ABSTRACT
International identity appears simultaneously impossible and ineluctable as a source of international order. On the one (theoretical) hand, its socially constructed nature implies that international identity breaks down during unsettled times-like international crisesand so it is logically impossible to contend that identity could impose order upon disorder. Identity, that is, could not engender stable expectations and behaviors among states in contexts where they are otherwise absent (Chapter 2). And yet, on the other (empirical) hand, it appears that identity must be a source of international order. Against the foil of the historical puzzle of sustained nonviolent order among the Western allies during the Suez Crisis, it appears that there is no explanation for that outcome that does not depend on identity. Indeed, the traditional power-politics and common-interest accounts both invoke Anglo-American we-ness identity to absorb the slack in their explanations of that event (Chapter 3). What, then, should be made of this theoretical and empirical disjuncture? The answer I pursue is that something is amiss with the constructivist theoretical rendering of identity; something which has led to misapprehension of how identities function during unsettled times. By reconceptualizing identity along postconstructivist lines, it is possible to reconcile the empirical and theoretical disjuncture in a way that makes sense of the international identityinternational order connection.
