ABSTRACT
Constructivism, a term first elaborated by Nicholas Onuf in his groundbreaking book World of Our Making in 1989, is a broad theoretical approach to the study of International Relations that has been applied to a range of issues, from political economy (Blyth 2002) to international organization (Ruggie 1999: 41-130, Barnett and Finnemore 2004) and security (Katzenstein 1996b, Weldes et al. 1999). Despite attention to security issues, however, the extent to which constructivists have developed a theory of international security is limited. This distinguishes constructivists from critical theorists (with their conception of security defined as a commitment to emancipation) and realists (whose theory of world politics as a whole orients around a concern with achieving security in an inherently dangerous world) (see Chapters 7 and 2 this volume). A popular view among realists is that constructivism has generally eschewed a focus on the power politics of security and focused instead on the development of benign norms for managing interstate competition and institutionalizing broader forms of political community (see Mearsheimer 1994/95).
