The Realist Paradigm

Introduction
Realism and constructivism are usually presented as conflicting international relations paradigms. Realists argue that international relations are mere reflections of the imperatives of power politics and balances of power, while constructivists contend that international relations reflect not only power politics but norms and identity politics as well. Nevertheless, the two paradigms are not contradictory. Rather, realism is compatible with certain constructivist variants, although this compatibility is largely unrecognized. Moreover, combing key variables of realism and constructivism, or even synthesizing them, is possible, but hindered by the alleged incompatibility between their ontological and epistemological bases – an allegation that overshadows the dialogue between their proponents.
Nevertheless, dialogue between the two paradigms is not the only route to synthesizing them, which is also possible through intra-paradigm dialogues, or dialogues within each of the two paradigms. Inter-paradigm dialogue is possible and potentially fruitful only after intra-paradigm reconciliations. In this paper, I discuss an intra-realist and an intra-constructivist dialogues that are likely to reconcile some the differences between the two paradigms. On the realist side in the first section, I criticize Walt’s balance-of-threats theory which is tested in the context of inter-Arab politics and attempts to fix Waltz’s balance-of-power theory, arguing that Walt’s analysis is hardly structural realist and essentially constructivist and therefore corrects, not complements, Waltz’s theory. Walt’s theory preceded the emergence of constructivism as an international relations paradigm but would ideally result in propositions remarkably similar to those of later constructivists. On the constructivist side in the second section, I discuss the insufficiency of the logic of appropriateness which constructivists use, showing how the four solutions to this problem that constructivists suggested imply realism directly or indirectly.

Section One: Intra-Realist Dialogue Heading Towards Social Constructivism
Intra-realist dialogue has been a main method to develop realism. In this section, I discuss one such a dialogue, namely, Walt’s balance-of-threat theory in response to Waltz’ balance-of-power theory. Walt’s theory, I argue, would develop realism in a constructivism direction well before constructivism was established as an international relations paradigm. I begin, however, with a discussion of Waltz’ theory and their problems that stemmed debates, sometimes heated, among realists over three decades.
The Realist Paradigm- Hans Morgenthau
• Six principles of political realism (Mongenthau, Politics Among Nations)
• The tenets of Realism
• The notion of state
• The international system
• States’ foreign policy formation
-Patterns of foreign policy
-Relative power capability base
Six principles of political realism
• Politics is governed by objectives laws; IR theory is a rational theory that reflects these laws
• Politics is an autonomous sphere, independent of economics and personal morality
• International politics is about national interests though these interests reflect the political and cultural context within which foreign policy is formulated
• The political ethics is different from the universal moral principles
• Particular nations cannot impose their national aspirations on other nations
• Pessimistic knowledge of human nature is in the centre of international politics
The tenets of Realism-the notion of state
• The notion of state defined through power: states are about pursuit and maximisation of power: acquiring it, increasing it, projecting it
• National interest: acquisition of power; objective national interest in terms of optimization of political influence of a country in the international political environment
The tenets of Realism-the notion of international system
• Self-help system: refers to the ultimate dependence of state on its own resources to promote its interests and protect itself
• Anarchy
• Zero-sum competition
• Balance of power
States’ foreign policy formation
• Rationale of state foreign policy: to advance state’s interests and survival
• Patterns of foreign policy:
• Status quo
• Imperialist
• Prestige
• Relative power capability base:
• Resource base: capital and industrial base; military capability; population size and education level; natural resource base; technological base; internal market capacity; transstate resources
• Mobilisation base: domestic control system and political regime; nationalist predisposition of the community
• Superordinate actors on international stage: foreign policy makers as rational problem-solvers
Waltz’ Problematic Theory of International Relations
Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics is so impactful that it is argued to have reconstructed realism on new foundations. Hence, its label “neorealism.” But this label is also claimed by other theorists in the realist school of thought, including Gilpin and Kindermann, whose propositions on international politics differ remarkably from those of Waltz’s (Dougherty and Pfaltzgraff, 1996: 80-5). This label also conceals what is new about the new realist theory, and implies that the new theory supersedes classical realism. I therefore do not use this label. I also avoid the systemic realism label because systemic theory and structural realism are not synonyms. For example, Marxian World-System analysis is systemic but not realist, arguing that causative structures exist at many levels, not only on the international level (p.130). Instead, Waltz’s theory is labeled “structural realism,” thus its contribution to rebuilding realism and distinction among other systemic theories are emphasized.

Structuring the International Political System
Waltz (1979: 118) founds his balance-of-power theory on one condition: “two or more states coexist in a self-help system, one with no superior agent to come to the aid of states that may be weakening or to deny to any of them the use of whatever instruments they think will serve their purposes.” In addition, the theory is based on two instrumental assumptions. First, states are unitary actors who seek their own preservation even if that requires universal domination. Second, the means available to states, or those who act for them, to achieve that end fall into two categories: internal efforts (i.e., moves to increase economic capability and military strength, and to develop clever strategies) and external efforts (i.e., moves to strengthen and enlarge one’s own alliance or to weaken and shrink an opposing one).
Morgenthau’s notion of the balance of power as a state strategy has no place in this theory. Indeed, Waltz takes issue with one of Morgenthau’s definitions of the balance of power as “a policy aimed at a certain state of affairs” because it turns a possible effect into “a necessary cause in the form of a stipulated rule” (p.120). Thus, while Morgenthau considers two facets of the balance of power (i.e. as a causative idea or policy, and a generated effect or state of affairs), Waltz’s theory of the balance of power “is simply a theory about the outcome of units’ behavior under conditions of anarchy” (p.57).
Even if the balance of power were an idea, embracing it by states would have no effect because, in Waltz’s theory, state motives and objectives are not causative. The theory “claims to explain the results of states’ actions, under given conditions, and those results may not be foreshadowed in any of the actors’ motives or be contained as objectives in their policies” (p.118). Moreover, Waltz implies that focusing on motives and objectives can be misleading because the structure of international politics causes actions to have consequences they were not intended to have (p.107). A well-known example of an unintended consequence is the security dilemma: “If each state, being stable, strove only for security and had no designs on its neighbors, all states would nevertheless remain insecure; for the means of security for one state are, in their very existence, the means by which other states are threatened” (p.64).
Waltz (1979: 18) therefore condemns as reductionist “theories of international politics that concentrate causes at the individual or national level,” including state motives, because “from attributes one cannot predict outcomes if outcomes depend on the situation of the actors as well as on their attributes” (p.61). Thus, the international politics theories which explain the whole by knowing the attributes and the interactions of its parts are insufficient to explain international politics and “must give way to systemic ones” (p.37). Systemic theories of international politics, on the other hand, explains the outcomes at the international political level, inferring expectations about the outcomes of states’ behavior and interactions from a knowledge of systems-level elements (p.39; p.50). Thus, a concern and possible accomplishment of systemic theories of international politics is “to show how the structure of the system affects the interacting units and how they in turn affect the structure” (p40; emphasis added).
