(3) Normative emergence how an idea reaches intersubjective status in a community. Focusing on these elements of normative dynamics led to progress in how constructivists understood conformance with normative strictures, the spread of existing norms, and the emergence of new norms. 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. Constructivism argues that culture, social structures and human institutional frameworks matter. Introduction to International Relations Theory 100% (10) 63. forthcoming). The influence of Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant (17241805) on constructivist thought can be seen regarding ideas about knowledge and objectivity, in that knowledge of the world is filtered through frameworks of understanding. I would like to thank Alice Ba, Robert Denemark, Phil Triadafilopoulos, and the anonymous reviewer for their helpful discussions and suggestions on this essay. 115135). Constructivist explanations of different phenomena related to the military can highlight how norms and identity come into play. 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. As Sandholtz (2008:101) puts it disputes about acts are at the heart of a process that continually modifies social rules. (Ed.). 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. Instead, practices are the result of inarticulate, practical knowledge that makes what is done appear self-evident or commensenical.. Constructivism and the nature of international relations Constructivism efforts to give a better understanding of international relations by its method which is based on social theory. Conventional constructivists like Wendt see similarities between constructivism and rationalist perspectives and methodologies. 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. Early empirical studies of social norms tended to consider social norms as static and relatively specific social facts. The rest of this section explores this distinction in greater detail, discussing the behavioral logics at the foundation of the about/through spectrum before examining the recent compliance and contestation literatures that are developing new ideas about norm dynamics. But Wendt also identified a Lockean culture that demonstrated some restraint in warfare and a Kantian culture that was guided more by cooperation (Wendt 1999). By Fizza Hameed Khan, Mahnoor Iqbal, Malaika Shahbaz, Sidra Noor, Raniya Ishtiaq. This logic fitted well with the commitment to mutual constitution (the notion of what is appropriate for different identities is socially constructed) and it also laid the groundwork for the norms-based challenge to strictly material explanations of world politics. London: Routledge. For liberals, the belief that liberal ideas such as democracy and the free market are ideas to be shared to make the world a better place suggests a transfer of ideas rather than an exchange of ideas. By the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, constructivists were engaging with both the small number of big important things that Waltz (1986:329, cited in Finnemore 1996:1) famously claimed for structural realism and the large number of big important things that other approaches ignored (Finnemore 1996:1). International Studies Quarterly, 60(3), 475485. This was seen as a backward step and a challenge to the taboo norm that had developed over preceding decades. The irreducible core of constructivism for international relations is the recognition that international reality is socially constructed. Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars . From the perspective of those who work on norms, there are very good reasons to focus on static and specific norms when analyzing international relations. Structures and agents influence each other. Further, constructivists became more cautious about basing their analyses on the logic of appropriateness. Instead, norms are general principles that must be translated into specific actions (Gregg 2003). We dont do that: A constructivist perspective on the use and non-use of private military contractors by Denmark. Security communities. It will then consider some key criticisms of this approach and conclude with a short summary. PS: Political Science and Politics, 50(1), 7174. Recent studies have taken the generic nature of norms more seriously and have subsequently focused on how actors must operationalize their normative context to take specific actions (Hoffmann 2005; Van Kersbergen and Verbeek 2007; Sandholtz 2008). Save. Less explicit attention was paid to the alternative perspectives on socialization: processes by which groups are maintained, the manner in which the targets of socialization affect both the socializers and targets of socialization (see Acharya 2004; Ba 2006), or the socialization of reluctant powerful actors (Cortell and Davis 2006; Johnston 2008). Critics too began to understand social norms as static and specific and this facilitated an erroneous notion that evidence of norm-breaking behavior somehow invalidated or falsified constructivist theorizing. Even among security communities such as the Nordic states, different strategic cultures can be found because they are informed by a range of historical and cultural experiences, with different experiences of war and conflict, membership of alliances, and other factors (see special issues of Cooperation and Conflict (2005) and Global Affairs (2018) for further discussions). Rasmussen, M. V. (2005). To dig deeper into what makes an agent or what structures global politics, constructivists look to norms and culture to make sense of what represents or guides behavior and how ideas of self inform that. 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. To construct something is an act which brings into being a subject or object that otherwise would not exist. Berger, T. U. 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). 317356). This study focuses on the definition of the social constructivism approach within the scope of International Relations (IR) theories and the discussions on this approach. Beginning with the assumption that actors reason about social norms means considering norms to be (at least somewhat) external to actors, part of their social context, but at least potentially manipulable by actors. Hidden in plain sight: Constructivist treatment of social context and its limitations. Finally, the third theory of international relations, known as Constructivism, focuses on ideas, shared beliefs and identity as the main drivers of success. Post modernism is relatively new in international relations. International Studies Review, 4(1), 4972. Constructivisms overwhelming focus on the state and state agents obscures other actors and processes. 