Published in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 15 August 2022.

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Constructivism
Friedrich Kratochwil, Emeritus Chair of International Relations, European University Institute and
Hannes Peltonen, Faculty of Management and Business Tampere University

Abstract
Constructivism in the social sciences has known several ups and downs over the last decades. It was successful
rather early in sociology but hotly contested in International Politics/Relations (IR). Oddly enough, just at the
moments it made important inroads into the research agenda and became accepted by the mainstream, the
enthusiasm for it waned. Many constructivists—as did mainstream scholars—moved from “grand theory” or
even “meta-theory” toward “normal science,” or experimented with other (eclectic) approaches, of which the
turns to practices, to emotions, to new materialism, to the visual, and to the queer are some of the latest
manifestations.

In a way, constructivism was “successful,” on the one hand, by introducing norms, norm-dynamics, and
diffusion; the role of new actors in world politics; and the changing role of institutions into the debates, while
losing, on the other hand, much of its critical potential. The latter survived only on the fringes—and in Europe
more than in the United States. In IR, curiously, constructivism, which was rooted in various European
traditions (philosophy, history, linguistics, social analysis), was originally introduced in Europe via the
disciplinary discussions taking place in the United States. Yet, especially in its critical version, it has found a
more conducive environment in Europe than in the United States.

In the United States, soon after its emergence, constructivism became “mainstreamed” by having its analysis of
norms reduced to “variable research.” In such research, positive examples of for instance the spread of norms
were included, but strangely empirical evidence of counterexamples of norm “deaths” (preventive strikes,
unlawful combatants, drone strikes, extrajudicial killings) were not. The elective affinity of constructivism and
humanitarianism seemed to have transformed the former into the Enlightenment project of “progress.” Even
Kant was finally pressed into the service of “liberalism” in the U.S. discussion, and his notion of the “practical
interest of reason” morphed into the political project of an “end of history.” This “slant” has prevented a serious
conceptual engagement with the “history” of law and (inter-)national politics and the epistemological problems
that are raised thereby. This bowdlerization of constructivism is further buttressed by the fact that in the
“knowledge industry” none of the “leading” U.S. departments has a constructivist on board, ensuring thereby
the narrowness of conceptual and methodological choices to which the future “professionals” are exposed.

This article contextualizes constructivism and its emergence within a changing world and within the evolution
of the discipline. The aim is not to provide a definition or a typology of constructivism, since such efforts go
against the critical dimension of constructivism. An application of this critique on constructivism itself leads to a
reflection on truth, knowledge, and the need for (re-)orientation.

Keywords
constructivism, epistemology, social theory, international relations as a profession, the agent/structure
controversy, logical positivism, science as a practice, speech acts, ordinary language philosophy, the turn to
practice, critical analysis of the “life-world” and of action, truth, knowledge, disciplinary history.

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Introduction
By way of an introduction, consider the following quote as one of the reactions to the early
constructivist challenge to International Politics/Relations (IR) theory:

Traditionally counterposed to rationalistic theory is the sociological approach … [that] has recently been in some
disarray. … Rather than try … to discuss this diffuse set of views about international relations, I will focus on the
work of several scholars who have … challenged the predominant rationalistic analysis … [and] emphasize the
importance of the “intersubjective meanings” of international institutional activity … I have … coined a phrase for
these writers, calling them “reflective” … the greatest weakness of the reflective school lies not in deficiencies in their
critical arguments but in the lack of a clear reflective research program that could be employed by students of world
politics. Waltzian neorealism has such a research program; so does neoliberal institutionalism

(Keohane, 1988, pp. 381–382, 392).

This call for IR constructivism to have a comparable research program to neorealism and
neoliberalism missed that constructivist concerns and sensibilities address questions of knowledge
generation and of the establishment of fields (of knowledge). Thus, Keohane’s accusation that the
“reflexivists” did not have a well-defined research program was “correct,” although it was a bit like
blaming a cat for not barking.1 Given that as an approach, constructivism is critical, assessing its
contribution simply in terms of “normal science” or of a “problem-solving” theory (Cox, 1981) is to
misunderstand its contribution.

Clarification of the constructivist contribution beyond “norms, identities, and cultures matter” is
uncertain if one continues the tendency of presenting constructivism next to liberal institutionalism
and (neo)realism as one of the “three main approaches” (Walt, 1998, p. 38). Similarly, providing a
definition and perhaps a taxonomy is likely to obfuscate one of constructivism’s characteristics: its
critical approach to the unexamined objectivist orientation of inquiry, that a “one size fits all”
assumption can be made without much ado. Simply providing an “inventory” of constructivist
research is also insufficient, especially because there exist already ample inventories of constructivist
work—some exhibiting more interest in display, others more on the critical theory side—such as
those by Adler (2012), Barnett (2005), Checkel (1998), Debrix (2003), Fearon and Wendt (2002),
Guzzini (2013), Hopf (1998), Hurd (2008), Kratochwil (2008), Lebow (2001, 2003), Pettman (2000),
Price and Reus-Smit (1998), Reus-Smit (2005), Ruggie (1998), and Zehfuss (2002)—not to speak of
several anthologies devoted to constructivism: Katzenstein (1996), Krause and Williams (1997),
Weldes, Laffey, Gusterson and Duvall (1999), Albert, Jacobson, and Lapid (2001), Fierke and
Joergensen (2001), Jupille, Caporaso, and Checkel (2003), and Guzzini and Leander (2006). Or see
also the “Forum” in the International Studies Review (Jackson, 2004), or the special issue of the
European Review of International Studies edited by Kessler and Steele (2016) that both provides an
overview and identifies the critical tasks that a “third generation” of constructivists face.2 Most
recently, McCourt (2022) draws from practice theory, relationalism, actor-network theory, affect and

1Early constructivists in the United States simply did not have had the time to publish as extensively as those who followed
established orthodoxies. A “fairer” comparison of publication lists could have been found by looking for example to Great
Britain and the English school (e.g. Bull, 1977) or to the comparison of different state systems and the conventional nature of
politics within the European State system (Wight, 1978).

2 A fourth generation might be emerging (Jackson & Nexon, 2022).

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emotions to argue for a New Constructivism, while Srivastava (2020) provides a typology of the use
of social construction as a research framework.

The heterogeneity of constructivist research, though, begs the question why some are included, and
others excluded. Going through each piece of research might provide some clues, but it is unlikely to
be as successful as one hopes, given the critical intent of this article. Attempting to find an essence of
constructivism (Pouliot, 2004) misappraises both constructivism and its place within the discipline
over time. Typologies and 2x2 matrices oversimplify things. Finer and finer distinctions get us
quickly farther away from the central point of how constructivism helps us understand the social
world in general and international relations in particular.