Nevertheless, Waltz criticizes earlier systemic theorists who focused on factors operating at the individual, national and international levels (p.18), and distinguishes his theory among theirs by denying causation of state motives and emphasizing the causative role of the structure of the international political system. For example, Hoffmann and Kaplan are criticized because they argue that “actors will produce a given result only if they are motivated to do so,” thus ignoring a concept of “the system’s structure acting as an organizational constraint on the actors, a constraint that would vary in its expected effects from one system to another.” Kaplan, for example, is criticized for claiming that “the source of change in international systems lies in the behavior of the actors, specifically in their breaking of the essential rules,” and therefore offering propositions “about decision-making units and the rules they follow rather than being about the effect of different international systems on such units” (pp.52-7).
Nevertheless, Waltz’s claim that state motives and objectives are not causal is a negation of human agency and has three important implications. First, a theory of foreign policy is neither implied nor required by a theory of international-political (p.72) because its only potential is to show the process through which “the structure selects,” i.e., the actors who conform to accepted and successful practices more often rise to the top and are likelier to stay there (p.92). Second, assuming that actors are rational or have constant will is unnecessary (p.118) because the balance of power operates mechanically without intervention on the part of rational or otherwise foreign policy decision makers. Third, the tension between power and morality is ostensibly solved by denying that foreign policy decision makers are responsible for the state of the affairs of international politics because, in order for their states to survive, they have no choice but to follow the imperatives of the balance of power. Thus, morality is not only separated (as in Carr’s theory) and ignored (as in Morgenthau’s theory) but also deemed insignificant and irrelevant to the study of international politics.
Like Morgenthau, however, Waltz fails to maintain throughout his theory this negation of the causative role of state motives and objectives. As the example of the security dilemma shows, one of the requirements for the balance-of-power politics to prevail is that states wish to survive (p.120) and consider security their top political interest (p.107). This, of course, is not an empirically established fact; rather, it is only an assumption, because Waltz argues that, “in a micro-theory, whether of international politics or of economics, the motivation of the actors is assumed rather than realistically described.” Waltz is aware that the state survival assumption, which, he admits, is a radical simplification of political reality (p.91), is not always realistic: “some states may persistently seek goals that they value more highly than survival; they may for example, prefer amalgamation with other states to their own survival in form” (p.92).
Waltz’s emphasis on survival as the state goal is a key element in his balance-of-power theory, but inconsistent with denouncing the analysis that focus on state attributes and their consequentiality in international politics. Moreover, he fails to explain why survival is the only state objective required in a general theory of international politics. How different would the theory be if state survival were substituted with another objective, or a combination of objectives, such as the wellbeing of ordinary people? And how powerful are the new theory’s explanations and predictions compared to those of the balance-of-power theory? These and similar questions are legitimate given Waltz’s claim that assumptions are employed only instrumentally in the construction of theory: “assumptions are not assertions of facts [and] find their justification in the success of the theories that employ them” (p.6).
Furthermore, Waltz’s assumption of only one state objective raises questions of moral choices. For example, prioritizing state survival over the wellbeing of its ordinary people is based on a moral commitment different from that on which the opposite priority may be based: the former is Hegelian, privileging the state’s efforts to preserve its individuality and claim to autonomy; the latter, Kantian and Beitzian, dispensing with the idea of the state’s national interest and instead appealing directly to the rights and interests of all persons affected by the choice (Murray, 1997: 163-4). As Waltz avoids to address this issue, thus forecloses an important aspect potentially differentiating states and thus possibly impacting international politics, it is legitimate to accept Murray’s argument:
A realist perspective, by way of contrast, recognizes on the one hand the importance of the defense of the state to the preservation of the communities which represent the principal bastions of the good that it values, and thus permits the national interest a certain moral dignity, but, on the other hand, refuses to allow this to extend to the defense of the institutions of the state in themselves, or to the point where it is no longer restrained by, and subordinate to, broader moral principles (p.167).
But if state motives and objectives are not causes of Waltz’s balance of power, what is? It is the international political structure, “the system-level component that makes it possible to think of the units as forming a set as distinct from a mere collection” (Waltz, 1979: 40). A system’s structure acts as a constraint on its units, thus “disposes them to behave in certain ways and not in others, and because it does so the system is maintained. If systemic forces are insufficient for these tasks, then the system either dissolves or is transformed” (p.58). Although Waltz explicitly states that “structure operates as a cause, but it is not the only cause in play” (p.87), he fails to show the other causes. We are therefore left with the international political structure as the only demonstrated cause of international political outcomes and shaper of political processes in Waltz’s theory.
A closer examination of Waltz’s international political structure reveals where causality exactly lies. For any system, Waltz argues, the structure is a positional picture, “a general description of the ordered overall arrangement of a society written in terms of the placement of units rather than in terms of their qualities” (p.99). Unlike national politics which consists of differentiated units performing specified functions, the international political system consists of “like units duplicating one another’s activities” (p.97). These units are states. Waltz justifies the state-centrism of his theory by the central role of states in international politics:
So long as the major states are the major actors, the structure of international politics is defined in terms of them… a theory that denies the central role of states will be needed only if non-state actors develop to the point of rivaling or surpassing the great powers, not just a few of the minor ones (pp.94-95).
The structure of the international political system of states is defined by anarchy and the distribution of capabilities across states (pp.81-2). Anarchy is the principle by which the states are arranged. It is held constant in all structures of the international political system, and thus should be treated as the constitutive force of that system, not a direct cause of outcomes in it. Holding anarchy constant has the effect of distinguishing states only by their greater or lesser capabilities for performing their similar tasks. Thus, changes of the arrangement of states in the system, which are the only structural changes (p.80), are a function of changes in the distribution of capabilities among states.
The structure of a system changes with changes in the distribution of capabilities across the system’s units. And changes in structure change expectations about how the units of the system will behave and about the outcomes their interactions will produce (p.97).
In other words, changing the distribution of capabilities causes a change in the structure of a system, which in turn causes a change in state behavior and the outcome of state interactions.
In turn, a change in the distribution of capabilities is a function of changes of states’ power because, in Waltz’s theory, “capabilities” is only another word for “power.” “Power is estimated by comparing the capabilities of a number of units,” and states are therefore differently placed in the structure of the international political system by their power (p.97). Thus, Baldwin (1993: 16) mischaracterizes Waltz’s concept of power as only relational, i.e. an agent is powerful to the extent that he affects others more than they affect him (Waltz, 1979: 192). In Waltz’s theory power is also causal (i.e. the power wielder affects the behavior, attitudes, beliefs, or propensity to act of another actor). But it is causal only indirectly because its distribution is the foundation of the structure of the international political system whose change leads to change in states behavior and the outcomes of state interaction.
