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18 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Main points
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Ideational structure vs material, cultures of anarchy, NR as degenerating, emergence of collective identity, intersubjective identities and interests, conditions of peace, power as link between social construction and meaning, CS positions, norms, criticism of Waltz
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List to use (12)
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Wendt, Social Theory of Intl Politics
Wendt, Constructing Intl Politics Wendt, Collective Identity Formation Wendt, Anarchy is what states make of it Wendt, Agent-Structure Debate Adler, Conditions of Peace Copeland in Guzzini & Leander, Constructivism in IR Guzzini, A Reconstruction of Constructivism Hopf, Promise of Constructivism Hopf, Social Construction of Intl Politics Kowert & Legro, The Culture of National Security Neumann & Waever, Future of IR Ruggie, Continuity & Change |
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Wendt, Social Theory of Intl Politics
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Materialist-idealist/individualist-holist (agent/structure). Materialist-idealist – whether material or social consciousness primary form of explanation. NR – individualist (structure only regulates behavior) and holist (system creates like units). Implicit assumptions in Waltz (status quo, assumed dist of interests). Not ideas all the way down; baseline of materialism needed. Desires from what we know (beliefs). Schemas. Link ideas and interests. Interests are beliefs about how to meet needs. Fear is not inherent but effect of unmet needs. Ideas give way to biological necessities. Structure. NR – material structure. Wendt – Ideational structure. Waltz – 2 levels of structure, reified (divorced from actors and action that give rise to it). Micro-structure (interaction between units, reductionist), Macro-structure (system). Wendt wants to add third – unit level (attributes). Collective knowledge creates macro level systems of behavior, ie Westphalian. Culture is not just shared ideas. Actors lean identities and interests from behavior of others towards them. Cultures of anarchy – Hobbesian, Lockean, Kantian and degrees (1st coercion, 2nd compliance, 3rd internalization). 9 grid. Change – highly internalized hard to change.
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Wendt, Constructing Intl Politics
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Response to Mearsheimer. Shares realist assumptions. Social structures. Ontology, epistemology. NR degenerating.
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Wendt, Collective Identity Formation
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Rival claim, internation at systemic changes state IDs and interests. Collective identity would emerge and generate cooperation, transform anarchy into intl state. Core claims of constructivism. Corporate identity of the state. Domestic and intl. Higher level of social aggregation. Alliances temporary. Collective id different. Anarchy. Sov promote collective identity. Ontological security. Recognition of sov important. Intersubjective systemic structures. Dilemmas of common interests/aversions. Internationalization of political authority – anarchy to authority. Neo-Medievalism. New form of state. Rationalism.
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Wendt, Anarchy is what states make of it
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IDs and interests dependent variable. Self-help/power politics are institutions not essential features of anarchy. Collective meanings. Multiple identities. Institution. Continuum of security systems. Socialization of states. Identities, interests. Waltz underspecified. Need to add intersubjectively constituted structure of Ids and interests.
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Wendt, Agent-Structure Debate
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NR – individualism, agent primitive. Believes doesn’t need a theory of state (does). Need structure and agent. How is action X possible? Why did X happen rather than Y?
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Adler, Conditions of Peace
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Various conditions of peace. How people change ids and prefs (structural change). Security communities cannot threaten one another.
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Copeland in Guzzini & Leander, Constructivism in IR
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Contributions of Wendt’s argument
- To const o Purshes const paradigm to new level sophistication o Strong const disagree with idea that states/indiv have basic needs independent of social interaction, that they are egoistic at first and that they have corporate identities prior to interaction § To Wen, w/o these baselines, social processes at intl level would have nothing to act upon § Ideas all the way down leaves theorist with all structure and no agents - To NR o Goes beyond lib and const theories who treat power and ints as factors covered by realism and who then seek to show that ideas matter as separate causal force; give away too much to realism o Provides rigorous philosophical justificiation for treating the state as an actor o Anarchy is what states make of it Weaknesses of Wen’s argument - Problems of misspecificaiton and incompleteness - His point that NR can’t explain without relying on hidden variable goes too far o Starting assumption of NR is that all states in the system are only security seekers; no nonsecurity motives for war; why good states do bad things o Uncertainty about present and future intentions of other o This is key o Wen says states can learn a great deal about the other § Unsupported statement § Inconsistent with his recognition that states often have difficulty learning about the other – Ego and Alter – behavior does not speak for itself, must be interpreted; ideas are unobservable § Ignores problem of deception o Problem with 9 grid § Assumes a state knows which box it’s in and which the other is in § First two degrees aren’t even culture – coercion, self-interest |
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Guzzini, A Reconstruction of Constructivism
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Power. Links interaction between social construction of meaning and construction of social reality. Shift understanding of power – lack of fungibility, issue areas, Nye’s soft power.