For these reasons, part of the focus here should be the contextualization of constructivism within a
changing world and within the evolution of the discipline, to which constructivism also contributed.
The next section, then, first sketches the circumstances during which constructivism emerged as well
as how it came to the fore. The second section follows up by not defining, or by providing a typology,
of constructivism but by attempting to communicate—as in the Latin communicare, to make
common—constructivism’s intent and its general contribution. Yet, the latter half of the section
discusses how, over time, the social construction of both IR constructivism and the discipline itself led
to the success story of constructivism, even though for many constructivists the price of being
involved in the IR theory trinity has been too high. From a constructivist position, however, we
remain critical of such conclusions, because we should apply social constructivist insights to
constructivism itself. This leads, in the final section, to a reflection on truth, knowledge, and the need
for (re-)orientation. Thus, by cutting in at different points—sometimes re-cutting instead of a simple
linear progression—we reflect on where and how boundaries were drawn, on some of the bridge-
building exercises within the discipline as well as on the wider issue of knowledge-creation.

Setting the Scene

Constructivism emerged in International Politics/Relations (IR) at a time marked by global
superpower rivalry. In the early 1980s, the Cold War tensions were on the rise again, while the second
half of the decade saw especially Gorbachev’s efforts to ease tensions through openness and
reorganization. In some sense, IR as a discipline had been caught in a kind of a Cold War mindset to
the extent that for some it provided not just an example of an allegedly stable international order but
perhaps even the raison d’etre for the discipline’s existence. The three main theoretical approaches at
the time—the various forms of liberalism, realism, and Marxism—may have all claimed to be
politically neutral, since as scientific theories they allegedly dealt with facts and how the world “is,”
while missing the occurrence of transformative change, how the bounds of sense were being re-
drawn, and how the old vocabularies of the state project, of history as “progress,” and of universal
truths had lost their traction.

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Regarding the main IR theories, the end of the Cold War showed the problematic nature of many of
the assumptions on which they had been resting. One, the myth of Westphalia,3 had always been
problematic among historians, but such objections from another discipline were usually disregarded
by IR scholars, whether due to ignorance or due to making it difficult to hold on to the notion of
parsimony without it. “Keeping it simple” meant holding on to a strict division between the domestic
and the international realms, focusing on states as the main actors at the expense of others, and
concentrating on power while actually leaving the element of power largely unexamined. Strangely,
while in the domestic arena questions of the “good life” could still be asked, the international arena
seemed to have been reduced to power, reductively conceived as military capabilities. Interests were
there, but they were assessed “in terms of power” with little if any consideration given to the
contextuality of interests and their links to identities. Curiously, even such insights as “there is no
reality to be described that is independent of people’s beliefs about it” (Jervis, 1984, p. 13)—exactly a
constructivist take on the problem of the (social) world—led only to a distinction between “defensive”
and “offensive” realists (Jervis, 1978), not to taking seriously the insight’s implications.

Methodologically, a requirement for IR research to have scientific status emphasized that a “proper”
method was to be used. Politics, like anything else, was to be studied more geometrico. First
understood in terms of geometry, later in analogy to “nature” whose laws could be discovered,
“science” was based on clear and distinct ideas (Descartes) which were indubitable and generated
“theories” by following a distinct method that led to necessary and universal “truths.” Despite
empiricist “tinkering” à la Francis Bacon that was suggestive of an alternative, the belief in the
scientific method was widely shared by the “moderns.” Combined with a notion of progress, familiar
from the beginning of the Enlightenment, many of the formerly accepted distinctions lost their
authoritative standing, for instance Aristotle’s argument that the realm of “praxis” required a different
mode of analysis, meaning that not everything could or should be studied in the same way. Even the
principled attack on the epistemological ideal of a “science” by American pragmatists toward the end
of the nineteenth century did not resonate sufficiently with the wider public, much less with IR
scholars, so as to re-awaken a curiosity to methodological diversity. Instead, a particular methodology
was insisted upon, although it did not really “fit” even some of the hot topics at the time. For instance
Cold War deterrence led to spirited exchanges but not to a change in the parameters of the debate,
even though it should have, because successful deterrence is a “non-event” that cannot be simply
observed.4

For constructivism, the Cold War and its end served as a catalyst. They showed that neither the
structures nor the objects of the social world were “given,” to be analyzed from a “view from
nowhere.” To the fore came instead the “mind-dependence” of most concepts we use in social
analysis. And clearly the prevalent notion of “progress”—Kant’s “cunning of nature” leading to a
predestined end—was wrong. Both the Soviet and the U.S. model of ordering had claimed to stand for
“progress” and for moving towards the ultimate destiny of mankind.5 But contrary to a popular claim
at the time, we had and have not reached the “end of history” (Fukuyama, 1992). In the discussions
about the end of the Cold War, the blindness to conceptual issues was as staggering as it was, at times,
comical. Allegedly, the end of the Cold War was a single “data point” that therefore could not be used

3 On the role of Westphalia as a (highly problematic) symbol of a new beginning, see Osiander (2001).

4 For just one facet of this debate, see e.g. Huth and Russett (1984, 1988) and Lebow and Stein (1989, 1990).

5 One question was who “won” the Cold War. For a critique of such simplistic attempts of explanation, see Lebow and Stein
(1994).

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to refute the correctness of the general (Waltzian) theory,6 although it is exactly a positivist notion that
single cases (experiments) can and should falsify a theory. Never mind that the realist reaction of
reducing complex global developments for over forty years to a single data point was obviously a
lame stratagem as neorealist logic had been clearly contradicted by actual events.

One would think that by now the discipline had learned its lessons. Yet, a similar myopia seems to
prevail still. Consider the general surprise to Trump’s election, even though it had been long in the
making.7 Or consider the more recent fall of Kabul. The end of the Cold War as well as these two
recent events illustrate a neglect in inquiring into the reasons why and how regimes—not just “evil
empires” but also well constituted polities including liberal democracies—can die, a concern which
was central to Aristotle, Polybius, Ibn Khaldun, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Madison, de Tocqueville,
and Weber to name a few. Importantly, we should be alerted to how our discipline, systematically,
neglects important issues (e.g. identity politics, equality considerations, mobilization, and the role of
the media) that cannot be amputated by Occam’s razor without the considerable risk of cutting one’s
own (scholarly) throat.

Emerging constructivism
Having sketched the time when constructivism emerged, constructivism “happened,” in a sense, in
1989, when Onuf (1989) and Kratochwil (1989) designated certain concerns, which had animated the
debates in the 1970s and 1980s, as “constructivist,” even though the researchers did not refer to
themselves as constructivist.8 The terms “construction” or “constitution” were nevertheless rather
common and used to question the notion that the “world out there” was given, waiting to be
discovered by shining a light on the existing objects or by “lifting a veil” from reality. That such
metaphors were misleading was recognized by some of the younger scholars, or those who had caught
the bug of deconstruction or Foucauldian (1972, 1980) analysis as well as by such established authors
as Ernst Haas. In seminal articles, Haas (1975, 1980) investigated how such “natural kinds” as oceans
are constructed as “issue areas” and how the linking of different concerns (security, resources,
communications, pollution abatement etc.) can lead to regime emergence. The subsequent regime
debate (Krasner, 1983) was less concerned with cognitive issues and more with the question why
norms were followed in the absence of, or despite, the decline of a hegemon. Haas had stressed the
importance of shared knowledge and the role of epistemic communities for international
collaboration. Emanuel Adler continued this line of inquiry, both in terms of a meta-theory of
cognitive evolution (Adler, 1991) and of applying the concept of epistemic communities to security
issues (Adler & Barnett, 1998).