In addition to shaping the structure of the international political system, power is central to states because it provides them with four important things:
First, power provides the means of maintaining one’s autonomy in the face of force that others wield. Second, greater power permits wider ranges of action, while leaving the outcomes of action uncertain… Third, the more powerful enjoy wider margins of safety in dealing with the less powerful and have more to say about which games will be played and how… Weak states operate on narrow margins. Inopportune acts, flawed policies, and mistimed moves may have fatal results… Fourth, great power gives its possessors a big stake in their system and the ability to act for its sake (pp.194-5).
This importance of power justifies Waltz’s focus on it, and qualifies his theory as another theory of means, not substance (i.e. preferences and morality).
The focus on power entails the importance of measuring it accurately. To avoid the consequences of the indeterminacy of national power that led Morgenthau (1960 [1948]: 205) to the uncertainty, unreality, and inadequacy of the balance of power as an objective law of international politics, Waltz adopts two strategies. First, he claims that measuring and comparing states’ different combinations of capabilities, difficult as they are, especially as the weight to be assigned to different items changes with time, are in fact less important to identify the great powers than most theorists think because “historically, despite difficulties, one finds general agreement about who the great powers of a period are, with occasional doubt about marginal cases” (Waltz, 1979: 131). He justifies his theory’s focus on the great powers on the basis that these states make the most difference. Therefore, “a general theory of international politics is necessarily based on the great powers” (p.73).
Second, he includes in the list of the determinants of national capabilities only power components that can be measured and compared relatively easily. For example, a great power must enjoy sizable population and territory, rich resources, capable economy, strong military, and stable and competent political system (p.131). Waltz explicitly excludes the ideational elements of power such as national characteristics and morale, ideology, form of government, peacefulness, bellicosity (pp.97-8). Thus, contrary to Baldwin’s (1993: 17) claim, Waltz’s list resembles only partly Morgenthau’s list of the elements of national power.

Unsolved Problems, Possible Corrections
Waltz excludes foreign policy and focuses only on materialist components of power, thus nearly closing the two windows through which moral and ideational elements had been smuggled in Morgenthau’s theory. As a result, Waltz produces perhaps the most coherent and parsimonious statement of realism, or arguably all general theories of international politics. It is also arguable that the tradeoffs of parsimony in Waltz’s theory undermine considerably its apparent elegance. These tradeoffs include the theory’s mechanical and deterministic operation, weak explanatory and predictive power, and limited scope and usefulness.
First, this interpretation of international politics is mechanical and deterministic. According to Waltz (1979: 75-77), no state can resist what the international political structure imposes without fatal consequences. In other words, states responding to the pressures of the structure of the system move along one of two trajectories with no assigned probabilities of success: they either accommodate their ways to the most acceptable and successful practices in the system, which they learn through socialization and competition, or die. Waltz (2000: 24), however, rejects this criticism, arguing that the theory does not imply that structures determine the actions of states:
A state that is stronger than any other can decide for itself whether to conform its policies to structural pressures and whether to avail itself of the opportunities that structural change offers, with little fear of adverse affects in the short run.
Nevertheless, this note concerns only the strongest states in the system, and undermines the assumed anarchic nature of the international political system as discussed at the end of this subsection.
Second, Waltz (1979: Chapter Eight) considers bipolarity a stable structure of the international political system, and therefore views the bipolar system of the Cold War as robust. Although he expected its lifetime to be shorter than its multi-polar predecessor (p.162), he was unable to predict its end, and could not expect the changes that led to the radical transformation of the structure of the international political system that ended the Cold War only one decade after publishing his Theory of International Politics. This predictive weakness may be justified by the complexity of social phenomena. After all, as Waltz asserts, “prediction is an insufficient criterion for accepting a theory’s validity, for predictions may be right or wrong for many different and accidental reasons” (p.28), and the predictions of the balance-of-power theory is indeterminate anyway (p.124).
What is less tolerable is the theory’s inability to explain such changes because it stops short of illuminating the mechanisms through which the relative distribution of capabilities between major powers change thus making possible a system-transforming change of the number of its poles, moving away from bipolarity in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These mechanisms are not addressed in Waltz’s theory simply because they are in fact changes in states attributes and interactions produced by forces neither central nor consequential in Waltz’s systemic theory of international politics, and allegedly lying outside of the theory’s purview. Theory attempts to explain the constraints that confine all states and give general answers to the question “what will a state have to react to?” but cannot explain particular reactions of states because these reactions depend not only on international constraints but also the characteristics of states (p.122). This inability to explain changes of the international political system should be underscored given Waltz’s assertion that “a systems theory explains changes across system, not within them” (p71). In other words, this is the central domain of systemic theories such as Waltz’s.
Third, if changes-across-system is the central domain of the theory, then its scope is indeed limited. Waltz (p.70) admits that “structure is certainly no good on detail.” But most international politics are indeed details. Writing before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Waltz identified only one change of the international political structure during the previous four centuries – that is, the move from a multi-polar to a bipolar system at the end of the Second World War (p.163). As for the dynamics within a stable system, the theory is not very useful. When balances do not form and states do not conform to the successful practices of other states, forces that lie outside of the theory’s purview are claimed to be at work. This is yet another example of the theory’s incompleteness.
Waltz alerts the readers of this limited domain of the systemic theories which “can tell us what pressures are exerted and what possibilities are posed by systems of different structure,” but cannot tell “just how, and how effectively, the units of a system will respond to those pressures and possibilities” (p.71). Specifically, they tell us “what international conditions national policies have to cope with,” but not “how the coping is likely to be done” (p.72). Thus, Waltz’s theory is perhaps useful only for a general understanding of the history of international politics, but of no use for decision makers who are concerned with states’ detailed responses to immediate stimuli.
In response to this criticism, Waltz (2000: 27) only reiterates his sharp distinction between international politics – the domain of structural realism – and foreign policy analysis:
international political theory deals with the pressures of structure on states and not with how states will respond to the pressures. The latter is a task for theories about how national governments respond to pressures on them and take advantage of opportunities that may be present.
The failure to respond convincingly to these criticisms, I argue, lies in the questionable foundations of the theory, its lack of clarity on and specification of unit-level causes, and its unnecessary fixation of variables, especially anarchy and its self-help implication, treated as constants. I now turn to defend this argument.
