“We are cultural beings, endowed with the
capacity and the will to take a deliberate attitude towards the world and lend
it significance” – Max Weber
Most of the
discourse in international relations has revolved around the Realist and
Liberal schools of thought. To a large extent, “ideational” factors have been
absent from theorizing in the realm of IR. In “What Makes the World Hang
Together? Neo-Utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge”, John Ruggie
presents an analytical account of “Social Constructivism” not as a theory of
international relations, but rather as a “theoretically informed approach” to
the study of the discipline. Ruggie attempts to incorporate the power of ideas
into the given framework of international politics, by providing an
evolutionary trajectory of Constructivism as a field of IR.
For the
most part, the role of ideas has been heavily constrained within theorizing in
international relations. Neo-realists and neo-liberals have often sought to
simplify their work, by assuming that interests and identities of various
actors within the international system are exogenous and hence, given. The neo-utilitarian view is “narrowly
circumscribed” with respect to the emphasis placed on ideational features of
the international system. However, the neo-realist and neo-liberal schools of
thought differ slightly in this regard. According to Ruggie, neo-realists such
as Kenneth Waltz and Stephen Krasner have attempted include the ideational
factors into their work by referring to the interests of states. However, the
interactions and socialization of states are restricted to the framework of
conflict and the balance of power in the international system. Despite Ruggie acknowledges
that theorists have tried to “add greater determinative content” to Waltz work
by including previously ignored ideational factors such as culture as an
instrument of social mobilization. Neo-liberal theorists on the other hand
attribute a greater, albeit limited, causal role to ideational factors. The
neo-liberal school of thought divides ideas into three distinct categories: “world
views”, which are effected by people’s conceptions of their identities; “principled
beliefs” which form the basis of distinguishing right from wrong; and “causal
beliefs”, that are beliefs about the cause-effect relations within the
international system. These allow individuals to determine their preferences
and choose the most efficient outcome based on their understanding. However,
most of these neo-utilitarian ideas are taken for granted and left unexplored.
However,
Ruggie considers this “cameo appearance” of ideas within the dominant IR theories
as insufficient. He identifies three main problems with the neo-utilitarian
approaches that allow for the development of Social Constructivism as a theory.
Firstly, neo-utilitarianism does not address the “foundational question” of how
constituent actors acquire their identities and interests. In addition, these
identities and interests are assumed to be unchanging. According to Ruggie,
Ilya Prigogine aptly describes this phenomenon: “States and the system of
states simply are: endowed with the
ontological status of being, but not of becoming”. Secondly, the generic
identities attributed to states are not dealt with in an analytical manner.
Neo-utilitarianism also ignores how “specific identities of specific states
shape their interests” and their varied impact on international outcomes.
Lastly, Ruggie believes that there is growing evidence that normative factors
in addition states’ identities shape their interests and behavior directly – an
idea that does not fall within the framework of neo-utilitarianism. Therefore, social constructivism has emerged
as a “metatheoretical critique” all the while addressing issues that were
assumed, discounted and ignored by neo-utilitarianism.
Social
Constructivism as presented by Ruggie, states that the “building blocks of
international reality are ideational as well as material”. The international
system is considered to be a social structure, made of “socially knowledgeable”
and “discursively competent” players. Interactions within the social structure
allow the identities of individual states, as states, to be constructed.
Furthermore, Ruggie differentiates between three variants of constructivism:
neo-classical constructivism, postmodernist constructivism and naturalistic
constructivism. As the name suggests, neo-classical constructivism is rooted
within the classical tradition, with an affinity toward pragmatism, tools to
make sense of “intersubjective meanings” and a commitment to the idea of social
science. Postmodernist constructivism on the other hand places emphasis on the “linguistic
construction” or discourse prevalent within international politics. Naturalistic
constructivism combines the two previous variants in order to present a theory
that incorporates material and social worlds that deals in “un-observables”.
Although
constructivism provides a different perspective while examining international
events as it allows for the inclusion of several ideational factors and human consciousness
in the analysis, Ruggie himself admits that it “lacks rigor and specification”.
Acknowledgement of the fact that Constructivism is far from perfect, adds strength
to Ruggie’s work. However, the discussion presented within the article was
entirely too philosophical and unnecessarily complicated for my liking.
Starting off with Weber was great! Also, you did a good job engaging with Ruggie's arguments. And I agree that Ruggie is far too philosophical, which actually takes away from his overall argument. That being said, I appreciate your attempt to deconstruct it!
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