Constructivism in International Relations
Introduction
Constructivism in international relations explains world politics by treating identities, interests, norms, and political meanings as socially constituted rather than simply given. States operate within material conditions shaped by territory, military capabilities, economic resources, and physical vulnerability, but those conditions do not determine political behavior independently of interpretation. Their significance depends partly on historically formed expectations, shared understandings, rules, and relationships among actors. Constructivism accordingly directs attention to the processes through which states and other international actors understand who they are, what they want, whom they regard as threatening or legitimate, and which forms of conduct they consider appropriate or possible (Adler, 1997; Ruggie, 1998; Wendt, 1999).
This emphasis does not require denying the importance of material power. Constructivist scholarship instead questions the assumption that material capabilities possess a fixed political meaning outside the social relationships in which they are embedded. The same military capability may be interpreted differently depending on the identity attributed to its possessor, prior interactions, expectations about future conduct, and established patterns of friendship, rivalry, or hostility. Interests and identities are likewise not treated as fully formed before international interaction begins. Social structures shape actors, while actors reproduce or alter those structures through their practices, a relationship commonly described as mutual constitution (Wendt, 1987; 1999).
The intellectual development of constructivism preceded its emergence as a prominent current of international relations theory in the 1990s. Nicholas Onuf placed rules, language, and the construction of social reality at the center of World of Our Making, while Friedrich Kratochwil examined how rules and norms structure political judgment and practical reasoning rather than functioning only as external constraints on fixed preferences (Onuf, 1989; Kratochwil, 1989). John Ruggie also contributed to the broader constructivist challenge to approaches that treated identities and interests as analytically prior to social interaction, emphasizing the significance of intersubjective meaning and historically contingent institutions in international politics (Ruggie, 1998).
Alexander Wendt subsequently gave constructivism one of its most influential systemic formulations through direct engagement with structural realism. His argument that “anarchy is what states make of it” accepted the absence of centralized authority in the international system while rejecting the claim that anarchy necessarily generates self-help or competitive power politics. Such patterns can become deeply institutionalized, but they arise through interaction and shared expectations rather than following automatically from anarchy itself (Wendt, 1992). Wendt later developed this argument by showing how identities, interests, and different cultures of anarchy can be constituted through social relations among states (Wendt, 1999).
Constructivist research expanded beyond this systemic debate through sustained work on international norms, identity, culture, socialization, and legitimacy. Scholars examined how standards of appropriate behavior emerge and diffuse, how actors internalize or contest international expectations, and how identities influence the formation of national interests and foreign-policy preferences. The resulting literature did not produce a single model of political behavior. It established a broader research program concerned with how intersubjective meanings, normative structures, persuasion, socialization, and historically formed identities shape international outcomes alongside material and strategic considerations (Katzenstein, 1996; Hopf, 1998; Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998).
Constructivism has also developed beyond the canonical emphasis on norms and state identity. More recent scholarship has examined practices, relational processes, language, professional communities, expertise, emotions, and the everyday production of international order. McCourt describes many of these developments as part of a “New Constructivism,” a characterization that emphasizes renewed attention to the processes through which political realities are produced rather than treating norms or identities as static explanatory variables (McCourt, 2022). Constructivism is consequently best understood as a diverse family of approaches united by a common proposition: international order is partly constituted through social relations, shared meanings, rules, identities, and practices that are historically produced, reproduced, contested, and capable of change.
1. Constructivism in International Relations as Social Theory
Constructivism in international relations is best understood as a broad approach to the social character of world politics rather than as a single theory producing one fixed set of predictions. Constructivist scholars differ over methodology, epistemology, and the relative importance of norms, identity, language, discourse, institutions, and practice. Their common ground lies in treating important features of international politics as socially constituted rather than assuming that actors, interests, and political meanings exist fully formed before interaction begins (Adler, 1997; Ruggie, 1998).
This orientation changes how familiar categories are analyzed. National interest, threat, sovereignty, alliance, legitimacy, and appropriate state conduct cannot always be taken as self-evident starting points. Constructivist research asks how such categories acquire meaning, how they become embedded in institutions and political practice, and why some interpretations become authoritative while others remain marginal or contested.