First, Waltz’s parsimonious theory does not capture the complexity of the studied phenomena because, to achieve parsimony, Waltz resorts to two strategies. On the one hand, he begins with unrealistic, simplifying assumptions, and adds more of them while developing the theory. Edifying the theory on such assumptions is justified on the basis that “assumptions are neither true nor false and that they are essential for the construction of theory” (p.119). On the other hand, he isolates one realm of international politics from all others for purpose of simplification, thus focuses on the structure of the system to the exclusion of state attributes and interactions. A similar justification is in order:
The question, as ever with theories, is not whether the isolation of a realm is realistic, but whether it is useful. And usefulness is judged by the explanatory and predictive powers of the theory that may be fashioned (p.8).
This strategy of making instrumental and simplifying assumptions and isolating realms as a way out of the order-in-complexity problem obviously follows the advice of a number of logical-positivists such as Hayek (2001: 55-70), Scriven (2001: 71-77), and McIntyre (2001: 131-143), who recommend that social scientists ignore complexity, come up with general theories not focused on prediction, and redefine their research problems and develop parsimonious theories before collecting data. Adopting this strategy, however, results only in limiting the scope of Waltz’s theory and minimizing the cases where it is supposed to apply successfully. If there is no escape from assumptions, they should be as realistic as possible. In addition, they must be theoretically scrutinized and empirically tested (Moravcsik, 1993: 7), and their number must be as small as possible.
Second, Waltz fails to show examples of non-structural causes of international political outcomes, with the exception of the assumed state objective of survival. Indeed, the relationship between the two components of the international system, namely, its structure and interacting units, is at best under-theorized. While Waltz implies that the two components affect each other (Waltz, 1979: 58, 72), and demonstrates how the former constrains the latter, in nowhere does he show how the latter affects the former. It is plausible that a proper theory of international theory is the one which “allows for the handling of both unit-level and systems-level causes,” and can therefore account for “both the changes and the continuities that occur in a system…without proliferating variables and multiplying categories” (p.68); but Waltz’s theory does not live up to this challenge of theorizing on both the unit and system levels.
Third, Waltz unnecessarily treats as constants two systemic components that take varying values in reality. These are the anarchy of the international political system and its corollary of the self-help system. The latter is discussed thoroughly by a number of realist, neoliberal institutionalists, and constructivists, most notably Alexander Wendt, as referred to in the third chapter. The former is hardly addressed in the literature, although it is the most basic foundation of Waltz’s theory.
Waltz argues that anarchy is the enduring character of international politics that “accounts for the striking sameness in the quality of international life through the millennia” (p.66), but gives one meaning to anarchy, that is, self help: “The international imperative is ‘take care of yourself’!” (p.107). This is another way of saying that, each state is an autonomous political unit, or sovereign, and equal to all the others: “none is entitled to command; none is required to obey” (p.88; p.95). Waltz defines sovereignty rather loosely as follows: “each state decides for itself how it will cope with its internal and external problems, including whether or not to seek assistance from others and in doing so to limit its freedom by making commitments to them” (p.96).
Nevertheless, his emphasis on state sovereignty and equality as defining anarchy, the constitutive element of the causative structure of the international political system, is problematic because sovereignty and equality are eroding, and therefore constitute shaky foundations of a general theory of international relations. On this point, Osiander (2001: 283) makes the following persuasive argument:
Growing interdependence as a result of industrialization has, for a century or more, continuously undermined the capacity for self-reliance of international actors (states) and will diminish it further. This development has been accompanied by an ongoing swing of the pendulum away from near-total autonomy of states and by a proliferation of international institutions trying to “get in” on the management of transborder politics… There is a clear de facto trend in international politics away from classical sovereignty and toward something closer to landeshoheit, territorial jurisdiction under an external legal regime shared by the actors. Like the estates of the [Holy Roman] empire, modern states are also tied into a complex structure of governance that creates a network both of cooperation and of mutual restraint. Participation in this network is voluntary in principle but difficult in practice to escape because of the high cost escaping would entail.
Although Waltz can still treat sovereignty and equality instrumentally as assumptions necessary for constructing his theory, insisting on sovereignty and equality as defining anarchy has the potential of magnifying another problem in theory. Namely, defining anarchy in terms of sovereignty and equality undermines the power-base of Waltz’s account of international politics, and thus creates a contradiction in the theory. Indeed, this definition raises a dilemma for realists as they attempt to answer such a simple question as whether states respect the sovereignty and equality of other states. If their answer is yes, as Waltz would apparently do, then they must either accept the significance of the legalistic-moralistic framework of international relations or search for another explanation of the prevailing practice of observing this well-established norm. Power politics, realism’s lifeblood, seems unable to provide such an explanation, especially as evident in the post-Cold War era. It might be plausible that respecting state sovereignty and equality was an expression of the balance of power in Europe or worldwide at certain historical periods, but it is hardly convincing that the United States, for example, is now restrained from attacking an enemy such as Cuba because of dyadic or global power calculations. Other factors must be at work. On the other hand, if the answer to the question of whether states respect the sovereignty and equality of other states is no, and power relations in international politics are highlighted instead, then Waltz’s emphasis on state sovereignty and equality as partly defining the structure of the international political system is misplaced and ignores the strong hierarchical elements in the international political structure.
Therefore, realists would either accept norms, identities, institutions, and cultures as forces in international politics, or insist on materialistic power as the only defining element of the structure of the international political system. Both choices entail a revolution in the realist school of thought: the first has the effect of converging realism with constructivism; the second admits the mixed anarchical-hierarchical nature of the international political system and therefore (1) makes possible the yet imaginary scenario of moving from one system to another by moving from an anarchic to a hierarchic realm (Waltz, 1979: 100) or, more accurately, moving along an anarchic-hierarchic spectrum or continuum; (2) highlights the significance of powerful non-state actors in international politics and downplays that of weak states; (3) makes the study of internal politics more relevant to the study of international politics.
Waltz (p.132) comes closest to admitting the mixed anarchical-hierarchical nature of the international political system when he emphasizes the inequality inherent in the state system:
At the pinnacle of power, no more than small numbers of states have ever coexisted as approximate equal; in relation to them, other states have always been of lesser moment… The inequality of states, though it provides no guarantee, at least makes peace and stability possible.
However, he fails to take this point to its logical end: while anarchy constitute relations among great powers, “at the dyadic level, at least, anarchy is only one possible set of relationships” (Lake, 2001: 132). This is yet another criticism of the limited scope of Waltz’s theory; as it focuses only on great power politics to the exclusion of international politics of the developing world, thus failing to account for non-anarchic relationships in international politics.