Other criticisms of the contemporary mainstream research were more theoretically oriented. For
instance Ruggie (1983) clarified that Waltz’s “structural” theory of international relations could not
address transformative changes. Dessler (1989) criticized “parsimony” as a problematic theoretical
standard. Kratochwil and Ruggie (1986) objected to the treatment of norms as “variables.” The latter

6 For a further discussion, see Lebow and Risse-Kappen (1995, esp. chap. 1).

7 See e.g. Mair (2013), Runciman (2014, 2018), Bartels (2008), Klein (2020), Mouffe, Offe, Krastev, and Mueller (2019).

8 The name “constructivism” might originate from the artistic circles after the Russian revolution.

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issue revived the controversy concerning “explaining” (by efficient causes) and “understanding” (by
inter-subjective shared meanings) that has a long philosophical pedigree ranging from Vico to Kant
and Weber, and which later surfaced again in the agent-structure debate (Doty, 1997). Gidden’s
Constitution of Society (1984) but also the earlier Construction of Social Reality by Berger and
Luckmann (1966) provided much grist for the mill (see also Held & Thompson, 1989).

Important for the emergence of constructivism was also the new systems theory à la Luhmann (1995,
1997), although at the time it was known only to a few cognoscenti in the United States. Luhmann’s
radical new formulation of the sociological problematique relied on the writings of Maturana (1970)
and Maturana and Varela (1980), who had used the term “constructivist” for describing their work in
biology. Luhmann—borrowing also from von Foerster—transferred this approach to sociology but
not without serious misgivings of some of the “lenders” (Kratochwil, 2013). For Luhmann, society no
longer consists of concrete people but of communications, and therefore its reproduction (autopoiesis)
became the major issue. Luhmann departed from the part-whole distinction (system and sub-systems)
that had informed systems thinking since Aristotle, because it limited systems to the arrangement of
pre-existing parts. Instead, Luhmann studied systems in terms of processes of differentiation and self-
production: each system uses a “code” for differentiating itself from other systems, and a system’s
responses to irritations from the “outside” are governed by it, as is its own reproduction.

Better known to the U.S. audience was Juergen Habermas (1984, 1987), Luhmann’s opponent in
German social theory. Habermas based his theory also on “communication” but followed the tradition
of the Frankfurt school by criticizing social theories built on notions of technical (instrumental)
rationality. Against functional “social technologies,” Habermas reformulated the Marxian notion of
“man” creating himself through Arbeit as a constitutive interest in human emancipation, allowing for
free and unencumbered exchanges with others. Moreover, given that Habermas modeled
communicative exchange in terms of the “transcendental conditions” underlying an ideal speech
situation among free and autonomous subjects—instead of Luhmann’s abstract logic of differentiation
and the evolution of autopoietic systems—his emphasis on actors (rather than systems) resonated
more with the North American readership. Although it seemed to deal with real actors, a closer
reading suggests that ideal speech situations have to be populated by ideal actors. To that extent, the
argument of the early Habermas bore some resemblance to the Rawlsian conception of justice with its
original position and the veil of ignorance (for IR, see e.g. the collection of essays by Alker, 1996).

Other significant aspects of and for the emergence of constructivism in IR were post-modern
criticism, feminist critique, a re-examination of the history of science, and the linguistic turn. Such
post-modernists as Ashley (1986, 1988) and Der Derian and Shapiro (1989) stressed the performative
dimension of power and politics, instead of reducing political praxis to the amassing or possession of
resources similar to the homo economicus. Their argument was supported by the conceptual analysis
of power by for example Baldwin (1989), which had appeared at the end of an extended debate in
American and Comparative Politics. Power’s productive dimension was later picked up by
constructivists (Barnett & Duvall, 2005).

The feminist critique of the mainstream’s blindness to gender differences foreshadowed

constructivists’ preoccupation with identity issues. For instance, Showalter’s (1979) “gynocentrism”
refused to take the dominant masculine viewpoint as the normal or default way for all humans. Much
of this criticism came out of literary studies or from debates about the moral development of children.
For example, the apparent stereotypical feminine concrete care for others in comparison with
stereotypical male elaboration of abstract concepts was not some “developmental retardation.”

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Instead, it was a different but equally valid trajectory (Gilligan, 1993) of moral development. Such
insights engendered a wider feminist point against conceptualizing identities and gender in essentialist
terms. Instead, feminism favors a historically and linguistically constructed concept of identity (Moi,
1985). Literary criticism, psychoanalysis (see Kristeva, 1986, who coined the term “inter-textuality”),
and French post-structuralism influenced this understanding.

In IR, the gender issue was first raised in terms of the lack of women in the profession and in policy-
making. Quite quickly, though, came the realization that the (perhaps unconscious) binary opposition
of men and women gave rise to the problematic attribution of certain issues as appropriate for women
while framing security in terms of masculine interest (note the reproduction of the public/private
divide). Based on a new understanding of gender, alternative research agendas moved, for example,
from geopolitics to eco-politics and from security as a zero-sum game to the notion of a “common
security” (see Tickner, 1992; Enloe, 1988).

The history of science had been traditionally conceived as a steady cumulative progress thanks to
scientific method propagated by positivism, but such conceptions had little to do with actual scientific
practices. Here, consider Kuhn’s (1970) challenge of “revolutionary science” and paradigm shifts as
well as historical accounts of actual scientific communities and their way of practicing science
(Latour & Woolgar, 1979; Knorr-Cetina, 1981). Even Popper had to admit that the organization of
knowledge-creation does matter when he charged the “community” with the task of keeping a
researcher “honest.”9 As historical research showed, Popper’s formal criteria (refutability and
empirical tests) were seldom unequivocal, and the evidence had to be “weighed” by the scientific
community. And even then, no clear criterion existed for indicating when to abandon a theory if it had
been refuted. Or worse, whether one should re-instate a theory after it had been refuted, if it later
turned out to be corroborated again by new evidence (Diesing, 1991).

Finally, the proponents of the linguistic turn, especially those influenced by later Wittgenstein,
challenged the notion of language as a mirror of nature and the possibility of reducing “meaning” to
“truth.” Such a reduction was problematic for two reasons. First, there are meaningful sentences that
are not “true.” For example, propositions of law or aesthetic judgements are meaningful but not “true”
in a strict sense. To say that “Botticelli’s Birth of Venus is beautiful” is not meaningless, but the
criteria such an assertion has to satisfy are not those of “truth conditions.” Moreover, the
counterfactual validity of norms shows that questions of validity are indubitably part of “meaning,”
although they are not reducible to truth conditions either. Second, reducing truth to reference is
problematic. In saying “green tomorrow seven boiled car insurance” each word refers to something,
but the sentence is meaningless. Thus, the relationships between semantics, ontology, and methods are
more complicated than is assumed by Cartesian thinking, or by the bowdlerized Humean argument
that only observables—the “is”— can be meaningful, while norms and values are, at best, only
indications of idiosyncratic preferences (de gustibus non est disputandum).

