(2009). New York: Columbia University Press. 6061). Norms that challenged ideas like genocide, apartheid, the use of nuclear weapons, how to treat prisoners of war, how combatants are defined, and the role of women in armed forces emerge in opposition to existing norms. Similarly, treating social norms as static independent variables led to calls for constructivists to define the conditions under which normative and nonnormative influences on behavior are likely to be the most important in determining behavior (Legro and Kowert 1996; Risse et al. Making sense, making worlds: Constructivism in social theory and international relations. 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). Central to constructivism are concepts such as norms, institutions, and culture. About us. Finally, the third theory of international relations, known as Constructivism, focuses on ideas, shared beliefs and identity as the main drivers of success. New York: M. E. Sharpe. In this sense, under a constructivist lens, key concepts like sovereignty and power can take on different meanings compared to how they are understood in realist frameworks or defense-oriented establishments. This paper's argument begins by assuming that constructivism is a contested concept. (1999). At the same time, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) had successfully pushed for the UN to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2020. Instead of calculating what is best for improving its utility, an actor motivated by the logic of appropriateness will instead reason what actors like me should do. Cham: Springer. Our assessments, publications and research spread knowledge, spark enquiry and aid understanding around the world. Special issue. 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. This dynamism, it should also be noted, may not always be positive ideas about security can also regress or become less normative or progressive. Studies of contestation and norm change have begun to examine diverse issues like organizational change in international financial institutions (Nielson, Tierney, and Weaver 2006; Chwieroth 2008); European integration (Meyer 2005; Van Kersbergen and Verbeek 2007; Dimitrakopoulos 2008); environment (Bailey 2008); election monitoring (Kelley 2008); and security (Kornprobst 2007). The strategic cultures of states are not the same: they are guided by perceptions, beliefs, ideas and norms that determine how states view the international system and how they use military force and priorities (Neumann and Heikka 2005, p. 6). Constructivism relies in part on the theory of the social construction of reality, which says that whatever reality is perceived to be, for the . The international system is defined by anarchy. Hopf, T. (1998). Birdsall, A. 23) and recognized as a medium of exchange for goods and services. This perspective states that the . 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. Bibliographical References Adler, E. (1997). Further, constructivists became more cautious about basing their analyses on the logic of appropriateness. Theories on International Relations: Social Constructivism PJ October 14, 2018 Human Rights, Law and International Relations Previous Next The social constructivist approach is distinctive in that it emphasises human consciousness and knowledge in a way that 'treats ideas as structural factors which influence how actors interpret the world.' Manchester: Manchester University Press. However, when defined as ideas or expectations about appropriate behavior for actors with a given identity (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998:891), it became an ideal conceptual tool for operationalizing processes of social construction. Constructivism demonstrates the flexibility and critical stance that characterizes the reflectivist theories by stressing the socially constructed aspect of international realities and highlighting the ever-changing nature of the study of International Relations. 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). The identity of agents such as states matter because identity helps determine national interests. By Fizza Hameed Khan, Mahnoor Iqbal, Malaika Shahbaz, Sidra Noor, Raniya Ishtiaq. (3) Normative emergence how an idea reaches intersubjective status in a community. To be specific, I navigated core tenets of constructivism in terms of its ontology, epistemology, and methodology, respectively. Ideas about whether actors reason about norms or through norms can be linked to behavioral logics, which provide conceptions of how actors and norms are linked. The Pacific Review, 28(1), 122. 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. 115135). Constructivism, which reached the shores of IR in the 1980s, describes the dynamic, contingent and culturally based condition of the social world. The study and practice of international relations has led international relations scholars to suggest different . Constructivism considers the relations between states (and other actors) as a social realm; less about the distribution of resources and power and more about the distribution of ideas. A further example of norm erosion can be seen in the norm against the use of torture. McCourt, D. (2016). Countering hybrid warfare as ontological security management: The emerging practices of the EU and NATO. Nordic strategic culture. International Relations is in Social Studies, thus this study field tries to theorize a model that could explain everything that is going on between countries. - Checkel (1998) argues that "without more sustained attention . Constructivists argue that international life is social, resulting from the ways people interact with each other (i.e. In The New Constructivism in International Relations Theory, David McCourt offers a refreshing take on Constructivism by reviewing old, present, and new concepts in Constructivism and connects them pragmatically with methodological examples.Moreover, this book functions as a handbook on 'how to constructivist' in an era defined and dominated by new advances in computational social science. Critics found this dual understanding of the logic of appropriateness wanting and thus developed additional behavioral logics that modeled differing motivations and modes of behavior more explicitly. The way in which issues are constructed and interpreted as threatening can also depend heavily on identity and views of the external realm. In eliciting conformance and stabilizing expectations norms do not and cannot define all possible behavior, especially when a norm first emerges. Cham: Springer. 