Walt’s Essentially Constructivist Corrections
Walt examines whether states tend to ally against or with the principal external threat. In other words, he attempts to answer the question, “which state behavior is more common: balancing or bandwagoning” (Walt, 1990: 17). Contrary to Waltz, Walt finds that states do not ally against the most powerful state in the international system; rather, they ally against the principal source of threat in their regions (p152); hence, Walt’s balance-of -threat theory. The question then becomes, what is a state’s principal source of threat? During the Cold War, only the two superpowers saw the most powerful state as the most threatening one, thus, tended to “balance primarily against aggregate power alone (i.e. forming alliances to contain the other superpower)” (p153). For all other states, the distribution of power was only one, though important, factor in defining external threats. Other possible sources of threat included geographic proximity, offensive capabilities, and perceived intentions (p5). Walt hypothesizes the effects of all these possible sources of threat, except perceived intensions, as indeterminate, and consequently tested whether aggregate, proximate, or offensive power motivates states to balance. He hypothesizes only the effect of perceived intention as certain: an unalterably aggressive or expansionist power is likely to trigger an opposing coalition by provoking others to balance against it (pp23-6).
As the empirical analysis shows, all hypothesized factors defining a threat are confirmed as likely to result in balancing (p153, p158, p165, p168). Walt therefore concludes that the balance-of-threat theory is superior to the balance-of-power theory. In other words, “examining the impact of several related but distinct sources of threat can provide a more persuasive account of alliance formation than can focusing solely on the distribution of aggregate capabilities” (p172). In this sense, Walt’s theory is proposed as “a better alternative than balance of power theory” (p5) because it complements Waltz’s theory by adding more causes of the balancing behavior of states. Thus, Walt’s theory is celebrated by structural realists, including Waltz, who calls it, “the best work on alliance that I know of.” It is therefore hardly taken as seriously undermining the foundations of their theories. Nevertheless, Walt’s analysis is essentially social constructivist and could therefore have been taken to correct, not complement, Waltz’s theory.
First, although Walt uses Waltz’s concept of power uncritically as “material capabilities,” his empirical analysis suggests that the determinants of power are more comprehensive and include both material and nonmaterial elements, as he finds that,
“In the Arab world, the most important source of power has been the ability to manipulate one’s own image and the image of one’s rivals in the minds of other Arab elites. Regimes have gained power and legitimacy if they have been seen as loyal to accepted Arab goals, and they have lost these assets if they have appeared to stray outside the Arab consensus. As a result, an effective means of countering one’s rivals has been to attract as many allies as possible in order to portray oneself as leading (or at least conforming to) the norms of Arab solidarity. In effect, the Arab states have balanced one another not by adding up armies but by adding up votes. Thus militarily insignificant alliances between the various Arab states often have had profound political effects.” (p149)
This indeed is a bold statement by a self-proclaimed realist, as it underlines the powerful impact of ideas as opposed to militaries, and portrays the violation of established norms and the betrayal of accepted goals as the most important sources of threat that motivate states to ally against the violator or the betrayer. Indeed, this statement runs against almost all structural realist theories, especially Waltz’s which criticizes Kaplan’s for turning into an independent variable the dependent variables of state acceptance of international norms and the socialization of states to the international system (Waltz, 1979: 52). Thus, taking Walt’s seriously necessitates theorizing norms and principles as constituting power in international politics, as later constructivists did, and confounds one basic foundation of structural realism as theorized by Waltz, namely, the materialist concept of power.
Second, Walt finds aggregate power not a sufficient explanation of the balancing behavior of states, neither in a direct relation between aggregate power and the balancing behavior of states nor in an indirect relation through threat: “although power can pose a threat, it can also be prized. States with great power have the capacity to either punish enemies or reward friends. A state’s aggregate power, therefore, provides motives for both balancing and bandwagoning (Walt, 1990: 23). Consequently, Walt conceptualizes a “threat” more comprehensively than “aggregate power,” with aggregate power being only one source of threat. The most determining source of threat, however, is its only nonmaterial component, namely, perceived intentions: “because power can be used either to threaten or to support other states, how states perceive the ways that others will use their power becomes paramount” (p179). Walt’s emphasis on both perception and intentions again confounds the materialist base of structural realism as theorized by Waltz.
Third, Walt’s misspecification of state intentions as state ideologies undermines the corrective possibilities of his analysis. Walt (p180) argues that determining state intensions is possible, though not easy, using state ideologies as indicators of state intentions. As he fails to confirm the ideological solidarity hypothesis (namely, states with similar traits tend to align with one another to states whose domestic characteristics are different), he concludes that “ideology may be more of a rationalization than a cause” of alliance formation (p214), thus confirming his early suspicion that “for both internal and external reasons, statesmen are likely to describe their allies in favorable terms, suggesting that a strong ideological affinity exists” (p39). Nevertheless, taking the rhetoric of statesmen too seriously may be misleading in identifying not only their state ideologies and domestic characteristics but also their intensions. For example, for any Arab state, a threatening (i.e., “unalterably aggressive” or “expansionist”) power is not necessarily the state whose leaders adhere to a competing ideology; two states may claim to adhere to the same ideology and still identify each other as staunch enemies, as the two Ba’thist regimes in Syria and Iraq continued to do for decades. More generally, as Barnett (1996: 401) later puts it, “it is the politics of identity rather than the logic of anarchy that often provides a better understanding of which states are viewed as a potential or immediate threat to the state’s security.” Thus, analyzing state identities is more useful than relying on official statements about state ideologies in identifying state intensions regarding other states. Thus, a research agenda guided by Walt’s theory would ideally include not only international norms, state intensions, and leaders’ perceptions, but also state identities as possible causes of alliance.
Fourth, in the balance-of-threat theory, the four tested and confirmed sources of threat (i.e. aggregate, proximate, and offensive power and perceived intentions) provide motives for states to balance, thus re-introducing human agents between structural causes and effects. Therefore, balances may not form if their objective causes (i.e. threats in Walt’s theory, and the distribution of capabilities in Waltz’s theory) fail to motivate human actors to produce a certain effect (i.e. the balancing behavior of states). Walt’s adoption of Morgenthau’s (1960 [1948]: 221-2) double-edged definition of the balance-of-power as a causative idea (or policy) as well as a generated effect (or state of affairs) obviously violates two pillars of structural realism as articulated by Waltz: first, motives are assumed, not tested; second, balances will form even if states are not motivated to balance because the balancing behavior of states is a product of the structural constraints of the system. In this sense, Walt’s propositions may be considered a shift to classical realism. Moreover, Walt’s analysis emphasizes the importance of theorizing on the unit-level (i.e. state attributes and interactions) in order to define the conditions that make the objective causes of balancing motivate states to produce their effect. Although Waltz (1979: 72) deems the theorizing on the unit-level as unnecessary in a general theory of international politics, constructivists undertake this task in order to stress actor-initiated changes (Haas and Haas, 2002: 582).
