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This paper surveys constructivist scholarship in the study of international political economy (IPE) in China. Chinese scholars in the field of IPE have until recently rarely used constructivism as an approach to study IPE for two reasons. The first, like Western IPE, is the short history of constructivism as a theoretical perspective. The second, unlike Western IPE, stems from the long-standing dominance of Marxism, China's official state ideology, in the academic field. In China, Marxism's materialist core shapes the basic research questions of IPE. Unsurprisingly then, constructivist analysis is quite alien to the dominant intellectual discourse in China. Nonetheless, of late, more Chinese scholars have begun to apply constructivist analysis. This paper surveys these developments and is divided into three sections. The first section provides an overview of how Chinese Marxist scholars approach the major issues of IPE as they relate to China. The second section provides an overview of the work of liberal-minded Chinese scholars who work on major IPE issues, another counterpoint to the Marxist school. The third section, which is the major focus of this paper, examines how Chinese scholars have applied the constructivist concepts to study major IPE issues in the Chinese context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The idea of interdisciplinarity can be articulated in different ways. The aim of the article is to criticise the view that interdisciplinarity is to be treated as a quality of the historian's approach to his subject-matter, and to argue for a constructivist interpretation of that notion. A constructivist account of interdisciplinarity relies on the thesis that the latter is one of the manifold ways in which it is possible to give sense to the historical records of which the historian wants to gain knowledge. In the paper it is maintained that the function of the notion of interdisciplinarity is to account for the clash of languages that can be found when disciplines converge. This new paradigm is highlighted by taking into consideration the history of American pragmatism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper compares the rational and the constructivist approach to the study of international political economy (Ipe). In doing so, the paper focuses on the ontological and epistemological features that allow distinguishing between the two approaches. This distinction is further itemized in the illustration of the two main, contemporary Ipe schools: the American and the British school. The article concludes by reflecting on the modalities through which recent studies have attempted to reconcile the rational and the constructivist approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept of constitutional constructivism in relation to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the 1798 case Calder v. Bull which deals with the application of a prohibition against ex post facto laws in an American state court-based civil probate matter. The views of then-U.S. Supreme Court Justices James Iredell and Samuel Chase are examined, along with natural laws and rights and various interpretations of the nation's Constitution.

Debates about policies affecting the consumption of oil, and on how to support development of substitutes, often represent environmental politics at its most polarizing. How can we explain the serial reversals in energy policy that result from changing perceptions about the availability of renewable versus non-renewable energy supplies? Application of a range of theories to the case of the United States since 1973 suggests that two distinct types of explanation interact to play crucial roles: socially constructed deliberation takes place over the purposes of energy policy; meanwhile, physical constraints in natural resources are also observed and processed into updated perceptions of relative feasibility among policy choices. Over time, different policy priorities – varying in emphases on economic growth, sustainability, scarcity, or innovation – rise and fall as market conditions test how policies correspond with reality. Opportunities to develop successful policy strategies for managing this century's energy transition – in any of the four directions described – will depend similarly on the absence or presence of political will, a condition shaped by perceptions of material feasibility. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This autobiographical retrospective discusses Konrad Jarausch's scholarship as an example of the topical and methodological development of contemporary history. In contrast to nationally bound scholars, his career in the United States and involvement in German debates illuminates the transatlantic connections of historicizing the recent past. The need to confront the Nazi dictatorship initially privileged political history, but the societal upheavals of the 1960 shifted interests towards quantitative methods and the new social history. The peaceful revolution of 1989 then challenged historians to establish a nuanced interpretation of the GDR in scholarship and memory culture. At the same time the cultural turn called for an engagement with postmodern methods of narratology, transforming theoretical approaches towards constructivism. The growing sensitivity towards the European and global embeddedness of the German past finally inspired a move towards transnational perspectives. This intellectual trajectory is therefore emblematic of successive changes which opened contemporary history towards a new plurality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korea's strategic thought toward the United States has been evolving from a blood alliance during the Cold War era, to a transitional alliance during the post-Cold War era, and to a strategic alliance after September 11. Despite some trials and errors, South Korea has successfully adjusted itself to new strategic challenges by transforming and reinventing its alliance with the United States. As part of a soft-balancing strategy, this endeavor has been conducted in parallel with South Korea's improved relations with other major powers than the United States and its support for multilateral security cooperation so that the United States may not impose its own strategic preferences on South Korea. In these attempts, we can discover strategic elements that are realist (utilizing the U.S. as a strategic balancer between China and Japan), liberal (going beyond the military alliance), and constructivist (joining the regional community-building). