ABSTRACT
Is cumulative knowledge and progress possible in the study and practice of international relations? How can one develop social knowledge about the world, given that claims about the nature of the world and observation of the world are both socially constructed activities? While this chapter focuses on international institutions, it may be taken as an illustration of much wider issues in the field of International Relations (IR) and social science more generally. We focus in general on progress in the study of IR and the possible consequences for practices of international relations. Students of IR remain divided on the implications of international insti-
tutions for the understanding of contemporary international relations. This is largely due, we believe, to the unremitting assertion made in the IR literature that the incommensurate ontological and epistemological positions that different IR scholars bring to their studies and interpretations of international institutions fundamentally impair the ability to develop cumulative knowledge about international institutions and their role in international relations. In this chapter we present a pragmatic constructivist approach to the study of international institutions, and of IR more generally. This approach is capable of generating useful mid-level truths without falling prey to the unresolvable philosophical, ontological and epistemological debates, posed in unnecessarily dichotomous terms, that currently bedevil the study of international relations. One such dichotomy opposes ideographic to nomothetic studies – unnecessarily. Another claims that there is a deep fissure between explanation and understanding – an overstated caricature of systematic research. Still another rather crudely opposes positivism to reflectivism. We believe that pragmatic constructivism provides a means of sidestepping
these procrustean constraints on inquiry. Pragmatic constructivism is derived from constructivism in IR and the pragmatist tradition in the philosophy of science. In this chapter we hope to combine the two, by presenting constructivist ontology and the reasons that such ontology requires a distinctive epistemology for generating a more useful explanation of contemporary international relations. Pragmatic constructivism features a consensus theory of truth: we argue that it is possible for followers of any and all approaches
involved in developing knowledge about a particular puzzle to agree if and when they can also agree that they accept a given solution to be ‘true’, if only temporarily and for a restricted purpose. We also argue that the means for ascertaining such a ‘truth’ – truth tests – can also become consensual by means of sustained dialogue among theorists and practitioners. Ontologically and epistemologically, the ‘truth’ ascertained by these operations is neither as absolute as positivists and scientific realists demand, nor as biased, subject to someone’s domination, or hegemonic as relativists proclaim (Bernstein 1983; Giddens 1984; Braybrooke 1987; Hollis and Smith 1990; Sosa and Tooley 1993; Martin and McIntyre 1994; Searle 1995). We do not aspire to a grand synthesis, but we do believe that a pragmatic engagement may contribute to stronger and more confident knowledge claims within delimited domains of mid-level theorizing. Pragmatic constructivism seeks to locate ideas about politics and the world within the social conditions from which they emerge, or are constructed. Our approach goes beyond an epistemological claim to develop a procedure by which social science consensus may lead to changes in the ‘real world’. Pragmatic constructivists treat institutions as venues in which analysts and
policy-makers interact. While institutions are, at times, merely the artefacts of strategically and rationally motivated state actors, as realists and neoliberal institutionalists contend, they are viewed differently by pragmatic constructivists. Institutions may be wilful actors on their own, at times, but are also the location in which reflexive new practices and policies develop. We believe that pragmatic constructivism provides the explanatory lens through which this may be understood, as well as the methodological guidelines by which such a process may be pursued. We begin with a brief overview of constructivism in IR. For convenience,
we begin with its ontology. We then locate the study of institutions within these ontological parameters, and proceed to develop epistemological propositions about the fruitful study of institutions within IR. We conclude with a reflexive effort to bring pragmatic constructivism to bear on the project of human betterment. Our constructivism, while critical of positivism and the IR approaches
depending on it, nevertheless seeks to facilitate dialogue among holders of currently competing theories. Hence we develop a three-part map of analytical discourse in order to ‘place’ our approach in it. This map aims at representing the three ideational domains that are fundamental to the understanding and operation of politics, as well as their interaction. Having specified our version of agent-driven constructivism, we then
examine how various rival ontological traditions have treated international institutions, contrasting agent-driven approaches with those that stress structure instead. We then show why neither a positivist epistemology nor a framework that seeks to mimic stylized research in the natural sciences serves well for studying international institutions if agent-mediated change is to be featured.
