Constructivism and International Relations

Stefano Guzzini, Anna Leander

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134319589
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

This new book unites in one volume some of the most prominent critiques of Alexander Wendt's constructivist theory of international relations and includes the first comprehensive reply by Wendt.

Partly reprints of benchmark articles, partly new original critiques, the critical chapters are informed by a wide array of contending theories ranging from realism to poststructuralism. The collected leading theorists critique Wendt's seminal book Social Theory of International Politics and his subsequent revisions. They take issue with the full panoply of Wendt's approach, such as his alleged positivism, his critique of the realist school, the conceptualism of identity, and his teleological theory of history. Wendt's reply is not limited to rebuttal only. For the first time, he develops his recent idea of quantum social science, as well as its implications for theorising international relations.

This unique volume will be a necessary companion to Wendt's book for students and researchers seeking a better understanding of his work, and also offers one of the most up-to-date collections on constructivist theorizing.

1
The constructivist challenge to structural realism
A review essay^*

Dale C.Copeland

For more than a decade realism, by most accounts the dominant paradigm in international relations theory, has been under assault by the emerging paradigm of constructivism. One group of realists—the structural (or neo-/systemic) realists who draw inspiration from Kenneth Waltz’s (1979) seminal Theory of International Politics—has been a particular target for constructivist arrows. Such realists contend that anarchy and the distribution of relative power drive most of what goes on in world politics. Constructivists counter that structural realism misses what is often a more determinant factor, namely, the intersubjectively shared ideas that shape behavior by constituting the identities and interests of actors.

Through a series of influential articles, Alexander Wendt has provided one of the most sophisticated and hard-hitting constructivist critiques of structural realism.¹ Social Theory of International Politics provides the first book-length statement of his unique brand of constructivism (Wendt 1999).² Wendt goes beyond the more moderate constructivist point that shared ideas must be considered alongside material forces in any empirical analysis. Instead he seeks to challenge the core neorealist premise that anarchy forces states into recurrent security competitions. According to Wendt, whether a system is conflictual or peaceful is a function not of anarchy and power but of the shared culture created through discursive social practices. Anarchy has no determinant ‘logic’, only different cultural instantiations. Because each actor’s conception of self (its interests and identity) is a product of the others’ diplomatic gestures, states can reshape structure by process; through new gestures, they can reconstitute interests and identities toward more other-regarding and peaceful means and ends. If Wendt is correct, and ‘anarchy is whatstates make of it’, then realism has been dealt a crushing blow: states are not condemned by their anarchic situation to worry constantly about relative power and to fall into tragic conflicts. They can act to alter the intersubjective culture that constitutes the system, solidifying over time the non-egoistic mind-sets needed for long-term peace.

Notwithstanding Wendt’s important contributions to international relations theory, his critique of structural realism has inherent flaws. Most important, it does not adequately address a critical aspect of the realist worldview: the problem of uncertainty. For structural realists, it is states’ uncertainty about the present and especially the future intentions of others that makes the levels and trends in relative power such fundamental causal variables. Contrary to Wendt’s claim that realism must smuggle in states with differently constituted interests to explain why systems sometimes fall into conflict, neorealists argue that uncertainty about the other’s present interests—whether the other is driven by security or nonsecurity motives—can be enough to lead security-seeking states to fight. This problem is exacerbated by the incentives that actors have to deceive one another, an issue Wendt does not address.

Yet even when states are fairly sure that the other is also a security seeker, they know that it might change its spots later on. States must therefore worry about any decline in their power, lest the other turn aggressive after achieving superiority. Wendt’s building of a systemic constructivist theory—and his bracketing of unit-level processes—thus presents him with an ironic dilemma. It is the very mutability of polities as emphasized by domestic-level constructivists—that states may change because of domestic processes independent of international interaction—that makes prudent leaders so concerned about the future. If diplomacy can have only a limited effect on another’s character or regime type, then leaders must calculate the other’s potential to attack later should it acquire motives for expansion. In such an environment of future uncertainty, levels and trends in relative power will thus act as a key constraint on state behavior.

The problem of uncertainty complicates Wendt’s efforts to show that anarchy has no particular logic, but only three different ideational instantiations in history—as Hobbesian, Lockean, or Kantian cultures, depending on the level of actor compliance to certain behavioral norms. By differentiating these cultures in terms of the degree of cooperative behavior exhibited by states, Wendt’s analysis reinforces the very dilemma underpinning the realist argument. If the other is acting cooperatively, how is one to know whether this reflects its peaceful character, or is just a façade masking aggressive desires? Wendt’s discussion of the different degrees of internalization of the three cultures only exacerbates the problem. What drives behavior at the lower levels of internalization is precisely what is not shared between actors—their private incentives to comply for short-term selfish reasons. This suggests that the neorealist and neoliberal paradigms, both of which emphasize the role of uncertainty when internalization is low or nonexistent, remain strong competitors to constructivism in explaining changing levels of cooperation through history. And because Wendt provides little empirical evidence to support his view in relation to these competitors, the debate over which paradigm possesses greater explanatory power is still an open one.

