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INTRODUCTION 

Alexander Wendt is one of the core social constructivist scholars in the field of international relations. He developed a theory of the international system as a social construction. He refers to his theory as a constructivist approach to international politics although he said that it is a kind of idealism, a structural idealism.

Wendt’s most influential work to date is Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1999), which was a jump off from his 1992 article “Anarchy is What States Make of It”.

In this book, Wendt divided the discussion of his theory into two levels: second order issues which refer to the ontology and epistemology and first order issues referring to the units and levels of analysis.

SUMMARY
Chapter 1: Four sociologies of international politics

In the first part of the book, Wendt explained the constructivist approach to international relations and from there he identified the kind of constructivism that he adhered to.  He identified the two basic tenets of constructivism: that “structures of human association are determined primarily by shared ideas rather than material forces” and that “the identities and interests of actors are constructed by these shared ideas rather than given by nature.”  Because of these basic tenets, he argued that constructivism can be seen as a kind of “structural idealism.”

Wendt said there was a revival of the constructivist approach after the Cold war because mainstream IR theories had difficulty explaining the end of Cold war.  This problem, he says, stems from the materialist and individualist orientation of mainstream IR, and he argues that a more ideational and holistic view of international politics might do better.  He then identified three main streams of constructivist IR theory: the modernist stream associated with John Ruggie and Friedrich Kratochwil, the postmodernist stream associated with Richard Ashley and Rob Walker and the feminist stream associated with Spike Peterson and Ann Tickner.

Wendt admits that his brand of constructivism is a moderate one, as opposed to other constructivist theorists, because it concedes important points to materialist and individualist perspectives and because he endorses a scientific approach to social inquiry.  He says that even though norms and law govern most domestic politics, self-interest and coercion, ideas that are tied to the realist school, seem to rule international politics.  He argues that although identities are constructed by society, primary actors are much more autonomous from the social system in which they are embedded.

In this chapter, Wendt also discussed the different ontologies associated with the different schools of thought in IR.  Neorealists have a materialist ontology while neoliberals added the institutional superstructure to the material base.  Constructivists on the other hand, have an idealist ontology.

In order to explain the ontology of his theory, he first identified the four sociologies of structure involved in the ontological debate over social construction: individualism, holism, materialism and idealism.  For materialists, he says that the most fundamental fact about society is nature and the organization of material forces.  For idealists, on the other hand, the most fundamental fact about society is the nature and structure of social consciousness or what Wendt calls the distribution of ideas or knowledge.  The meaning and effects of material forces depend on the actors’ ideas.  For individualists, social scientific explanations depend on the properties or interactions of independently existing individuals while for holists, explanations should include the construction of agents in both causal and constitutive senses.

Using these four sociologies, Wendt provided a map to locate where the different theories of international politics may fall.  Classical realism and neorealism are both materialist and individualist.  The World-Systems Theory and Neo-Gramscian Marxism fall under materialist and holist theories.  Liberalism and neoliberalism, on the other hand, are both idealist and individualist while constructivism, postmodernist and feminist IR are holist and idealist theories.  Wendt said his theory belongs to the holist and idealist quadrant.  However, he clarifies in a succeeding chapter that an idealist ontology is not synonymous to utopianism.  It only means that to the extent that interests are constituted by beliefs, we can have more hope of changing them than we could, if interests simply reflected human nature.

In this chapter, Wendt also identified the units or levels of analysis in IR theories– state centrism and systems approach.  Wendt adhered to the systems approach and was actually critical to Kenneth Waltz’ state centrism.  He says that although Waltz claims to develop a systemic rather than a reductionist approach, he is ultimately an individualist because of his micro-economic analogy wherein he likened the international system to a market within which states compete.  Waltz’ neorealism is also defined by its materialism, which excludes social structures like relationships and international interaction.

