International Relations: Approaches, Issues and Analysis Lecture 4: Constructivist IR

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International Relations Approaches, Issues and
AnalysisLecture 4 Constructivist IR

• Jevgenia Viktorova
• University of St Andrews
• E-mail jv2 ät st-and.ac.uk

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Social Constructivism in IR

• The socially constructed nature of
  (international) politics issues and agendas
• International society and the English School of
  IR
• Language turn in IR discourse analysis
• Some thinkers and theories Wendt and anarchy
  Wæver and security Kratochwil and norms rules

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Critique of mainstream IR

• Liberal and realist theories
• may disagree on many issues, but
• share one important feature
• Treat the reality of international politics as
  independent from their own theorising
• Critics of mainstream IR
• consider the view of political reality as given
  as deeply flawed
• offer no grand theoretical alternatives to
  neo-neo positions

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Rationalist vs. reflectivist IR

• Robert Keohane has termed this new kind of IR
  thinking reflectivist
• Reflectivist IR
• opposed to the mainstream rationalist
  approaches
• refers to
• preferred methods (qualitative, interpretivist,
  hermeneutical)
• awareness of the implications of IR theorising on
  (international) political reality
• Two broad camps of reflectivist IR
• constructivism
• critical theory and post-structuralism

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(Social) constructivism

• As a theory, not exclusive to IR no explicit IR
  predecessors
• intellectual origins in e.g. Berger and Luckmann
  (1966) The Social Construction of Reality
• Currently, a respectable alternative to neo-neo
  orthodoxies
• a middle way (Adler 1997) between mainstream
  IR and the more radical critique
• Seemed radical enough at its inception (late
  1990s)
• Friedrich Kratochwil (1989)
• Nicholas Onuf (1989)
• Alexander Wendt (1987, 1992)

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A constructivist approach

• Respect for a fundamental distinction between
• brute facts about the world (independent of
  human action and perception)
• e.g. the earth will rotate regardless of our
  knowledge of this fact
• social facts (depend on their existence on
  socially established conventions) (Searle 1995)
• e.g. 1 note is money because it is recognised by
  people in Scotland to be such
• limits of conventions
• Social reality is not pre-given human agents
  construct and reproduce it through everyday
  practices

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Implications for methodology

• Links between ontological and epistemological
  assumptions of different IR theories and their
  methods
• Rational choice theory
• methodological individualism individual human
  action elementary unit of the social life
• Constructivism
• human agents do not exist independently from
  their social environment and its collectively
  shared systems of meanings
• methods should take into account mutual
  constitution of human agents and their social
  environment
• middle-ground between individualism and
  structuralism there are properties of both
  agents and structures that cannot be explained
  through each other

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New research agendas

• Q The terms of structure-agency relations?
• Structure is a product of human agency, but
• Does man-made character of the structure imply
  that it can be altered/ undone by human agents?
• If not, what accounts for its durability?
• Does the structure in turn constitute agents? If
  the influence is mutual (e.g. in Giddenss
  structuration theory),
• what accounts for the dynamics of the interplay
  between structure and agents
• where comes the impetus for change, or process in
  international relations?

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A focus on structure

• The terms of constitution of the social reality
• How is the shared picture of reality produced?
• What are the implicit rules of the game
  sustaining a particular version of international
  relations?
• e.g. Wittgensteinian analysis of the rules of
  the game ways in which the grammar of world
  politics is constituted
• Kratochwil (1995) the place of the rule of
  non-intervention in the Westphalian game of
  sovereignty-as-dominium.
• or Habermasian analysis of pragmatic aspects of
  rule (non-)observance based on his theory of
  communicative action (e.g. Risse 2000)

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A focus on agents

• Questions about the nature of agents
• How identity is constituted through actors
  interaction with others?
• production of sameness and difference
• How identity of the actors affects the terms of
  relationships between them?
• Contest the realist black box image of states
  in international relations relationships between
  states
• not a product of impersonal balance-of-power
  considerations
• product of perceptions of commonality and
  difference (e.g. US-China relationships differ
  from US-Canada)