1999; Jacobsen 2003). In this sense, constructivism is really at its core a social theory of international relations because the focus on identity and interactions show how clashes and cooperation manifest in the global arena. Cham: Springer. International Politics, 47(1), 125. Identities are also constructed. van Meegdenburg, H. (2019). The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. Guzzini, S. (2005). When the Bush administration introduced the category of unlawful enemy combatant in the global war on terror, these individuals were not afforded the protections under the Geneva Conventions (Tannenwald 2017, pp. These initial works laid the theoretical foundation for an approach to world politics that included the assumption that important aspects of politics are socially constructed, a commitment to mutual constitution as an answer to the agent-structure problem, a dedication to the importance of intersubjective reality in contrast to objective/subjective realities, and a focus on ideational and identity factors in analyses of world politics. They posited the LoA as a corrective. 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. 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). - 51.75.65.162. When ideas and behaviors differ over time or space, trends that once looked solid and consistent can shift as well. In A. M. Sookermany (Ed. Roennfeldt, C. F. (2022). Anarchy is not a given of the international system. forthcoming). NATO and the New Europe. How shared culture and identity matters in international security can be illustrated with the example of nuclear weapons. In the other mode, actors actively consider their normative context in an attempt to reason about the best (appropriate) course of action actors reasoning about social norms. Constructivists say that to understand these sorts of questions, one cannot simply turn to material factors like military power these do not explain why some states are seen as threats and others as benign. Adler, E., & Barnett, M. It was a tool for constructivists to show that ideas, norms, and morals mattered vis--vis rationalist variables in explanations of world political phenomena. New York: Routledge. The social construction of Swedish neutrality: Challenges to Swedish identity and sovereignty. Identity informs preferences and interests, so to understand why certain states behave the way they do on the international stage, paying attention to how their identities drive their interests and actions matters. In P. J. Katzenstein (Ed. Correspondence to (1999). People who share an identification are then assumed to share unique traits and attributes. A constructivist lens on PMCs, however, reveals how questions of national identity can also be central to their use. 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. Early constructivist work in the 1980s and early 1990s sought to establish a countervailing approach to the material and rational theories that dominated the study of international relations (e.g., Wendt 1987, 1992; Onuf 1989; Kratochwil 1989; Ruggie 1993; Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986). ), The culture of national security. ), Handbook of military sciences (pp. This analytic move facilitated conversation and competition with rational/material theoretical competitors. Scholars working in this vein often begin by critiquing the analytic move to freeze the content of norms. Foreign Policy, 134, 5059. International norms dynamics and political change. If the meaning of a norm can change or if different communities of actors adhere to different norms (or different versions of a norm), then norm-breaking takes on a different meaning. Social Constructivism Summary Notes. This criticism over methodology, it should be noted, does not wholly apply to the conventional strand of constructivism, which Wendt says can employ positivist scientific methods to verify or falsify claims (Wendt 1999); for example, to know something about a states military culture, one could look to opinion polls, regulations, training manuals, and the curricula at military academies that can provide data or information about how ideas and norms inform approaches to military organization and culture (Farrell 2002, pp. Just as liberalism was a response to realism, economic structuralism is a response to liberalism. 23) and recognized as a medium of exchange for goods and services. Power is influenced by norms, ideas, and practices; in a constructivist reading, power depends on how it is used and what it means in the interaction of states. Klotz (1995), for instance, chronicled how the anti-apartheid norm shaped the expectations and actions of the US towards South Africa in the 1980s. Rather than see security and conflict in the same way, actors will interpret and pursue security based on the ideas, norms, identities, and values that have meaning for them. First, norms are relatively stable if they were not, it would be hard to justify or observe this analytic category. Handbook of Military Sciences pp 116Cite as, 2 Some preexisting knowledge of speech act theory, constructivism, and securitization theory is useful before reading this chapter . The dominant focus of traditional theories on state and distribution of . Second, there is a division between what is generally called conventional and critical constructivism (Hopf 1998), largely over questions of state centricity and treatment of identity. Poststructuralism in international relations: An exploration of discourse and the military. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, You can also search for this author in 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. While constructivists do not deny the importance of material factors, they also argue that ideas also matter, and in some cases, matter more. 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. This recent research speaks to and is driven by broader questions of conceptualizing the relationship between actors and norms whether actors reason through or about social norms. Moreover, how NATO made this successful transition and ensured its survival relied on the dominant ideas about how the Cold War ended. This review examines the constructivist norms-oriented literature from early efforts geared at gaining acceptance in a field dominated by the neorealist/neoliberal debates, through the recent emergence of agendas focused on norm compliance and contestation. This chapter will concentrate on some of the main elements that have relevance for military studies. Keywords Constructivists International norms International relations Rationalism Strategic behaviour Epistemic communities are described by Peter Haas as networks of knowledge-based communities with an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within their domain of expertise. They share intersubjective knowledge and beliefs and a common policy enterprise, tackling specific problems in relation to their professions (2016, p. 5) to push for norm change around nuclear proliferation and to reduce the arsenal of the superpowers. Silverstone, S. (2021). Introduction to special section: from Nordic exceptionalism to a third order priority variations of Nordicness in foreign and security policy. Legro (1996) provided insight on a traditional security issue by delineating how normative ideas embedded in organizational culture at the domestic level could explain puzzling (for traditional international relations theories) variation in war fighting decisions in World War II. 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