The approach is also more demanding than the general proposition that ideas influence politics. Many theories acknowledge beliefs, perceptions, and ideology. Constructivism goes further by arguing that shared understandings can help constitute actors and interests themselves. International structures contain material capabilities, but they also contain rules, expectations, classifications, and social meanings that affect how actors interpret both themselves and others (Wendt, 1999).
1.1 Intersubjective Meaning and Social Facts
A private belief belongs to an individual consciousness. An intersubjective understanding exists between actors and acquires social significance because it is shared, recognized, or treated as authoritative in practice. Constructivist analysis emphasizes this distinction because many international institutions depend on collective expectations that cannot be reduced to any single government's preferences or perceptions (Ruggie, 1998).
Sovereignty illustrates the point. Territory and population have material existence, while sovereign authority also depends on historically developed legal and political understandings concerning jurisdiction, independence, and legitimate rule. Diplomatic relations offer a related example, although their operation is not merely a matter of social convention. Under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, diplomatic relations and permanent missions are established by mutual consent, and the receiving state must grant agrément to the proposed head of mission (Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961). Constructivist analysis concerns the social meanings and practices surrounding such institutions; it does not replace their formal legal regulation.
Similar dynamics apply to borders, currencies, international offices, alliances, and institutional roles. A frontier has physical location, but its political significance depends on rules and recognition. A currency may be made of paper, metal, or digital records, yet its capacity to discharge obligations and organize economic exchange rests on institutionalized expectations. An alliance commitment acquires strategic significance partly because governments believe that particular obligations, roles, and expectations attach to the relationship.
Social construction does not imply unreality or unlimited malleability. Social facts can impose substantial constraints because actors organize behavior around them, institutions reproduce them, and violations may carry political or legal consequences. Material capabilities operate within the same interpretive environment. The destructive capacity of a weapon is physically measurable, but its political significance depends partly on who possesses it, the relationship between the actors concerned, anticipated intentions, doctrine, and historical experience.
1.2 Agents, Structures, and Mutual Constitution
The relationship between agents and structures became one of the defining theoretical problems in constructivist international relations. An actor-centered model may begin with states whose preferences and identities are already established, while a strongly structural account can leave little room for actors to reproduce or transform the conditions under which they operate. Wendt's early work challenged both forms of reduction by treating agents and structures as mutually constitutive (Wendt, 1987).
States operate within structures of norms, institutions, roles, and expectations that shape the range of intelligible and legitimate action. Those structures do not exist independently of practice. Governments, diplomats, international organizations, courts, military institutions, firms, and social movements continually enact, interpret, apply, challenge, and modify the rules and expectations through which international relations are organized.
Sovereignty again demonstrates the relationship. States exercise authority within an international order in which territorial jurisdiction and political independence are recognized and institutionalized. That order persists because actors continue to invoke sovereign rights, establish diplomatic relations, conclude treaties, contest interference, and organize international institutions around sovereign equality. The institution constrains states, while state practice simultaneously sustains the institution.
Mutual constitution also helps explain both continuity and change. International structures can endure because they are deeply institutionalized and repeatedly reproduced across generations of political actors. They can also change when practices, interpretations, and relationships shift sufficiently to alter the expectations on which an institution rests. Constructivism thus treats international order as historically produced without suggesting that actors can redesign it freely or instantaneously.
2. The Intellectual Formation of Constructivism
Constructivism did not originate in a single work, nor did it arise simply as a response to the end of the Cold War. Its intellectual formation drew on debates in social theory, sociology, philosophy of language, international law, and international relations concerning rules, agency, institutions, meaning, and historical change. By the late 1980s, several scholars were already developing arguments that would become central to constructivist IR (Onuf, 1989; Kratochwil, 1989).
The end of the Cold War intensified disciplinary interest in systemic transformation and in approaches that did not treat identities and interests as permanently fixed. The transformation of Soviet foreign policy, the collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe, German reunification, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union made questions of political learning, legitimacy, identity, and institutional change especially salient. Constructivism did not emerge because these events occurred, but they strengthened interest in theoretical approaches capable of explaining significant changes in political meanings and relationships.
