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The main argument of this paper is that the so-called 'Paris School' of security studies cannot account for practices of resistance because of the way it conceptualizes the 'everyday' as the arena of un-intentional actions. After briefly reviewing some of the main arguments of the 'Paris School', the paper engages in a discussion about oppositional agency to security practices. I suggest that resistance to security has a specificity of its own when compared to general practices of resistance. Further on, the paper traces the main theoretical 'roots' of the 'Paris School', analysing how Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau and James Scott conceptualize the 'everyday', and how this is translated into a vision about agency that leaves out intentionality. Such a vision, I argue, is bound to remain incomplete, and is unable to constitute a coherent theoretical vision about resistance. As a substitute, I suggest the critique of the everyday as developed by Henri Lefebvre, with its emphasis on the transformation of everyday life and its focus on the festival. For Lefebvre, the festival is the ultimate expression of oppositional agency, since it is able to substitute for the alienation of everyday life. I contribute to this theoretical discussion by bringing two examples of such transformations of everyday life: tactical frivolity and 'temporary autonomous zones'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the implications of constructivism for the growing literature that investigates the relationship between ethnic diversity and economic growth. Accepting that ethnic identities are multidimensional and situation-dependent has three principal consequences for studies in this area: it raises concerns about how a country?s ethnic diversity is measured; it introduces the possibility that a country?s diversity may be endogenous to its growth rate; and it suggests the need to be on the lookout for variables that affect both a country?s fractionalization and its economic performance. The paper identifies these potential pitfalls and assesses the extent to which they undermine existing estimates of the effects of diversity on growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the multiple disconnects separating neorealist international relations theory and the practice of foreign policy. Below, several of these that have already received great attention by scholars in the field are very briefly summarized. For example, neorealists carefully separate IR theory from foreign policy analysis. One cannot say much about the behavior of a single state, they repeatedly warn, based on a systemic IR theory. Foreign policy, neorealists acknowledge, is likely to reflect elements of domestic politics as well as international constraints. Then, much greater scrutiny is directed at an important disconnect that has not received close examination ? the divergence between the neorealist theory of international politics and the real world practice of American neorealists who often assume prominent roles in academic and policy debates about US foreign relations. Based on neorealist participation in these academic and policy debates, as well as the scholars? own explanation of their role in these controversies, the paper concludes that these neorealists arguably embrace reflective, communicative, and emancipatory notions of foreign policy decision-making. These are, of course, foundational theoretical concerns of constructivist and critical international relations theorists and are often disparaged by neorealists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the impact of the Western system of values on the post-communist identity change process that has taken place in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) during the last 15 years. The main point is that an extended set of values has to be taken into consideration. To the classical democracy- and capitalism-related values it should be added a security-related set of principles originating in the Helsinki Final Act?s Decalogue. The paper starts by putting the CEE process of identity change in relation to the creation and functioning of a security regime. The origin and structure of the system of values associated with this regime are described. This is followed by a quantitative evaluation of its diffusion in former communist countries. Then, the causes of this uneven geographical distribution are analyzed. Finally, the concluding remarks summarize the main findings of the paper emphasizing the hegemonic role (in a Gramscian sense) of the Western system of values in CEE. All these steps use an approach inspired by Wendt?s identity-based constructivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decades constructivism has moved from the margins to the centre of IR/IPE. Therefore the contentious issue is no longer whether or not one can use constructivism in IPE. Rather, the question is how to make the best possible use of constructivism in IR/IPE. This paper makes an argument in favour of a sociological version of constructivism (drawing heavily on the work of Pierre Bourdieu) which is particularly well suited to develop questions and answers for empirical studies in IR/IPE. The reason is that, although this approach cannot overcome and resolve the central dichotomies in social theory, it suggests ways which make it possible to argue in parallel and to keep both sides of the dichotomies within the analysis. The paper provides three illustrations of this. The first is that the approach focuses both on power entailed by the social construction of meaning both at the level of the level of the ideas expressed by policy maker and/or observer in the public realm and at the level of the private, material action. The second is that it suggests a way of keeping an explicit link between the instrumental use of ideas and the taken for