Fifth, Walt suggests leaders’ perception is the intermediate variable that causes the objective conditions to motivate states to form balances. In other words, perceiving conditions properly by human actors is necessary to producing the balancing behavior of states. Thus, in Walt’s theory, perception is an integral part of the causal chain as follows:



Although perception is not inherently anti-realist, Walt’s argument that perception is causal is inconsistent with Waltz’s structural realism. According to Waltz,
“Actors may perceive the structure that constrains them and understand how it serves to reward some kinds of behavior and to penalize others. But then again they either may not see it or, seeing it, may for any of many reasons fail to conform their actions to the patterns that are most often rewarded and least often punished” (Waltz, 1979: 92).
Thus, while in Waltz’s theory actors are denied a role in producing the balance of power, in Walt’s analysis, theorizing about human perception is necessary in a general theory of international politics.
Although Walt emphasizes perception especially in regard to state intentions, there is no reason to ignore the role of perception in regard to other sources of threat (i.e. aggregate, proximate, and offensive power). As Wohlforth argues, beliefs about power, not only intentions, matter because states are “guided by embedded beliefs about foreign policy that are relatively resistant to change, even when experience with the material environment clearly signals the need for it” (Legro and Moravcsik, 1999: 39).
In short, Walt’s analysis refers to such direct and indirect causes of the balancing behavior of states in response to security threats as international and regional norms, state intentions and identities, and motives and perception of statesmen. Thus, Walt’s analysis implicitly suggests a research agenda that goes beyond structural realism as theorized by Waltz and is closer to later sociological institutional constructivism. This conclusion supports the rather modest results of Barnett’s (1996) extensive discussion of Walt’s analysis, that is, “as it stands, Walt’s various historical observations are inconsistent with his materialist presuppositions, suggesting the limitations of neorealism for understanding inter-Arab politics.”

Section Two: Intra- Constructivist Dialogue Heading Towards Realism
Realism was not a source of the constructivist enterprise in international relations, which can be traced to three intellectual sources. The first is Berger and Luckmann’s 1966 The Social Construction of Reality (Osterud, 1996: 387; Pettman, 2000: 11; Smith, 2001: 39). The second is the sociological school of thought, especially sociological institutionalism (Finnemore, 1996: 15; Barnett and Finnemore, 1999: 699) and the sociology of collective behavior, and Gidden’s theory of structuration in particular (Wendt, 1992: 394; 1999: 1; Ruggie, 1998: 862, 875; Haas and Haas, 2002: 582). The third source is Nicholas Onuf’s 1989 World of Our Making, which is the first international relations thesis that used the term constructivism (Wendt, 1992: 393; Finnemore, 1996: 3; Ruggie; 1998: 862; Smith, 2001: 41, 51).
Inspired by sociological paradigms, constructivists reject the prevailing mode of theorizing in the field of international relations that not only ignores historical context but actually privileges the theories divorced from history. “The more timeless a proposition (for example, people as value maximizers, societies as corporate agents situated in a competitive state of nature), the more valuable the claim appears to be” (Kowert, 2003: 77). To the contrary, constructivists are concerned with the historical contexts not only for theoretical purposes but also to act as public intellectuals in both guiding and being immersed in public debates. In other words, they are potential political actors (Widmaier, 2004: 443).

Realism Compatible with Constructivist Variants
Although constructivist theories are argued to share at least one foundation – that is, international politics is constructed socially, as opposed to only materially (Finnemore, 1996: 15; Ruggie, 1998: 856; Wendt, 1999: 3, 7), they differ on many levels. Hence, the many classifications of constructivist theories. These classifications, however, are largely similar to each other, and mostly attempts to defend one’s own version of constructivism by claiming a middle ground between mainstream and critical theories of international relations. Critics of constructivism add to the fervor of this competition by using largely unfavorable terms, such as de-constructivism, to label particular constructivist theories (Osterud, 1996: 386-7).
An analysis of the classifications proposed by Hopf, Ruggie, Wendt, and Pettman may be sufficient to justify this conclusion. First, Hopf (1998: 172) makes a distinction between conventional and critical constructivism. While critical constructivism is more closely tied to critical theory, conventional constructivism rejects both “the mainstream presumption that world politics is so homogeneous that universally valid generalizations can be expected to come out of theorizing about it, [and] the critical constructivist position that world politics is so heterogeneous that we should presume to look for only the unique and differentiating.” Conventional constructivists instead look for the so-called “communities of intersubjectivity in world politics, domains within which actors share understandings of themselves and each other, yielding predictable and replicable patterns of action within a specific context” (p.199).
Second, Ruggie (1998: 881-2) gives different names to these two categories and adds one more, thus distinguishing between neoclassical, naturalistic, and postmodernist theories of constructivism. Neoclassical constructivism is committed to the idea of social science – “albeit one more plural and more social than that espoused in the mainstream theories.” Naturalistic constructivism is based on scientific realism, thus offering the possibility of a whole new naturalistic social science. And postmodernist constructivism stresses the linguistic construction of subjects. Third, Wendt (1999: 3) puts Ruggie’s neoclassical and naturalistic constructivism together as modernist constructivism, and distinguishes it from the two postmodernist and feminist streams of constructivism.
Fourth, Pettman (2000: 11-26) agrees that the main distinction in the constructivist school of thought is between conservative (which is another name for conventional, neoclassical, and modernist) and commonsense (which is another name for critical and postmodernist) variants of constructivism. While conservative constructivism defends “the primacy of strict scientific reasoning,” commonsense constructivism “goes beyond the limits that rationalism sets,” and “bring people back in.” he also adds a category of social theory constructivism which attempts “to reconstitute our understanding of social relationships from first principles like language and from the cognitive acts or speech acts that language makes possible” (p.17).
It is therefore inaccurate to use constructivism and postmodernism as synonyms. Only one variant of constructivism is postmodernist. This by no means belittles the postmodernist contributions to international relations theories. Indeed, postmodernism arguably makes four distinct contributions to international relations: a concept of socially constructed identity; a link to other social sciences and political and social theory “by problematizing the simple assumptions about how knowledge is created and anchored;” a focus on “that which is usually excluded from international relations, such as ethics, gender, race, economics and sexuality;” and an exposure of “what passes for common sense in international theory as one product of the power-knowledge relationship” (Smith, 1997: 333-4).