During the 1990s, constructivism developed into a more recognizable research program. Work on international norms, political culture, state identity, international institutions, transnational activism, and socialization expanded rapidly. The field remained internally diverse, and its development cannot be reduced to Alexander Wendt. Onuf, Kratochwil, Ruggie, Wendt, and later scholars contributed different theoretical vocabularies and research agendas to what became known collectively as constructivist international relations.
2.1 Onuf, Kratochwil, and the Constructivist Turn
Nicholas Onuf's World of Our Making was one of the foundational works of constructivist international relations and is closely associated with the adoption of the constructivist label in the discipline. Onuf placed rules and language at the center of social life, arguing that people and society continually constitute one another through practices governed by rules (Onuf, 1989). His constructivism was broader than a theory of state preferences or international norms in the later mainstream sense.
Language occupies a central place in Onuf's account because social relations are partly produced through speech and rule-governed interaction. Political actors do not merely describe an already constituted world; their practices help sustain the social arrangements within which authority, obligation, and status acquire meaning. This emphasis linked constructivism to wider concerns about rule, communication, and the social production of order.
Friedrich Kratochwil approached related questions through rules, norms, and practical reasoning. In Rules, Norms, and Decisions, he challenged accounts that treated norms primarily as external constraints on otherwise fixed preferences. Rules can provide reasons for action and establish standards through which actors justify, criticize, and evaluate conduct. Political judgment consequently involves interpretation and argument as well as instrumental calculation (Kratochwil, 1989).
John Ruggie's work formed another important part of this intellectual development. His analysis of international institutions emphasized intersubjective understandings, historical contingency, and the social foundations of international order. Ruggie later framed constructivism as an approach that problematizes identities and interests rather than treating them as analytically prior to interaction (Ruggie, 1998). These early contributions show that rules, language, institutions, and historical change were central to constructivist thinking before norms and identity became its most familiar themes.
2.2 Wendt and the Mainstreaming of Constructivism
Alexander Wendt's distinctive contribution was to bring constructivist social theory into direct engagement with questions already central to mainstream American international relations. His 1987 article on the agent-structure problem argued that agents and structures are mutually constituted, connecting debates in social theory to systemic IR analysis (Wendt, 1987).
Wendt's 1992 article, “Anarchy Is What States Make of It,” sharpened that engagement by challenging a core inference associated with neorealism. He accepted the absence of centralized authority as a feature of the international system but disputed the claim that anarchy necessarily generates self-help and competitive power politics. Interaction, identity, and shared expectations became part of the explanation rather than assumptions established before analysis began (Wendt, 1992).
Social Theory of International Politics developed these arguments into a more systematic framework. Wendt retained states as the principal units of systemic analysis and treated international structure as containing both material and ideational elements. He also developed the concept of different cultures of anarchy, allowing systemic relations to vary according to institutionalized understandings among states (Wendt, 1999).
His version of constructivism does not exhaust the wider tradition. Wendt's approach is strongly state-centered and systemic, whereas other constructivists have concentrated on language, international law, transnational activism, discourse, professional practices, historical sociology, and interpretive methods. His importance lies in making constructivist claims central to debates with neorealism and rationalist approaches, not in establishing a single authoritative definition of constructivism.
3. Wendt and the Social Construction of Anarchy
Wendt's treatment of anarchy offers one of the clearest demonstrations of how constructivism alters a conventional problem in international relations theory. Structural realism and Wendtian constructivism both recognize that the international system lacks a centralized political authority equivalent to domestic government. Their disagreement concerns the social consequences attributed to that condition.
Kenneth Waltz treated anarchy as the ordering principle of international politics and argued that states in a self-help system must remain attentive to survival and to the distribution of capabilities (Waltz, 1979). Wendt did not dispute the existence of international anarchy. He challenged the inference that one particular pattern of identity and interaction follows necessarily from it.
Competition, distrust, arms accumulation, and rivalry can become durable features of international politics. Constructivism does not treat such conditions as illusory. Wendt's argument concerns their origin and reproduction: competitive relationships are historically formed institutions of interaction rather than properties logically contained in the absence of world government (Wendt, 1992).
