Politics, Ethics, and Knowledge in the New Constructivism

Chapter Six addresses the question of constructivist ethics, which has emerged as a significant theme in the New Constructivism. Scholars have argued that relationalism and practice theory, respectively, are not only able to offer thicker accounts of the social construction of world politics than the Old Constructivism, but can also centre the ethical content of norms and culture in ways downplayed by earlier constructivist theorizing. I assess these arguments, suggesting that the New Constructivism retains a core tension from the Old Constructivism when it comes to the issue of ethics and normativity. In many ways, a problem with Old Constructivism was not the lack of norms, but an over-abundance, which led many realists and rationalists to critique it as a somewhat “soft” approach based on norms and taboos, rather than the “hard” matter of power and interests. I trace this tension to Constructivism’s position in IR as a via media between more critical and scientific perspectives. For some, New Constructivism remains part of the modernist project of a social science of IR, and should therefore remain true to Max Weber’s plea for a “fact-value” distinction in theorizing. Such a position is closer to my own, which I advance but do not proselytize.