In international relations (IR), constructivism is a social theory that asserts that significant aspects of international relations are shaped by ideational factors—i.e. the mental process of forming ideas. The most important ideational factors are those that are collectively held; these collectively held beliefs construct the interests and identities of actors. Constructivist scholarship in IR is rooted in approaches and theories from the field of sociology.
In contrast to other prominent IR approaches and theories (such as realism and rational choice), constructivists see identities and interests of actors as socially constructed and changeable; identities are not static and cannot be exogenously assumed—i.e. interpreted by reference to outside influences alone. Similar to rational choice, constructivism does not make broad and specific predictions about international relations; it is an approach to studying international politics, not a substantive theory of international politics.. Constructivist analysis can only provide substantive explanations or predictions once the relevant actors and their interests have been identified, as well as the content of social structures.
The main theories competing with constructivism are variants of realism, liberalism and rational choice that emphasize materialism (the notion that the physical world determines political behavior on its own), and individualism (the notion that individual units can be studied apart from the broader systems that they are embedded in). Whereas other prominent approaches conceptualize power in material terms (e.g. military and economic capabilities), constructivist analyses also see power as the ability to structure and constitute the nature of social relations among actors.
Development Nicholas Onuf has been credited with coining the term constructivism to describe theories that stress the socially constructed character of international relations. Since the late 1980s to early 1990s, constructivism has become one of the major schools of thought within international relations.
Two major changes in the structure of world politics in the 1990s created an opportunity for constructivism to satisfy intellectual needs. The first is the end of the Cold War, which temporarily suspended the security dilemma, altered the distribution of power, and ushered in a period of peace and unipolarity where ideational factors such as norms, identity, culture, and legitimacy seemed to matter. The second was the expansion of global civil society, in particular in the form of non-governmental organizations, which suggested that more actors mattered in world politics than just states.
The earliest constructivist works focused on establishing that norms mattered in international politics. Peter J. Katzenstein's edited volume The Culture of National Security compiled works by numerous prominent and emerging constructivists, showing that constructivist insights were important in the field of security studies, an area of International Relations in which realists had been dominant. The journal International Organization, the top journal in the field of international relations, also published a number of important constructivist articles, helping to lend legitimacy to the framework.
After establishing that norms mattered in international politics, later veins of constructivism focused on explaining the circumstances under which some norms mattered and others did not. Swathes of constructivist research have focused on norm entrepreneurs: international organizations and law: epistemic communities; speech, argument, and persuasion; and structural configuration as mechanisms and processes for social construction.
Alexander Wendt is the most prominent advocate of social constructivism in the field of international relations. Wendt's 1992 article "Anarchy is What States Make of It: the Social Construction of Power Politics" laid the theoretical groundwork for challenging what he considered to be a flaw shared by both neorealists and neoliberal institutionalists, namely, a commitment to a (crude) form of materialism. By attempting to show that even such a core realist concept as "power politics" is socially constructed—that is, not given by nature and hence, capable of being transformed by human practice—Wendt opened the way for a generation of international relations scholars to pursue work on a wide range of issues from a constructivist perspective. Wendt further developed these ideas in his central work, Social Theory of International Politics (1999). Following up on Wendt, Martha Finnemore offered the first "sustained, systematic empirical argument in support of the constructivist claim that international normative structures matter in world politics" in her 1996 book National Interests in International Society.
There are several strands of constructivism.http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/theories-of-international-relations-scott-burchill/?isb=978023036222. . On the one hand, there are "conventional". constructivist scholars such as Kathryn Sikkink, Peter Katzenstein, Elizabeth Kier, Martha Finnemore and Alexander Wendt, who use widely accepted methodologies and epistemologies. Their work has been widely accepted within the mainstream IR community and generated vibrant scholarly discussions among realists, liberals, and constructivists. These scholars hold that research oriented around causal explanations and constitutive explanations is appropriate. Wendt refers to this form of constructivism as "thin" constructivism. On the other hand, there are "critical" radical constructivists who take discourse and linguistics more seriously, and adopt non-positivist methodologies and epistemologies. A third strand, known as critical constructivism, takes conventional constructivists to task for systematically downplaying or omitting class factors. Despite their differences, all strands of constructivism agree that neorealism and neoliberalism pay insufficient attention to social construction in world politics.
Theory Constructivism primarily seeks to demonstrate how core aspects of international relations are, contrary to the assumptions of neorealism and neoliberalism, socially constructed. This means that they are given their form by ongoing processes of social practice and interaction. Alexander Wendt calls two increasingly accepted basic tenets of constructivism "that the structures of human association are determined primarily by shared ideas rather than material forces, and that the identities and interests of purposive actors are constructed by these shared ideas rather than given by nature." This does not mean that constructivists believe international politics is "ideas all the way down", but rather is characterized both by material factors and ideational factors.
Central to constructivism are the notions that ideas matter, and that agents are socially constructed (rather than given).
Constructivist research is focused both on causal explanations for phenomena, as well as analyses of how things are constituted. In the study of national security, the emphasis is on the conditioning that culture and identity exert on security policies and related behaviors. Identities are necessary in order to ensure at least some minimal level of predictability and order. The object of the constructivist discourse can be conceived as the arrival, a fundamental factor in the field of international relations, of the recent debate on epistemology, the sociology of knowledge, the agent/structure relationship, and the ontological status of social facts.
The notion that international relations are not only affected by power politics, but also by ideas, is shared by writers who describe themselves as constructivist theorists. According to this view, the fundamental structures of international politics are social rather than strictly material. This leads to social constructivists to argue that changes in the nature of social interaction between states can bring a fundamental shift towards greater international security.
Challenging realism During constructivism's formative period, neorealism was the dominant discourse of international relations. Much of constructivism's initial theoretical work challenged basic neorealist assumptions. Neorealists are fundamentally causal structuralists. They hold that the majority of important content to international politics is explained by the structure of the international system, a position first advanced in Kenneth Waltz's Man, the State, and War and fully elucidated in his core text of neorealism, Theory of International Politics. Specifically, international politics is primarily determined by the fact that the international system is anarchic—it lacks any overarching authority, instead it is composed of units (states) which are formally equal—they are all sovereign over their own territory. Such anarchy, neorealists argue, forces States to act in certain ways, specifically, they can only rely on themselves for security (they have to self-help). The way in which anarchy forces them to act in such ways, to defend their own self-interest in terms of power, neorealists argue, explains most of international politics. Because of this, neorealists tend to disregard explanations of international politics at the "unit" or "state" level.Alexander Wendt (1999). Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 8−15.Chris Brown (2005). Understanding International Relations. Basingstoke: Palgrave Publishing, pp. 40−43. Kenneth Waltz attacked such a focus as being reductionist.Kenneth Waltz (1979). Theory of International Politics. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.