This reasoning gives greater explanatory weight to the histories of relationships among states. Repeated interaction can establish expectations that later actors inherit as powerful constraints. Hostility may become institutionalized just as cooperation can. The constructed character of a relationship says nothing by itself about how easily that relationship can be changed.
3.1 “Anarchy Is What States Make of It”
Wendt's phrase “anarchy is what states make of it” captures his rejection of the claim that anarchy possesses a single predetermined social logic. His 1992 argument focused particularly on self-help and competitive power politics. Neither, he argued, follows automatically from the absence of centralized authority (Wendt, 1992).
States form expectations about one another through interaction. If governments repeatedly interpret each other's actions as threatening, prepare for confrontation, and respond through suspicion, they can reproduce an increasingly competitive relationship. Once established, such expectations may become institutionalized and survive changes of government or individual leadership.
Cooperative relationships can also acquire structural force. Repeated restraint, institutional cooperation, and credible expectations of peaceful conduct may change how actors understand one another and the range of behavior they consider plausible. Constructivism does not predict that states will move naturally toward cooperation. It explains why either rivalry or cooperation requires more than the abstract fact of anarchy.
The security dilemma requires separate care. Material factors such as military technology, offense-defense conditions, geography, and uncertainty can affect how states interpret security measures and risks (Jervis, 1978). Wendt's more limited theoretical point is that anarchy alone does not logically determine self-help identities or competitive interaction. Constructivist analysis complements rather than eliminates strategic questions about capabilities and vulnerability.
3.2 Identity, Interest, and Cultures of Anarchy
Wendt's later work connected the social construction of anarchy to state identities and interests. Interests concern the objectives actors pursue, while identities concern the kinds of actors they understand themselves and others to be. Wendt argued that these categories are related because identities help shape the interests actors recognize as relevant within particular social relationships (Wendt, 1999).
Social Theory of International Politics distinguishes three cultures of anarchy: Hobbesian, Lockean, and Kantian. The categories describe different dominant role relationships among states. Hobbesian relations are organized around enemies, Lockean relations around rivals, and Kantian relations around friends (Wendt, 1999).
Each culture contains different expectations concerning legitimate conduct. In a Hobbesian relationship, the other is treated as an enemy whose existence may be threatened. Lockean rivalry accepts continuing competition while recognizing the other state's right to exist as a sovereign actor. Kantian friendship is associated with expectations of nonviolence in disputes and, under specified conditions, mutual assistance.
These cultures are intersubjective structures rather than descriptions of individual psychology. Governments can participate in established relationships even when particular leaders hold different private attitudes. Their persistence depends on shared expectations and repeated practices that become institutionalized over time. Wendt's framework consequently allows social structures to constrain actors while retaining the possibility that patterns of interaction may eventually be transformed.
4. International Norms, Identity, and State Interests
International norms became one of the most influential subjects in constructivist research during the 1990s. In this literature, a norm is commonly understood as a collective expectation concerning appropriate behavior for actors with a particular identity. Its significance lies not merely in individual approval but in the existence of a social standard against which conduct can be judged, defended, criticized, or sanctioned (Katzenstein, 1996).
Constructivist scholarship distinguishes between regulative and constitutive effects. Regulative norms govern the conduct of actors whose identities and roles are already recognized. Constitutive rules and norms participate in defining social roles, practices, and legitimate forms of action. Diplomatic representation, membership in international institutions, and recognized institutional roles demonstrate how rule-governed practices help establish the categories within which later political behavior occurs (Ruggie, 1998).
Normative change is rarely a linear process in which a morally superior idea simply displaces an inferior one. Finnemore and Sikkink's influential model distinguishes norm emergence, a possible norm cascade, and internalization. Norm entrepreneurs may frame issues and seek institutional support, while socialization, legitimacy, conformity, and strategic calculation can contribute to wider acceptance at later stages (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998).
