SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM
One of the most influential formulations of social constructivism was
Alexander Wendt’s assertion that ‘Anarchy is What States Make of It’.
This implies that state behavior is not determined, as neo-realists assert,
by the structure of the international system, but by how particular states
view anarchy.
History: The Rise of Constructivism
 1980s – Constructivism has become a significant approach
especially in North American IR.
 Neorealist view: other states will balance against the US because
the offsetting US power is a means of guaranteeing one’s own
security which will lead to the emergence of new great powers in
multipolar system.
o Constructivist view: focus on thoughts and ideas leads to better
theory about anarchy and power balancing
o View of liberals: Focus on the role of ideas after the end of
Cold war
o Francis Fukuyama: ‘the end of history’ (1989) – endorsed the
role of ideas especially the progress of liberal ideas in the
world.
 Historical context and theoretical discussion between IR scholars
are attributed for the emergence of a constructivist approach.
 Constructivists were inspired by theoretical developments in other
social science disciplines.
o Anthony Giddens (1984) – In sociology, he proposed the
concept of saturation as a way of analyzing the relationship
between structures and actors
 18th century: Constructivism has deeper roots; it grows out of an
old methodology.
o Giambattista Vico – The natural world is made by God, but the
historical world is made by man.
o Immanuel Kant – knowledge about the world can be obtained,
but will always be subjective as it is filtered through human
consciousness.
o Max Weber – the social world is fundamentally different from
the natural world of physical phenomena
Four key fault lines:
1. Primary unit of analysis: Social communities
2. Primary unit of observation : Inter-subjective ideas
3. Nature of causality: Ideational dynamics
4. Ontology of power: Power is a social fact
Key constructivist concepts:
1. Social construction and social facts
 Reality is constructed
 The Social Construction of Reality (1966) –
understanding of reality is derived from inter-subjective
knowledge and the interpreted nature of social reality.
 There are portions of reality that are regarded as facts only
through human agreement and which are made observable
only through human practice.
2. Ideational and material structures
 Structures can be understood through reference to both
ideational and material factors
 It emphasizes the importance of shared knowledge about
material factors, rules, symbols, and language, which all
shape how we interpret the world and the actions of
others.
 Material facts alone have no meaning without
understanding the social context, shared knowledge and
practices surrounding it.
 Structures are often codified in formal rules and norms
o Formal rules – written or spoken form
o Norms – associated with a specific community or
social group
 It specifies the appropriate behavior for an agent
with a given identity.
 Structural function : constraining and
constitutive
3. Identity, interest, and ‘logics of action’
 Identity is the agent’s understanding of self, its place in
the social world, and its relationships with others.
 Identities strongly imply a particular set of interests or
preferences in respect of choice of action.
Ocampo, Vincent Ray G.
Tamag, Johnlen U.
 People are not simply led by assumed interest based on
rational cost-benefit calculations, but that they will
consider options for actions reflexively and consider
whether the action is appropriate for their identity.
 March and Olsen (1989) : include both logics in analyzing
political institutions
o Logic of consequences – agents calculate the
consequences of a particular course of action
and will choose the action that offers them the
most utility.
o Logic of appropriateness – agents are rule
followers, they will try to follow rules that
associate particular identities to particular
situations, and they will consider which action
is the most appropriate behavior for them.
 Factors – historical, cultural, political and social contexts
of the agent – contribute to the construction of identity.
4. Agents, structure and practice
 Structures and agents are mutually constituted.
 Giddens (1984): Structuration – structure influence
agents, but that agents are also able to influence structure
through practice.
a) Social facts are externalized and habitualized.
b) Independent existence from the agents who
first constructed the social fact.
c) It becomes embedded.
 Through practice, a stable cognitive environment is
ensured, which may also reinforce the individual’s
identity and provide agents with confidence that their
cognitive world will be reproduced.
 Ted Hopf : though structuration logically implies the
possibility of change through agents’ practice, it is also
assumed that agents reproduce their own constraints
through daily practice
 Jeffrey Checkel: constructivists have focused structure-
centered approaches
INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
 Nicholas Onuf (1989): he introduced Constructivism to
International Relations and is the one who term
“constructivism” contending that states much the same as
individuals are living in a ‘world of our making’
 Alexander Wendt: ‘Anarchy is What States Make of It’
*Three Major Types of Anarchy/ Cultures of Anarchy
1) Hobbesian – states view each other as enemies
*war of all against all
*dominated until the seventeenth century
2) Lockean – states consider each other as rivals,
but does not seek to eliminate each other
*states recognize the other states’ right to exist
*seen after the Peace of Westphalia (1648)
3) Kantian – States view each other as friends
*emerged among consolidated liberal
democracies since WWII
 State: purposive, in the sense the political authority is derived
not from power itself, but from the ends to which the power is
legitimately used
o In relation to the government as an agent: IPE begins
necessarily with the recognition that government
preferences vary and may be endogenous to
interaction with domestic societies, other
governments, and international norms
o Source of behavior and practice: international
institutions, international norms, domestic cultural
norms, national identities  INTEREST AND
IDENTITY
 World economy: consists both material facts and social facts
o Constructivist view propounds that material interests
are not sufficient to explain patters of economic
interactions or policies, and that economic and
political identities are significant determinants of
economic action.
