example,

when Risse-

Kappen argues

that North Atlantic

Treaty Organization (NATO)

members

regard

each other s liberal

allies,

rather

han

as realist tates

balancing against

a

threat,

e is

making

a

prediction:

fNATO

members ee

each other s liberal

allies,

NATO will

persistbeyond the point

where the threat

disappears.





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One obstacle

to the

development

of

a

causal model

of

identity

s conven-

tional constructivism'silence on the issue of intentionality.ritical theorists

confidently eclare their ndifferenceo the issue: establishing ausality s

an

illusory goal. Kowert

and

Legro point out

the failure of

any

author

in

the

Katzensteinvolume to establishmore than

a

correlative elationship etween

an identity

nd an

outcome.

In

fact, he authors do

far

more

than

that:they

control for alternative xplanations and theyshow the connectionbetween

norms and interests nd outcomes. But what is missing s the decision based

on the dentity. ere again, constructivist eterogamy llows for n attempted

fix.

The answer may lie

in

trying

o

marry onstructivistrocess to psychologi-

cal process.Kowert and Legro discuss the possibility n termsofthe experi-

mental social

psychological

work

of

Marilyn

Brewer

nd

Jonathan

urner.86o

the extent

t

s possible to establisha causal link between a particular dentity,

such as

Japanese antimilitarism,

nd an

interest

n

opposing Japanesemilitary

expenditures or between belief

n a

norm, uch as

humanitarian

ntervention-

ism,and an actionto fulfill hatnorm), tmightbe attainable hrough ngoing

work

on the

connectionbetween identity

nd

behavior

n

social psychology.

The last problem

with

constructivisms really not so much a problem as

it

is an

advantage. Constructivism'sheory fprocessand commitment o inter-

pretivist

hick

descriptionplace extraordinary

emands

on the researcher

o

gather

mountains of elaborate

empirical

data.

To reconstruct he

operation

of

identitypolitics,

even

in a limited domain for a

short

period, requires

thou-

sands of

pages

of

reading,

monthsof interviews

nd archival

research,

nd a

host

of ess

conventional ctivities, uch as ridingpublic transportation,

tand-

ing in lines,and goingto bars and caf6s to participate n local practices. The

latterneed not be so

onerous.) The point here

is that

the evidence necessary

to develop

an

understanding f, ay, national dentity,ts relation

o

domestic

identities, he practices hat constitute oth, mplied

interests f

each,

and

the

overall social structure s

necessarily vast

and varied. Constructivism s no

shortcut.

The

Constructivistromise

The assumptions thatunderlay constructivismccount for ts different nder-

standing

of world

politics.

Since actors

and

structures

re

mutually

con-

structed,

tate behavior

in

the face of different

istributions

f

power

or

86.

Ibid.,

p. 479.





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ThePromise

fConstructivism

I

199

anarchy s unknowable absent

a reconstruction f the ntersubjectivemeaning

of these structures

nd actors.Since actors have multiple dentities, nd these

identities mply different

nterests, he a priori and exogenous attribution f

identical nterests o states

s invalid. Since power is both material nd discur-

sive, patterned ehaviorover

time hould be understood s a result f material

or economic power working

n

concert

with

deological

structures,ocial prac-

tices, nstitutionalized orms, nd intersubjective ebs of meaning. The great-

est

power

of all is thatwhich disciplinesactorstonaturally magine only those

actions

that

reproduce

the

underlying rrangements

f

power-material

and

discursive.Since constructivist

ocial structures re both

enduring and muta-

ble, change

in world

politics

s considered both

difficult nd

possible.

A

conventional onstructivist

ecasting f mainstream


puzzles is based on

the mplications f ts assumptions.Since what constitutes

a

threat

an never be stated as

an

a

priori,primordial

constant,

t should be

approached

as a

social construction f

an

Other,

nd theorized

at

that evel.

Since identities,norms,and social practices reduce uncertainty,he security

dilemma should not be

the starting oint for nalyzing

relations mong states.

Since states

are

already

situated

in

multiple

social contexts, ny

account of

(non)cooperation among them should begin by exploring

how their under-

standings

of

each

other

generate

heirrelevant nterests. ince communities

f

identity re expected to

exist,patternsof behaviorthat spur scholars to con-

sider a liberal

peace

should insteadprovokeus

to

consider

ones of

peace

more

generally.

A

conventional constructivist ccount

of

politics

operates

between main-

stream nternational elations nd critical heory. onventional constructivism

rejects he mainstream resumption

hat

world politics

s so homogenous

that

universally

valid

generalizations

an be expected

to

come

of

theorizing

bout

it. It

denies

the critical onstructivist

osition

that world politics s

so hetero-

geneous

thatwe should presume

to look for

onlythe unique

and

the differen-

tiating.Contrary

o

both

these

two

approaches,

conventional

constructivism

presumeswe should be looking

forcommunities fintersubjectivity

n

world

politics,domains

within

which

actors shareunderstandings

f themselves

nd

each

other,yielding predictable

and

replicable patterns

of action within

a

specific ontext.

Mainstream


theory

treats

world

politics

as an inte-

grated whole, undifferentiatedy either

time

or territory.

riticaltheoryre-

gards

world

politics

s an

array

of

fragments

hat an

never

add

up

to

a

whole,

and

regards

efforts

o

construct uch

a whole as

a

political

move

to

impose





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Internationalecurity3:1 | 200

some kind of

rationalistic,

aturalized order on

irrepressible

ifference. on-

ventional constructivism, n the other hand, regards the world as a compli-

cated and vast

array

of different

omains,

the

apprehension

of all of which

could never yield a fully oherentpictureof international olitics.The failure

to account for ny one of them,however,will guarantee a theoretically nsat-

isfying nderstanding f the world. In effect, he promise of constructivisms

to restorea kind of partial order and predictability o world politics that

derives not from

mposed homogeneity,

ut from n

appreciation f difference.

Corrections:

In Alexei G. Arbatov, MilitaryReform n Russia: Dilemmas, Obstacles, and

Prospects, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Spring 1998): p. 86 line 13 should read The quantity

of military ersonnel

..

must be sacrificed orhigher uality rms ; p. 90 line

17 should read Numerical Balance ; p. 92 line 3 should read reinforcement

advantages and interdictioncapabilities against Russian reinforcements ;

p. 106 line 10 should read has never been preprogrammed nto ; p. 109 line

11 should read to find ts force evels and structure n a priority asis ; p. 130

line 1 should read down to a level of 1.2 millionby 1999 ; and p. 130 line 25

should read are not carried out.

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