Social constructivism is a school of thought in International Relations (IR) theory. It was first coined by Nicolas Onuf in 1989 in his book “”.our making world“Where he said that much like nation states, individuals live primarily in a reality created by themselves rather than external physical entities. We are not created but created by our social and cultural interactions with others. Similarly interstate interactions And by associations states create their identities and interests which in turn inform the structures and institutions they build among themselves. This does not mean that everything around us is a belief or that ‘it is only in our minds’ is’. Structures are real, physical and relatively stable but it is only by assigning collective meanings to our structures that they will achieve their purpose. They are not objective external entities but also cognitive processes. Collective meanings form those structures who organize our work.
Traditional IR theory was primarily dominated by the realist and liberal school of thought. Realists argued that since the international order is in a state of perpetual anarchy (there is no super-sovereign power) states are naturally motivated to self-help, that is, to work for their own interests and with other nation states. Developing competitive and aggressive policies. Liberals accepted the basis of anarchy, arguing that states engage in more cooperative behavior rather than aggressively competitive foreign policy. Both schools argue primarily about behavior according to them, which is the only thing that can change as their unique identities and interests remain the same as states. Constructivists disagree on this fundamental basis on which both realist and liberal theories stand. They oppose that anarchy is not a set-in stone system where states are constantly engaged in the politics of balance of power, but rather a system that is created through interaction and social practices over a period of time. States are also not objective but subjective entities. States have not clearly defined independent non-relevant interests. They only have interests in relation to each other. The interests that a state has with its neighbor may not be the same as what it has with another distant one.
As a prominent constructivist scholar Alexander Wendt puts it, ‘anarchy is what the states make of it’. Wendt elaborates on three different types of security systems to refute the idea that chaos is static and static. There is a self-help security system on which the realists base the world. Here states negatively identify with each other which then informs most of their interactions as competitive and aggressive. Then we have the personal security system in which states are indifferent to other states and their security interests. This is what liberals mostly identify with. They argue that the states are concerned with themselves and would not want any activity, be it competition or war, to jeopardize their sovereign status. It prefers cooperation over competition. The third is the cooperative security system where states positively identify with each other; They consider the sovereign status of another state as important as their own. This is seen in the likes of security agreements like CSTO, NATO etc. Therefore, there are various systems within the chaos that continually reconfigure the nature of nation states in relation to each other.
In his seminal essay, ‘Anarchy is What Makes the State: The Social Construction of Power Politics’, Wendt explains the constructed nature of chaos with his famous exotic example. he believes; If tomorrow it is known that there are supernatural beings in the universe and they have contact with mankind, what will be the reaction? Certainly, nation states will not declare war and will deploy the latest military arsenal at the forefront. One will wait for this, carefully assess their movements, try to communicate with them and then take appropriate steps as the situation demands. When there has been no previous interaction with an entity, the self-propelled aggressive policy is not the underlying response as realists claim. This process of indicating, interpreting, analyzing and responding is how meaning arises and how institutions and identity are formed.
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