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Theories of World Politics II
ZHENG YU I34049
WU KWOK MAN I37025
PIAO HAIYUE I34036
Contents
• Constructivism’s origins
• Constructivism’s core commitments
• Conclusion
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Constructivism’s origins
• In 1980s, mainstream IR theories:
• Neo-realism & Neo-liberal institutionalism
• Distribution of power and pursuit by states of
power and wealth
• Constructivist: critical reaction
• Highlight: how ideas define and can transform
the organization of world politics, shape the
identities and interests of states and
determine what counts as legitimate action.
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Constructivism’s origins
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Cold reception initially
Gained Credibility & popularity quickly
The end of cold war
How the world is made and remade through
human action
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Constructivism’s origins
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Constructivism’s origins (Brief)
Two factors: theoretical & sociological
Midwives:
1)Neo-realism and neo-liberal institutionalism
2)Sociological and critical theory
Social forces such as ideas, knowledge, norms
and rules influence states’ identities and interests
and the very organization of world politics.
• From European social and political thought and
run counter to the American culture
• Individualism
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Constructivism’s core commitments
• Constructivism’s core commitment
• Constructivism is a social theory: Broadly
concerned with how to conceptualize the
relationship between agents and structures;
• Rational Choice (social theory):
• It offers a framework for understanding how
actors operate with fixed preferences that they
attempt to maximize under a set of constraints.
• Both constructivism and rational choice are social
theories, but rational choice is a substantive
theory and constructivism is not.
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Constructivism’s core commitments
• Many different kinds of constructivists
• Neoclassical, Modernist, Postmodern, Naturalistic,
Thick, Thin, Linguistic, Narrative, Weak, Strong,
Systemic, Holistic.
• Still, there is unity within such diversity
• Constructivism is about human consciousness and
its role in international life
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Constructivism’s core commitments
• A commitment to idealism
• Idealism demands that: we should take seriously the
role of ideas in world politics
• Actually, ideas are not psychological states that reside
inside our heads, instead, these ideas are social
• Our mental maps are shaped by collectively held
ideas such as knowledge, symbols, language, and
rules.
• A commitment to holism
• The world is irreducibly social and cannot be
decomposed into the properties of already existing
actors
• It does not deny agency but instead recognizes that
agents have some autonomy and their interactions
help to construct, reproduce, and transform those 8
structures
Conclusion
• More like a substantive theory:
• It suggests how to investigate world politics
• Not as a social theory:
• Should give predictions about enduring
regularities or tendencies in world politics
• Contribution:
• It offers alternative ways of thinking about a range
of concepts and issues, including power, alliance
formation, war termination, military intervention,
the liberal peace, and international organizations.
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Conclusion
• Constructivism’s Future
• It Accept:
• Social construction of reality
• The existence and importance of social facts
• The constitution of actors’ identities, interests and
subjectivities
• The importance of recovering the meaning that
actors give to their activities
• Tremendous difference
• It will guard against complacency & enrich our
understanding of the world
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Thanks!
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