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Hopf, Promise of Constructivism
CS positions |
CS’s position on significant IR themes: agents and structures (mutually constituted; intersubjective social context; relations with others through norms; anarchy is meaningless alone), anarchy (must be mutually constituted by actors and can have multiple meanings), identities and interests (identities are necessary for order; imply a set of interests/preferences; empirical within historical context; wider array of choices but constrained by structure), power of practice (both material and discursive power are important; actions need to be recognized as legitimate in context by others; discursive power key), and change (agnostic, possible but difficult, identity as struggle for control, reproduction of daily constraints).
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Hopf, Promise of Constructivism
Research agenda |
The CS research agenda can include balancing (theory of threat perception), security dilemma (identities create certainty), cooperation (NL – institutions; CS – distribution of identities and interests; friends; less certainty, more institutional devices), democratic peace, gender/sexuality/race/religion, return culture to IR. It easily combines with different fields. The promise of CS is to restore a kind of partial order nad predictability to world politics that derives not from imposed homogeneity but from an appreciation of difference.
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Hopf, Social Construction of International Politics
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3 approaches to CS: normative (states’ adherence to intl norms), systemic (account for interstate identity structures) and social (domestic socio-cognitive roots of state identity). Normative CS tends to ignore the domestic context which international norms are embedded in, and believes the more universalistic a norm is internationally the more likely to be adopted domestically (not always true). Normative is focused on instrumentalities to advance actor interests. Ruggie – CS does not always show discursive terrain leading to norm. In systemic CS, a collective identity occurs if a state sees its interests as involving another state. We might see transformation; moving from one system to another (Lockean to Kantian). There are three roles here: status quo, revisionist or collectivist, and they might not be mutually exclusive. Wendt says that four interest derive from the corporate identity of the state: security, ontological security, mutual recognition as a legitimate actor and domestic development (Hopf doesn’t like this list).
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Kowert & Legro, The Culture of National Security
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Norms must be distinguished from identities. Social prescription divided into prescriptive (identities) and behavioral. Interests constructed. Norms shape instruments available to pursue interests. Norms/identity might arise from in-group/out-group differentiation. 5 challenges in study of norms: Knowing Norms – defining what constitutes a norm is highly problematic. An Embarrassment of Norms – since multiple norms can influence a single actor, it is difficult to distinguish the ones that matter. Continuity and Change – accounting for both is very challenging. Culture exhibits an inertial force that resists change, but explanations of change are less straightforward. Material and Normative Worlds – norms do not exist independent of the material world, but the relationship between the two is relatively unexplored. Agency and Norms – norms can influence interests, but actors can also manipulate or change norms. Even an actor’s own identity can be manipulated for strategic reasons. Internal/external norms. Identity vs presentation of identity.
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Neumann & Waever, Future of IR
Waltz |
Waltz: how to account for continuity despite pressure for change. Balancing universal in anarchy. Why bipolarity better. Ignores unit/system cleavage.
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Neumann & Waever, Future of IR
Onuf |
Onuf: IR’s roots in intl law. No pre-social anarchical order. Must draw on practice based rules of game. Agents/structures co-constituted. Agents dependent on structure. Daily practice reproduces structures. Look at deeds/practices. Do not have unmediated access to world. World becomes of our making through practice based rules. Not structural dopes.
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Neumann & Waever, Future of IR
Wendt |
Wendt: Material can’t be analyzed apart from social structures. Combine agent/structure. Waltz and Wallerstein have their uses but insufficient. Waltz – agent centric structure. How is action possible? How state constituted? Wendt – matter not important but how represented. Criticism of Wendt – no convincing theory of action. Practices as starting point but not explained. Why do state do what they do?
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Ruggie, Continuity & Change
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Critique of Waltz. Switch from feudal to modern. Rise of private property and sov. Waltz should have included differentation among units. Ignores Durkheim’s dynamic density. Structural change has no source other than unit-level processes
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