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Summary of 7 pages for the course International Relations of the Middle East at School of Oriental and African Studies (Coursework material)
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INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS OF MIDDLE EASTQUESTION 2
What does “constructivism” contribute to foreign policy analysis? Discuss with reference to one conflict in
the region.
It is argued that a “natural link” exists between constructivism and foreign policy analysis, explained as “the
set of official external relations conducted by an independent actor, usually a state, in international
relations”. According to Smith, “social construction and foreign policy analysis look made for one another”.
That is, FPA and constructivism seem to share the same agent-based and psychological oriented notions
which go well beyond the neorealist and neoliberalist materialistic approaches previously made in an effort
to explain foreign policies.
This essay will argue that constructivism does indeed confer relevant contributions to the study of foreign
policy since “decision makers create their own world (thus it is a social construction) in which they perform
a particular foreign policy”. Firstly, it will provide a brief explanation on how constructivism arrived in FPA
starting by illustrating the reasons why neorealism and neoliberalism are unable to effectively predict
foreign policy behavior. Secondly, it will illustrate the constructivist assumptions upon which the theory is
built, and it will show how they can easily be combined to foreign policy analysis. Also, this analysis will
present a counterargument which will state that FPA diverge from constructivism as it “ offers a
complementary but distinct perspective on the role of ideas in international relations and on the
relationship between agents and structures”, thus it is not really contributing to foreign policy analysis.
Finally, a case study will be discussed, this being the case of the Iraq War of 2003, which will provide the
tool through which the essay will demonstrate the validity of its core argument; constructivism does play a
critical role and it is contributing to the study of foreign policy behavior as it is the most applicable model.
Despite these conclusions, I will argue that each perspective, realist, neoliberalist, and constructivist, can
play a role in understanding foreign policy decision-making and that as states cannot be considered “black
boxes”, also theories cannot be completely disregarded, in favor of just one of them.
As stated above, the essay will first explain how constructivism arrived in the discipline of FPA. Firstly, it is
important to outline how FPA first came into being as well as to what it refers to, in order to be then able to
assess which of the IR theories can contribute more to it. In 1950s a split within the field of International
Relations occurred and the discipline was divided into two main subfields: foreign policy analysis and
international relations theory. The former focuses on what happens inside the states to explain foreign
policy behavior operating at a system level of inquiry, while the latter explores how interstate relations
affect states policies operating at a more micro level of explanations, maintaining individuals as the primary
unit of analysis. The divide between the two is clear and it grew even more in 1979 when IR scholar
Kenneth Waltz published his neorealist theory. According to Waltz, states behavior could be predicted by
just examining the impacts that external forces have on them, with no need to look into the “black box” of
the state, thus missing out the role played by domestic politics. It seems to have been a testing time for
FPA. However, as Houghton argues, IR theorists not only are attracted to FPA, but also “try to pedagogically
connect FPA to the ongoing theoretical debate in IR”. However, pedagogical connections need strong
logical relations and neither neo-realism nor neoliberalism can be easily combined to FPA, as they both fail
to recognize the ideational factor and concentrate exclusively on the material variable. (Appendix 1.) The
arrival of constructivism in IR theory has provided a solution, by including the ideational factor and
conferring relevant contributions to foreign policy analysis. Firstly, it is useful to highlight the similarities
and the differences between the two to critically evaluate if constructivism can actually be considered as a
logical as well as pedagogical combination of FPA. With respect to differences, they have two different
levels of inquiry. As constructivism is part of IR theory, it shares with the latter the same macro
conventional level of analysis operating at a “broader social structure context”. While FPA, as stated above,
, is operating at the micro level of individual policy makers’ “learning and psychological biases”. “Apart from
this methodological distinction, they also differ in epistemological terms.” On one hand, FPA follows a
“loosely positivist epistemology”. On the other, constructivism is divided between a positivist perspective,
this being the American variant, and an interpretive perspective, this being the European variant. (Appendix
2.) Still, Houghton argues that “the most logical base” from which FPA can be approached is exactly social
constructivism for its “cognitive psychological approach to the study of foreign policy.” That is because of
their common concentration on the ways in which “various cognitive processes impact upon foreign policy
construction, as well as on agency and agents, either state-based foreign policy elites, stressed by FP
analysts, or non-state norm entrepreneurs, highlighted by constructivists”. This being the similarity
between constructivism and FPA that influence and orientate foreign policy practices, it now becomes
possible to state that constructivism is indeed the most applicable model among IR theories to FPA
research and thus, the one conferring the most relevant contribution to it. To understand what these
contributions are, it is relevant to illustrate the assumptions of constructivism and its approach towards
FPA.
Firstly, constructivists reject the materialistic point of view of neorealism and neoliberalism. They propose
“human awareness and consciousness” as the main aspect of IR. States are acknowledged as social actors
interacting in a social international arena by following domestic and international norms. However, they are
not unitary actors; “social communities, international organizations and states’ agencies” play a critical role
in the constructivist approach. Also, it is fundamental to state that the domestic and the international
sphere are considered as the “product of inter-subjective awareness amongst persons who live in the same
world”. It is evident that human ideas and not material forces are the ones constituting these systems,
which are the result of human intellectual invention. “Humans actively make their world” (this way of
thinking isn’t entirely new, appendix 3). As a consequence, “ideas as a set of principles and values, matter in
shaping structures of international relations and provide some direction for policy”. Not only ideas matter,
but also identity is vital in the understanding of constructivism. Constructivists connect ideas with
identities, defined as a self-other relationship, since ideas are the tools people use to “socially construct
meanings for their worlds”. According to Wendt, states create identity which determines their interests,
ending up constructing institutions, which are “stable structures of the produced identity and interests”.
The constructed institutions and norms are part of the actor’s idea about their social world. In particular,
social norms can be defined as a “standard of appropriate behaviour for actors with a given identity”
(Katzenstein 1996) From this “logic of appropriateness”, it follows that states are expected to behave in the
respect of socially constructed norms that reflect their identities. (March and Olsen, 1998) In sum, “all;
identities, ideas, interests, norms and institutions, is the outcome of an interactive process among social
actors which are mutually constitutive”. (Weber)
Once the main assumptions upon which the theory of constructivism is built have been illustrated as above,
it becomes possible to notice some of the contributions apported by constructivism to FPA. First, on one
hand, traditional foreign policy analysis tends to consider interests as pre-given. On the other, a
constructivist approach to FPA would treat interests as an endogenous variable and investigate how they
are socially constructed. Furthermore, as states aren’t unitary actors, a constructivist contribution to FPA is
that a scholar would focus on the interest construction process not only on a state-based level point of
view, but would also explore the processes by which international organizations and NGOs actively
participate in the construction of national interests, exerting pressure on policy makers’ decisions in name
of what constructivists recognize as the “moral force of commonly held values and norms”. Another
contribution is the “communicative view of rationality” constructivists have that can inform foreign policy
behavior. Thus, argumentation and persuasion, preferred to a mere calculation of costs and benefits, would
be the tools for decision-making used by policy makers in their interactions. Finally, constructivists have
theorized “cross-level models” according to which not only “the international system is connected to
national actors, institutions and policies”, but also has an “impact upon the very identities and interests of
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