(Wendts book is vital reading for all constructivist scholars and his ontological and epistemological position on constructivism is set out more fully here. This was seen as a backward step and a challenge to the taboo norm that had developed over preceding decades. Wiener (2004:191, 192) notes that this behavioralist approach operates with stable norms and is best suited to inferring and predicting behavior by referring to a particular category of norms that entail standards for behavior. While these studies unveiled how the norms they examined contributed to dynamic political processes, they tended to hold the norms themselves constant. Abstract. This is akin to what Krebs and Jackson (2007:434) describe as implication contests where actors agree on the nature of an issue, but not the policy implications and framing contests where there is fundamental disagreement about the situation at hand. (2021). Constructivism is an International Relations (IR) theory. 3. This chapter will concentrate on some of the main elements that have relevance for military studies. There is an implicit equivalence made between contestation that goes on within a normative community (generated by the gap between general rules and specific situations) and contestation that occurs between different normative communities (inevitable tension between norms). 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. (Eds.). Tactical constructivism, method, and international relations. For neoconservatives, Saddam Hussein represented a threat because he was seen as an irrational actor that has been hostile toward the USA (Tun 2005). International Organization, 48(2), 185214. In other words, they worry that mutual constitution implies that actors have a difficult time stepping outside the bounds of their social/normative context to decide what is right to do. He considers that existing norms constrain the possibilities for action, but that different understandings of those norms inevitably arise in the community of norm acceptors. Zehfuss, M. (2002). Understanding how ideas about danger and threat are socially constructed, and how states form social relations in the international system is a key starting point in discussions about global security. And while the focus on norms is important, there is an overwhelming tendency to examine good norms theres often the assumption that norms are good or ethical without critically analyzing what makes them good and what they mean for international change (Erskine 2012; Kowert and Legro 1996). What Is Social Constructivism? This standpoint of Constructivism is contrary to the 'atomized' Realists have traditionally seen neutral states as weak and small, responding only to the external anarchic realm (Agius 2006). Social Constructivism sees the whole discipline of International Relations as a social construction. I also explored the growing body of constructivist . 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. (Ed.). Constructivists interested in norm change have recently begun reconceiving norm dynamics in a different way and have focused on contestation within communities of norm acceptors. or alliances (as realists would argue?). 331336). International Organization, 53(3), 433468. Is Dewey a social constructivist? Constructivisms overwhelming focus on the state and state agents obscures other actors and processes. Social constructivism is not among the most popular theoretical approaches used in forecasting in International Relations. But some states refuse to do this, even if it is in their material interests to do so (see the example of neutral states in this chapter). While constructivists know that social norms are always being reconstituted in the dynamic interplay of agents and social structures known as mutual constitution, social norms do elicit common behavioral expectations such that they are recognizable as relatively stable shared ideas. Further, constructivists became more cautious about basing their analyses on the logic of appropriateness. Reviewing the complementary identity-oriented approaches is beyond the scope of this essay, but its neglect here in no way reflects the importance of this crucial aspect of constructivist theorizing (on identity see, e.g., Hall 1999; Hopf 2002). Treating social norms as fully formed, static constructs, even for analytic convenience, underplayed this dynamism. While arguments remain about constructivisms ontological commitments and efforts to build a bridge between rationalist and reflectivist approaches, its relevance for military studies can be widely seen in terms of how it can broaden thinking about how to see and respond to other actors in terms of security and cooperation. Constructivism in international relations: The politics of reality. Constructivism (International Relations) For decades, the international relations theory field was comprised largely of two more dominant approaches: the theory of realism, and liberalism/pluralism. This 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. Constructivists are often too fast and loose with the use of the term norm without a concomitant discussion of what the community of norm acceptors looks like and by what criteria we can identify a community of norm acceptors. The realist reading of Thucydides account of the Melian Dialogue (431BC) in the Peloponnesian War is seen as the classic illustration of power politics. While realists would argue that decision to go to war are based on rational state interests, constructivists would argue that the Geneva Convention represents the idea that war is a social and cultural practice and driven by moral considerations. Only those with equal power could make such demands, and the Athenians make good on their threat to destroy the Melians, declaring that might is right and the weak suffer what they must (Thucydides 1951, pp. Norms in international relations: Some conceptual and methodological reflections. A key illustration here is the norm of human rights, which is widely accepted by actors (Katzenstein 1996). 