The first section of this essay outlines the essential elements of Wendt’s argument against the backdrop of the general constructivist position. The second considers some of the book’s contributions versus existing theories within the liberal, constructivist, and realist paradigms. The third offers an extended critique of Wendt’s argument against structural realism.

Overview: constructivism and Wendt’s argument

Three elements make constructivism a distinct form of international relations theorizing. First, global politics is said to be guided by the intersubjectively shared ideas, norms, and values held by actors. Constructivists focus on the intersubjective dimension of knowledge, because they wish to emphasize the social aspect of human existence—the role of shared ideas as an ideational structure constraining and shaping behavior.³ This allows constructivists to pose this structure as a causal force separate from the material structure of neorealism.

Second, the ideational structure has a constitutive and not just regulative effect on actors. That is, the structure leads actors to redefine their interests and identities in the process of interacting (they become ‘socialized’ by process). Thus, unlike rationalist theories such as neorealism and neoliberalism, which hold interest and identities constant in order to isolate (respectively) the causal roles of power and international institutions, constructivism considers how ideational structures shape the very way actors define themselves—who they are, their goals, and the roles they believe they should play.⁴

Third, ideational structures and actors (‘agents’) co-constitute and co-determine each other. Structures constitute actors in terms of their interests and identities, but structures are also produced, reproduced, and altered by the discursive practices of agents. This element allows constructivists to challenge the determinacy of neorealism. Structures are not reified objects that actors can do nothing about, but to which they must respond. Rather structures exist only through the reciprocal interaction of actors. This means that agents, through acts of social will, can change structures. They can thereby emancipate themselves from dysfunctional situations that are in turn replicating conflictual practices.⁵

For constructivists, therefore, it is critical to recognize that an actor’s reality at any point in time is historically constructed and contingent. It is the product of human activity—historical social practices—and thus can, at least in theory, betranscended by instantiating new social practices. This process of cultural change may be slow; after all, agents are sometimes coming up against thousands of years of socialization. But even the most embedded structures can be altered by acts of will (and the requisite social mobilization). The neorealist presumption that there are universal laws of international politics that work across space and time, driven by the given reality of structure, must therefore be discarded or at least highly qualified.⁶

Social Theory of International Politics moves beyond this core constructivist framework. For Wendt, constructivism in its different strands is simultaneously too extreme and too limited in its attack on neorealism. It is too extreme when it claims that it is ‘ideas all the way down’, namely, that all aspects of human reality are shaped by socialization through discursive practices.⁷ Material forces do exist and may have independent causal effects on actor behavior. Moreover, the state is a real, self-organized actor that has certain basic interests prior to its interaction with other states. Yet, according to Wendt, constructivism is too limited when it simply tests ideas as causal factors against realist variables such as power and interest, without exploring the degree to which these apparent ‘material’ variables are really constituted by ideational processes. If much of what scholars take to be material causes is actually the product of historical social practices, then realism explains far less in international relations than is commonly assumed.

Social Theory of International Politics is a complex work of both social philosophy and social science, one that justifies multiple readings to absorb its subtleties.⁸ Its core argument, however, can be summarized as follows. The book’s target is Waltzian neorealism. The overarching goal is to do for constructivism what Waltz did for realism, namely, the building of a parsimonious systemic theory that reveals the overarching constraining and shaping force of structure—this time from an ideational perspective. (Thus the title’s twist on Waltz’s masterwork—‘Social Theory of International Politics’.)

As with neorealism, Wendt’s argument is founded on the notion that states are the primary actors in world politics. States are self-organized units constructed from within by the discursive practices of individuals and social groups. As units that exist in the collective knowledge of many individuals, they are not dependent on the thoughts of any one person. Moreover, as self-organized entities, each possesses a ‘corporate’ identity as a sovereign actor, an identity not tied to interaction with other states.⁹ Even more controversial for extreme constructivists, Wendt also suggests that states possess certain essential needs that arise from their nature as self-organized political units: needs for physical survival, autonomy, economic well-being, and collective self-esteem—namely, the group’s need to feel good about itself (see chap. 5, especially 207–9, 224–6, 235–6). Wendt argues that it is only with this starting point—the state as a ‘pre-social’ actor with certain basic needs—that we can see the impact of interaction at the system level on the interests and identities of states. If states were solely a product of interaction, there would be no independent things upon which interaction could have its effect. Moreover, the state could never act as a free-willed agent employing rational deliberation to change its situation; it would be little more than a cultural automaton (198, 74, 125–30, 179–82, 244). Wendt also contends, contrary to more extreme constructivists, that the state, at least initially, has a tendency to be egoistic in its relations with others. Wendt acknowledges that members of groups, as social identity theory has shown, almost always show favoritism toward each other when dealing with members of the out-group. This means that, in the initial stages of a state-to-state interaction, egoistic self-help behavior is likely to be exhibited (306, 322–3).¹⁰