That truth cannot be simply “read off” of the objects in “the world out there” had already been
addressed by the “constructivist” Kant, but the later Wittgenstein’s work was probably more
influential for IR. While Kant had shown—and Hume had already surmised—that causality was not a

9 See Popper (1959/2002): “Experiences can motivate a decision, and hence an acceptance or a rejection of a statement, but a
basic statement cannot be justified by them – no more than by thumping the table” (p. 87–88). “By its decision, the jury
accepts, by agreement, a statement about a factual occurrence – a basic statement, as it were” (p. 92). ‘The piles are driven
down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or “given” base; and if we stop driving the piles deeper, it is
not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that the piles are firm enough to carry the
structure, at least for the time being’ (p. 94).

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property of “the world” but of reason (or of the “mind” in Hume), which sets the conditions for our
knowing, the later Wittgenstein suggested that the understandability of our assertions and utterances is
not due to reference but due to the use of the terms according to inter-subjective criteria. This change
in perspective highlighted the importance of “ordinary language” and “forms of life” (instead of
deriving understandability from logic or artificial languages). In turn, they enabled the investigation of
speech acts (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969) and how language is used for doing something rather than
“only” describing an action or an event. Such moves went far beyond the old explaining-
understanding controversies.

The issues discussed above were part of the setting when constructivism emerged in IR. The regime
debate offered the first principled criticism of positivism’s assessment of the role of norms in social
life (Kratochwil & Ruggie, 1986; see also Kratochwil, 1988 and Kratochwil, 1989). Onuf’s (1989)
seminal contribution consisted of using speech act theory to expound on the notion of “rule”
(Herrschaft) through rules. Importantly, his “speech act” of calling several independent projects
“constructivist” served as a catalyst, which in turn reinforced Lapid’s (1989) celebration of the new
awareness spawning the critical examination of the ontological, epistemological, and axiological
foundations of the field in a post-positivist era (see also George, 1989).

Yet, this catalytic “naming” surprised some scholars who now found themselves in the wider
constructivist tent. For example, Vasquez (1998) or Jervis,10 although critical of some of the positivist
work, hardly shared the perspectivism and meta-theoretical concerns characterizing constructivism.
Dessler (1999) and Biersteker (1989)—the latter more sympathetic to the constructivist sensibilities—
had little enthusiasm for the “unparalleled potentialities” that Lapid (1989) expected from the
“ferment” he had identified in other social sciences. In sum, constructivism emerged in IR from
diverse origins, and while its emergence needed to be defended, it also put some on the defense.

The Nature of the Beast

Generally, the early IR constructivist research agendas in the United States took issue with the
dominant mode of thinking about international politics. The link that realism, particularly structural
realism, had established to “positivist science” was also contested by scholars who were influenced by
more sociological approaches to politics. Rather than taking the Hobbesian “war of all against all” as
the starting position, the new research agendas focused on actual historical interactions and the
transformative changes that occurred in the European and world systems ranging from the balance of
power to the Congresses (Westphalia, Utrecht, Vienna, The Hague, Versailles) and the new
institutions they spawned. Such transformations were investigated through changes in the meaning of
“sovereignty” and in new modes of organizing the international game through the institutionalization
of collective security, the Hague system (arbitration), and the emergence of universal and “functional”
international organizations.

10On Jervis’s complex approach via the analysis of concrete problems of interaction (signals, cognitive and motivated
biases, system effects) rather than starting with models and abstract assumptions concerning “rationality,” see Davis (2013).

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Moreover, constructivists profited from the work of classical realists (Wight, 1977; Kissinger, 1973;
Gilpin, 1983), who had examined the balance of power, hegemony, and diplomatic practice, and also
from international law and organizations scholars (Claude, 1971; Henkin, 1979). Yet, because of their
interest in norms and ideas, constructivists’ agenda also linked up with works in political theory
(Walker, 1993), given that the emergence of nationalism and totalitarian ideologies (Arendt, 1966)
had made it clear that many of the ways of conducting international politics through wars and more or
less secret diplomacy had undergone fundamental changes. For example, nationalism and mass armies
involving the entire population made territorial and other compromises difficult if not impossible.
Consequently, while many of the “lessons learned” by classical realists were simply no longer
applicable as such, they provided better insights into the actual workings of international politics as
compared to (the ideal theory inclined) structural realism.

Research agendas diverging from the mainstream had also methodological implications. Given
constructivist understandings, the social world could not be modeled after the sciences that dealt with
a “given” nature, the “world out there,” as its bedrock. Already Aristotle had remarked that the social
world is not “natural” but one of artifice, and that it is “speech” and common concepts that “make a
city” (Aristotle, 1981, Bk. I, chap. 2). Thus, we cannot simply take a spectator’s view and “observe.”
Rather, to understand what people are doing, we have to look at the world through the actor’s
perspective. This does not mean that we must get into the actors’ psyche, but we ought to understand
the meaning of their interactions. As in the case of football or soccer, we need not know what goes
through the mind of a quarterback or a striker when he makes a pass. Rather, to understand why a
particular pass was attempted, we must understand the rules underlying the game. An off-side or a
request for a time-out is to appraise an action “as something,” not simply to describe something.

Usually at this point criticisms of relativism arise. Is it not the task of science to show how the world
really is, and that means to describe it as objectively as possible? Are we not otherwise bound to sink
into relativism? If the world is not given but constructed and thus “one of our making,” are we not
saying that anything can be appraised as anything? That anything goes?

First, such “conclusions” are as confused as erroneous. Just because something is not black, does not
mean that it has to be white. Yet, it also does not necessarily follow that it can then be “whatever.”
Certainly, there can be disagreement in unclear cases, but calling a ball a square would not be easily
accepted by others and neither would naming “white” something that is “black” according to our
paradigmatic distinctions.

Second, anybody who has tried to change things in the social world knows that it is difficult to do so
precisely because the situations we face are not like those when we encounter nature’s resistance. The
problem we usually face in the social world is not like cutting down a tree. Rather, our actions
(including appraisals) depend not solely on what I (or we) do, or on what the other or others are doing,
but on how our choices interact and the reverberations they have. For instance, one cannot “solve” a
financial crisis by just printing more money. Money is not tangible but a convention, and it “exists”
only because people agree that something (gold, silver, paper, computer blips, clams) “serves” as
money.11 Mistaking the material, which has this function, for the “real thing” is as mistaken as
believing that no convention is necessary for the creation of money. If we were to just crank up the

11Searle’s (2011) formulation is “X serves as Y in context C” and according to him, this applies to pretty much everything in
the social world.

9
money printing machine, we are likely to create “inflation,” because money is not only a means of
exchange but also a measure and a store of value on the basis of a shared belief.

