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 2
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From the course by National Research University Higher School of Economics
Understanding International Relations Theory
26 ratings
National Research University Higher School of Economics
26 ratings
From the lesson
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.
Meet the Instructors
Timofei BordachevAssociate professor
Department of international relations
Dmitrii SuslovSenior Lecturer
Department of international relations, HSE
[SOUND] As I said, constructivism pays
much attention to culture and language.
Why do they matter?
Why do we need to focus on culture and
language when we start international relations?
And again, there is a foundational difference.
Between this assertion, the assumption of constructivism and
the classical theories of IR.
For classical theories of IR, all the countries behave in a similar way,
disregarding their culture, disregarding their language.
For both realists, liberals, and Marxists claim that the United States of America
acts in a similar way as Russia, Iran and China, right?
And if they don't, this is a mistake.
Constructivism disagrees.
It is not a mistake by China or
Russia that they behave differently from the United States of America.
Or it is not a mistake of Iran that it behaves differently
from the United States or from other countries.
It is simply they behave differently,
simply because they see the world differently.
Why do they see the world differently?
Because their culture and language differs.
So culture and language matter
in international relations because they shape perceptions of states and people.
And perceptions determines policy.
Again, there is no objective reality, there is just an image.
There is just perceptions which determine policy.
And perceptions differ from countries to countries.
Countries interpret the same events,
and the same talk, the same speeches, the same narratives differently.
And this difference in perceptions results into clashing polices.
Just to give you an example, the Arab Spring.
The perception of the Arab Spring in the United States and
in Russia differed fundamentally.
Despite the fact that there were the same facts on the ground, right,
namely transformations in the Arab world.
For the United States, Arab Spring was the new
wave of democratization, the new wave of democracy.
It was the beginning of the transition of the region of the Arab world
from authoritarianism to democracy.
Thus it was a very positive tendency which needed to be encouraged and promoted.
For Russia, Arab Spring was a transition from stability to instability.
It was the beginning of the movement of the region into chaos,
into disorder, into endless wars, into collapse of statehood.
And thus this was the process which was perceived in a fundamental and
negative way and needed to be resisted.
Thus the United States and Russia pursued fundamentally clashing opposite
policies vis a vis the Arab Spring which resulted into our clashes in Libya,
into our clashes in Syria, and so on and so forth, right?
Despite the fact that we were dealing with the same reality.
Narratives differ and clash as well.
We have different interpretations of history.
We have different interpretation of the same periods of time.
Another prominent example, how did the Cold War end?
Right, we have the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and
the Communist Bloc, the collapse of the Communist system.
What does it mean?
What conclusions do we draw from that.
And we have absolutely different narratives.
From the perspective of the United States, the Cold War ended with the victory
of the US, with the victory of the American values, American institutions,
American rules, and the Western institutions and rules.
Whereas the alternative was defeated, and thus it was collapsed.
The Russian perspective of the end of Cold War is fundamentally different.
It is that the Cold War was brought to an end through deliberate cooperation and
dialogue of two major super powers, Soviet Union and the United States.
And Soviet Union was not defeated, but it was the voluntary and deliberate
decision of the Soviet leadership to end confrontation with the United States.
There is a fundamental clash of our narratives, I mean Russian and
American narratives, in interpreting the post-Cold War period.
The post-Cold War period for the United States was the absolutely bright, benign,
and positive time when the American values became universal.
There was a chance for globalization to trigger prosperity
in many countries and regions of the world.
I mean it was the golden period of time.
For Russia, the post-Cold War period was the 25 years' crisis,
to paraphrase Edward Carr and his analysis of the middle war,
his characterization of the middle war period.
For Russia, it was the period when international relations were
developed in the wrong way, rather than right way.
And of course the policies of Russia and the United States,
that were based on these clashing narratives, also clash.
Our understanding of the major trends of international relations differ.
What is a norm, and what is the violation of the norm in international relations?
Is for instance this sphere of influence, the notion of spheres of influence,
is our spheres of influence a norm?
Is it normal to respect the demands of great powers in their neighborhood?
Or it is a violation of the norm and if great powers behave in this way,
we need to punish them.
Where does the world go?
Where does the international relations go?
Are we moving towards a homogeneous world based on the Western values institutions?
Or the world goes back to the 19th century multipolarity with
coexistence of different regional orders and several great powers.
We have fundamentally different understandings of this.
And both Russia and
the United States in these understandings are convinced that they are correct.
And we have a situation today in the US-Russia relations when both
the United States and
Russia rationally claim that they are at the right side of history.
Whereas the opponent is at the wrong side of history.
And both countries, both sides are able to prove this by certain
arguments that they draw from the international relations,
that they draw from the images of the international relations that they have.
And these clashing narratives, clashing and different perceptions and
understandings of the world are social constructions, right?
We are dealing with not a material objective reality.
We are dealing with social constructions which are shaped by history,
culture, and language.
And this is why we need to focus on history, culture, and language.
Because they help us to understand why do countries and peoples understand reality
in a particular way different from how the others understand the same reality.
So according to constructivism, theories based on rational choice are misguided.
According to constructivism,
constructivism claims that states act as people.
And people are not rational machines, people are irrational creatures.
Constructivism emphasizes social dimensions of international relations and
the possibility of change.
Why there is change, why do states behave differently,
because their perceptions differ, and because they act in an irrational way.
And this irrationality produces change,
such as the collapse of the Soviet Union, for instance.
Reality according to constructivism is not objective.
It is constructed, it is being built, it is being imagined, it is a man-made
reality in international relations, not something imposed from above.
So international relations as such is a product of social construction of reality.
It's not like the ocean that exists differently from others, right?
What is international relations?
Do we actually see international relations?
It is the invented thing.
It is imagined reality, right?
So we're dealing with the results of social construction.
We are dealing with the mental activity,
with imagination to a certain way.
And social facts according to constructivism
depend on human interactions to make them real.
There are no social facts by themselves, by default.
It is the human interactions which produce them.
So this is why international relations is kind of the result of the behavior
of actors, of the behavior of people, not vice versa.
Not the behavior of people is the result of certain objective reality which
exists in the world out there.
Thus constructivism makes a very powerful conclusion that states
behave as they choose to behave.
States behave as they choose to behave.
Their behavior is not predetermined by the structure, by the objective reality.
National interests are not determined by structure, but are constructed.
Thus we can make a conclusion that constructivism is a kind of
epistemology for international relations.
It claims that perceptions matter, and
perceptions are sometimes more important than reality.
We live in the world of images and operate according to these images.
States behave not according to what exists out there but according to what they see.
And there is a link between identity and national interest.
States' national interests are derived from the way they perceive themselves and
those around them.
So there is no objective reality.
There are images which are constructed.
This is why constructivism, right?
Constructivism as a term is based on the notion that reality,
social reality, is being constructed.
And international relations is a accumulation of
different social constructs.
Perceptions differ across countries and within countries.
Thus constructivism in addition to history, language and
culture, also attributes a big role to values.
Values define what the state considers importance and
will affect the way it perceives other actors, right?
Behavior is shaped by whether we consider the others similar to us or
different from us.
If we consider the others as aliens, we will probably compete with them.
We won't trust them.
But if the others, they share our values, they are like us,
then it is much more probable that we will cooperate with them.
So this is why values also matter for constructivism no less than language,
culture, and historical experience.
[SOUND]
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