The Debate Aftermath

It was not altogether clear that rules and social theory exist as integral parts to international relations and formal institutions. Yet, Tuesday’s discussion was expressed with particular attention to indicators of fundamental change and how each group defined anarchy. The questioned posed to us was, "Can there be a fundamental change in the international environment?” The breakdown of each argument focused on agency between two international actors provided that socially acceptable consequences would arise from a cooperative act. So, we were able to take in to account the prearranged conditions to world politics and the conditions as a result of sovereign bodies engaging in cooperative means, or in the likeness of bilateral support.

Team 1 referenced Wendt’s assertion that "anarchy is what the states make of it" Wendt 1992, 395), but I sensed that there wasn’t enough unpacking of that line. Wendt describes how the logic of anarchy plays into cooperative structures that engage in international competition. Team 1 might have combined Wendt’s constructivist roots and critical realist position into one identity, because it wasn’t clear what argument was evaluated to better understand what drives anarchy.

For team 2, I’d say that the downside of the argument was in that our rhetoric assumed that in order to fundamentally remake the international environment an actor would have to assert a dominant role over other actors or that the rug would have to be pulled out from under all authoritative figures because of a disaster. Instead of pointing to a catastrophic change in the world to force change, we could have focused on how power dynamics are transactional in practice. That idea is reflective of ‘U.S. hegemony’ where the autonomous actors such United States has the means to ‘give up some control in order to achieve global buy-in’ (Team 2). This focuses on the practical aspect of professor Jackson’s typologies: state actors can make decisions based on hard and soft boundaries without being limited to just one category within the structure agency debate.

The theoretical assumptions of constructivism, realism and liberalism became more apparent after the closing statements were delivered. Rather, I’d say that the explanations became more refined. For realists, there is the assumption that human nature depends on ones expectations of which preclude fundamental change, which translates to competition drawing from the eradication of cooperative measures. Liberalist perspective seeks to create ways to overcome anarchy with the premise of maintaining goals that are similar between international actors. Constructivism, I would argue, is based on the premise of relationally, where is not assumption of top-down or bottom-up interpretations of institutional power. Fundamental change is instantiated in the environment: people make society, and society makes people. The social constructivist discusses fundamental change through social arrangements, memberships, and associations. Each position refers to certain ontological expectations an emphasis on continuous relations as opposed to a divine separation of reason.