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This chapter discusses the groundwork for constructing a qualified ethical cosmopolitan position. It maintains that normative International Relations (IR) theory must respond to the attempts to challenge the very nature of morality. The chapter distinguishes between two distinct aspects of any moral perspective, namely: the understanding of the moral agent upon which it relies, and the ‘sphere of equal moral standing’ that it allows.

This introductory chapter criticizes the amateurish way in which history is used to corroborate International Relations theory, in particular Realism. Conversely, it criticizes conventional historiography for its neglect of political theory. A case in point is the constructivist insight that political structures are created through political discourse. The political discourse underlying present-day political structures is so ubiquitous as to render those structures largely immune to manipulation. But since to most people the everyday political discourse of past eras is now unfamiliar, historians feel free, indeed obliged, to describe past political structures using the political concepts and assumptions of our own day. What they fail to realize is that unlike present-day political structures the political structures of past ages do change when anachronistic terminology is used to describe them: they come to look more like our own than they were.

This chapter argues that what various theoretical approaches to IR that describe themselves or are described as critical share in common is that they are political rather than social theories. There are no other common elements to be found across this group of approaches. Various schemas used to typify different sorts of critical theories (e.g., emancipatory/postmodern; feminist/postcolonial/poststructuralist; Copenhagen School/Aberystwyth School/Paris School) signify different political theories with different political content but share political investment in both disciplinary International Relations and global politics. They are explicitly engaged in International Relations theorizing and International Relations research as a political enterprise with political ends.

Do critical approaches to International Relations have some ontological commonality? Is there some tenet about what the world is (or should be) that critical approaches share? Does critical International Relations scholarship have methodological, perhaps even constructivist, commonality? This chapter makes the case that critical theories are sets of political commitments, not ontologies or sets of research methods. To read critical theories as ontology or method is to do injustice to their ties to politics; to read critical theories as methodologically bound is unfairly limiting to them. The chapter provides an overview of the range of ontologies and methods that are useful to the spectrum of International Relations critical theories, suggesting that this spectrum is broad, varied, and not necessarily internally consistent. While constructivisms can be methodologically useful to critical theorizing, they are only some among many of the tools that can be employed fruitfully in service of the various ends of International Relations critical theories.

This chapter builds on the understandings of constructivist and critical International Relations theories laid out in the book so far to make an argument that constructivisms and critical theories are not the same thing, naturally aligned, or necessarily productive bedfellows. Furthermore, there are both analytical and political downsides to the constructivist/critical theory nexus, which are evident in work in international relations that pairs the two unreflectively. In fact, many of the intersections between constructivisms and critical theories in the current International Relations theory literature are contrived at the expense of some or even most of the core tenets of either theory. This chapter suggests that the “end of International Relations” and the lost, confused nature of International Relations theory (particularly progressive International Relations theory) can find their origins in the underspecification and overreached application of pairings between constructivisms and critical theorizing in International Relations. These implications make it necessary to critically evaluate figurations of constructivist and critical International Relations.

Is there a constructivist–critical theory synthesis? This chapter makes the case that such a synthesis can indeed be found, both in the practice and the politics of the discipline of International Relations. The chapter locates the synthesis both in broader social science debates about social construction and in disciplinary histories of International Relations that see both critical theory and constructivism on the same side of the so-called third debate. The chapter sees the synthesis being expressed implicitly, as a default category for work that does not fit into the realist/liberal synthesis or is outside the neopositivist mainstream. The chapter also sees the synthesis in explicit claims—of nonfoundationalism, of the rejection of metanarratives, or of the embrace of progressive politics. Finally, the chapter sees traces of a synthesis even when critical theory and constructivism are presented as paradigmatically distinct.

This chapter sets up an identity crisis in International Relations theorizing as the context for the currently complicated relationship between constructivism and critical theorizing, both in disciplinary International Relations–centered theory discussions and in empirical research about global politics. It argues that in the face of a proliferation of theoretical perspectives and increasing uncertainty about the nature of the world of global politics “out there,” there has been a tendency of theorists outside the “neo-neo synthesis” of realisms and liberalisms to consolidate their work into another synthesis, one between constructivist and critical International Relations. The chapter makes the preliminary case that constructivism and critical theory should be seen as orthogonal rather than complementary, and that the two should be seen as sets of tools for research and argumentation, rather than as paradigmatic unities. Finally, the chapter introduces the idea of affordances as a way of thinking about what the two can do well.

The chapter discusses various ways that constructivism might be defined, and finds in them a tendency to make constructivisms into at once more than they are (by imbuing them with “naturally” associated politics) and less (by divorcing them from their roots as social theory). The chapter builds an argument that what constructivisms have in common is the ontological assumption of the social construction of international politics as expressed in methodology for doing International Relations research. This assumption should not be understood as taking specific ontologies, let alone methods, methodologies, or politics, as definitional of constructivism. Work can reasonably be described as constructivist if it builds on an ontology of co-constitution and intersubjectivity in the context of a particular set of methodological claims underlying a research exercise about global politics. This brackets what work might be called constructivist but does not associate constructivism either with any specific ontology or with any specific methodology.

