The Social Construction of International Society

Abstract

Metatheoretical debates, once the preserve of political and social theory, have entered the iron cage of International Relations. This article opens with a discussion of these debates, in particular the argument that the social sciences have inherited two radically different understandings of the nature of the social world: `objectivism' and `subjectivism'. The argument made in Section 2 of the article is that contemporary metatheorists like Onuf, Wendt and Hollis and Smith have consistently underestimated the `subjectivism' of theorists such as Charles Manning, Martin Wight, Hedley Bull and Adam Watson who were united in their belief that states, through their interaction, reflexively formed a society. And crucially, the very existence of that society shapes the identity of states. This leads to an examination of the `subjectivist' treatment of the institutions of international society and how this differs from the contemporary `objectivism' of neoliberalism and neorealism. Lastly, the article explores the question how far the classical constructivists such as Hedley Bull are more sceptical than neoconstructivists such as Alexander Wendt about the capacity for the practices of the society of states to be reconstituted.