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      The Constructive Turn in International Relations Theory

      World Politics
      Cambridge University Press (CUP)

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          Abstract

          In recent years, constructivist thinking about global politics has brought a breath of fresh auto international relations. By exploring questions of identity and interest, constructivist scholars have articulated an important corrective to the methodological individualism and materialism that have come to dominate much of IR. As the books under review indicate, constructivism has also succeeded in demonstrating its empirical value—documenting a new and important causal role for norms and social structure in global politics. Theoretically, however, the approach remains underspecified. In particular, constructivists typically fail to explain the origins of such structures, how they change over time, how their effects vary cross nationally, or the mechanisms through which they constitute states and individuals. Missing is the substantive theory and attention to agency that will provide answers to such puzzles, as well as ensure the development of a productive research program.

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          Most cited references4

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          Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946–1986.

          Democratic states are in general about as conflict- and war-prone as nondemocracies, but democracies have rarely clashed with one another in violent conflict. We first show that democracy, as well as other factors, accounts for the relative lack of conflict. Then we examine two explanatory models. The normative model suggests that democracies do not fight each other because norms of compromise and cooperation prevent their conflicts of interest from escalating into violent clashes. The structural model asserts that complex political mobilization processes impose institutional constraints on the leaders of two democracies confronting each other to make violent conflict unfeasible. Using different data sets of international conflict and a multiplicity of indicators, we find that (1) democracy, in and of itself, has a consistent and robust negative effect on the likelihood of conflict or escalation in a dyad; (2) both the normative and structural models are supported by the data; and (3) support for the normative model is more robust and consistent.
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            Rules, Norms, and Decisions

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              State sovereignty as social construct

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                applab
                World Politics
                World Pol.
                Cambridge University Press (CUP)
                0043-8871
                1086-3338
                January 1998
                June 2011
                : 50
                : 02
                : 324-348
                Article
                10.1017/S0043887100008133
                f76f3e01-4c4a-4987-9493-5bba115c7e1a
                © 1998
                History

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