2. Contrastingly, neorealist prescriptions of power see it as hard, material, military power (such as large military forces or superior weapons) and are concerned with its distribution in the international system. What agents want and who they are may be constituted by social structures, but there is never a complete sublimation of agents they retain an ability to reason about constitutive social structures and make relatively independent behavioral choices. European Journal of International Relations, 5(4), 435450. Japan and identity change: Why it matters in international relations. Thucydides the constructivist. Rasmussen, M. V. (2005). This means that the absence of a central power over states produces a world of perpetual insecurity, or Hobbesian state of nature (see Realist International Relations Theory and The Military by Schmidt in this volume), with conflict and violence a constant possibility. In addition, the students who took POL487 in fall of 2008 at the University of Toronto provided a wonderful sounding board and inspired feedback for the development of some of the ideas in this essay. For the Athenians, the refusal of the Melians the much weaker party to submit and their preference for neutrality was an affront to their power. Although some debate exists over whether it is more of an approach rather than a theory (McCourt 2016, p. 476), its importance for international relations can be found in its emphasis on social relations between actors; how actors relate to each other shapes international politics. Social theory of international politics. Poststructuralism in international relations: An exploration of discourse and the military. For March and Olsen, the logic of consequences where agents undertake actions on the basis of rationally calculating the optimal (usually materially) course of action remained an insufficient foundation for theorizing behavior in international relations. Moreover, social constructivism emphasizes social relations in global politics, and sees security and international politics as determined by ideas as well as material factors. Hilde van Meegdenburg argues that in the case of Denmark, the use of PMSCs has been limited because it is not seen to align with Danish values. Just as liberalism was a response to realism, economic structuralism is a response to liberalism. Katzenstein, P. J. In M. Evangelista & N. Tannenwald (Eds. Foreign Policy, 134, 5059. Norms and Social Constructivism in International Relations | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies 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. Second, and more significantly, both the norm compliance and norm change research agendas engage seriously with notions of normative contestation, directly problematizing aspects of norm dynamics that tended to be held constant in earlier work. The culture of national security. Social constructivism can also help make sense of security and military phenomena, such as alliances and threat perceptions, or why states go to war. Norms, identity, and national security in Germany and Japan. Moreover, military alliances are increasingly not just about physical security but about binding together states with shared interests, identities, and norms. This has led the constructivist literature away from Keohanes (1988) original vision of a division of labor constructivists provide insight into what the interests are, rational approaches take the analysis from there (Legro 1996). One of the big problems for rationalists, (When considering critiques of constructivism, it is important to note that those critiques are guided by the underlying epistemological and ontological positions of rationalist or other forms of theorizing.) First, unlike realist theory which sees actors as like units which respond to external phenomena in the same way, constructivists argue that who actors think they are matters. International Organization, 59(4), 701012. On the contrary, early, empirically oriented constructivists worked to demonstrate that shared ideas about appropriate state behavior had a profound impact on the nature and functioning of world politics. We dont do that: A constructivist perspective on the use and non-use of private military contractors by Denmark. Social Constructivism sees the whole discipline of International Relations as a social construction. 134). (2002). A paradox of social norms is their dual quality. Violation of the Geneva Conventions constitutes a war crime. Norms and identity in world politics. Assuming that actors reason through social norms means beginning analysis with the understanding that the very way that actors view and understand the world is shaped by social norms. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. 3536). Arguments over the different actions feed back and alter the meaning of the original norms. The link was not copied. Critical constructivists prefer to examine state identity in terms of its wider story (Fierke and Jrgensen 2001). The simplification of social norm dynamics at the foundation of the initial wave of constructivist norms writing contributed to the meteoric rise of social constructivism within the international relations literature. Tun, H. (2005). As we have seen in chapter 4, various factors can influence a country's interpretation of a convention. 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. The inescapable tension between general rules and specific actions ceaselessly casts up disputes which in turn generate arguments, which then reshape both rules and conduct. The logical chain from general norms to contestation is not long. This logic structured seminal empirical work that endeavored to show how ideational and normative factors could explain puzzles in world politics (e.g., Klotz 1995; Finnemore 1996). This aspect of the literature is more focused on how actors understand the norms that constitute them and alternatively consider how actors that reason through norms can contest and reconstruct the norms that bind communities together. Rather than passive receptacles, norm takers have a very active role to play in socialization and can influence the meaning of the norms that constitute the very community they are being asked to join (Ba 2006). Constructivist thought makes it clear that social norms do not exist independently of communities of actors that believe in and enact them. Social Constructivism in International Relations and the Gender Dimension . Interpreting the impact of a norm. 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. Yet this dominant view of international relations was significantly challenged by Alexander Wendt in the early 1990s with the simple premise: anarchy is what states make of it (Wendt 1992, pp. Self-identity and the IR state. An example of this can be seen in the case of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which was created in 2002 to hear cases of war crimes. Norms are also expectations about behavior (these are called regulatory norms because they define acceptable behavior). 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). In A. M. Sookermany (Ed. Yet, Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblances helps in understanding why an essence of constructivism need not be found. We unlock the potential of millions of people worldwide. 