Postmodernist approaches, however, can distract researchers and move the object of study away from the real world. For example, feminist and discursive approaches, though greatly help us to uncover certain biases in our field and allow certain historically marginalized and dissenting voices to be heard, are likely to lead us to focus less on political phenomena and more on how these phenomena are treated by politicians, experts and researchers. For example, a study of war using the discursive analysis is ideally focused on how wars are legitimated by politicians and reported by historians, not how wars are initiated, escalated, de-escalated, and terminated. Using an interpretive or critical analysis will make the study focus on the environments and worldviews of the politicians and historians involved. Using a hermeneutic analysis will move the focus even further away from the war phenomenon, as the researcher will reflect on her or his environment and worldviews insofar as they affect our understanding of the phenomenon under investigation.
In short, while these classifications show postmodernist constructivism as certainly incompatible with realism, they show the modernist variants of constructivism as compatible with it. Although classical realism was not historically an intellectual source of the constructivist enterprise in international relations, its main propositions are compatible with the main propositions of modernist constructivist – that is, international politics is constructed socially, not only materially. For example, Murray (1997: 191) finds that:
“[Classical] realism can in no way be associated with a search for an objective science of international politics based on the model of the natural sciences… Rather, it is deeply aware of the extent to which international politics is socially constructed, the consequent importance of understanding human practices rather than explaining material phenomena, and of using such knowledge not to control or dominate, but to enhance the mutual understandings by which actors with divergent value systems relate to one another.”
Williams (2004: 633-4) reaches a similar conclusion: classical realism is a tradition of thinking that provides a subtle and sophisticated understanding of the role of ideas in international relations.
Structural realism is also compatible with modernist constructivism. Wendt’s theory, for example, is not only structural and state-centric but also constructed explicitly against the background of Waltz’s neorealism (Zehfuss, 2001: 56), although it differs from Waltz’s in proposing that “the way international relations are conducted is socially constructed rather than trans-historically given” (Zehfuss, 2002: 14). It is therefore unsurprising that Finnemore (1996: 26-27) admits that the relation between the three theories she tests (namely, neorealism, neoliberal institutionalism, and constructivism) is complementary, not competing: “my argument is not so much that neorealism and neoliberalism are wrong as that they are grossly incomplete.”
Nevertheless, the compatibility between realism and conventional constructivism has not been emphasized for two reasons. First, much efforts of early conventional constructivists focused on showing norms and ideas as non-negligible factors in international politics and separating their effects from the effects of other factors, especially state interest and realpolitik. Nevertheless, they did not specify how much norms and ideas matter, thus left realist and neoliberal skeptics free to dismiss them as only “residual to objective responses to structural or institutional constraints” (Parsons, 2002: 48).
For example, Legro (1997: 34) once argued that one risks spuriously crediting international norms with consequences that are better explained by other types of factors if alternative explanations, including ideational ones, for the effects attributed to norms are neglected. Goertz and Diehl (1992: 637) also conceive norms as potentially causal only when they conflict with interests and no central sanctioning body exists, thus claim that “many times norms are used as convenient justifications for self-interested behavior.” Thus, where self-interest is emphasized, they presume norms to have little independent effect (p.641). Only if norms produce an effect unpredicted by self-interest calculations, they are credited as independent causes of behavior. This bias against norms, however, is baseless, ignores the authors’ affirmation that norm-based and self-interested behavior is hardly distinguishable, and reflects the prevailing tendency to put the burden of proof disproportionately on normative explanations of behavior. Despite this bias, however, Goertz and Diehl’s analysis of decolonization demonstrates that “the decolonization norm had a significant and strong impact in limiting military conflict in cases of national independence,” even after controlling for self-interest and power politics concerns which have significant impact on state behavior (p.662).
Some constructivists, such as Finnemore (1996: 65), acquiesced to this logic and accepted this challenge, thus argued that positive evidence of norms must be coupled with the failure of alternative explanations in order to provide a strong case for the role of norms. Constructivists have made inroads precisely when they provided “explanations substantiated by evidence for puzzles in international politics that other approaches had been unable to explain satisfactorily” (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998: 890). With the increasing demonstrations that “ideas can be concretely displayed as autonomous causes,” ideational theorists demanded…
“a move beyond battles over whether or not ideas matter to the much more interesting questions of how much they matter in particular situations and under what conditions they matter most. Within these debates, furthermore, the burden of proof should no longer fall disproportionately on ideational theorists… We would then all face the same theoretical dilemma: the relative weighting of structural, institutional, and ideational causes” (Parsons, 2002: 78-9).
Only if realists accept this challenge, they may eventually recognize the compatibility between their theories and conventional constructivism.
Second, the compatibility between realism and conventional constructivism is not recognized because the international relations literature is full of studies that unjustifiably pit such social constructions as norms and idea against power and state interests whether explicitly or implicitly, although power and norms are best understood as mutually constitutive (Barkin, 2003 and 2004a). I here identify two such studies. First, Parsons (2002: 49) argues that the challenge for causal ideational argument is to isolate the ideational filter from its material context, he therefore attempts to isolate the impact of ideas from that of material interests by focusing on ideas strongly cross-cutting lines of shared material interests (p.48). He compares “actors in near-identical places in the objective world to highlight the purely subjective variations in their behavior” (p.51). This endeavor, however, is at odds with his recognition (p.50) that ideational theorist assume that actors interpret their interests through ideas. In other words, ideas are constitutive of, not in conflict with, material interests.
Second, Herrmann and Shannon (2001: 622-3) explain the variation in United States decisions to defend violated norms by comparing the impacts of material interests as opposed to felt normative obligation based on the moral obligation to abide by and defend prescriptive norms. Without considering the realist-idealist dispute over “the relative effect of material interests and prescriptive norms” (p.624), they arrive at “an apparent intuitive realist” conclusion that felt normative obligation motivates some action, but not nearly as much as material interests do: “In cases where U.S. material interests were at stake… leaders chose to act. When only normative obligation was involved, far fewer leaders made a similar choice (p.651). This conclusion is indeed at odds with their early recognitions that constructivists treat interests “as constituted by normative ideas” (p.625), that the conceptual distinction between material interests and prescriptive norms is often blurred (p.624), that normative rules may indirectly “affect both constructions of material interests and calculations on how best to advance them” (p.622), and that “the logic of material consequences and normative appropriateness are not mutually exclusive” (p.622).
This failure to recognize the compatibility between realism and conventional constructivism forecloses a research agenda that integrates their explanations of world politics phenomena. This study is a venture in that direction. It, however, focuses on a necessary first step, that is, showing the social construction components in classical and structural realisms and their fixation attempts, which are commonly ignored.

Intra-Paradigm Dialogues Uncovering Realist Solutions to Constructivist Limitations
Approaching international relations from constructivist perspectives has some limitations, such as the insufficiency of the logic of appropriateness. I this subsection I demonstrate how realism is implied directly or indirectly in the four solutions to this problem that constructivists suggested, concluding that realism has the potential to solve some critical constructivist puzzles.
