Transcription of CONSTRUCTIVISM - Northwestern University
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CONSTRUCTIVISM - Northwestern University
17-Smit-Snidal-c17 OUP218-Reus-Smit(Typeset by Spi, Delhi)298of316 January18,2008 18:41chapter hurdThebasic insight behind the constructivist approach can be understood by un-packing a quick observation made by Alexander Wendt. He says that 500 Britishnuclear weapons are less threatening to the United States than5 North Koreannuclear weapons (Wendt1995,73). In this little observation are found traces ofthe features that distinguish CONSTRUCTIVISM from other approaches to internationalrelations, including its critique of materialism, its emphasis on the social construc-tion of interests, its relationship between structures and agents, and its multiplelogics of anarchy. On its surface, the empirical puzzle of the threat embodied byNorth Korean missiles is easy to explain: as Wendt (1995,73) says, the British arefriends and the North Koreans are not. This of course begs an understanding ofthe categories of friend and enemy, and it is through this opening that Wendtand other constructivists have addressed both important substantive aspects ofinternational relations (for instance, how do states come to see others as friendsand as enemies?)
about material power in international relations, in contrast with constructivism’s ... by the discipline.4Even materialist theories of international relations now generally openly include at least two kinds of ideas (though mostly individual rather than collective ideas): first, “non-material” factors such as (for Mearsheimer 2001, 58) ...
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