Subsequent research complicated accounts of straightforward diffusion. Acharya's concept of norm localization emphasizes the agency of actors who encounter external norms and reinterpret them through existing local beliefs, institutions, and practices. International norms may be modified in the process of adoption rather than transmitted unchanged from one political setting to another (Acharya, 2004).
Norm contestation adds another layer. Actors may recognize the existence of a normative standard while disagreeing over its interpretation, scope, or application. Such disputes can preserve a norm, reshape it, or contribute to its decline. Contestation is consequently part of normative politics rather than simply evidence that a norm has failed (Wiener, 2008).
Identity connects these processes to the formation of interests. Governments may understand themselves through several identities at once: as neutral states, democracies, regional powers, alliance members, revolutionary governments, or participants in particular international communities. Different identities can become politically salient under different conditions, and none automatically determines conduct.
Constructivist analysis treats interests as partly dependent on these social relationships. Finnemore showed how international organizations and norms can influence what states understand their interests to require, challenging approaches that assume preferences are produced entirely before international interaction begins (Finnemore, 1996). Material concerns remain relevant, but their political meaning and priority may themselves depend on historically formed identities and normative expectations.
5. Constructivist Explanations of Foreign Policy and Security
Constructivism became influential in international relations partly because its theoretical claims generated a substantial empirical research program. Scholars examined military doctrine, alliance politics, human rights, sanctions, nuclear weapons, international organizations, diplomatic practices, and transnational activism to identify how norms, identities, interpretation, and socialization affected political behavior. These studies do not imply that ideational explanations dominate every case; their value depends on demonstrating specific mechanisms and tracing their effects.
One line of research examined national security cultures. The studies collected in The Culture of National Security investigated how historically formed norms and identities influenced military policy, weapons choices, alliance relationships, and conceptions of national security (Katzenstein, 1996). Such work challenged analyses that attempted to infer policy preferences directly from distributions of material capabilities without examining how political actors interpreted those conditions.
The international campaign against apartheid offered a different empirical setting. Audie Klotz analyzed racial equality as an international norm and connected changes in legitimate international conduct to the adoption of sanctions against South Africa. Her account highlighted the interaction of transnational activism, international institutions, and normative change without reducing policy outcomes to material strategic interests alone (Klotz, 1995).
Nuclear non-use produced another important constructivist argument. Nina Tannenwald examined the emergence of a normative prohibition against nuclear use and its influence on American decision-making after 1945. She did not reject deterrence as an explanation for restraint; her argument was that deterrence alone could not fully account for patterns of nuclear non-use and that normative stigma also entered the decision-making environment (Tannenwald, 1999).
Human-rights scholarship focused more directly on socialization. Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink developed the “spiral model” to explain how external pressure, transnational advocacy, domestic opposition, argument, and institutionalization could contribute to changes in state behavior. The model identifies movement through different stages rather than assuming that governments internalize international human-rights norms immediately after exposure to them (Risse and Sikkink, 1999).
Research on security communities examined how peaceful expectations themselves can become institutionalized. Adler and Barnett developed Karl Deutsch's earlier concept to analyze communities in which participating states acquire dependable expectations of peaceful change. Members come to expect that disputes among them will be resolved without organized military violence, even though the international system remains formally decentralized (Adler and Barnett, 1998).
These empirical literatures rely on different causal and constitutive processes. Socialization may expose officials to new standards, persuasion can change understandings, institutions can stabilize expectations, and repeated practice can normalize particular behavior. Norms may also be resisted, localized, contested, or invoked strategically. A constructivist explanation gains analytical force when it identifies which mechanism is operating and shows how it affects political choice.
Material and social explanations frequently operate together. Economic pressure was relevant to apartheid sanctions, deterrence remains indispensable to the study of nuclear politics, and military capabilities shape security calculations. Constructivism contributes by asking how such costs, capabilities, threats, and available policies acquire meaning for the actors making decisions. Foreign policy is shaped not only by what states possess or confront, but also by the identities, norms, expectations, and relationships through which those conditions are interpreted.