granted dimension of social reality. The third is that the approach stresses the significance of reflexivity both for critical knowledge and for the reproduction of social hierarchies. The focus on power, agency and reflexivity is not fortuitous. It is around these issues that the critique of constructivists, from outsiders and insiders alike, tends to focus and therefore when discussing how to make the best possible use of constructivism, it is from these issues that one has to depart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the applicability of foreign policy analysis (FPA) to studying the European Union’s global policy. It argues that problem-based globalism (PBG) can bridge the concerns of FPA and the study of the EU’s external relations. The two basic theses of PBG are: the structuration and course of international politics already predominantly is and in the future will decisively be determined by the aggravation of global problems, and that the IR discipline is developing towards new cohesion, resulting from the increasing attraction of the globalist problem orientation. Based on constructivism the paper emphasizes that the foreign policy does not exist independently of human action and cognition but, rather, the world of IR is a social world whose rules and practices are made and reproduced by human interactions. Thus, ideas and knowledge play a significant role in explaining the evolution of global policy. Global threats are giving rise to a new kind of mental orientation to life and politics. This new thinking culture is generally characterised by high attention and priority given to global problems and action, as contrasted with traditional nationalist and regional ways of thinking. This paper challenges the state-centricity assumption of foreign policy analysis. While recognizing the multiplicity of global actors, this paper pays special attention to the globalization of the foreign policies of states, groupings of states and integration communities (EU) as presumably the main precondition for essential improvement of global policy-making. The EU seems to be even more capable of acting in world politics than most states ? at least some issue areas. Rationality assumption is also challenged, because the EU does not always know how they should act. Under the conditions of aggravated global problems, it is especially receptive to learn why we are in trouble and what would be an appropriate strategy to manage the global problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constructivism in IR, moderate and radical versions alike, suffers from a superficial understanding of language: Looking only at argumentation and content (what is being said), it overlooks that reality is also being constructed below the surface of texts: it does make a difference, how I say something. Style matters! The proposed paper will point to the crucial role metaphors play in this regard: Metaphors create reality by projecting everyday life-worlds onto international relations. They make sense of and give meaning to strange material phenomena such as the fall of the Berlin wall or the WTC-towers. My paper will come up with a method of analysing metaphors that builds on two strands of literature: post-structuralist theories of discourse on the one hand and sociology of knowledge on the other. In order to illustrate how the method works on the empirical ground, it will be applied to the discourse on EU-enlargement, showing that and how enlargement-metaphors construct European identity. Against this background the paper will finally reflect upon linguistic mechanisms of identity construction more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of ethnopolitics generally agree that ethnopolitical identities are constructed and re-constructed through strategic choices in the course of social, economic and political interactions. This paper describes a dataset on ethnopolitical groups and cleavage patterns in Africa that is motivated by this combination of constructivist and rationalist approaches to ethnopolitics. The paper first clarifies the logic of ?constrained constructivism? and how it informed the theoretical foundation of the dataset and the methodology employed to specify 375 ethnopolitical groups at three levels of inclusiveness in 43 African countries. It then (a) presents comparative data on two measures of ethnopolitical cleavages at each of these levels? an index of ethnopolitical fragmentation and an index of ethnopolitical concentration ? derived from this dataset, (b) explains the conceptualization and calculation of these measures, and (c) elucidates, with illustrative examples, their theoretical implications and explanatory significance for comparative analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central goal of description is to explore - that is to establish when, what, how and where something happened - and thereby prepare the groundwork explaining of why it happened. While social science methodology readily acknowledges this division of labor, it treats description as something without much structure that therefore cannot be as systematically evaluated as an explanation. This paper challenges this assumption by showing that description has a distinct structure that consists of five distinct elements: finding and recording of facts, selecting evidence, scaling, and reordering time and space. And given this structure, the quality of description can be evaluated just as systematically as the quality of explanations. The paper illustrates the elements of description and the criteria for its evaluation by drawing on the Goldhagen and Browning controversy from the late 1990s on what motivated ordinary Germans to participate in the Holocaust. This controversy is helpful because both scholars explored the very same documents but ended with very different analyses. The subsequent broader scholarly debate contained many