1999; Jacobsen 2003). Liberty University International Relations Chapter Four: Theories of International Relations: Economic Structuralism, Constructivism, and Feminism Notes. This is particularly relevant to military studies in terms of understanding the strategic culture of specific states: culture can have an important influence on how states see security, how they interpret threat and train and organize their military forces. European Journal of International Relations, 12(3), 341370. There is significant overlap with the socialization literature here as the mechanisms by which an idea becomes a norm are not all that different from the mechanisms by which an actor outside a normative community is brought within. In: Sookermany, A.M. (eds) Handbook of Military Sciences. Constructivism is based on the general notion that international relations are socially constructed. Handbook of Military Sciences pp 116Cite as, 2 General norms must be operationalized or translated into specific actions for specific situations. The focus was not on analyzing norms as much as it was using norms as a device to analyze world politics. Constructivism sees power in terms of what it does and means (Guzzini 2005); ideas have power (e.g., that democracies are good). Practice theory and relationalism as the new constructivism. Norm shift around the idea of sovereignty can be seen in the pillars of R2P that say that if a state cannot or will not stop human rights abuses within its own territory, other states have a compelling reason to intervene. A similar concern motivated Risse (2000) to draw on Habermass work with communicative action and propose a new behavioral logic that would inject agency and more purposive reflection into the process of social construction. A constructivist lens on PMCs, however, reveals how questions of national identity can also be central to their use. 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. Hidden in plain sight: Constructivist treatment of social context and its limitations. Advance of Theory of Constructivism in IR The theory's rise is generally attributed after the end of cold war . This paper's argument begins by assuming that constructivism is a contested concept. Constructivism is relevant to military studies in numerous ways. Security communities. 124). On the contrary, discursive interventions contribute to challenging the meaning of norms and subsequently actors are likely to reverse previously supported political positions. The current norm contestation literature explores processes through which actors come to understand shared norms differently, contest each others understandings, and how the contestation alters/reifies the norms that constitute a community of norm acceptors together (Hoffmann 2005; Van Kersbergen and Verbeek 2007; Chwieroth 2008; Sandholtz 2008). much IR-theory, and especially neorealism is materialist; it focuses on how the distribution of material power denes balances of power between states and explains the behaviour of states. In A. M. Sookermany (Ed. The logic of arguing has inspired the development of significant empirical research (e.g., Muller 2004; Bjola 2005; Leiteritz 2005; Mitzen 2005) and it is the foundation for some approaches to reasoning about social norms (the logic of consequences is also implicated in approaches that consider that actors reason about norms). International Organization, 46(2), 391425. Wendt, A. 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. This article aims to illuminate how social constructivism has evolved as a mainstream international relation (IR) paradigm within a short period of time. Nordic strategic culture. They consider that actors can stand outside a normative structure to consider options. Perhaps more fundamentally from a feminist perspective, Locher and Prugl contend that the objectivist stance of many constructivist scholars is inconsistent with their social ontology. 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. Liberal international relations theory and the military. The international system is defined by anarchy. They posited the LoA as a corrective. All of this came about through processes of socialization and persuasion, where interested groups such as NGOs, epistemic communities, and other actors not only successfully changed the norm around the treatment of civilians and combatants in warfare but instigated this norm as part of identity, and how states define right behavior. Certainly actors are strategic, but constructivist logic dictates that the normative context defines and shapes that strategic behavior (Muller 2004). The culture of national security. On the contrary, this analytic device has a deep history in the sociological and economic literatures. The Geneva Convention (1949) is an example of an international regime. It is a social institution with norms, rules, and procedures to govern how civilians and combatants should be treated in war. Identities are formed through shared meanings and understandings of the world, which then brings in culture, intersubjective or shared meanings and norms and values. Post modernism // Refer political theory (section 1A) also. The culture of national security. Instead social norms are generic rules that allow agents to behave and get along in a wide range of situations. In the context of the global war on terror, US efforts to extract intelligence from suspected terrorists led to the use of enhanced interrogation techniques which was widely seen to have abrogated or contested the global prohibition on the use of torture (Steele 2008a; see also Birdsall (2016) who argues that it worked to strengthen the anti-torture norm). The second is compliance or diffusion actors from different normative communities seek to enlarge their communities or to hold on to extant norms in the face of external normative challenges and disputes that arise can lead to normative change in both communities. In this regard Social Constructivism ushers itself in, in the discipline of International Relations as a new alternative to the traditional theories that have hitherto monopolized the way political scientists have been viewing the inter - and intrastate events. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, You can also search for this author in In order to better understand compliance with and contestation over norms either in isolation or together, it is necessary to pay more attention to the prior understanding of who is in the community. 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. Rather the controversies mainly focus on how far one can push one logic of action to account for observable practices and which logic dominates a given situation. International relations and military sciences. Critical constructivists prefer to examine state identity in terms of its wider story (Fierke and Jrgensen 2001). 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