6. Constructivism and Realism: A Careful Comparison
The contrast between constructivism and realism is most useful when it identifies distinct explanatory priorities rather than treating the two traditions as opposites. Realist theories generally give substantial weight to power, security, competition, and the constraints generated by international politics. Constructivists focus more directly on how actors acquire interests, interpret threats, recognize legitimate authority, and develop expectations about appropriate conduct. The difference concerns what requires explanation and what can reasonably be taken as given.
Structural realism provides the clearest point of comparison. Waltz treats anarchy as the ordering principle of the international system and emphasizes the pressures created by the absence of a central authority, particularly the need for states to preserve their survival and remain attentive to the distribution of capabilities (Waltz, 1979). Wendt accepts both anarchy and material capabilities as significant but argues that their political consequences depend partly on the social relationships within which states interpret one another (Wendt, 1992; 1999).
The two approaches also differ in their treatment of systemic change. Structural realism is especially well equipped to analyze shifts generated by changing distributions of capabilities and strategic constraints. Constructivism allows for another form of transformation: identities, interests, relationships, and standards of legitimate conduct can themselves change. The international system may remain anarchic while the social meaning of relations among particular states changes substantially.
Classical realism complicates any simple contrast. Morgenthau's work gives sustained attention to political judgment, prudence, prestige, national interest, and historically specific configurations of power (Morgenthau, 1948). Realism is consequently more diverse than a purely materialist description suggests, just as constructivism is broader than the study of ideas alone.
6.1 Anarchy, Power, and the Source of State Interests
Structural realism begins with states operating in an anarchic environment in which no higher authority can reliably guarantee their security. Survival occupies a privileged position, and the distribution of capabilities shapes opportunities and constraints. Waltz's systemic theory does not require a detailed account of how every state preference or identity formed before analyzing these structural effects (Waltz, 1979).
Constructivism asks for a fuller account of how interests acquire their content. Wendt does not deny that states have basic material needs or that military capabilities impose constraints. His argument is that the meaning of security, threat, rivalry, and cooperation cannot be inferred completely from capabilities themselves. States interpret those conditions through relationships in which identities and expectations have developed over time (Wendt, 1999).
Comparable military capabilities may consequently provoke different responses. Armed power possessed by a longstanding adversary may be interpreted as threatening, while similar capabilities held by an ally can generate considerably less anxiety. Material differences still matter, but historical relations, perceived intentions, institutional commitments, and established expectations help determine how those capabilities are understood.
The same logic applies to the legitimate exercise of power. Military and economic resources can produce coercive effects regardless of social approval, yet political actors also distinguish between forms of power they regard as legitimate, tolerable, threatening, or unlawful. Constructivist analysis directs attention to the social and institutional processes through which those judgments are formed, rather than treating the political meaning of power as fixed by its material source alone.
6.2 Where the Realist-Constructivist Divide Blurs
The familiar distinction between realist materialism and constructivist idealism is analytically convenient but incomplete. Classical realism has long incorporated questions of political judgment, prestige, prudence, and perception into its account of international politics. Morgenthau's conception of power, for example, cannot be reduced to the possession of military resources because it also concerns relationships of influence and political control (Morgenthau, 1948).
Constructivism likewise does not require the rejection of strategy or material constraint. Actors may pursue socially constituted interests through calculated means. Governments can respond strategically to incentives while operating within an environment in which their identities, goals, and legitimate options have been shaped by prior interaction.
J. Samuel Barkin develops this overlap through the concept of realist constructivism. He challenges the assumption that realism and constructivism must occupy mutually exclusive theoretical positions and argues that constructivist attention to the social production of interests can coexist with realist attention to power and political constraint (Barkin, 2010).
The overlap does not erase important differences. Structural realists generally assign greater explanatory weight to systemic pressures arising from anarchy and the distribution of capabilities, while many constructivists make the constitution of identities and interests part of the explanatory problem itself. Realist constructivism demonstrates that these emphases can intersect without requiring the two traditions to collapse into one another.
7. Conventional, Critical, and Other Constructivisms
Constructivism does not possess a single epistemology, method, or research agenda. Scholars associated with the tradition share an interest in the socially constituted character of international politics, but they disagree over the kinds of explanation that social science can provide, the role of causation, the significance of discourse and language, and the relationship between interpretation and empirical testing.
