ABSTRACT

International relations (IR) were the result of social interactions and patterns of sociability. According to Ted Hopf, several main features could broadly define constructivism. First, actors and structures in the international system are mutually constituted “through the media of norms and practices” as “in the absence of norms, exercises of power, or actions, would be devoid of meaning.” Second, practices are fundamental to understanding international relations due to their “capacity to reproduce the intersubjective meanings that constitute social structures and actors alike.” Relationships between actors in the international system evolve over time as results of historical processes of interaction. Post structuralism brought to IR alternative approaches and theories to the study of world politics, with a particular focus, as mentioned earlier, on the connection between identity and foreign policy. The problems identified by Jan Selby could potentially be applied to other social theorists and philosophers whose work has been applied to IR by specific ‘schools of thought.’.