Third, while Weber may have called attention to the subjective point of view, he did not mean it in the
normal sense of being only “personal,” psychological, or idiosyncratic. Instead, the point is to focus
on the inter-subjectively constituted social world as “the reality” that makes possible “objectivity” in
the social sciences (Weber, 2011). This objectivity is different from that of nature, and accepting it
does not result in relativism (anything goes), although it pays attention to relationality. The
dichotomy between objectivity and subjectivity misses the importance of inter-subjectivity in the
social world, and it presupposes that there is some unique “true” position, a God’s view of “the world
out there.” The strive for objectivity assumes that everything is already “there,” and all we need to do
is to discover it as it is. Yet, even some well-established sciences accept that the world is not complete
and “there,” but that it is in the making. Consider for example Darwin’s theory of evolution. It
suggests that species are not just there, ready to be classified. Rather, the point is that nature changes,
and while these changes are not predictable, we can nevertheless find some explanation why they
have occurred. And this enables not just the classification of what “is” but also that novel, previously
unimaginable questions can be asked.

Importantly for the social sciences, if we were to look only what is “there” through the framework of
physics, we would see rocks and planets, oceans and storms, but we would not see “money;” there
would “be” no contract, no melody, no beauty nor trust, but also no fraud or trespass. There would be
death but at least no taxes! It would be absurd to argue that, for example, “trespass” does not exist,
because in physics it is just a bodily movement and that’s it. A description through physics could not
come to terms with the fact that a trespass entails crossing a “border” and doing so without
authorization—something that is important in the social world, even if it is not a physical
phenomenon.

Thus, the idea of “real” objectivity, of there being some “true” point, outside of all the different
worlds (plural!), and from which to perceive all things in those worlds “as they really are,” is a
fantasy. Instead of chasing such a fantasy, we are better served by spelling out the frameworks within
which we make assertions and examine validity claims in various disciplines.

Frameworks are important, because meaning is established contextually, not by virtue of reference to
some objective “Truth.” If I try to phone a friend and ask the person who answers the phone “Is Jim
there?” and the person answering me says “Yes” and hangs up, she is obviously pulling my leg; that
was not what the question meant. Rather, my question was (served as) a request to talk to Jim.12 Even
simple descriptive statements such as “This is a big deviation” are not self-evident despite their
descriptive ring, because there is no “fact of the matter” as the philosopher would say. One millimeter
deviation from the plan when building a 50-story office tower is “nothing,” but it is disastrous for a
computer chip manufacturer, who is operating at nanometer precision. Alternatively, if I say “I do” in
a marriage ceremony, I am not describing or referring to anything; I am doing something (Austin,
1962; Searle, 1969). When a state “declares” war, it is not describing an independently existing state
of the world; it brings it about by “doing” something, pursuant to its declaration: such as suspending
the laws of peace, interning the aliens, seizing their property, and commencing hostilities.

12 On such implicatures, see e.g. Grice (1989).

10
The upshot of these examples is that crucial elements of the social world are not “mind-independent.”
They would not exist, if no people existed or if people had not developed the relevant conceptual
apparatus. Such apparatuses place concepts, such as “judge,” “contract,” or “state,” within a semantic
field and link them to certain practices—only a state can send ambassadors and make treaties or
decide what is legal tender. Without the concepts underlying certain practices, such terms could not
refer to anything, as nothing would be “there.”

Given the radical implications of the meta-theoretical stance for IR, only a few hardened
constructivists were ready to embrace this position. After all, it was not what “political scientists”
usually did—or do today, for that matter. Usually, political scientists are accustomed to collecting
data and “testing” theories against the “world out there,” as if they were confronting the physical
world, even though they are guided by an understanding of a “physics that never was” (Toulmin
2001).

And yet, the meta-theoretical insights of early IR constructivism were not completely alien to some
“positivists” who were aware that the theoretical terms they used were not “neutral” but theory-laden,
and that therefore they never really tested against “the world,” but at best only against other theories.
Yet, acknowledging this “Hempelian paradox”—that theories and data are not really independent—
and its problem for positivist “truth” claims did not seem to translate to a willingness to consider such
alternatives as constructivism offered. Things changed, though, when constructivism and its insights
were translated to a wider audience, which led, however, to something also being lost in translation
(Hofferberth and Weber, 2015).

Disciplining the Discipline?

Once constructivism gained a disciplinary foothold, it generally contributed more to a broadened
disciplinary research agenda than to ushering in a theoretical revolution. To name a few examples:
interest in norms (Klotz, 1995; Reus-Smit, 1999), in transnational movements (Khagram, Riker, &
Sikkink, 2002; Finnemore & Sikkink, 1998; Keck & Sikkink, 1998), in issues of identity
(Katzenstein, 1996; Lapid & Kratochwil, 1996; Hall, 1999; Wilmer, 2002; Telhami & Barnett, 2002;
Checkel & Katzenstein, 2009), in more robust security arrangements and arms control (Adler, 1992;
Risse-Kappen, 1995; Adler & Barnett, 1998), and in decolonization and humanitarian intervention
(Crawford, 2002). Arguably, these resulted more from changes in international politics and from the
realization that the global ordering was no longer an exclusive “state” project rather than from a
theoretical paradigm shift within the discipline. After the end of the superpower competition, during
the “liberal moment,”13 the new agenda emerged, inter alia, due to increasing interdependencies, the
human rights revolution, and the resurgence of nationalism, all of which were unsatisfactorily
answered by traditional realism or liberal institutionalism.

Yet, such dissatisfaction did not necessarily result in sharing the meta-theoretical doubts or the new
tenets of constructivists or post-modernists; instead, one could take the evidence as simply suggesting
that existing theories just needed some finetuning. Similarly, one could doubt the adequacy of the near

13 Or “neoidealist,” as Kegley (1993) called it.

11
exclusive focus on the state in neorealism, given the emergence of regimes and transnational networks
(both on the governmental and the civil society side), but still hold on to realism as the default
position (Keohane & Nye, 1977). Finally, the fundamentals of “scientific explanation” needed not to
be questioned, even if one was interested in how knowledge and the definition of problems delineated
the “issue areas” for regimes (Haas, 1980; Adler, 1991).

At the same time, among those questioning the contemporary orthodoxy, one had to notice a certain
distance to the “welcoming” strategies adopted by some exponents of the mainstream. Post-modern
criticism risked losing its critical potential, if its adoption also meant its transformation to some
garden variety “normal science.” Such fears, voiced by Ashley, Walker, and others in a special issue
of International Studies Quarterly (Ashley & Walker, 1990a), were not imaginary, and they were
confirmed by subsequent developments. The refusal of those authors to be “co-opted” gave grist to
the mill of their critics: their work was “so lit crit, so French, it has the ring of so much alien and
impenetrable jargon” (quoted in Ashley & Walker, 1990b, p. 370). The result was mutual exorcism
and disdain rather than the “happy pluralism” or synthesis one had hoped for.

Indeed, the participants in one of the first collaborative efforts among younger scholars addressing
problems in world politics in a constructivist mode did not carry the brief for “any particular
methodology or epistemology.” When they attempted “explanation, they engage in ‘normal science’
with its usual desiderata in mind” (Jepperson, Wendt, & Katzenstein, 1996, p. 65). That matters are
not quite as easy becomes clear when they admit (on the same page!) that their “insistence on socially
constructed and contested actor identities militate against the rationalist imagery informing most
neorealist and neoliberal theories.” In general, the emerging pluralism was characterized by
borrowing bits and pieces from here and there, often without much concern for (meta-theoretical)
coherence. Some researchers were happy to treat norms as “variables” and insisted on their causal
powers; others pointed to their constitutive function that was addressing a different question
altogether.