Ted Hopf's distinction between conventional and critical constructivism remains one influential way of mapping this diversity. Conventional constructivists generally retain a stronger commitment to explanatory social science and often investigate how norms, identities, or shared understandings influence political outcomes. Critical constructivists place greater emphasis on discourse, historical contingency, power, and the processes through which political categories and identities are themselves produced (Hopf, 1998).
The distinction is heuristic rather than absolute. Conventional research can examine how identities are constructed, while critical scholarship can make empirical claims about political consequences. Adler's description of constructivism as occupying a “middle ground” captured this methodological and epistemological breadth, although constructivism has continued to diversify since that formulation (Adler, 1997).
Method does not by itself determine whether a study is constructivist. Constructivist scholarship has used historical research, comparative case studies, interviews, discourse analysis, process tracing, surveys, and quantitative techniques. What distinguishes the approach is the theoretical treatment of actors, interests, meanings, and social structures, not the exclusive possession of a particular empirical method (Finnemore and Sikkink, 2001).
Labels such as conventional, critical, thin, thick, modern, or postmodern can clarify genuine differences in emphasis, but they are not universally accepted boundaries. Some scholars fit imperfectly within these categories, and different classifications foreground different dimensions of the field. Treating the labels as fixed schools would obscure the intellectual diversity they are intended to describe.
The distinction is clearest in the questions scholars ask. One study may investigate whether an established norm altered state behavior; another may examine how the identity of the relevant actor or the category of legitimate conduct was produced in the first place. Both can be constructivist while operating with different conceptions of explanation and evidence.
8. Critiques and Limits of Constructivist Explanation
Constructivism's breadth has generated persistent questions about explanatory precision. One criticism concerns causal mechanisms. Demonstrating that a norm, identity, or shared understanding exists does not establish how it produced a particular political outcome. Checkel's assessment of the constructivist research program emphasized the need to specify how social structures originate, why they affect actors differently, and through which mechanisms processes of constitution and change occur (Checkel, 1998).
The problem is especially visible in norms research. Behavior consistent with a norm may result from genuine normative commitment, coercion, strategic calculation, domestic political incentives, institutional routines, or several of these forces at once. Conformity alone cannot establish that a norm caused the behavior. Stronger explanations identify the mechanism connecting the normative environment to the decision under examination.
A related challenge is determining which norms become influential and under what conditions. Legro criticized approaches that concentrated on prominent norms without adequately comparing them with plausible alternatives or explaining variation in normative effects (Legro, 1997). Later research broadened the agenda by examining weakening, replacement, and disappearance as well as successful diffusion, showing that institutionalized norms can decline rather than simply accumulate over time (Panke and Petersohn, 2012).
Identity raises its own evidentiary difficulties. Researchers cannot observe an intersubjective identity as directly as a trade flow or military expenditure. They must establish its content and social relevance through defensible indicators drawn from discourse, institutions, behavior, surveys, or other evidence. Abdelal and his co-authors show that identity can be studied systematically, but careful operationalization is required to distinguish its content, contestation, and relationship to political behavior (Abdelal et al., 2006).
Prediction is another point of debate. Constructivism's emphasis on historical contingency does not make forecasting impossible, but it complicates universal prediction. Meyer argues that constructivist forecasting can be worthwhile when researchers specify the mechanisms and conditions through which expectations, norms, and identities are likely to persist or change (Meyer, 2011). The difficulty lies in building sufficiently developed mid-range theories rather than in any inherent prohibition on prediction.
McCourt identifies a different problem within the evolution of mainstream constructivism. In his account, norms, identities, and culture sometimes came to be treated as relatively stable variables whose effects could be tested against material alternatives. That development risked shifting attention away from the processes through which those social phenomena are continually produced and contested (McCourt, 2022). This is an influential diagnosis of the field rather than a conclusion accepted by all constructivists.
Criticism consequently needs to be directed at particular forms of constructivist explanation. A challenge to Wendt's state-centered systemic theory does not necessarily apply to practice theory, and a methodological objection to causal norm research may have limited force against an interpretive study of discourse. Constructivism's internal diversity makes precision in criticism as important as precision in its substantive claims.