 CONSTRUCTION OF INTEREST
o Martha Finnemore – develop a systemic approach to
understanding state interests and state behavior by
investigating an international structure, not of power,
but of meaning and social value.
 SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM
oINTEREST – not just out there waiting to be
discovered, they are constructed through social
interaction; consider of what is ‘desired’ – we want
what we want because of how we think about it
 UNCERTAINTY AND STABILITY
o Knightian Uncertainty: agents cannot estimate the
probabilities of various outcomes  ideas deployed
by the agents to diagnose the uncertainty and the
institutions they build to instantiate those ideas
produce the stability that makes political and
economic transactions possible
 MECHANISMS OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION
o Output Construction: Norms, States and National
Identities
 International Economy is therefore composed
of norms of regular behavior, as well as norms
of appropriate policy practices
 State Identities – primarily external, describe
the actions of governments in society of states
 National Identities – primarily internal,
describe the processes by which mass publics
acquire, modify and forget their collective
identities
o Input Mechanisms: Persuasion, Manipulation and
Socialization
 Persuasion – most people come to relation to
the new norm or idea in a relatively conscious,
affective, internalized, coherent way; the more
the ideas and norms are consciously valued and
internalized, the more they are the result of
persuasion
 Manipulation – carriers use some sort of power
to impose a new idea or norm on others, but that
then these recipients rationalize the new idea or
norm and forget that they ever questioned it
 Socialization – norms or ideas spread in a
relatively incremental, evolutionary way
generated by repeated interaction within groups
Formation of a World State (Wendt)
Teleological Explanation: explain by reference to an end or purpose
toward which a system is directed
Types of Causality:
1) Material: refers to the sense in which an entity or process
is caused by having a particular composition
*Individuals and Groups  State: organization
possessing a monopoly on the legitimate use of an
organized violence within a society)
*Legitimacy: constituted by a structure of political
authority that empowers some people to enforce the
rules and obligates others to obey
*Sovereignty: common power and legitimacy
combined together: defined as the exclusive right to
enforce the law of the land
*State as Corporate Actor: characteristic of the
structure to constitute a collective intentionality; an
ability of its members to act consistently as an agent
2) Efficient/ Upward: refers to a mechanical relationship
between a prior cause and a subsequent effect
*Struggle for Recognition
Thin Recognition: being acknowledge as an
independent subject within a community of law;
juridical status of sovereign person
Thick Recognition: being respected for what
makes a person special or unique
3) Formal/ Downward: refers to the way in which the
structure of an object or process gives it form
1. System of States: stage of complete non-
recognition
*war of all against all
*Boundary conditions: multiple interacting
states (individuals are not actors); absence of
any mechanism to enforce cooperation among
these states; mutual belief that they are enemies
2) Society of States: Lockean culture of anarchy
*states recognize each other’s legal sovereignty
as independent subjects, but not of each other’s
citizens
Ocampo, Vincent Ray G.
Tamag, Johnlen U.
3) World Society: universal pluralistic security
community
*mutual recognition at the system level now
begins to extend to individuals as well as states
4) Collective Security: Kantian culture of collective
security or friendship
*both individuals and states recognize each
other’s sovereignty and practice non-violent
dispute resolution
4) Final: key element in teleology; refers to the way in which
the purpose or end of a system affects its development
5) World State:
*transfer of state sovereignty to the global level;
individual recognition will not be mediated by
state boundaries
Constructing International Politics (Wendt)
 Assumptions
o Social structures are defined, in part, by shared
understandings, expectations, or knowledge
o Social structures include material resources
 Material resources only acquire meaning
for human action through the structure of
shared knowledge in which they are
embedded
o Social structures exists, not in actors’ heads nor in
material capabilities, but in practices
*Social structures are real and objective, which depends on
shared knowledge, and in that sense, social life is ‘ideas all the
way down’
 Objectivity
o Ontological: social structures are collective
phenomena that confront individuals as externally
social facts
o Epistemological: social inquiry as used through a
scientific-realist approach
 War and Peace
o Agency: what states do to each other affects the social
structure in which they are embedded by logic of
reciprocity
 Depth of interdependence
 Role of revisionist states
o Structure: the ability of revisionist states to create a
war of all against all depends on the structure of
shared knowledge
 Structure in which status quo states are
divided or naïve = Hobbessian world
 Structure in which status quo trust and
identify with each other = collective
security
o Distribution of material capabilities (based on
underlying structure of shared knowledge)
 Responsibility
o Structural change depends on changing a system of
expectations that may be mutually reinforcing
o To analyze the social construction of international
politics is to analyze how processes of interaction
produce and reproduce the social structures –
cooperation or conflictual – that shape actors’
identities and interests and the significance of their
material context