Although Wendt recognized that states are dominant and that they should be the primary unit of analysis, he said that this does not preclude the possibility that non-state actors, whether domestic or transnational, have important and even decisive effects on the frequency and/or manner in which states engage in war.  He added that states are rarely found in complete isolation from each other; therefore, the international structure is a social, rather than a material phenomenon.  However, Wendt clarifies that material power and interests are still important although their meaning and effects depend on the social structure of the system.  The main difference, he says, between rationalists and constructivists is that the latter does not treat identity and interests as given but rather question where they came from.

Chapter 2: Scientific realism and social kinds

In this chapter, Wendt explained that it is possible to adopt idealist and holist ontologies while maintaining a positivist epistemology.  Empiricists say that the states and the international system cannot be observed by our senses and are therefore unobservable.  However, Wendt argues that states and the states system are real structures whose nature can be approximated through science.  He says that meaning is not entirely socially or mentally constructed and that the only way to generate reliable causal knowledge about the world is to include empirical evidence.

Wendt identifies three ways to remain objective despite the subjective nature of meanings.  One is to emphasize the role of material forces.  Another is to focus on the role of self-organization in the constitution of social kinds and third is for an IR scholar to confront the international system as an objective social fact, independent of one’s beliefs.

Chapter 3: “Ideas all the way down?”: on the constitution of power and interest

In chapter 3, Wendt argues against the belief in “ideas all the way down.”  He says that ideas have material causes but the meaning of power and the content of interests are largely a function of ideas.  He added that it cannot be ideas all the way down because scientific realism shows that ideas are based on and are regulated by an independently existing physical reality.  He mentioned three material forces that have independent effects on international life. The distribution of actors’ material capabilities, the composition of material capabilities, technology in particular, geography and natural resources all affect the possibility and likelihood of certain outcomes.  Because of this, Wendt argues that constructivism should not proceed as if nature did not matter.  

However, he says only a small part of what constitutes interests is actually material.  The material force constituting interests is human nature while the rest is ideational or constituted by shared ideas or culture.  Simply put, we want what we want because of how we think about it.  Wendt argued against the material view of interest by drawing from cultural anthropology and philosophy. 

Chapter 4: Structure, agency, and culture

Chapter 4 focused on the structure of ideas in the social system.  Wendt says that the structure of any social system contains three elements– material conditions, interests and ideas. All these elements are equally necessary to explain social outcomes.

In this chapter, Wendt also dealt with the ways in which distributions of ideas may be structured.  He said that knowledge can be private or shared.  The private knowledge of states often stem from domestic or ideological consideration.  The relevance of private knowledge however, goes beyond explaining the foreign policy behavior of individual states because when states start interacting with each other, their privately held beliefs immediately become a “distribution” of knowledge that may have emergent effects.

On the other hand, socially shared knowledge or culture is knowledge that is both common and connected between individuals. Culture takes many specific forms, including norms, rules, institutions, ideologies, etc.

Wendt also discussed how people overcome indeterminacy and coordinate their expectations around particular outcomes.  One factor is common knowledge, which concerns actors’ beliefs about each other’s rationality, strategies, preferences, and beliefs about other states.  Another factor is collective knowledge or knowledge structures held by groups which generate macro-level patterns in individual behavior over time. As opposed to common knowledge, the effects of collective knowledge are not reducible to individuals’ beliefs. Another factor mentioned by Wendt is collective memory, which are myths, narratives, and traditions that constitute who a group is and how it relates to others. 

With this discussion, Wendt jumps off to discuss culture, which, according to him, is more than a summation of the shared ideas that individuals have in their heads but a “communally sustained” and thus inherently public phenomenon.  He emphasized that culture both have causal and constitutive effects.  Constructivists, he says, should be more interested on the constitutive effects of culture, which focuses on the relationship between agency and structure based on mutual constitution.  

Wendt also wanted to retain a moderate holism about culture, in which agents and structure can be both mutually constituted and co-determined.  He says that no matter how much the meaning of an individual’s thought is socially constructed, all that matters for explaining his behavior is how matters seem to him.  Therefore, agents have a role to play in social explanation which cannot be reduced to culture.

