The Role of Constructivism in Conflict

Across the social sciences, ideas are increasingly recognized as major factors in politics. One could go so far as to say that ideas are a primary source of political behavior. Ideas shape how we understand political problems, give definition to our goals and strategies, and are the currency we use to communicate about politics. By giving definition to our values and preferences, ideas provide us with interpretive frameworks that make us see some facts as important and others as less so. In turn, this has serious consequences for how we understand the role of interests in politics.

Politics is the struggle for power and control among people who are motivated by a myriad of ideas. These might include their perceived interests, but also their ideals, their pride, their fears, and so on. In addition, the ideas people share in their communications with those around them inform not only their belief in what they want, but what they deem to be appropriate, legitimate, and proper.

 Constructivism derives its name from the fundamental proposition that political actors construct international political relationships out of their own ideas. Relations between certain countries – and international relations in general – are the way that they are because that is how states and people believe them to be. Ideas matter more than material considerations in the conduct of international relations. These ideas can be of oneself, of a particular “Other,” or of the international state system in general. In the words of leading Constructivist scholar Alexander Wendt, “anarchy is what states make of it.”

According this concept, states begin their interactions with a blank slate. Nothing predisposes them to conflict or to cooperation. The early interactions are critical; they can set the relationship and intersubjective meaning construction between two countries on a largely positive or negative course. In the case of US-Iran relations, I argue that the following is a plausible explanation of the countries’ persistent conflict: Intersubjective meaning construction was placed on a profoundly negative trajectory when the current Iranian state known as the Islamic Republic of Iran emerged from the tumult of revolution in 1979. An Iranian narrative of American and Western imperialism and interference – backed by the historical realities of America’s role in the 1953 coup and support for the Shah – helped motivate the creation of a new state whose identity was to be largely based on opposition to America and the West. Meanwhile, a critical moment for the US in its early intersubjective meaning construction with post-revolutionary Iran was the appalling seizure of the American embassy in Tehran and subsequent 444-day hostage crisis. If there was indeed a momentary blank slate between the US and post-revolutionary Iran, this event helped to establish the Islamic Republic of Iran as a radically hostile enemy in American eyes.

Relations between these two nations have thus arguably been handicapped over the last three decades by the intersubjective meaning constructed with the bricks and mortar of hostility, trauma, and distrust. In such a Constructivist view, the state of US-Iran relations cannot be blamed on conflicting geopolitical, military, or economic interests. Instead, it is the result of ideas and narratives of grievance and threat developed in each country about the other. These ideas and narratives are in some cases rooted in real historical events that occurred at critical times, but often assume a power and a scale beyond what many outside observers would consider “rational” or objective.

 

Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane, “Ideas and Foreign Policy: An Analytical Framework,” in Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Cornell University Press, 1993).

Alexander Wendt, “Social Theory of International Theory Politics” in Cambridge Studies of International Relations (Cambridge Press, 1999).

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