โAnd state identities. Nor did these approaches provide insight into what might come next. The USA
Was enjoying a unipolar moment, but the distribution of power could not determine whether the USA would aspire to become a global hegemon or would aspire to become a global hegemon or would opt to work through multilateral institutions order to further their interest. But the end of the cold war triggered national debates over what were those interests, which were frequently tied to a a consideration of their national identity, which presupposed, as well, a discussion of critical similarities and differences. In other words, states were actively debating their national identity who are we and where do we belong? In order to determine their interests and the desired required, so it seemed, a Constructivist sensibility . Finally. The end of the cold war clipped the prominence of traditional security themes, neo-realism’s comparative advantage, and raised the importance of non-traditional security issues, transnationalism, human rights, and other subjects that seemingly played to Constructivism’s strengths.
Constructivists also convinced the mainstream in the United State that they were committed to ‘sciencd’. At first, many mainstream scholars dismissively labelled Constuctivism as anti-science and post-modern a remarkable claim that only high-lighted how quaint was their conception of social science, which cleaved to positivism and the search for timeless laws. In response, Constructivists worked to widen and modernize the concept of social science, to show careful attention to the logic of inquiry, and to insist that their differences were around what the worls was made of and not necessarily whether they tested their claims in relationship to the evidence and alternative explanations. Over time the relations between Constructivists and the mainstream improved. The same could not be said for relations between Constructivists and those subscribing to post-structural and critical theory.
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After all, Constructivists had gained considerable intellectual in sights from these-approaches, but they were insisting that they held the ‘middle’ ground because they could address these crucial issues within social science (Adler 2000).
Constructivism’s reliance on sociological theory also furthered its rise to respectability. The debates in international relations regarding how to conceptualize the relationship between state and the international relations system had been played (And replayed) in sociology for over a century as it debated how to conceptualize the relationship between the individualism and claimed that sociology was concerned with how culture shaped the meanings and significance that actors gave to their actions. George Herbert Mead enconraged sociologists with neo realists and neo liberals; the latter could not easily dismiss the ideas of such eminent sociologists that had influenced various areas of political science.
Ultimately, Constructivism’s success derived from its ability to further empirical analysis in matters of central concern to neo-realism and neo-liberal Institutionalism.The epistemic community literature carefully explored how expert groupings help states discover their interest and ways for producing durable cooperation. Peter Katzentein’s The Culture of National Security (1996)challenged standard neo-realist claims in a series of critical areas including alliance patterns, military intervention,arms racing, Great Power transformation and demonstrated how identity and norms shape state interests and must be incorporated to generate superior explanations. By the end of the 1990s Constructivism was no longer a fad or something attributed to the wild innocence of youth but instead was an increasingly accepted form of analysis