For Wendt, culture is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Given cause to interact in some situation, actors need to define the situation before they can choose a course of action.  These definitions will be based on their own identities and interests and what they think others will do.  This is opposed to Waltz’s more deterministic argument.

In this chapter, Wendt also criticized Waltz’ focus on two levels of analysis– states and the international system.  He says that when you separate these two levels of analysis, you separate structure from the agents and practices by which it is produced.  Wendt identified three levels of analysis relevant to theorizing about world politics.  First is the unit-level analysis, which explains individual choices.  Second is the interaction level, which goes further than unit-level theories, and explains the overall outcomes of interaction.  The third level is methodological individualism, which looks at the properties and/or interactions of independently existing agents.  Wendt says methodological individualism is a useful tool for analyzing many of the unintended, emergent outcomes of social life.

Chapter 5: The state and the problem of corporate agency

In chapter 5, Wendt argued that states are real actors to which we can legitimately attribute qualities like desires, beliefs and intentionality.  This is an argument against other theorists who say that the state is not really an actor at all, but merely a “theoretical construct.”  

The essential state (not just a construct) is an organizational actor embedded in an institutional-legal order that constitutes it with sovereignty and a monopoly on the legitimate use of organized violence over a society in a territory.

Wendt argues that state actors are real and not reducible to the individuals who instantiate them.  Authorization makes individual’s actions the actions of a collective.

In this chapter, Wendt also discussed the four types of identities.  Personal or corporate identities are those constituted by self-organizing, homeostatic structures like memories and consciousness that make actors distinct entities.  Type identities are social categories or labels applied to persons who share (or are thought to share) some characteristic/s in appearance, behavioral traits, attitudes, values, skills, knowledge, etcetera.  Role identities are those that exist in relation to others while collective identity occurs when the Self is categorized as the Other or when a single identity is created.

Wendt is quick to point out that without interests, identities have no motivational force and without identities, interests have no direction.  George and Keohane identified these interests as physical survival, autonomy and economic well-being.  Wendt added a fourth one, collective self-esteem.  Collective self-esteem refers to a group’s need to feel good about itself, for respect or status. These four interests are needs that must be met if state-society complexes are to be secure, and as such they set limits on what state can do in their foreign policies.

Finally, Wendt answers the question whether states are self-interested by nature.  He argues that we cannot understand self-interest without understanding the Self and especially its relationship to the Other.  He says that despite their biological bias toward self-interest, human beings are social animals, and probably would never have formed societies were they always self-interested.

Chapter 6: Three cultures of anarchy

In chapter 6, Wendt focused on the idea of anarchy.  He says that there are three cultures of anarchy, represented by different roles they portray: Hobbesian (represented by enemy), Lockean (represented by rival) and Kantian (represented by friend).  He argues that the structure and tendencies of anarchic systems will depend on which of these three roles—enemy, rival, and friend—dominate the systems.

The logic of Hobbesian anarchy is “war of all against all” (self-help system).  In this culture, states have shared knowledge of at least three things: (1) that they are dealing with other states, (2) that these beings are their enemies and therefore threaten their life and liberty, and (3) how to deal with their enemies—how to make war, communicate threats, arrange surrenders, balance power and so on.  

Lockean anarchy, on the other hand, is based on the role structure of rivalry rather than enmity.  Unlike enemies, rivals expect each other to act as if they recognize their sovereignty and should not try to conquer or dominate them.  Unlike friends however, the recognition among rivals does not extend to the right to be free from violence in disputes.  

Lastly, Kantian culture is based on a role structure of friendship, within which states expect each other to observe two simple rules: the rule of non-violence wherein disputes will be settled without war or the threat of war, and the rule of mutual aid wherein they will fight as a team if the security of any one is threatened by a third party.  Kantian culture occurs when collective security norms are internalized.

Wendt says these cultures can be internalized in three degrees, which yield three ways for how it may be realized.  First is through force, which is related to the traditional realist hypothesis.  Second is through price, associated with neoliberalism and rationalism.  Third is through the acceptance of legitimacy, associated with the idealists and constructivists.