This chapter looks into the question how, in a constitutionalizing world order, international law-making could take place. It identifies two poles: on the one hand, law-making should do justice to the presence and agency of relevant actors, and thus cannot do away with the requirement of consent just yet. On the other hand, law-making should also be responsive to common needs. The chapter suggests that a presumptive approach may be the best way to combine the two polar opposites, and posits the idea that normative utterances best be seen as law unless the opposite can be proven, accompanied by an enumeration of elements that may help rebut the assumption of law.

How does sustainable critique differ from other appropriations of Frankfurt school social theory—the focus of “third” and “fourth” debate—into IR? The answer lies in differentiating the work of contemporary Frankfurt school theorists, in particular Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth, from that of their predecessors: Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse. I argue that IR has been too quick to dismiss these earlier scholars. Building on Max Weber’s notion of a constellation and Graham Allison’s classic Essence of Decision, I suggest a basis for their re-consideration.

This chapter lays out the argument that constructivism is fundamentally a social theory of the mechanisms at work in global politics, rather than a political theory of what, in international politics, constitutes “good” and “bad.” Constructivisms provide a set of tools that can inform understandings of the substance of global political structures and decisions about how it is possible to maintain or change political structures, but constructivisms cannot by themselves inform decisions about the desirability of particular political structures. Constructivisms, as social theories, can only meaningfully inform the practice of international politics in combination with some political theory, understood as a theory concerned with the “ought” when constructivisms are concerned with the “is.” Constructivisms as such are no more “naturally” wed to critical theory than they are to realisms, liberalisms, Marxisms, or any other political theories.

This chapter analyses what the political transformations following the Arab Spring mean from the perspective of different International Relations theories: neo-realism, institutionalism, social constructivism and critical theories.  The chapter first points to the direct effects of foreign policy intervention in transitions to democracy worldwide, including the MENA region, notwithstanding the traditional support some non-democratic or aggressive regimes have received from consolidated democracies.   Second, the chapter reviews the work of a number of prestigious International Relations’ scholars on the Arab Spring and reviews how leading International Relations journals of different theoretical leaning have treated the Arab Spring in the period 2011-15. The chapter illustrates how similar topics are treated in each theory in rather inverted ways. While neo-realists do not focus on the Arab Spring itself but rather on the possible threats that derive from it and their consequences, critical theorists reverse the analysis and locate it in the economic causes and implications of armed interventions as well as the excessive processes of vigilance and control. If liberals engage in a debate on the defence of the R2P doctrine, constructivists are more aware of the contradictory effects of democratic diffusion and cognitive uncertainty. Finally, the chapter concludes on the prospects and need within International Relations for further theoretical development on the Arab Spring.

Scholars have increasingly focused on the role of gender in international relations and in particular the role of gender in conflict and peacebuilding. Chapter six explores the important role gender plays in the context of the Northern Ireland peace process. IR scholars have increasingly recognized that women experience insecurity differently from men and participate in conflict resolution and peacebuilding differently as well. This chapter links the latest research on gender and security with developments in Northern Ireland, contending that the peace process has privileged the masculine, marginalizing the role of women. The chapter’s findings highlight the historic small role women played as elected representatives in Northern Ireland. When women attempted to assert themselves as actors forming the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC) in 1996, their failure to become part of the formal political process meant that a decade later the organization dissolved, a victim of the continuing male dominated structures that shape post-Agreement Northern Ireland.

This chapter examines the argument that human rights are Western in terms of International Relations (IR) theory. IR theory provides three basic models for analysing international relations: realism, pluralism, and globalism. The operation of human rights discourse could be considered Western in the sense that in the terms of the realist model, political and civil rights are emphasized at the expense of social, cultural, and economic rights; in terms of the pluralist model, the role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) which promote these rights is accorded importance; and in terms of the global model, attempt is made to maximize the scope for the operation of Western capitalism.

Chapter 1 provides a reading of how the subject of International Relations has been theorized in relation to human bodies and violence. The chapter argues that bodies have been problematically understood in liberal humanist terms as individual, material objects, preexisting politics, that house sovereign subjects. Furthermore, contemporary practices of violence are constituted not only in reference to sovereign power, as most IR theory assumes, but biopower as well. Biopolitical practices of violence call our attention to the question of how bodies are constituted as objects and what the parameters and possibilities for embodied subjectivity are. Compared to International Relations, feminist theory has been much more attentive to questions of embodied subjectivity related to power and violence. Engaging with feminist theorists, the chapter provides a conceptualization of a body politics that understands bodies as produced by, and productive of, social and political relations.

The concluding chapter summarizes the major points of the chapters and identify some common themes that emerge from the analysis provided by the contributors. This chapter explains how International Relations theory is furthered by the attempt to apply the case study method to explore the causal mechanisms associated with different theories. While the Northern Ireland case confounds the theoretical predictions of multi-lateral governance and the literature on decommissioning, certain theoretical approaches, especially those emanating from constructivism, proved useful in explaining the arrival of a peace settlement in Northern Ireland. Constructivism has the advantage of allowing the researcher to focus on the unique characteristics of the actors involved and the ideas and ideologies they devised and employed to pursue their interests, including peace.