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A focus on agents (continued)

• Identities also matter for broader normative
  issues (e.g. international regimes)
• What regime is established depends on the
  identity of the hegemon
• Actors identities influence their ideas of what
  constitutes appropriate action
• the logic of appropriateness (March and Olsen)
• norm-guided behaviour
• violations of norms may occur what matters is
  how actors justify it (e.g. explaining violations
  of the norm of non-aggression as defensive or
  pre-emptive action tacitly still supports that
  norm)

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Anarchy problematic revisited

• Constructivists endorse the realist image of
  anarchy
• Disagree that there can only be one type of
  international relations derived from it
• Realist emphasis on self-help and conflict is not
  inevitable
• Several ways in which states can act upon the
  basic notion of anarchy
• Wendt (1992) Anarchy Is What States Make of It
• zero-sum games and perpetual insecurity, or
• cooperative security structures, orderliness and
  norm-governed institutions?
• The outcome of anarchy is thus socially
  constructed
• driven by states beliefs about appropriate
  behaviour

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Critique of realism

• Realist assumptions about the international
  system create self-fulfilling prophecies
• The initial assumption of threat and insecurity
• States act accordingly, building up military
  capabilities
• Ability to threaten each-others survival
• Initial perceptions of threat are vindicated!
• No place for security or for alternative
  assumptions (which may not have necessitated the
  train of action that leads to decreasing rather
  than enhanced security)

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Critique of realism (continued)

• Assumption of actors rationality is essentially
  flawed
• the terms of rationality may be variable
• those chosen by realists rely on cooptation of
  fear by states
• Eclectic ontological premises of realism
  combination of the idea of timeless and universal
  rationality with an arbitrary pick of essentially
  human (and gullible) emotion
• Strong institutionalism state conceptions of
  self-interest are socially constructed and shaped
  by norms (e.g. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn
  Sikkink)

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The English School of IR

• Wendts Social Theory of International Politics
  (1999) approaches anarchy in terms of anarchical
  society
• Legacy of the English School of IR, or
  Grotianism (after Hugo Grotius)
• Martin Wight, Hedley Bull, Adam Watson, James
  Mayall
• A middle-ground between realist and liberal IR of
  the 1960s and 70s
• Hedley Bulls The Anarchical Society (1977)
• Accepts the tenets of anarchy, balance-of-power
  and the centrality of states
• Not an international system (a non-normative,
  value-neutral pattern of regularities)
  international society

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International society

• A norm-governed relationship
• Members accept (limited) responsibilities towards
  each other and the society as a whole
• practices of international law and diplomacy
• States act out of self-interest, but not at all
  costs
• State behaviour is constrained by international
  norms and assumptions of reciprocity
• Otherwise, state action would endanger the
  existence of the international society
• Human nature is not set once and for all, but
  evolves in the historical process and in
  interaction among humans
• Similarly, the nature of states evolves in
  interaction with other states

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The English School Rationalism

• Martin Wight Why is there no International
  Theory? International Theory The three
  Traditions
• the English School as Rationalist
• based on the thinking of Locke, Burke, and
  Gortius
• in contrast to
• Realist (gt Hobbes, Hegel, Machiavelli) and
• Revolutionist (or Kantian) traditions of IR
  thought
• The traditions are both descriptive and
  prescriptive theoretical approaches
• each puts forward a different description of
  international relations
• prescribes how men and states should conduct
  themselves within it
• Rationalism as a middle ground theory between
  Realism and Revolutionism helps to see the
  merit in each tradition, enrich them and account
  for their strengths and weaknesses

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The English School today

• The English School ? a predecessor of
  constructivism
• its position can be developed in different
  directions
• A recent revival of the English School (e.g. Tim
  Dunne)
• attempts to link its agenda to
• neoliberal institutionalist research on regimes
  (Buzan)
• earlier, pre-rational choice realism
• Is international society still a valid concept?
• Is commonality necessary for the formation of a
  society?
• In the pre-WWII period most states shared a
  common history (albeit not always peaceful)
• Presently, the majority of states are
  non-European ? different ideas of acceptable
  norms and practices of interaction, different
  understandings of society

