ABSTRACT
Is Onuf then a Master in the Making? It is difficult to judge because up until now only very few scholars have embraced constructivism as an approach to the study of world politics; and even fewer Onuf s version of it. The fact that almost no one has been tempted by constructivism a la Onuf, however, has more to do with the unnecessary obscurity of his argument (especially as launched in WOOM) than with the overall soundness of constructivism as an approach to the study of social transformation. In several other parts of the social sciences-especially comparative politics, public administration, law and sociology-constructivism (or some version of it) has already for decades proved extremely fruitful. The mere idea that students of social phenomena should strive to incorporate both agential and structural properties into their analysis and consequently that actors are both enabled and constrained by historical paths and institutions is an almost trivial point invoked by sociologists more than a hundred years ago. In spite of its triviality, however, it seems that IR scholars in particular have paid very little attention to this insight. For this reason alone constructivism in its different versions deserves a place-not just a small corner-in the study of world politics.
