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The concept of "identity" in international relations offers too many vague and imprecise definitions of the concepts that stand at its very core. This text offers clear definitions of the concept of identity and the concepts surrounding the term.
How do states know what they want? Asking how interests are defined and how changes in them are accommodated, Martha Finnemore shows the fruitfulness of a constructivist approach to international politics. She draws on insights from sociological institutionalism to develop a systemic approach to state interests and state behavior by investigating an international structure not of power but of meaning and social value. An understanding of what states want, she argues, requires insight into the international social structure of which they are a part. States are embedded in dense networks of transnational and international social relations that shape their perceptions and their preferences in consistent ways. Finnemore focuses on international organizations as one important component of social structure and investigates the ways in which they redefine state preferences. She details three examples in different issue areas. In state structure, she discusses UNESCO and the changing international organization of science. In security, she analyzes the role of the Red Cross and the acceptance of the Geneva Convention rules of war. Finally, she focuses on the World Bank and explores the changing definitions of development in the Third World. Each case shows how international organizations socialize states to accept new political goals and new social values in ways that have lasting impact on the conduct of war, the workings of the international political economy, and the structure of states themselves.
Realism and constructivism are often viewed as competing paradigms for understanding international relations, though scholars are increasingly arguing that the two are compatible. Edited by one of the leading proponents of realist constructivism, this volume shows what realist constructivism looks like in practice by innovatively combining exposition and critiques of the realist constructivist approach with a series of international case studies. Each chapter addresses a key empirical question in international relations and provides important guidance for how to combine both approaches effectively in research. Addressing future directions and possibilities for realist constructivism in international relations, this book makes a significant contribution to the theorizing of global politics.
This thesis solves the puzzle of why Britain fought the Falklands war. It situates the loss of the Falkland Islands colony in a particular historical context in which the constitutive role of ideas can be examined specifically in relation to interests and then demonstrates the striking parallel between the deduction of one proposition to another and the construction of national interests in the midst of the Falklands crisis. Drawing upon Jutta Weldes' Constructing National Interests and Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, this thesis argues that after Britain lost possession British interests were then socially and discursively constructed within a narrative of the Falklands crisis. Metaphorically speaking, Britain's narrative was structured into a chain of hypothetical propositions (hereafter a chain argument). A chain argument comprises multiple "if, then" statements that are deductively linked to one another and may construct a contingent representation of national interests. Britain's narrative of the Falklands crisis began with a false premise that the Falkland Islands were a "British sovereign territory". The validity of the conclusion that Britain must repossess the Falklands flowed not from empirical evidence but from the power held by Britain to define the first premise. The metaphor of a chain argument offers a useful way to understand why the definition of the archipelago conferred by the first premise was accepted despite the fact that the definition was constructed in opposition to common sense knowledge. As shown within this thesis it can also examine the logical truths of national interests that arrive at a particular conclusion through pure deduction.
The book shows how national days are best understood in the context of debates about national identity. It argues that national days are contested and manipulated, as well as subject to political, cultural and social pressure. It brings together some of the most recent research on national days and sets it in a comparative context.