The course aims to introduce the key assumptions of the international relations theory as a part of social science and as an analytic tool, focusing on the problems of war and peace, foreign policy decision-making, etc. The course combines historic approach and analysis of the modern political problems. The historic part shows the evolution of the international relations theory from being a part of political philosophy to its emergence as a special branch of political science, which is essential to understand the key ideas of the IR science. The lectures also include broad outline of the modern concepts and debates in the context of the contemporary political problems, such as rise of China and other emerging powers, threat of terrorism, US-Russia confrontation, etc. The lectures of the two outstanding Russian scholars and political analysts – Timofey Bordachev and Dmitry Suslov - cover such fields as the problems of international security and conflict resolution, international economic relations, foreign policy decision-making, global governance, the role of power in the IR.
Constructivism
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來自 National Research University Higher School of Economics 的課程
Understanding International Relations Theory
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National Research University Higher School of Economics
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從本節課中
Critical IR theories (Constructivism, Postmodernism, Feminism)
The end of the Cold War, which have never been predicted by any classical theory, put a question about their legitimacy and broke up fundamental academic debates. The module introduce to the so-called critical theories and their interpretation of the key problems of world politics.
與講師見面
Timofei BordachevAssociate professor
Department of international relations
Dmitrii SuslovSenior Lecturer
Department of international relations, HSE
Let's start with constructivism,
which made the most important contribution to the start
of international relations among the critical theories of IR.
And the classic of constructivism is Alexander Wendt,
a relatively young American scholar,
who basically established the foundations
of the constructivist theory in the international relations field.
The prominent work of Alexander Wendt is called "Anarchy is What States Make of It",
and it really explains the philosophy of the main point of constructivism.
That anarchy, the state of international system,
is not the all encompassing and
all powerful determinant of behavior of states because indeed,
both realism and liberalism claim that states
behave in a certain way in conditions of the anarchical system.
They draw different conclusions of how do states behave in conditions of anarchy.
Realism claims that states compete in conditions of anarchy,
and anarchy makes all states enemies of each other or competitors of each other.
Liberalism claims that anarchy, on the contrary,
promotes states to cooperate because cooperation is
the only way for the states to survive in anarchical system,
but anarchy is kind of the nature of the international system which is an anarchical,
is the major driver of behavior of states.
It's kind of programs, behavior of states,
and states are like machines,
which follow the demands of the program which is the system, which is anarchy.
Wendt disagrees, and he claims that it is much more complex,
that states behave as they want to behave in
the anarchical system and anarchy is a environment which is produced by states,
which is not existing by default,
which is not kind of imposed on states,
on us, from the above.
And the point of departure of Alexandra Wendt was basically the failure of
the classical theories of IR to explain
the rapid end of the Cold War and collapse of the bipolar system,
collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, early 1990s.
And so, he developed
the alternative narrative of explaining the end of bipolarity in the Cold War,
which allowed him to develop
an independent theory of international relations namely constructivism.
So what are the main assumptions of constructivism?
Constructivism, as I said,
starts from the premise that classical theorists could not
predict the end of the Cold War or change in general.
Classical theories are static.
They assume that international relations never change.
Classical theories try to provide us
the eternal laws of international relations evolution,
that in all kinds of history,
states behave in a similar way.
For Realism, in all times of history, states compete.
For Liberalism, in all times of history, states cooperate.
For Marxism, in all times of history,
states draw economic benefits and exploit the others.
So, the major laws of
international relations are static according to the classical theories.
Wendt fundamentally disagrees.
He claims that international relations are much more dynamic,
are much more complex,
and not always rational.
Why? Because according to Wendt and according to constructivism in general,
international relations are not material,
they are not materialist.
He criticizes the materialist assumptions
of the traditional theories of international relations.
According to him and according to Constructivism,
international relations is not a material thing.
International relations does not consist of geography,
stones, rocks, and oceans.
International relations is a social reality.
So, we can say that constructivism is a sociology of international relations,
a kind of merge of sociology and IR.
And if international relations is a social reality,
so ideas are as powerful as material things.
Another very powerful proposition is that the world is much more complex and flux,
much more dynamic and unpredictable than is claimed by the classical theories.
Why? Because international relations, according to constructivism,
are not always rational,
and states in their behavior are not rational.
Indeed, states behave differently faced by similar situations in the anarchical system.
Faced with anarchy, some states can prefer competition.
The other states, in this absolutely same situation, can prefer cooperation.
Why? And each of these states might consider that its behavior is rational,
but nevertheless, states act in different ways.
Why do they behave differently in similar situations?
It is because perception of reality differs,
and perception is a fundamental notion in the constructivist theory.
Again, since international relations is a social reality,
not a material reality,
so perceptions matter more than material things.
States behave not because of the objective reality that they
face or the determinants of the behavior of states is not the objective reality.
The behavior of states is the images that the states
have kind of in their hands or the leaders of the states have in their heads,
in their conscious, in their minds.
And states have different perceptions.
They have different images of reality.
They see the world differently.
I mean, the same with states, as people,
we can look upon a certain thing and have a different picture,
a different understanding of the realities.
And why do we have different understandings of the realities?
Why are the images that our imagination that our mind
constructs differs from the images that are being constructed before the others?
It is because we have different history,
because we have different culture,
because we speak different languages,
because we have different values.
Thus, constructivism focuses on these precisely factors,
history, culture, language, and values,
as determinants of the image making that happens in the heads of the leaders,
in the heads of the states,
in the minds of the states.
And thus, determine policy because again,
policy, the behavior of states,
is determined by the images,
by the perception of reality,
not reality as such.
So we can say that constructivism is
a sociology and epistemology of international relations.
Epistemology is a science that studies perception.
And according to epistemology,
there is no reality,
there is just perception.
So, reality is not what really exists.
Reality is what we see.
Reality is what we see,
not what really exists.
And we can be wrong in the perception.
Ancient people, they imagine that the world is flat,
and they really thought that the world,
I mean, there was no globe,
but the Earth is a flat thing that is standing upon elephants,
and so on, and so forth,
and there is sun, which goes around the earth, not vice versa.
And they operated according to this image that they have.
So this is what happens in international relations.
This is the driver of state policies,
the perceptions, not the objective reality.
And constructivism, by the way,
is absolutely correct in citing this.
None of the classical theories of IR cites
this difference between the perceptions and the reality.
Constructivism does it, and this is
the foundational value of constructivism in the study of international relations.