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article claims that realist and constructivist ideas are compatible. Structural realism is needed to understand the constraining and stabilizing role of material factors. Furthermore, it detects process in a law-like tendency towards international power equilibrium which is achieved via balancing. Constructivism, in turn, highlights the importance of ideas and norms as engines for change and the creative role of agency. The article therefore combines a materialist and an idealist perspective. It both detects elements of stability and argues for necessary improvements in current international relations (IR) by looking at the issues of United States hegemony, the rise of new challengers and the threat of sub-state international terrorism. This article, therefore, takes up important claims made by Kenneth Waltz on realism, hegemony and terrorism, and interprets them in the light of IR theory today. It is argued that structural realism and Waltz's ideas are still important and viable, but that we need to combine them with additional perspectives, notably constructivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to criticism of the author's work on the problem of money laundering by the scholar Ian Roberge in the article "Bringing the United States Back in: A Response to Rainer Hülsse's 'Creating Demand for Global Governance." The author disagrees with Roberg's account of constructivism and the role of the U.S. in the development of money laundering investigation mechanisms by the Financial Action Task Force. The role of persuasion and the development of an intellectual account of the damage that money laundering causes in international economic relations is emphasised.

We investigated how third party managers from China, Japan and the USA intervened in employees' disputes. Consistent with predictions, we found (using non-linear HLM analysis) that managers who were superiors to the disputants behaved autocratically and/or decided on conservative (e.g., contract adhering) outcomes; but managers who were peers (especially in China and the USA), generally involved disputants in decision-making and obtained integrative outcomes that went beyond initial contract related mandates. Our results extend prior research and theorizing using the dispositional and constructivist perspectives on culture by introducing norm complexity as an explanation for variations in third party conflict intervention behaviour within one culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is likely to be the future character of the relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China? Will it be marked by convergence toward deepening cooperation, stability, and peace or by deterioration that leads to increasingly open competition and perhaps even war? The answers to these questions are of enormous importance. They are also, at this point, unknown. Most analysts who write on U.S.-China relations deploy arguments derived from the three main camps in contemporary international relations theorizing: realism, liberalism, and constructivism. Those whose basic analytical premises place them in one of these three schools, however, do not necessarily have similar views regarding the specific question of the future of U.S.-China relations. It is possible to identify realists who believe that the relationship will basically be stable and peaceful, liberals who expect confrontation and conflict, and constructivists who think that things could go either way. The six basic positions in this debate all rest on claims about the importance of particular causal mechanisms or sets of similarly aligned causal forces. In reality, one set of forces may turn out to be so powerful as to overwhelm the rest. But it is also conceivable that the future will be shaped by a confluence of different forces, some mutually reinforcing and others opposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little research exists on how the conception of world order in terms of globalization defines security policy. The way the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, on 11 September 2001 were understood highlights how globalization defines threats, and the policies adopted to deal with them, in the post-Cold War international order. This article utilizes three elements of the globalization discourse (globality, globalization and globalism) identified by Ulrich Beck in analysing the Western reaction to the events of 11 September 2001. It is argued that the attacks reflected a new 'strategic globality' in which the new civilian infrastructure of globalization enabled Third World groups to intervene in the West. In terms of globalization, the events of 11 September were seen as the realization of scenarios for post-Cold War insecurity that dominated the late 1990s. The terrorist attacks actualized the 'ontological insecurity' which followed from the notion that globalization enabled threats to proliferate with the same force as trade. Focusing on 'globalism', the article analyses the strategies for creating safety in a globalized world that presented themselves immediately after the events. The author presents three globalisms: particularism, imperialism and cosmopolitanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]