Yet, the social construction of the discipline—or the disciplining of the discipline—was noticeable.
Despite the constitutive nature of norms clearly highlighting the problematic assumption that only
causal accounts can provide explanation, with their highly influential and widely used book in
teaching, King, Keohane, and Verba (1994, p. 75) found anything outside of efficient causality
“confusing,” which then “explains” why they can be dismissed. But as Ruggie wryly remarks, King,
Keohane, and Verba’s insistence on the orthodoxy explains practically “nothing that is constitutive of
the very possibility of conducting international relations: not territorial states, not systems of states,
not any concrete international order, nor the whole host of institutional forms states use, ranging from
promises or treaties to multilateral ordering principles” (Ruggie, 1998, p. 23).

Thus, two important questions had to be faced: could constructivism exist along with empiricist,
rationalist, and realist approaches, and if so, in what form? Here, Adler’s (1995) and Wendt’s (1999)
different “mapping exercises” are highly significant. Within their matrices including two oppositions
(materialism-idealism and individualism-wholism), Wendt places known IR theories in different
quadrants, while Adler’s matrix shows an eclipse with an open space at the core. The different
messages of these “maps” are subtle but powerful. Since Wendt’s map is already inhabited by
different theories (world systems theory, neorealism, classical realism, liberalism), the newcomers are
placed in the right upper quadrant, where the English School, feminist, and post-modern IR sit cheek
to jowl with “world society.” In Adler’s map, the empty space seems to suggest that the core consists
of puzzles and questions social scientists investigate, and despite the puzzles and questions being

12
based on different “metaphysical assumptions,” they gravitate toward the center. In this way
constructivism supposedly draws a new boundary by dissolving the former lines and thereby creating
a place for exploring common questions of interest. Possibly, Adler tries to show that by bringing
back some of the “big questions” that had been “solved” by certain assumptions, constructivism might
indeed seize the critical middle ground, while Wendt attempts to show to the discipline that the new
arrivals are no barbarians at the gates but that they can be accommodated within the usual bounds of
sense.

Yet, if one followed these kinds of simplifying mapping exercises, many interesting questions,
important for constructivism, are pushed out. For instance, by accepting the existence of actors prior
to the international system, the issue of co-constitution loses its bite. The question of identity and its
link to interests are also truncated. Moreover, one can criticize a failure to build reliable bridges to
liberal institutionalism that takes domestic institutions seriously (Checkel, 1997; Jupille, Caporaso, &
Checkel, 2003; Reus-Smit, 2005). Any analysis of transformative change, such as the one from the
medieval world to the modern territorial state, is inhibited (Ruggie, 1983). Or the change from a statist
notion of sovereignty to one of nationalism (Hall, 1999; Barkin & Cronin, 1994). Or even the one that
ended the Cold War (Koslowski & Kratochwil, 1994). Key areas of interest, such the emergence of
“new actors” (Keck & Sikkink, 1998) and new roles and forms of organization (Ruggie, 1993; Barnett
& Finnemore, 1999; Khagram, Riker, & Sikkink, 2002; Risse-Kappen, 1995), new sources of
authority (Hall & Biersteker, 2002), and interactions between international and national political
systems (Cortell & Davis, 2000) also fall by the wayside. Indeed, it becomes downright mysterious
how certain cultural forms such as the state (Biersteker & Weber, 1996) and sovereignty emerged as
the organizing principles of modernity by becoming part of the common knowledge of the actors.

Despite such problems, constructivism became part of the trinity, a third “pillar” (Walt, 1998, p. 38), a
“success story” (Guzzini, 2000), or “trendy” (Checkel, 2004). Note, though, the common remark that
there was no single constructivist theory, but “a range of constructivist positions” (Risse & Wiener,
1999). Some made a division for instance between modern and post-modern constructivist approaches
(Price & Reus-Smit, 1998) or between conventional and critical constructivism (Hopf, 1998). Or
between consistent and mainstream constructivism (Kurowska & Kratochwil, 2012). Moreover, it
seems that some took constructivism as an ontology (Risse & Wiener, 1999), while others understood
it as a methodology or as an epistemology (Barkin, 2003). Such malleability may not have been the
original intent of those introducing constructivism to the discipline, but it did allow for disciplinary
success.

The popularity of constructivism, according to some, was bought by “purging” constructivism of its
critical potential (Hynek & Teti, 2010) and some critical voices warned about the construction of a
new orthodoxy (Kratochwil, 2000). Alternatively, one might say that much was lost in translation,
when constructivism gained status (Hofferberth & Weber, 2015). Put differently, the mainstream
version of constructivism was not really concerned with reflexivity concerning the social construction
of knowledge about socially constructed objects (McCourt, 2011). Or, as Kurowska and Kratochwil
(2012, 88) put it, mainstream constructivism has “submitted to ‘the illusion of science’ … and re-
opened the fundamental contradiction between inter-subjective ontology of the social world and the
positivist epistemology for studying it.” Constructivism’s critical potential seems to have been lost
when methodology of a certain type was given too much authority. And this might be due to not
paying sufficient attention to how the methods used for knowledge production and construction are
themselves socially constructed; these constructs are historical and contextual as well as in need of

13
interpretation. More importantly, they do not operate on their own, but a researcher is required both
for using them and for interpreting the results they give.

Here, though, it seems important not to end up arguing over who is a “real” constructivist (Peltonen,
2017). Certainly, one can categorize different kinds of constructivist approaches, and even do so by
using generations (Kessler & Steele, 2016). Similarly, it is possible to try to argue for an “essence” of
constructivism (Pouliot, 2004). It is possible to point out which versions of constructivism are more
consistent than others (Kurowska & Kratochwil, 2012). Yet, it is easy to become a victim to a
misleading question and to continue the search for an ideal form, which is itself problematic, as we
argue in this article.

The misleading question behind attempts to categorize constructivisms asks what they all have in
common, or what they should have in common.14 Since some authors see something missing in some
versions of constructivism, it is easy to conclude that such versions do not “really” represent
constructivism. Or at best, they are in some way misguided versions of “real” constructivism.

Yet, this requirement of sharing at least one characteristic misunderstands categorization. It makes
more sense to recall, first, the diverse origins of IR constructivism (see the discussion so far and
Hynek & Teti, 2010) and, second, also recall Wittgenstein’s (1958) insight and view the different
kinds of IR constructivisms as a Wittgensteinian family resemblance and language game (Peltonen,
2016; 2017). Moreover, given that one of the core ideas of constructivism is that things are not “out
there,” waiting to be discovered, this should apply to constructivism itself as well: social
constructivism is socially constructed (Peltonen 2017), and an examination of social constructivism is
also part of the social construction of constructivism itself (Peltonen, 2016, 79). This is because at
stake is not “just” a representation but a presentation (Gunnell, 2014).