interesting insights into the structure as well as quality of description that has broader implications for social science. In explicating these implications more fully, it is hoped that description will receive more systematic attention and will improve the development of testable hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes the elements that a structurationist theory in international relations should include. A structurationist theory incorporates both constructivism and historical sociology. The virtue of a structurationist approach is that it is conscious of the need to avoid ontological primacy of either agents or structures. Both agents and structures should be composed of explicit constitutive rules. Rules can only be instantiated by agents, individually or in combination. Thus all the rules of a structure must be distributed among agents. Outside the medium of agents, structures can have no rules. Agents, or subjects, should be built to construct situations, generate actions, and update memories. Subjects' memories may be intersubjective or exclusive. Memories can consist of identities, recently advocated norms, or descriptions with history-sensitive confidence levels. Structures should be defined as combinations of practices and rules that reproduce themselves. Wendt's 1992 diagram of the codetermination of institutions and processes is a helpful illustration of how subjects and structures can be modeled. Four constructivist empirical analyses are shown to contain the requisite elements of structurationist models and to fit Wendt's diagram. The paper concludes with three methodological imperatives. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that IR has tended to mischaracterise the 'social' basis of international society. States and other actors orient their behaviour towards shared understandings of cooperation not because of a prior common identity but because the provision of public goods provides a high value pay-off in terms of status. In the early part of the paper, we draw on Wittgenstein's ideas on rule indeterminacy to critique the idea of the causal power of norms, a view which animates a great deal of mainstream constructivism. Working with an alternative sociology of norms, it becomes possible to view the international social system as being produced through 'recognition games' played on many different boards. The goal of international social action is recognition of rightful membership of institutions and alliances, an argument familiar to English school writings in IR. China's struggle for status in contemporary international society provides an illustrative case study, one which avoids the stark choice between managing China's imminent threat (realism) or liberal socialization (constructivism). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

this paper sketches a pragmatic analysis of diplomatic apologies and regrets. To conduct such a study, some points of Sil and Katzenstein's "analytic eclecticism" should be clarified. Adapting Railton's concept of "ideal explanatory text", the recent works by Førland, Van Bouwel and Weber help clarifying how various causal mechanisms may be complementary to the understanding of one specific problem: different frameworks of analysis are needed to answer different why-questions encompassed in this problem. Their works parallel Kurki's advocacy of a post-Humean conception of causation. These analyses will be presented and briefly applied to the study of diplomatic apologies and regrets, showing how liberalism, constructivism, game theory (and other theories) are complementary to understand such complex phenomena. The main purpose of this paper is to show why it is interesting to integrate Sil and Katzenstein analyses with Kurki, Førland, Van Bouwel and Weber's to conduct a problem-driven and complexity-sensitive research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a preliminary conceptualization of a theory of nonhegemonic international orders (NHIO). To varying degrees, IR theories, including realism, liberalism, constructivism, and Gramscian critical theory have privileged hegemonic power and socialization in international order-building. Nonhegemonic international order theory (NHIOT) holds that international order is not simply a function of the power and preferences of hegemonic actors (or powerful states). A nonhegemonic order may be defined as a relative stable pattern of interactions without the individual or collective hegemony of great powers. NHIOT makes the following assumptions: (a) the main actors/agents in international relations are states, social groups, and international organizations; (b) the international system is an anarchy but hegemony is not a natural or inevitable solution to anarchy; resistance to hegemony may be a more a natural tendency; (c) the structure of the international system is both material and ideational and hence resistance to hegemony can be both material and ideational; (d) international cooperation is possible not only to organize resistance to, but also the socialization of, hegemony-seeking actors; and (e) nonhegemonic actors are not just passive recipients of universal ideas or collective goods, but active borrowers and exporters. The paper offers some examples of nonhegemonic international orders such as the diffusion of Indian political ideas in precolonial Asia, the Chinese tributary system, European Union’s security community, and Indonesia’s postcolonial role within Southeast Asia. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the formation of women's rights institutions in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). It challenges the tacit assumption found in most studies that reforms towards democratization and state-building in BiH are invariably imposed by the international community. I argue in this paper that this rationalist assumption presents us with a biased view on policy-making in BiH, impeding a more comprehensive understanding of how policy-making works in states that are subject to an international post-war intervention. The analysis of the formation of women's rights institutions in BiH reveals agency structures and leverage mechanisms that have largely been neglected in explanations of innovative policy change in BiH. The case supports a constructivist argument emphasising the power of domestic norm entrepreneurs as well as less hierarchical mechanisms of persuasion, capacity-building and cooperation. However, these domestic norm entrepreneurs also relied on external allies that helped them access relevant decision-makers and institutional processes by providing necessary resources and advice. The findings of this study do not only point to alternative strategies for international organizations beyond enforcement and withdrawal, they also introduce constructivist thinking into explanations of policy change under conditions of an international post-war intervention such as in BiH. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a paper on how to study international norms. The notion of norms is quite common in the work of the English School, yet only a few scholars offer an explicit definition of an international norm and even fewer an operationalisation. Using English School theory on norms as well as insight from constructivism, this paper offers a theoretical and methodological account of the study of international norms. Hence, the paper answers questions such as "what is an international norm", "do norms matter at all in international politics", "how do international norms work", and finally but equally important "how do one measure international norms" Thus, this paper is a first attempt to make a sound, explicit research design on how to study international norms. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The agent-structure debate was a debate entered into in the 80s and 90s, but has now silenced. This is largely the case also within constructivism, despite it being the approach that introduced the concept of the mutual constitution of agents and structures. This paper claims that the lack of attention to this fundamental theoretical aspect is diminishing the potential contributions the so-called "bridge building project" between rationalism and constructivism can make to contemporary IR. Today, the project has no metatheoretical fundaments common to both approaches, and is based largely on methodological inventions and theoretical pragmatism. Thus, there exist no theoretical bridge building, and the pragmatic-methodological approach leads to theoretical inconsistencies. Taking as the substantial point of departure the recent International Organization special issue "International Institutions and Socialization in Europe", this paper identifies four concrete problems arising form the lack of theoretical clarity. These are the problem of combining an exclusive use of positivism with constructivism, the conceptualization of mechanisms, the exclusion of interpretative approaches and the rationalist dominance. These problems contribute to the notion of the project as a bridge over troubled theoretical waters. The paper shows how one could approach these problems through revisiting the insights from the agent-structure debate. Values and facts could be reconceptualized as mutually sustaining, mechanisms could be seen as processes and not one-time influences and structures consist of both material and ideational aspects. This new approach might open the ground for a more theoretical coherent and resilient bridge building project. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s constructivism has played an important role in the theoretical debate between IR-scholars. This debate not only concerns systemic theory, but has extended to the FPA-field as well. However, empirical research to buttress constructivist theoretical claims is less profound.Although some empirical work has been done, mostly using quantitative discourse and content analysis, it is important to note that constructivists themselves seem to agree on this point. Someone like Maja Zehfuss is very critical of the social constructivists’ empirical efforts, which in her view remain “abstract”, “leave(s) off before getting to the practicalities” and provide “little to work with for those wishing to analyze what is construed as the political reality of international politics” (Zehfuss 2002: 33). A prominent constructivist like Jeffrey Checkel, in his review of Zehfuss’ book, agrees that “this seems an accurate assessment” (2003: 8). This paper discusses the usefulness of combining ‘new’ constructivist theoretical concepts with more ‘traditional’ qualitative case study research in the diplomatic history tradition, even though constructivist seem to dislike investigating ‘hard’ primary sources and dismiss it as too ‘rationalist’ and too ‘elitist’. Applying constructivist concepts of ‘critical junctures’ (Risse 1999: 155-156) and ‘moral entrepreneurs’ (Finnemore 1996: 24-28) to the development of West German ‘Ostpolitik’ under Chancellor Willy Brandt, the paper takes an absolute ‘most likely case’ (Eckstein 1975) to investigate their empirical foundations. Doing so not only contributes to reducing the gap between constructivist theory and empirical IR-research but also brings IR theory and diplomatic history closer together. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a partial reconciliation of realism, neoliberalism and constructivism by exploring the possibility of power optimization through combining hard power and soft power. The idea of soft power factors as phenomena which empower nations represents a significant break from a constructivist tradition that has tended to conceptualize such phenomena as being disempowering (i.e., serve to constrain the autonomy and actions of nations). Neoliberals too embrace soft power in a ways that emphasize restraint: i.e., an emphasis on cooperation for mutual gains and against concerns for relative power. It is argued that only through including such soft factors in a national power nexus can nations truly optimize their power. Indeed, strategies that do not embrace soft power elements, but rely exclusively on hard power, may very well have the counterproductive effect of weakening a nation. This "weakening effect" or "power curse" builds on the idea of "power illusion" (Gallarotti 2004). Hence, realism needs constructivism and neoliberalism for the realization of one of the fundamental goals it ascribes to nations: the optimization of national power. This paper proposes an intergrated paradigm which synthesizes these three paradigms with respect to power: Cosmopolitik. The logic herein is consistent with both relative and absolute power optimization. This reconciliation is carried out systematically and formally by developing the idea of soft power (Nye 2004) in a relational power context. Soft power is systematically analyzed as a manifestation of metapower. Developing the idea of soft power in this context leads to a conceptualization of the process of power illusion. Formally, both soft power and power illusion are modeled using portfolio diversification theory and a theory of optimal factor allocation in the production of influence. Moreover, the idea of empowerment through emulation is explored in the historical context of modern dollarization and late 19th century trade and monetary policy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of new institutionalist scholarship has, perhaps unremarkably, led to a corresponding proliferation in the adjectives used to characterise its variants. In 1984 James G. March and Johan P. Olsen spoke quite comfortably of the new institutionalism in the singular. By 1996 Peter A. Hall and Rosemary Taylor eventually settled on three new institutionalisms (having toyed, in earlier iterations of the same now classic article, with four). And by 1998 B. Guy Peters identified no less than seven new institutionalisms. Yet none of these authors made any reference to constructivism, far less to a distinctive constructivist variant of institutionalism in its own right. Indeed, until recently, there has been little if any reference to what is now variously described as an ideational, discursive or, as here, constructivist institutionalism. This is for three good reasons - constructivist institutionalism is by far the most recent addition to the family of institutionalisms, it arises out of an engagement with the limitations of the others, and, as a consequence and in contrast the others, it is still very much in its inception. It is, nonetheless already highly distinctive (ontologically, analytically and methodologically), and it poses a series of challenges to extant institutionalisms. The aim of this paper is quite simple - to outline the distinctiveness of constructivist institutionalism, to identify the nature of the challenge that it poses, and to discuss the problematic treatment of the concept of interests in constructivist institutionalist research to date. The paper proceeds in three sections. In the first, I consider the origins of constructivist institutionalism in the attempt to grapple with the limits of pre-existing institutionalist scholarship to deal with post-formative institutional change, particularly that associated with disequilibrium dynamics. In the second, I consider the ontological and analytical distinctiveness of constructivist institutionalism's turn to ideas and the associated nature of the challenge its poses to existing neo-institutionalist perspectives. In the third and concluding section, I establish the tendency of constructivist institutionalist research to fall back on an essentially materialist conception of self-interest, documenting the potential pitfalls of such a move. I argue that a more consistently constructivist perspective, which sees interests as social constructions, rather than as materially-given is in fact far better placed than any other variant of the new institutionalism to provide insights into the determinants of the rapid institutional and ideational change that other perspectives tend merely to endogenise. I illustrate this by showing how such a perspective might deal, rather differently than existing work, with the origins and rise of monetarism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of a larger project that compares three anti-racist campaigns - that of Football Against Racism in Europe (FARE), that of the American Ad Council, and that of the United Nations Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA). The project was motivated by the observation that all three campaigns were initiated in relative haste, with little or no planning, and were devised to respond to perceived crises. They also were just a few examples of a number of anti-racist campaigns that have become increasingly prominent features of contemporary international relations. Therefore, the central question of the project is "Why anti-racist campaigning?" If these initiatives are launched in a hurry, with hardly any similar precedence in international relations, and little idea of their chances of success, why then are so much money, time and other resources invested in them? In short, what are the cultural politics of these antiracist campaigns? The project theorizes this relatively new phenomenon in international relations in order to understand: (a) the wider historical and political context; (b) the agency of all those involved; and (c) the meaning of this practice to contemporary international relations. This paper is a discreet comparison of two of the three cases - FARE and the AD Council. It shows that the Constructivist paradigm is particularly helpful in arriving at a more sophisticated understanding of these two phenomena. Textual analysis is used