9. Beyond Norms and Identity: The New Constructivism
The contemporary constructivist landscape includes approaches that extend beyond the norms-and-identity research associated with the field's mainstream consolidation. David McCourt interprets practice theory, relationalism, actor-network theory, research on affect and emotions, and several methodological innovations as components of what he calls the “New Constructivism” (McCourt, 2016; 2022). The label is a substantive argument about the development of constructivist scholarship, not a universally accepted successor paradigm.
Practice theory has been especially influential. Adler and Pouliot define practices through socially meaningful patterns of competent performance and examine how practical knowledge is enacted in particular settings (Adler and Pouliot, 2011). This orientation shifts attention toward what diplomats, military officers, officials, and other actors routinely do, how competence is recognized, and how repeated performances reproduce or modify international order.
Relationalism makes a related move away from treating actors as self-contained units with properties that exist independently of their relationships. McCourt argues that relational approaches focus instead on processes, positions, and connections through which actors acquire their social characteristics (McCourt, 2016). A state's position, an expert's authority, or a diplomat's influence may depend on the relational environment in which that actor operates.
Rules, language, and law have also regained prominence within this wider constructivist agenda. These themes were already central to Onuf and Kratochwil, but contemporary work revisits them through closer attention to the practices that produce authoritative classifications, roles, competencies, and forms of legitimate action. McCourt treats this renewed focus as part of the recovery of constructivism's earlier concern with the active construction of social order (McCourt, 2022).
Expert and professional communities provide a further object of analysis. Foreign and security policy are made within institutions populated by diplomats, military officers, lawyers, economists, intelligence specialists, advisers, and other professionals who compete over expertise and the definition of policy problems. McCourt's account of experts as “world-makers” emphasizes how professional struggles can influence the categories through which states interpret interests and international environments (McCourt, 2022).
Research on emotions and affect has widened the agenda again. Fear, humiliation, attachment, sympathy, confidence, and other affective relations can influence how political actors interpret threats, communities, and status. McCourt includes this work within his New Constructivist synthesis, although scholarship on emotion and affect also crosses feminist, poststructural, psychological, and other traditions in international relations (McCourt, 2022).
Methodological diversity accompanies these theoretical developments. Constructivism does not prescribe a single qualitative or interpretive technique. McCourt argues that methods should be selected according to the research problem and discusses textual interpretation, interviews, network analysis, computational approaches, and Multiple Correspondence Analysis among the possibilities available to constructivist researchers (McCourt, 2022). Methodological choice remains subordinate to the theoretical claim being investigated.
The significance of McCourt's formulation lies partly in its genealogy. He argues that recent developments recover concerns that were present in early constructivism before mainstream scholarship concentrated heavily on norms, identity, and culture as comparatively stable factors. The New Constructivism, on this reading, represents less a replacement for earlier work than a renewed emphasis on construction as an ongoing political process.
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Conclusion
Constructivism changed international relations by challenging the assumption that the most important features of world politics arrive ready-made for analysis. States face material constraints, but threats, interests, authority, sovereignty, and even relationships of rivalry or friendship acquire political significance through historically formed social understandings.
That premise allows constructivists to explain forms of continuity that material structure alone may leave under-specified. Norms can become institutionalized, identities can stabilize expectations, and repeated practices can make particular forms of conduct appear legitimate or natural. The same framework also leaves room for transformation because those arrangements depend on social processes that can be contested and altered.
No constructivist explanation is persuasive merely because it invokes norms or identity. The analytical burden is to show how a shared meaning emerged, how it affected the actor concerned, and why it produced the outcome attributed to it. Material incentives, coercion, domestic politics, and strategic calculation may remain part of the same explanation.
The strongest contribution of constructivism lies in making the constitution of international politics itself an object of inquiry. Rather than assuming that actors, interests, threats, and institutions possess fixed meanings, it asks how those meanings become established, reproduced, and politically consequential. That question continues to connect the field's early concern with rules and social construction to contemporary research on practices, relations, expertise, language, and affect.
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