That there are rather diverse versions of IR constructivism, and that despite its popularity many
constructivists are unhappy about it, this “embarrassment of riches”15 can be understood to follow
from the different presentations of constructivism. Some of these presentations have been part of the
disciplining efforts of social constructivism by constructivists. Not only have certain gatekeepers of
the discipline legitimated constructivist research that follow particular notions of science and research,
while delegitimizing other kinds of constructivist research, but also constructivists themselves have
often done the same. Alternatively, a more benign interpretation is to see the diversity of
constructivisms following from differences in what are considered as legitimate processes of knowing
and reasoning, and that over time there has been a branching of IR constructivism, leading to two
main “genera,” distinguishable based on the kind of cognition they use (Peltonen, 2017).

Yet, despite there being an understanding that both genera are legitimate, this benign interpretation
begs the questions whence legitimacy originates, how it is maintained in a discipline, and whose
acceptance counts and whose does not. And these bring back questions related to the normal working
of a discipline, what “is” science, and to the politics of science and of disciplines. A discipline is also
not “out there” or independent of people. The deeds and not-doings of people make and maintain a

14This requirement can be viewed as unfair as the challenge put to early constructivist contributions (in Keohane, 1988),
while simultaneously following that requirement raises similar risks as was already identified by Ashley and Walker
(1990a).

15This probably concerns more the U.S. academia than e.g. Europe. See the symposium edited by Steele (2017) and in it
especially Subotic (2017) and Zarakol (2017).

14
discipline, and such maintenance denotes reconstruction and engaging in disciplinary practices,
including also disciplining, even if it is not intended as such. Finally, despite the notion that science is
impersonal, science does not happen by itself; it is people who “do” science.

In lieu of a conclusion; what is to be done?

The discussion seems to have led to a paradox. Constructivism, understood as principled criticism,
shows how problematic it is to use the scientific method in studying the social and practical worlds,
but its criticism can be turned on itself also. Is constructivism itself not based on “just” some
assumptions? On what basis are those assumptions any truer than the ones constructivism criticizes?
Do we not need some bedrock, a world “out there” as the last court of appeals, or otherwise we risk
circularity, or worse, relativism? But is this hope for a final answer through, for example, the
objectivity and neutrality of logic not refuted by the Liar’s Paradox? The self-referentiality of a
sentence makes even logic not a contradiction free system. “This is not an X” does not seem to differ
very much from “This sentence is false.” The difference is, though, that in the first sentence X is an
object that is confronted by the speaker or the observer. In the second case, the “object” refers to itself
(the sentence), which makes it true, when it is false, and false, when it is true.

One way to deal with paradoxes is to leave such philosophical issues to philosophers, declare oneself
agnostic, and just “get on with it,” namely produce “theoretical and empirical knowledge about world
politics.”16 Yet, this would satisfy neither the true believers of the scientific method nor
constructivists. And only a few might be content with the solution suggested by philosophers: truth is
a circular concept (Gupta & Belnap, 1993). After all, isn’t circularity one of the sins to avoid?
Alternatively, we might want to “turn” to yet another new approach in the hopes that we do not
encounter the same issues there.17

All this seems to warrant a brief re-reflection on truth. Truth cannot be simply “possessed,” but it is
supposed to be recognized by others, ideally by everyone. The imagery is of a disclosure, of
something having been hidden or unclear that is now (publicly) revealed. This is the old Greek
conception of truth as aletheia where being is revealing itself, and significantly, we take our “seeing”
(eidein) as the metaphorical “proof.” But this is, however, a problematic move. After all, people might
genuinely see the “thing” quite differently—consider as an example Gestalt images—not to mention
how easily people can disagree over the meaning of what they have seen. That a truth can mean
different things is not to assert that the truth itself is meaningless or that anything can be anything.

Furthermore, the imagery of a disclosure draws attention to time. By holding on to the metaphor of
revealing the truth, we seem to imagine that we are lifting the veil from something that was already
there. But this cannot be “true” either, since we know that even nature has a “history.”
Acknowledging the historicity of knowledge creates its own puzzles. How can it be true today but not
tomorrow, or yesterday? Can it actually be true, if it can change from one day to the next? Is there not
some deeper, more real truth? Aren’t we supposed to be finding transhistorical laws of politics?

16 This seems to be the suggestion in Lake (2011, p. 465).

17 For recent IR “turns,” see e.g. Baele & Bettiza, 2021.

15
But why insist on there “must” being some more fundamental truth, when we know that our social
worlds are full of such things that are true one day but not the next? For instance, through speech acts
we make truths come into existence instantly (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969). By saying “I pronounce
you husband and wife” at a wedding, a priest or a justice of the peace has just then and there made
those things true. They were “not true” before the pronouncement. Equally, due to a tragic car
accident after the very same wedding, they may cease to be true again. Put differently, some truths are
not revealed but made, either by us, by others, or sometimes by events beyond anyone’s intention, and
they may also stop being true.

Moreover, the notion of truth as an adequate representation of something “out there” implies also a
“dynamics of discovery,” namely the process of conjecture and refutation which is summed in the
metaphor that thanks to the scientific method we come closer and closer to the truth. This metaphor
breaks down when it tries to accommodate the progression or rather the accumulation of knowledge.
In addition to the point about time made above, such a “dynamic version” of discovery, coming closer
and closer to the truth, would require that we already knew what our destination is, but that
destination is exactly what we are trying to “discover.” Even though the number of true statements
might grow, we cannot say that we are coming closer and closer to the truth. A judgement of
approximation would require a clear view of the “goal posts” before we actually get there. Without
such a view, we can only say that we are now somewhere different than before. Hanging on to the
approximation metaphor then leads to an analogous situation illustrated by a befuddled football player
moving about in an open field with no idea where the goal posts are. Besides that, the notion of
approximation might be even less comforting when we realize that our increase in knowledge seems
to come with the price of an increase in our ignorance.

Thus, the metaphors we use are partially illuminating but also partially misleading. What matters is
which ones we use and how we see our own roles in the process of knowledge generation. Once we
leave behind the notion of being only observers, trying to explain or understand an existing reality,
and consider our active roles in making truths (and falsehoods), the question of judgement comes to
the fore. Despite the effort, judgment cannot be externalized to some particular scientific approach,
not even to social constructivism, because all approaches require interpretation, and thereby the
making of meaning, and we should not be misled by some ideal “full view” or be paralyzed by the
logical problems of self-referentiality and infinite regress.

Yet, how to adjudicate between different, possibly equally legitimate interpretations? We could leave
it to some authority, as we often do, whether that means some wise men or women, the law, or the
sovereign. For Hobbes and Carl Schmitt, the sovereign is the ultimate authority. For Popper, and as
we generally now understand it, it is supposed to be a community of scientists who adjudicates over
differing interpretations. Importantly, while positions of power cannot be neglected in this vetting
process, on a more general level the scientific communities are supposed to argue with inter-
subjectively accepted criteria over differing interpretations. What is the best argument, which one
wins the day, is, however, not necessarily self-evident nor independent of the contemporarily used
criteria, practices, institutions, and relations in our social worlds, including those of a scientific
discipline.