to show how anti-racism in the two cases is part of wider discourses on nationalism. The anti-racist campaigns are, therefore, important artifacts in pantomimes of identity politics, not by people, but by a state (the United States, in the case of the "War on Terror") and a regional body (UEFA, in the case of FARE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International Relations' constructivist approaches seem to have reached a consensus on the fact that looking at national interests and identities as constructed is important for understanding international politics' dynamics. Gaps remain, however, on explaining how such interests/identities are actually defined and what is the link between the national and international dimensions. The paper argues that the process through which the national actors' understanding of the world translates into political change at the international level cannot be explained by looking at state actors alone. Applying a multidisciplinary perspective, combining international relations with the methodological tools of political communications and discourse analysis, the study attempts at providing an empirical account of the mechanisms explaining political interests' construction at the international level. More specifically, by drawing on the case study of the War on Terrorism, the paper argues that: 1) the media have an impact on political discourses' development, i.e. the media play a role in how political interests are constructed 2) there is an interaction between/among political and media discourses at transnational level: i.e. the construction of international politics is the result of complex cross-national discoursive exchanges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questions about the future of the nation-state have led many to question in various ways the suitability of sovereignty as a concept. This paper organizes some of the major debates and findings in the recent study of sovereignty. Two major approaches exist right now and focus on different theoretical problems. The modern systemic theories including realism, liberalism, and constructivism, struggle with the role of power, ideas, and norms while the resurgent sociological approaches including the British School and Weberian historical sociology struggle with articulating clear conceptions of multiple causality and state-society relations. I find three key problems in the current literature: a rigid definition of sovereignty, an inadequate theory of agency, and an underdeveloped theory of the linkages between sovereignty and political order. Weberian historical sociology is less developed than more mainstream theories, but also provides more promising solutions to these problems. A reformulation of the relationship between sovereignty and order that takes a more agent-centered multi-system approach offers a new way of understanding the existing problems in the literature at the same time that it suggests distinct alternatives to absolute sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines public attitudes and participation in the Niger Delta of Nigeria, a major site of contentious ethnic mobilization and conflict. The data is drawn from three Afrobarometer surveys, providing a time series from a large and uniquely representative sample of citizens from the Delta region. There are three preliminary findings, based upon descriptive statistics and partial event analysis. The pattern of attitudes in Niger Delta, when situated within events, is consonant with constructivist accounts of identity formation. Subjective identities are volatile, and shifts in identity can be explained with reference to political opportunities and economic inducements. Second, with regard to the discourse of grievance in the Niger Delta, parochial ethnic identities are predominant, rather than an overarching regional identity. Ethnic identities are animated by a combination of political challenges and economic interests. Third, regime type does not adequately account for changes in identity and behavior. Democratic governance can reduce communal polarization when the political system furnishes desired collective goods. When citizens perceive that the system has failed to provide essential political or economic goods, they are more likely to gravitate to communal identities and to pursue contentious mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A principal area in which mainstream constructivists have advanced our knowledge of international relations is by addressing normative diffusion. Principles flow outward from a core of normative consensus to a periphery that, over time, comes to accept and endorse the norms. While constructivists anticipate resistance to normative diffusion, the implicit story they tell is a teleological one, and the outcome is normative convergence and the long-term resolution of normative conflicts. Moreover, while careful to point out that constructivism (as a body of theory) is neutral as to whether good or bad norms prevail, in practice constructivists have disproportionately focused on consensus around progressive norms, and more often than not they endorse the normative changes in question. In this paper, we challenge constructivists by arguing that conflict over some of the most fundamental norms of international society is likely to remain entrenched and irreconcilable over time, perhaps indefinitely. We take as our theoretical point of departure John Rawls’s writings on domestic and international political liberalism. Rawls provides a useful analytic framework with which to engage the problem of normative convergence, in two ways. First, he presents a compelling account of human psychology, showing how and why free institutions generate an irreconcilable multiplicity of moral, philosophical, and theological doctrines (what he calls ?comprehensive doctrines?). Thus, Rawls clearly defines a conceptual boundary