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A constructivist analysis of security

• Copenhagens schools theory of securitisation
  (Ole Wæver)
• Security is not given
• The process by which an issue becomes a matter of
  security securitisation
• Premised on a separation between the realms of
  politics and security
• politics as a sphere of open decision-making
• security as a sphere of exceptional
  decision-making with restricted access
• ? security-related decision-making is essentially
  undemocratic

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Securitisation

• The move of an issue from politics to
  security
• Relies on speech acts (Austen, How to Do Things
  with Words)
• performative utterances (expressions that serve
  as both an utterance and an act
• Invoking security implications of an issue turns
  it into a security issue a securitising move
• Identity of the securitising actor matters
• Examples
• inter-ethnic relations (when the existence of
  another ethnic group is portrayed as a security
  issue), environmental issues, weapons of
  mass-destruction
• De-securitisation a move from security to
  politics

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The importance of language

• Focus on communicative and discursive practices
• one make sense of the world through the use of
  language
• Language does not describe a pre-existing
  reality it is a medium through which the reality
  is created and the material world given meaning
• Looking at how actors deploy language is crucial
  for understanding and explaining their social
  behaviour and understanding of the world

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Discourse

• Discourse is not synonymous with language
• refers to the use of language and to the effects
  of its use in terms of producing or ascribing
  meaning to social processes and phenomena
• draws attention to implicit intentionality in the
  use of language
• alerts us to the fact that language is not
  neutral
• meanings are always a result of selection among
  the limitless range of possible meanings and
  exclusion of what we deem non-meaningful
• We use language and impose meaning, but cannot
  claim full control over this process discourse
  as
• an intermediary between human agency and the
  structure of language
• a medium through which the mutual constitution of
  structure and agency takes place

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Knowledge-power nexus

• Michel Foucault
• discursive practices establish power relations
• they make us focus on certain issues, understand
  them in certain ways and pose questions
  accordingly
• What we consider worth knowing and appropriate
  ways of knowing it
• determines how we study the world and
• how we perceive the world we study
• This, in turn, directs practice
• ? IR is not just an academic but also a political
  enterprise

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Discourse some quotes

• A discourse generates the categories of
  meaning by which reality can be understood and
  explained and it also by extension makes
  real that which it prescribes as meaningful
  (George, 1994)
• the world-making nature of discourse
• This discursive representation of reality in the
  world is an integral part of the relations of
  power that are present in all human societies.
  Accordingly, the process of discursive
  representation is never a neutral, detached one
  but is always imbued with the power and authority
  of the namers and makers of reality it is
  always knowledge as power (George, 1994)

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Discourse analysis

• Knowledge is not simply a cognitive matter it
  is also a normative and political matter
• Analysis of discourse can uncover the underlying
  configurations of power and ways in which it
  purports to produce valid representations of
  reality
• The method relies on questioning what Foucault
  (2002) terms the pre-existing forms of
  continuity and disturbing the tranquillity
  with which they are accepted, asking questions
  such as
• what is this specific existence that emerges
  from what is said and nowhere else?, and
• how is that one particular statement appeared
  rather than another?

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Discourse analysis (continued)

• directs attention to contradictions that disrupt
  the smooth functioning of a discourse, by
  uncovering the spaces of dissention
• not an interpretative undertaking
• does not seek hidden meanings, but tries to
  grasp the statement in the exact specificity of
  its occurrence determine its conditions of
  existence, fix its limits, establish its
  correlations with other statements and show
  what other forms of statement it excludes
  (Foucault 2002).
• Foucaults genealogical method
• a style of historical thought which exposes and
  registers the significance of power-knowledge
  relations
• concerned with writing counter-histories that
  expose the processes of exclusion which gives to
  history its unity and coherence