Wendt’s apparent concessions to the neorealist paradigm, however, do not mean that egoistic orientations will always be dominant, that states cannot learn to be more other-regarding and cooperative. Drawing from symbolic interactionism, Wendt argues that interaction with other states can lead actors to significant redefinitions of self. In the process of interacting, two states, designated as ‘Ego’ and ‘Alter’, take on certain roles and cast the other in corresponding counter-roles. Such role-taking and alter-casting, depending on the type of behavior exhibited (egoistic vs. other-regarding, militaristic vs. cooperative), can lead to one of two results: a reproduction of initially egoistic conceptions of self and other, or a transformation of the shared ideational structure to one that is more collective and other-regarding (327–36). The critical point for Wendt is that a structure has no reality apart from its instantiation in process. Structure, he stresses, ‘exists, has effects, and evolves only because of agents and their practices’ (185, emphasis in original; see also 313). Hence, if egoistic and militaristic conceptions of self and other continue, it is only because of the interactive practices that sustain those conceptions. Likewise, discursive practices are the source of any transformation in interests and identities. By casting the other in a non-egoistic light, and acting toward it from an other-regarding standpoint, actors can begin to build collective identities that include the other as part of the definition of self (chap. 7, especially 336–42, 368–9).

The book begins its sustained critique of neorealism in chapter 3. Wendt argues that behind Waltz’s explicit model of international politics, emphasizing anarchy and the distribution of material capabilities as primary causal factors, lies an implicit model focusing on the distribution of interests across states. That is, neorealism cannot explain variations in international outcomes without implicitly invoking different types of states—some of which seek only to maintain what theyhave (status quo states) and some of which seek to change the system through force (revisionist states). Systems consisting only of status quo states constitute ‘one kind of anarchy’, while systems with revisionist states constitute another. Foreshadowing his later discussion, Wendt suggests that status quo states should be relatively peaceful (anarchies of a Lockean or perhaps Kantian kind), while revisionist states will be conflictual, with states always on the edge of elimination (anarchy with a Hobbesian culture). This argument implies that anarchy, as a mere absence of central authority, has no one ‘logic’. Rather the way a particular anarchy and distribution of power plays itself out will depend critically on the distribution of interests in the system—‘what states want’ (106, emphasis in original).¹¹

Waltz’s neorealism is therefore underspecified: a hidden variable, the distribution of interests (status quo vs. revisionist), is doing most of the explaining. Any material structure, in fact, will have no effect except insofar as it interacts with the ideational structure that is the distribution of interests. Concrete interests, moreover, are not simply given by the system. Socialized beliefs about what kinds of objectives are worth pursuing or avoiding will shape each state’s actual interests. So, while individuals and states may have certain basic needs (such as needs for survival, esteem, and autonomy), how these needs are manifest in particular actors will be a product of social discursive practices (113–35).

Building on this foundation, in chapter 6 Wendt lays out what he calls the three ‘cultures of anarchy’ that have characterized at various times the past two thousand years of international relations. In each culture, states play certain types of roles vis-à-vis each other, complete with specific behavioral norms. In a Hobbesian culture, which according to Wendt dominated world affairs until the seventeenth century, states cast each other in the role of ‘enemy’: the other is a threatening adversary that will observe no limits on the use of violence. Violence must therefore be employed as a basic tool for survival. In a Lockean culture, which has characterized the modern state system since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, states view each other as rivals that may use violence to advance their interests, but that are required to refrain from eliminating each other. In a Kantian culture, which has emerged only recently in relations between democracies, states play the role of friends, that is, states do not use force to settle disputes and work as a team against security threats...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contributors
• Series editor’s preface
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1: The constructivist challenge to structural realism A review essay
• 2: Constructing a new orthodoxy? Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics and the constructivist challenge
• 3: Grand Theory in the age of its impossibility Contemplations on Alexander Wendt
• 4: Wendt, IR, and philosophy A critique
• 5: Wendt’s constructivism A relentless quest for synthesis
• 6: Constructivism and identity A dangerous liaison
• 7: Endogenizing corporate identities The next step in constructivist IR theory
• 8: Reflexivity and structural change
• 9: No place for politics? Truth, progress and the neglected role of diplomacy in Wendt’s theory of history
• 10: Social Theory as Cartesian science An auto-critique from a quantum perspective
• References