that must be overcome if we are to be convinced that anything beyond the very thin normative convergence he envisions is possible. Second, when he extends his political liberalism to the international level, he has to make some heroic assumptions in order to make even a thin conception of normative convergence possible, assumptions that we do not find compelling. Therefore, we have reason to believe that normative conflict will be even more problematic at the international level than at the domestic level. In sum, we accept the basic terms of Rawls? political and moral psychology but argue that even his narrow account of convergence is implausible. Normative conflict will remain a problem at the international level. Therefore, the primary question is: How do we learn to live in a world where others do not share our values? We argue that realism provides an answer to this question. Just as liberal theorists resort to checks and balances at the domestic level to mitigate conflict, realists have consistently argued against over-reaching at the international level, however normatively driven, because of the violence that could follow. Because they anticipate resistance, realists warn against privileging moral considerations in foreign policy and the aggressive foreign policies that result. Again, live and let live is the best the world can do. This, we think more reasonable, set of assumptions about normative change allows us to recover the non-utopian liberal potential inherent in realist theories of international politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A primary indicator of a fair and legitimate process is whether those most affected are afforded meaningful opportunities for participation. Indeed, the right to participation in decision-making is a core principle of human rights law. Organizations holding a privileged role in the development of human rights ? including intergovernmental bodies such as the UN and non-governmental such as Human Rights Watch ? are increasingly subjected to scrutiny by reference to principles of legitimacy and are called to account for what they say and the locus of their authority for saying it. While constructivism has usefully examined questions of legitimacy and accountability in relation to core segments of human rights practice, IR offers little in the way of empirical research regarding the actual development of human rights law. This paper extends constructivist analysis to explore whether and how NGO power holders in UN human rights treaty processes apply principles of legitimacy and accountability in their leadership. It provides a case study of the newest UN human rights treaty initiative regarding disabled persons and identifies factors that facilitate or impede meaningful NGO participation, assesses the role of the UN in shaping NGO influence and suggests how such issues ultimately bear upon treaty implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dialogue of civilizations may have significant practical and theoretical implications for international relations at different levels including ontological, epistemological, sociological, and normative. It is, however, theoretically underdeveloped. This idea can hardly be incorporated into the realist paradigm of international relations due to its dialogical, non-statist, and non-power-political aspects. It seems, however, that the English School, constructivism, and critical international theory can be the best theoretical contexts for understanding and conceptualizing the theoretical contribution of dialogue of civilizations. This paper attempts to clarify this contribution. On the basis of its emphasis on civilization and its characteristics, the idea of dialogue of civilizations can alter the state-centric conception of international relations. It may also function as a basis for non Euro-centric approaches to international relations both as the social context in which the interactions among actors take place and as the discipline in which these interactions are to be conceptualized, interpreted, and explained. Its dialogical character represents a multi-layered mechanism for setting international agenda and resolving international conflicts. It can also be seen as a way towards the formation of a new worldwide moral community based on a worldwide dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars increasingly represent Anglo-American international relations theory as a three-cornered fight between realism, liberalism, and constructivism, describing each as paradigms or research programs. Although the three paradigms understanding of international relations theory has some heuristic value, that value is outweighed by the costs for cumulative knowledge in the field. Whatever else they may be, realism, liberalism, and constructivism should not be understood through post-positivist models of scientific evolution. In this paper we propose an alternative heuristic for mapping general approaches to international politics. First, to what degree do theories and approaches hold that anarchy is a fixed constraint on actors in the international system? Second, to what degree do theories and approaches hold that power can be transcended in international politics? Re-mapping the discipline as we suggests reveals some strange bedfellows. Specifically, it shows that the ‘three-cornered’ debate between realism, liberalism, and constructivism is, at minimum, a ‘four-cornered’ fight in which variants of constructivism share at least as much in common with realist theories as with liberal and other constructivist approaches. This realist constructivism is characterized by a focus on the ongoing role of power understood in a relational sense in producing outcomes in world politics. We flesh out this fourth contender, with a special emphasis on the methodological strategies utilized by realist constructivism to produce knowledge that is qualitatively