Constructing International Politics

By Alexander Wendt

Critical IR theory:
- Postmodernism (Richard Ashley, Rob B.J. Walker, Hayward Alker)
- Constructivism (Emanuel Adler, Friedrich Kratochwil, John Ruggie, Peter Katzenstein)
- Neo-Marxism (Robert W. Cox, Stephen Gill, Andrew Linklater)
- Feminism (V. Spike Peterson, Christine Sylvester)
Commonality: concern with how world politics is socially constructed, based on the claims that:
o The fundamental structures of international politics are social rather than strictly
material (opposition to materialism)
o These structures shape actors´ identities and interests rather than just behavior
(opposition to rationalism)
Wendt´s main arguments: assumptions, objective knowledge, explanation of war and peace,
policymakers´ responsibilities

Assumptions
Constructivists are structuralists: how is the construction of a State “identity” and “interest” who,
in return are constructed by systemic structures, not exogenous to them (sociology).
Differences of perception on what these structures are made of: for a neorealist of the distribution
of material capabilities, whereas for a constructivist of social relationships.
Social structures have 3 elements:
- Shared knowledge: understandings and expectations (security dilemma or security
community?), intersubjective quality
- Material resources: only have a meaning through the structure of shared knowledge
- Practices: social structure exists only in process

Objectivity
Ontology: social structures have an objective existence
Epistemology: social structures can have objective knowledge
Key factor: distinction between subject and object

Explaining war and peace

The point is to explain why states engage in war or peace.
This logic has 2 elements:
- Structure: social structure of a system makes actions possible by constituting actors with
certain identities and interests, and material capabilities with certain meanings.
- Agency: agency and interaction produce and reproduce structures of shared knowledge
over time.
Possibility is not probability: anarchy as such is not a structural cause of anything. An anarchy of
friends is not an anarchy of enemies.
Redefining sovereignty (mutual recognition and non-intervention) and status quo (internalization
of states´ interests).

Responsibilities
Social structures constrain action for transformation, but can give “slack” for it to happen.
To analyze the social construction of international politics is to analyze how processes of
interaction produce and reproduce the social structures –cooperative or conflictual- that shape
actors´ identities and interests and the significance of material contexts.