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. Erskine, T. (2012). Constructivists used this logic in early efforts to contrast their work with more established rationalist perspectives on world politics (see especially Finnemore 1996) because the logic of appropriateness contends that actors in world politics undertake actions that are appropriate for their particular identity. Seeing the world in this way as mutually constituted, driven by the interests of actors which relies on their ideas of themselves and others, and their approach to phenomena brings about different possibilities in international relations and security. Even studies of norm emergence tended to treat the norms in question as relatively static one relatively fully formed norm is replaced by a new idea that becomes a norm. It has major implications for an understanding of knowledge, including scientific knowledge, and how to achieve it. Constructivisms overwhelming focus on the state and state agents obscures other actors and processes. His refusal to allow the UN weapons inspectors into Iraq during the buildup to war in 2003 was seen as irrational to many in the west. Initial constructivist studies of social norms can be divided into three areas: normative, socialization, and normative emergence. The translation requires interpretation a subjective understanding of the intersubjective context to decide on a behavior. The main two paradigms is the Realists and the Liberalist school of thoughts. 317356). Steele, B. Haas, P. M. (2016). If it was not, then the international order and what security means could be something completely different. European Security, 27(3), 374392. International Studies Quarterly, 60(3), 475485. Constructivism is the new approach to International Relations. (2017). Along with recent work on strategic social construction the idea that norms can be deployed in the service of interests (regardless of whether those interests are pre-given or socially constructed themselves) or at least shape strategic behavior (e.g., Barnett and Coleman 2004; Muller 2004; Nielson, Tierney, and Weaver 2006; Seabrooke 2006) the recent writing on compliance has made progress on questions left open by the initial wave of empirical norms research. 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. Google Scholar. During the First World War, Belgium, driven by a sense of honor, chose to fight Germany even though the Belgians risked and experienced catastrophic consequences (Steele 2008b). What if behavior was due to factors other than norms or ideas? Baylis revision International Relations. 331336). On the contrary, the two parts of the norms literature described above tend to find themselves on different ends of the reasoning about normsreasoning through norms spectrum. Actors can see and interpret the world and approach it differently therefore, anarchy is what states make of it. For Wendt, different cultures of anarchy were possible, which meant that the neorealist idea of a self-help system was limited to just a Hobbesian version that depended on military power for security. However, the success of this initial wave of constructivist norms studies was built on an analytic move that would engender significant debate in the 2000s. Table of Contents; Introduction to Social Constructivism: Rise of Social Constructivism in IR: Constructivism as social theory: Constructivist theories of International Relations: States interactions are socially constructed. Part of Springer Nature. 1820; see also Katzenstein 1996). Constructivists discuss questions of identity and belief. An alternative set of norm dynamics may be implicated when one seeks to understand change in norms themselves. As Tannenwald says, [e]ven as states pursue their interests, they do so within a normative structure (2017, p. 17). The belief that reality is socially constructed leads constructivists to place a greater role on norm development, identity, and ideational power than the other major theoretical paradigms. General norms must be operationalized or translated into specific actions for specific situations. Critical methodology and constructivism. 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). In international relations, constructivism is a social theory that asserts that significant aspects of international relations are shaped by ideational factors (which are historically and socially constructed), not simply material factors. One set of norm dynamics may be implied when one seeks to understand how an actor outside a normative community interacts with norms when it is the target of socialization. talk, follow norms, create rules, etc.). As Sandholtz (2008:101) puts it disputes about acts are at the heart of a process that continually modifies social rules. Constructivism had been marginalized by these mainstream theories because it focused on social construction instead of material construction (Barkin, 2017). Put simply, social norms were treated as independent variables explanations for varied behaviors observed in world politics. 1999; Jacobsen 2003). Introduction by Finley, John H. New York: Random House. 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. Its value also depends on the market, so it can go up and down, or buy more or fewer things, dependent on inflation, and other variables. A Social Constructivist Interpretation of the Liberal Argument," European Journal of International Relations 1 (December 1995)CrossRef Google Scholar. As political processes such as the 2008 economic crisis in Europe and Brexit show, theorising a polity. Critical constructivists would seek to include different identities in how they understand the nation and present a more complex picture of what identity means and how it is contested and can be deconstructed (Fierke 2001). The first wave of empirical constructivist studies tended to freeze norms. First, the compliance and norm change research agenda (loosely defined) is more internally focused than the previous wave of norms-oriented research. (2) Socialization how an extant norm or a nascent norm from one community diffuses and is internalized by actors outside that community. New York: Routledge. This approach challenged the rationalism and positivism of neorealism and neoliberalism. In other words, actors can never significantly remove themselves from their social structure to make independent judgments. Christine Agius . Two strands of research, on the relations between strategic behaviour and international norms and between rationalism and constructivism, serve as examples of promising research in constructivist international relations theory. (1951). Sandholtz (2008:121) deems this to be a built-in dynamic of change whereby the ever present gap between general rules and specific situations, as well as the inevitable tension between norms, creates openings for disputes.. 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