distinct from that produced by any of the other three contenders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political scientists, whether of a materialist or idealist bent, have usually treated rhetoric as epiphenomenal. More recently, constructivists have brought new attention to rhetoric as shaping political outcomes through the mechanism of persuasion. This paper suggests a new way of understanding the role of rhetoric in accounts of politics, as a form of coercion, and thus lays the groundwork for what we call ‘coercive constructivism’ in contrast to the Habermasian versions so popular today. We subsequently illustrate our model’s relevance through two ‘hard’ cases: (1) the efforts of Druse Arabs in Israel to garner full citizenship rights by framing them as the just desserts of their battlefield sacrifice, and (2) the campaign to forge an American commitment to the reconstruction of Europe after World War II by framing it as essential to the defense of ‘Western civilization.’ We maintain that these outcomes are not entirely explicable without close attention to the competing rhetorics put forward by the opposed parties and that our model of rhetorical coercion helps make sense of these puzzling and important cases. We contend that thinking about rhetoric in such terms avoids the naïveté of the Habermasian perspective, the crudeness of vulgar materialism, and the reductionism of ideational approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I begin the process of determining and explaining state death rates. Specifically, I present new data on conquest, union, disintegration, and collapse in Europe and the Middle East from 1800-1994 and test the ability of realist, liberal, and constructivist theories to explain historical trends in conquest rates. In doing so, I dispel two myths. First, contrary to the conventional wisdom, historical state death rates have been quite high. Second, contrary to liberal and constructivist claims, relative capabilities, polarity, great power decline, the offense-defense-deterrence balance, and prevailing economic technologies are better predictors of conquest than democratic, juridical, statist, or collective norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia's national interests have not been defined on the basis of conventional cost-benefit assessments, perceptions of material threat, or the identities projected onto Russia by other countries. Aspirations to regain the international great power status that Russians believe their country enjoyed during the tsarist and Soviet past were critical to the creation of its present national identity and national security interests. This paper asks how Russian elites came to have these national interests in social competition for great power status. In trying to explain how national interests are created, I present a novel aspirational constructivist approach that draws heavily on social psychology to answer three fundamental questions: What are the sources of national identity? Why do multiple identities come into contention? How does one of these candidate national identities come to dominate the others and become "social fact," acting as "the" national identity that defines a country's core national interests? In developing the answers, we gain a better understanding of how foreign "others" enter into the definition of Russia's national identity and the formation of its interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why has there been no confrontation or conflict among big powers after the Cold War? Neither structural realism nor constructivism can offer satisfactory answer. This paper attempts to find an answer to this puzzle by going back to the unit level to explo ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a two-tiered, constructivist theoretical and methodological framework for analysing how international law influences specific (foreign policy) decision-making processes. Taking the linguistic turn seriously, the first tier explores h ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses four related questions: why do norms of military practice develop, spread, gain acceptance, and become internalized? Why are accepted norms sometimes abandoned in favour of contradictory norms? Why did many state leaders become convin ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I develop a realist-constructivist theory to explain the limited nature of European social policy when significant efficiencies could be achieved through a significant transfer from the national to the European level. To explain how European social policy has been institutionalized in this way, the re-launch of social policy by interstate negotiations in Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty. I seek to combine rational and sociological approaches by synthesizing realist intergovernmentalism and social constructivism. The initial genesis of the Single European Act and Maastricht Treaty can be explained by an intergovernmental explanation. Because of their favorable balance of power within the European Council, the most powerful member states determine the direction of the integration process. Additionally, the integration process has been marked by relative gains concerns. The intergovernmental nature of the integration process, with states calculating the relative gains, has becomes a reified, unquestioned part of the European integration. The state interests for social policy integration were socially constructed through phenomenological and symbolic interactions. Intersubjective structural processes have generated both European and national identities, which promote interests for continued cooperation that allows for national autonomy. The routinized, habitual interactions among the national elites, as agents, reproduce the European social policy as an intersubjective structure. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]