Session 17: Hi Constructivism!

Alexander Wendt brings up the incredible idea of constructivism as a means of explaining international relations since he believes that the existing theories of neorealism and neoliberalism were unable to substantially justify the end of the cold war. The staunch believer of the model asserts that “the ability to shed interesting light on concrete problems of world politics must ultimately test of a method’s worth”. Well clearly, he has added an exciting theory to the pool.

Constructivism believes in the power of ideas. He believes that contrary to the notion in the field to blame the system for violence, states should be held responsible since the system change ultimately happens through the states. And theories should be developed to explain the state-centric behaviours. Then he also talks about systemic approach arguing that though states cannot be studied in isolation, a new theory should be developed as it will explain certain aspects which the other theories will fail to acknowledge. He further criticizes realism and presents map of social theory assumptions and highlights the methodological and ontological approaches.  

However, this was an interesting piece to read as it was beautifully structured and well written piece incorporating all the keys ideas that we have studied so far. Discussing the two schools of thought simultaneously with constructivism helped me better understand the relatively new theory and assisted me strengthen my grasp on previous concepts. Furthermore, the author accepts to the level of generalization and abstraction present in the book which means that he accepts that his work has room for improvement.

Overall, constructivism is a pretty fascinating approach and takes the study of IR to a completely new level by not defining the things to study, but by explaining the way in which it should be studied. Though it has strengths and weaknesses, it is still a leading paradigm in international relations field.