James Fearon and Alexander Wendt, “Rationalism v. Constructivism: A Skeptical View,” in Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, and Beth Simmons, Handbook of International Relations (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002), pp.52-72.
Summary by Taylor
Main Argument: The “debate” between rationalism and constructivism as it is often conceptualized is a debate over how to study IR, not a debate about IR. Instead, the most interesting research is likely to be work that ignores zero-sum interpretations of their relationships and instead directly engages questions that cut across the rationalist/constructivist boundaries.
James Fearon and Alexander Wendt: “Rationalism vs Constructivism: A Skeptical View”
Main Argument: The “debate” between rationalism and constructivism as it is often conceptualized is a debate over how to study IR, not a debate about IR. Instead, the most interesting research is likely to be work that ignores zero-sum interpretations of their relationships and instead directly engages questions that cut across the rationalist/constructivist boundaries.
Sub-Arguments:
Framing rationalism and constructivism as pragmatic/analytical tools is most useful
1) rationalists, as bottom-uppers, and constructivists, as top-downers, come from different vantage points and thus ask different questions and bring different aspects of social life into focus
2) the two approaches often yield similar or complementary accounts of international life anyway because they study the same reality
3) much can be gained by using the tools of one to answer the questions of another
Framing rationalism and constructivism as assumptions about the world is not useful because
1) these issues are philosophical, so not likely to be settled soon, and then not even by international relations scholars
2) social scientists can still continue pragmatically remaining agnostic about what society is really made of
3) we don’t know enough about international life to rule out certain arguments a priori on purely philosophical grounds
Framing rationalism and constructivism in empirical terms is not useful because
1) in their purest forms, neither make many interesting predictions about the world
2) even if one can interpret assumptions, there are usually methodological reasons to limit testing in certain ways that work fine
The two issues that people really are worrying about are
1) wether and how ideas matter in world politics (really less difference between the two schools than is thought)
2) the relationship between international actors and the structures in which they are embedded
Generalizations of constructivism about the construction of social objects and practices
1) it is centrally concerned with the role of ideas, which are shared by many and initiate practices in constructing social life (oppose arguments emphasizing the role of geography, technology, etc.)
2) it is concerned with showing how the nature of agents are socially constructed (take the actors and turn them into dependent variables rather than taking them as a given)
3) it is based on a holistic research methodology rather than an individualistic one
4) it is concerned with constitutive as opposed to just causal explanations
Supposed conflicts between rationalism vs constructivism
1)Material vs Ideational—rationalists believe people act in self-interests, constructivists believe acting on norms
a) true that constructivism is against materialism, but this is a mischaracterization of rationalism that arose out of deterrence theory
b) true rationalism is the idea that Desire + Belief = Action, bringing ideas to a primary position; that game theory equilibria are made up of patterns or beliefs that satisfy stability properties; and one cannot say that a desire is material
2) The Logic of Consequence vs Appropriateness—rationalists focus on the former, constructivists on the latter
a) keep the two separate as people use both in making decisions, and using one in a domain that another seems to dominate can lead to insightful results
3) Norms as Useful vs Norms as Right—rationalists claim that people follow norms when it benefits to do so; constructivists claim that they do because it’s right
a) no real conflict unless restricted to “thick” rationalism where actors have no intrinsic preference to follow norms, but this leads to REAL differences at stake
b) but no reason to think that human behavior is always one or the other and often lead to same outcome (US didn’t annex Canada because of possible repercussions/because it would be wrong)
Preference Formation in Actors—three things can be taken as given or endogenized:
1) A body is the internal organizational structure of an actor (usually taken as given by both camps)
2) Beliefs are explained by both camps (game theory evaluates preferences and beliefs)
3) Preferences or “identities and interests” are given to rationalists and endogenous to constructivists, but this does not need to constitute significant epistemological cleavage
On the Constitution of Subjectivity
1) broadly, rationalists emphasize explaining wholes in terms of parts, but they can still account for how macro-data influence individual actors
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