In short, what gives anarchy meaning are the kinds of people who live there and the structure of their relationships.  Wendt says that no structure is easy to change and the more deeply that a structure of shared ideas penetrates actors’ identities and interests, the more resistant to change it will be.   He discusses this point in the final chapter of the book.

Chapter 7: Process and structural change

Constructivist social theory is often associated with the belief that change is easy but Wendt argues that structural change (cultural change) is quite difficult.  The more deeply culture is internalized by actors, the more difficult it will be to change.

Wendt identified two causal pathways through which identities may evolve: natural and cultural selection.  Natural selection occurs when organisms who poorly adapts to the competition for scarce resources in an environment, fail to reproduce and are replaced by the better adapted.  Wendt says that because of the institution of sovereignty, modern states have a low death rate; therefore natural selection will not be an important factor in the evolution of state identities in the future.  

The other pathway through which identities may evolve is through cultural selection.  Cultural selection is an evolutionary mechanism involving “the transmission of the determinants of behavior from individual to individual, and thus from generation to generation, by social learning, imitation or some other similar process.”  Wendt examines the two mechanisms of cultural selection: imitation and social learning.

In imitation, identities and interests are acquired when actors adopt the belief of those whom they perceive as “successful.”  Wendt however, was more interested in complex social learning, wherein identities and their corresponding interests are learned and then reinforced in response to how actors are treated by significant Others.  

Wendt identified four variables in collective identity formation: interdependence, common fate, homogeneity and self-restraint.  These four variables are present in the evolution of a collective identity.  Finally, Wendt concluded that structural change is not easy.  It is path dependent, which means that collective identity formation in international politics takes place against a cultural background.

REVIEW

Unlike other IR scholars, Wendt gave special attention to first and second order issues, particularly the ontological and epistemological debates in IR theories.  By doing so, he was able to find a niche for himself, molding his own brand of constructivism.  

His theory bridges the gap between traditional constructivist approach and neorealism, an important feat because as he mentioned in his book, most IR scholars do not take theories seriously if they do not have any hint of realism in it.  By combining constructivist and neorealist ideas, Wendt produced a very systematic, structured and holist approach to the study of international relations.

Another important aspect in Wendt’s theory is his adherence to the scientific approach to the study of IR.  In this sense, his approach is somewhere between those of realist scholars like Hans Morgenthau and E.H. Carr who both claim that the study of international relations can be scientific, using observable conditions or objective realities as their basis of analysis.  However, Wendt does not discount the fact that realities are value-laden that is why he mentioned that the IR scholar must be aware of his o her biases and must confront the international system as a social fact.  This is quite similar to Robert Cox’s argument that theory is always value-laden.

Some scholars dismiss Wendt’s work as unconvincing particularly his arguments towards the importance of a holist rather than an individualist ontology.  Others claim that scientific realism and social constructivism are incompatible but I argue otherwise.  Through his analysis of particular events in history, Wendt was able to show how indeed compatible the ideas of both theories are.

Realist critics also argue that Wendt did not adequately address a critical aspect of the realist worldview: the problem of uncertainty.  However, I think Wendt’s inclusion of methodological individualism in the levels of analysis shows that he is aware that uncertainty is indeed present in the system and he recognizes this in his analysis.

Another criticism thrown against Wendt’s theory is the argument of realists that by differentiating the cultures of anarchy in terms of the degree of cooperative behavior, he seemed to have reinforced the underpinning realist argument that what drives behavior at the lower levels of internalization are the private incentives of selfish interests.  They question how one can be sure that states who cooperate really reflect a peaceful character and that the state is not just masking his own aggressive desires.  I think Wendt was able to address this when he gave more importance to the constitutive rather than causal effects of cultures.  Cultures, he says, do not always lead to more cooperation.  Although Wendt’s theory leans on the idealist ontology, he is quick to point out that he is not a utopian.

In conclusion, the strength of this book lies in its ontological discussion because in order to explain how the international system works, we must be able to know what it is made of and how it is structured.