1. Baylis, Smith & Owens:
The Globalization of World Politics 5e
Chapter 9
Social Constructivism
2. Introduction
• IR in the 1980s dominated by theories
that ascribed to materialism and
individualism
• End of cold war: new intellectual space
• Scholars began to use critical and
sociological theories to examine effects
of normative structure and identity
3. Constructivism
• Concerned with human consciousness
• Treats ideas as structural factors
• Considers dynamic relationship
between ideas and material forces as a
consequence of how actors interpret
their material reality
• Interested in how agents produce
structures and structures produce
agents
4. Constructivism
• Key: Knowledge shapes how actors
interpret and construct their social
reality
• Normative structure shapes identity and
interests of actors
• Social facts (sovereignty, human rights)
exist because of human agreement
5. Constructivism
• Meanings aren’t always fixed
• Social rules
– Regulative: manage existing activities
– Constitutive: define and produce those
very activities
• Denaturalizes what is taken for granted
6. Constructivism
• Asks questions about origins of what is
accepted
• Considers alternative pathways
• Power: not only the ability of one actor
to get another actor to do what she
would not do otherwise
– Also the production of identities and
interests that limit actors’ ability to control
their fate
7. Constructivism and Global Change
• Investigates global change and
transformation
• Diffusion: concerned with institutional
isomorphism and life cycle of norms
– Adopted sometimes because of superiority of
model
– But sometimes because of external pressure
and incentives
• Raises issues of growing homogeneity,
deepening international community, &
socialization
