The India–US Nuclear Deal: Norms of Power and the Power of Norms

A major dilemma for the nuclear non-proliferation regime is whether and how to engage the nuclear-armed states that are not in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) more effectively in the broader nuclear non-proliferation regime without weakening or discrediting the NPT. The Indo-U.S. Civilian Nuclear Agreement claims to bring India, as a “responsible” nuclear state, closer to the nuclear non-proliferation regime. It was criticized by the non-proliferation community, concerned that global non-proliferation norms would be undermined by India specially.This chapter employs a realist constructivist approach to understand how the U.S.-India nuclear agreement has affected the key norms of the global nuclear non-proliferation regime by deviating from the established expectations of the regime, and why the U.S. went to great efforts to sell the agreement as consistent with non-proliferation norms.

Taking Co-constitution Seriously: Explaining an Ambiguous US Approach to Latin America

The external behaviors of the preeminent Western power are much more ambiguous than mainstream IR theories predict because none of the mainstream camps have an accurate conception of the relations between Western states and their cultures. On the one hand, neorealists fail to explain how the culture of a Western power will tend to discourage the state from behaving in ways that are openly dissonant with the core symbols of its professed liberalism. On the other hand, it is fairly commonplace for Western media to facilitate their states’ casual deviations from a liberal foreign policy course by obfuscating the existence of such deviations. To solve the puzzle of a Western power’s ambiguous foreign policies, we must explore the practical implications of co-constitution, according to which state interests and cultural identities mutually shape each other and can never be fully autonomous from each other. This study conducts such an exploration in the context of U.S. policy to Latin America, particularly around the failed coup in Venezuela in 2002.

Realist Constructivism: An Introduction

This chapter looks at the general relationship between realism and constructivism in international relations theory. It introduces both approaches, and argues that the distinctions often drawn between them, such as those between materialism and idealism and between logics of consequences and appropriateness, do not in fact make them incompatible. It suggests that areas of fruitful overlap between realism and constructivism are to be found in the study of the institution of the state and of individual agency in foreign policy. The chapter also lays out the plan of the book, and briefly introduces the other chapters.

Permutations and Combinations in Theorizing Global Politics: Whither Realist Constructivism?

This chapter argues that while combinations of realisms and constructivisms provide more leverage in understanding international relations than either of the two approaches alone, two is unnecessarily limiting. It suggests that where two is an improvement, three or more might be better yet. To this end, it looks at the empirical chapters of the book and asks what might be gained by incorporating into their analyses critical theories, decolonial approaches, queer approaches, and feminisms. It concludes by arguing for trading in realist constructivism for ‘ism’ promiscuity.

Constructivist and Neoclassical Realisms

Neoclassical realism is one of the major new developments in realist theory in the past two decades. It is an approach that aspires to bridge the gap between classical realism’s focus on foreign policy and neorealism’s systematism and parsimony. Rather than classical realism’s focus on policy prescription, neoclassical realism looks to explain foreign policy, and to do so by using neorealism’s assumptions about the nature of anarchy and the international system as a starting point. But to the extent that it espouses a neopositivist methodology, as most neoclassical realists do, it fails. This chapter argues that constructivism provides the appropriate set of methodologies for neoclassical realism.

Saving Realist Prudence

This chapter argues that, rather than seeing realist constructivisms as a combination of two explanatory theories, they should be viewed as combinations of different types of theorising. They combines a political theory informed by realism (based on power politics) that, in turn, informs a realist foreign policy strategy and morality based on a prudential check on power, with an explanatory theory largely informed by constructivism. In this way, combining realism and constructivism can be seen as an attempt to think the different layers of IR theorising in parallel, and yet to explore new combinations not within but across types of theorising.

The Bridging Capacity of Realist Constructivism: The Normative Evolution of Human Security and the Responsibility to Protect

This chapter is an inquiry into the evolution and implementation of the controversial norm of responsibility to protect in the international community, with respect to the effects it produces in international customary law. It looks into the changes in the security discourse induced by the norms that emphasize human rights, which impact the core practices of the international system, as reasons for intervention, international security, and state sovereignty. It traces the normative evolution of human-centered principles, by identifying their commonalities, their institutional markers, and their presence in the discourse of international actors. The chapter scrutinizes the international community’s internalization of the normative frameworks of human security and the responsibility to protect by testing them on two hard cases; the conflicts in Libya and Syria.

Huadu: A Realist Constructivist Account of Taiwan’s Anomalous Status

Taiwan is a unique artefact of particular political and historical circumstances. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has claimed it since 1949; Beijing’s stance is officially upheld by the UN, the US and most of the international community. Yet, the US guarantees Taiwan’s security, and the international system recognises its sovereign existence in China’s threat to kill it – and China’s restraint. Taiwan’s case invites a constructivist response to a realist puzzle; power forms an anarchic structure that states must respect in order to survive. Yet, in order to survive, Taiwan must neither declare independence nor unify with China. Taiwan’s US -imposed undetermined status and protection combined with the PRC’s irredentist claim forms the systemic context that led Taiwan to engage in two overlapping conversations, one cross-Strait and one domestic, that constructed a Chinese identity after 1945 and a Taiwanese one after 1971. In telling Taiwan’s story, this study demonstrates a realist constructivism that accounts for state identity and foreign policy construction at the interface of inter-state and domestic politics; that is, the PRC-ROC and the ROC-Taiwan dimensions. The result is a two-level, three-stage, three-dimensional framework of power politics and identity.

Coercive Engagement: Lessons from US Policy towards China

In 1996 the U.S. convinced China to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), even though this treaty materially disadvantaged China’s nuclear weapons program. Why did U.S. engagement initiatives—without invoking coercive material measures and offering side payments—succeeded in prodding Beijing to do something that caused damage to its relative power position? This chapter argues that the normative mechanism through which engagement influences Beijing is not socialization. Rather, it argues that engagement works through a realist-constructivist mechanism that several scholars call “rhetorical coercion” or “rhetorical entrapment.” By appealing to the commitments to which Beijing has agreed in public, America and its allies locked Chinese leaders in their own words, leaving them unable to continue with policies contrary to the “peaceful rise” or “peaceful development” discourses they have proposed before international audiences. The case illustrates a realist-constructivism by showing what may be called coercive engagement.

Causation in Realist Constructivism: Interactionality, Emergence and the Need for Interpretation

Realist constructivism has the potential to offer a stronger account of causation than either classical realism or constructivism on their own. It can combine classical realism’s account of interactionality and rationalism in power politics, in which agency acquires a significant causal role, and constructivism’s account of causal emergence, where social context is analyzed in depth and the causal role of normative structures is highlighted. This account of causality, embedded in a critical realist philosophy of social science, shows that realist constructivist causal argument needs to incorporate interpretivism in order to give better accounts of causation that accounts for the roles of both agency and structure.