Specifically, the ideas and norms impacting a foreign policy decision may be inconsistent or incoherent, and their hierarchical order may not be defined by the decision maker clearly. For example, Barnett (1993: 272, 290) suggests constructivist explanations of international instability and uncertainty as the results of the role conflicts states usually experience “because of their simultaneous presence in institutions that demand contradictory role expectations and performances,” but offers no explanation of the outcome of the role conflicts. That a state facing a role conflict eventually occupies a particular role is hardly explained only by the logic of appropriateness. In other words, this logic fails to explain the behavior of a state facing conflicting roles or institutional obligations to which they are expected to adhere.
Similarly, in international organizations, the hierarchical order of norms, which defines which norms are more important than others, is sometimes disputed in a certain situation. Finnemore (1996: 135), for example, overlooks the fact that competing and contradictory norms may impact an international organization at the same time. Although she admits that a normative structure may contain competing and contradictory elements, because “social institutions are continually being contested, albeit to varying degrees at different times” (emphasis added), she fails to address a situation where an international organization must act according to contested norms. Legro (1997: 33) therefore argues that “since different norms can have competing or even contradictory imperatives, it is important to understand why some norms are more influential than others in particular situations.”
Constructivists offer four distinct solutions to the insufficiency of the logic of appropriateness. First, Herrmann and Shannon (2001) propose perception as playing a large role in foreign policy decision making. Accurate or otherwise, “perceptions of the situation define which rules, duties, and obligations are relevant as well as the type of the utilitarian interests at stake” (p.625-6). Testing this proposition in the responses of United States foreign policy decision makers to violations of the norm of protecting sovereignty-as-territorial-integrity, they found their expectations confirmed.
“Especially important are perceptions of the motives seen to be behind the violation, perceptions of the situation as a cross-border conflict or a civil war, and perceptions of the democratic character of the victim. The prescriptive norm we investigated was most likely to be defended when leaders perceived the attacker to be unprovoked and offensively motivated, perceived the attack as crossing national boundaries, and perceived the victim to be democratic” (p.650).
That perception may be explained by psychological and historical factors does not invalidate the argument that perceptions cause variation in behavior, because “explaining [perceptions] as dependent variables is legitimately separate from showing their presence and effects as independent variables” (Parsons, 2002: 51).
Nevertheless, emphasizing the role of perceptions is not especially constructivist; rather, it is shared by some critical theorists, such as Cox (Cox and Jacobson, 1973/1997: 84), neoliberal institutionalists, such as Keohane (1993), and self-proclaimed structural realists, such as Walt (1990 [1987]). Moreover, this emphasis is at odds with positivist theories, including modernist constructivism, according to which “the reality to be comprehended is real in the sense that it exists independently from us, whether we perceive it correctly or not,” and is more compatible with post-positivism, according to which “the reality to be comprehended is mostly dependent on a social construction in which shared perceptions establish what is real” (Haas and Haas, 2002: 584).
Second, some sociological institutional constructivists, such as Finnemore and Sikkink (1998), suggest a rational choice solution, and make the following argument:
“The current tendency to oppose norms against rationality or rational choice is not helpful in explaining many of the most politically salient processes we see in empirical research – processes we call strategic social construction in which actors strategize rationally to reconfigure preferences, identities, or social context” (p888).
Thus, actors facing conflicting rules and norms, each making claims for different courses of action, choose rationally “which rules or norms to follow and which obligations to meet at the expense of others in a given situation” (p.914). Unlike conventional rational choice applications, however, the normative patterns that are developed, and may become stable, out of actors’ choices are based on calculations of social and ideational, not material, utilities (p.910).
This proposition, however, is more realist than constructivist because it assumes the rationality of the foreign policy decision makers. Indeed, it is based on the antithesis of the logic of appropriateness, that is, the utilitarian logic of instrumental rationality. It therefore acquiesces to realists such as Krasner who view the international system as “an environment in which the logics of consequences dominate the logics of appropriateness” (Herrmann and Shannon, 2001: 628).
Third, linguistic constructivists, such as Kratochwil, reject all solutions to the insufficiency of the logic of appropriateness that are based on instrumental rationality because social situations are inherently indeterminate and there are no logically necessary or compelling solutions to social problems (Zehfuss, 2001: 66-67); only norms “provide the basis for a process of reasoning in which the decision to take a certain course of action, rather than another, is justified.” Such a decision is not necessarily arbitrary and may instead be based on good reasons, especially if founded on a narrative starting from a commonplace with others. Kratochwil therefore offers a normative solution that takes into account not only an actor’s interest but also the interests of others that the actor has to take into account while making a choice. He specifically suggests focusing the analysis on how validity claims are decided, relevant premises identified, and situations defined, through discourse, argumentation, and persuasion – significant processes determining if an action can marshal support.
This solution, however, is circular: it claims to solve the problem of choosing among contradictory norms by only introducing more norms. Moreover, because the process of reasoning does not necessarily lead to a single best solution in a particular situation, authoritative decisions are necessary. This opens the door wide to realists who not only stress power and authority but also argue that the powerful may coerce other international actors and still attempt to persuade and cooperate with them because persuasion is only a tool in international politics (Murray, 1997: 192).
Fourth, Barkin’s (2003: 337) realist constructivism explicitly points to power as solving the problem of the appropriateness logic:
“Even if all actors in the international system at a given point in time accept the same basic set of normative structures, they will differ in their interpretations of those structures, whether for rationally self-interested reasons or for psychological reasons... When interpretations differ, the power of the interpreter continues to matter. The role of a realist constructivism, then, is to examine, skeptically from a moral perspective the interrelationships between power and international norms.”
This is an openly realist solution. It is therefore surprising that some realists criticize Barkin’s realist constructivism because it “takes norms and ideas seriously as objects of analysis” rather than arguing “about why power cannot be, in any way, transcended in international politics” (Jackson and Nexon, 2004: 338).
This solution, however, and perhaps ironically, closely follows a post-structuralist reasoning accordingly to which, where there is a conflict of interpretations or interests, powerful states may well attempt to dominate and impose their wills upon others by “giving orders, making binding rules hierarchically and manipulating with threats of violence,” thus resulting in an insecurity community (Patomaki, 2002: 200).
In short, constructivists can hardly use the logic of appropriateness independently from rationality, perception, discourse, and/or direct power considerations to explain why in a certain situation, a state or any other international actor occupies a particular role or acts according to a particular norm, rule or principle (or a cluster of them), not others that may have competing or even contradictory imperatives. Constructivism void of realism may therefore be no less sterile than realism void of constructivism.

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