Since there is no instant total (or even common) view, the use of language allows the conversation
over truth to continue, even if it can lead to conflict. Convergence might be desirable, but it is not
guaranteed. One might wish to avoid such conflicts, or hide them, for instance through dialectics, but
which in both its right and left Hegelian versions allows for no genuine conversation and insists on

16
demonstration. Every objection can then be emasculated because everything is already internal to the
dialectical process. The same problem persists in ideal theory à la Rawls, namely choosing behind a
veil of ignorance. Although it is supposed to be a contract among the participants, it is no contract at
all. The participant’s task is to clarify principles that exist (apparently in a “value heaven”) and are
lexically ordered so that an “objective” prioritization avoids value clashes. Despite the contractarian
rhetoric, the choice of principles does not emerge from an agreement among the idealized (or
constrained) actors. Instead, the end result rests on an epistemic ground that is “apparent” to “all,” and
every participant’s “choice” is like the choice of a single “rational” individual acting under specified
constraints. Even in Habermas’s communicative action we encounter the papering over of the
problem of deep-seated disagreement. His communicative action calls not only for an idealized
speech situation but for actually equal and “ideal” participants who have unlimited time to reopen all
settled questions at every turn so that the discursive space remains open. One can, of course, have
serious doubts about such “constructs.”

Put differently, attempts at doing away with one of the defining characteristics of the social world—
conflict over multiple legitimate interpretations, or even over the criteria and practices of
interpretation—have been inspired by the desire to build a view from nowhere that would settle
everything. Often, such efforts seem to end up in an attempt to impose a particular view from
somewhere and call it “the truth” that others “must” then accept. But strict decisionism cannot work,
because rules presuppose common understandings as they are not simple commands but
commandments applicable to similar but not identical situations. Yet, rules allow people to act
instead of having to wait at every turn for a command of the “sovereign.” And in any case, we might
have reasons to not blindly trust such an “authority” and retreat into passivity or, if we can, we make
our definition stick. Either way, we are likely to end up in a “blaming game” even though decisionism
was supposed to take care of such a possibility. In this game, the opponents are charged either with
lacking in “reason” (which is allegedly universal and singular, not a plurality drawing on different
sources and experiences) or with “treason,” namely acting contrary to their obligations. It is not
difficult to see that such a dynamic invites arguments ad hominem rather than exchanges and
deliberation over reasons that support or defeat a proposal for action in a specific situation.

Generally speaking, the bitter truth seems to be that we neither have all the information concerning a
particular situation and the consequences that follow from our (inter)actions nor can we afford to
suspend time and not act, or just flip a coin. Here, though, representative (sovereign’s) actions differ
from those of an individual. The sovereign’s actions determine “on behalf” of others and thereby bind
them to his choice. Such official actions are enforceable (valid), despite the possible objections of the
individual who is bound by them, unless they are reversed by an authorized, official agent. Through
the self-referentiality of law, the sovereign can suspend any objection or criticism, but that does not
mean that he can act ultra vires and neglect his duties, even though according to Locke “a long train
of abuses” is required to change the presumption of legitimacy of a sovereign’s decision. Moreover,
through determining actions for others, the sovereign also becomes “responsible” for all, but even the
clearest rules cannot just “make” people act in a way that excludes interpretation. Thus, to act and to
be an actor in the social world is not just about being determinate. If it were so, we could just use a
decision generator, be it a random number generator or algorithms purchased from Google or
Facebook. Whether for a sovereign or for an individual, the complexity of decisions under risk or
uncertainty cannot be “solved” by some predetermined, unequivocal decision rule. Therefore, we
usually decide on the basis of a variety of reasons—all things considered—not by flipping a coin.

17
Knowing all this, for better or worse, some answers seem to emerge. Could it be that, instead of
looking for a key “out there” or within the human mind, we should focus on how we come to common
understandings or failing this, what means we possess—if we have any—to prevent the escalation of
conflicts? This would require an examination of how we talk about truth and politics and their places
within the social world, and how the concepts and semantics we use in this process affect social
reproduction that comprises both individuation and socialization.18 This is not an innocent process, in
which everyone has equal power or opportunity, or even interest to participate. Part of ordering the
social world involves also, unfortunately, disciplining and punishing (Foucault, 1995). Yet, even in
such cases, it is the framework of language that establishes the social world, with all its miseries and
some delights, through rules and institutions, and some common understandings and common
practices.

Through the study of the inter-subjective nature of language we can also elucidate the proprium of
politics instead of looking for incontrovertible foundations. Our “subject” is: who can do what to
whom and on what basis and for what purposes? Through language we also construct and preserve a
“we” in historical time, despite the fact that the “we” is literally changing from one day to the next
due to deaths and births. Through language we navigate, reproduce, and change a system of
interactions with “others,” thereby also reproducing the social in a world of “scarcity and limited
generosity” as Hume would have it.

Despite appearances, the above attempt of clarification of the proprium of acting together is not a
specification of “assumptions” which can then be “operationalized” by indicators and measurements.
Rather, it is a mapping of a field within the wider horizon of praxis. Politics is about rule, about
subjects and rulers, about making and maintaining boundaries by yoking people and securing spaces
within which certain goods—be they collective or private—can be secured and distributed. It is about
the constant effort of “ordering” in the face of decay and the open horizon of the future rather than
about executing a technical or a providential plan. Finding “solutions”— possibilities that allow us to
go on at least for the time being—is not the same as realizing the hoped for “redemption,” be it either
in one fell swoop (apocalyptic revolution) or by a step-by-step progression to a pre-destined “end.”

This implies that part of this exploration has to be criticism—or deconstruction—and showing why
something is likely to misfire or why it might have a chance of working. Such assessments are only
plausible rather than determinative. Why something might work or misfire is contextual and
historical, meaning that such questions cannot be answered once and for all. Part of thinking about
this predicament concerns the making of distinctions and drawing on experiences without assuming
that we face identical rather than only similar/dissimilar situations. Moreover, such distinctions are
not natural but made. That, then, requires criteria for assessment as well as the examination of the
criteria themselves. As part of that examination, we appeal to reasons that have multiple sources,
pedigrees, and valences and that cannot be reduced to one static and universal value hierarchy or to
“one” source (the will of God or the sovereign). Ordering remains a “task” (Aufgabe) we have to
master rather than a realization of a “plan” (Vorgabe) or of a product.

Wittgenstein, in a critical gloss to his students on the failure of an epistemologically driven

philosophizing, provided a striking illustration of one of modernity’s obsessions: the “total view.” He

18 This point is powerfully made in Steele’s (2019) study on “restraint.”

18
likened it to the vain attempt of “working the wall” and provided at least a practical suggestion, if not
a cure: turn around and search where you have not looked:

It is as if a man is standing in a room facing a wall on which are painted a number of dummy
doors. Wanting to get out, he fumblingly tries to open them, vainly trying them all, one after the
other, over and over again. But, of course, it is quite useless. And all the time, although he doesn’t
realize it, there is a real door in the wall behind his back, and all he has to do is to turn around and
open it. To help him get out of the room all we have to do is to get him to look in a different
direction. But it’s hard to do this, since, wanting to get out, he resists our attempts to turn him
away from where he thinks the exit must be. (Gasking & Jackson, 1967, 52, emphasis added)

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Friedrich Kratochwil and Hannes Peltonen

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