Given the inroads that constructivism has made into international relations theorizing in general, it is not surprising that international political economy (IPE) scholars would increasingly incorporate it into their work. This incorporation is central to Social Construction and the Logic of Money, which attempts to blend rationalist and constructivist methodologies in order to explain when nation-states decide to provide leadership in international economics and how they go about doing so. Constructivism is not as central to Governing the World's Money, which brings together some of the best-known scholars in IPE today in order to discuss how international monetary relations may be effectively managed, yet even here there is a growing awareness of the socially constructed aspects of IPE.

J. Samuel Barkin's analysis begins with the observation that while a rationalist would claim there is an inherent logic to international monetary exchange, a constructivist would argue that “the international political economy is a social construct, and is thus historically specific” (p. 10). Barkin attempts to bring these two positions together by accepting “that political and economic structures and behaviors are historically contingent, but also that given certain of these contingencies there are objective logics that can help us to understand the operation of both structures and behaviors” (p. 23). The particular logic in which he is interested is the logic of money, which he equates with the logic of international financial predominance. He argues that when the ratio of a country's holdings in long-term international stock investment surpasses half of the total stock of such investments, that country will have achieved financial predominance and be motivated to provide international monetary leadership (pp. 28–29). This logic of money “tells us whether or not a country can, and is likely to want to, be a leader” (p. 26). It cannot tell us how a leader will choose to lead, however, and for that we need the logic of social constructivism, which involves “looking at the social structures underlying the making of leadership policies domestically” (p. 27). Hence, the logic that produces international economic leadership is the “framework,” and to understand it we need a rationalist methodology, but to understand the particular policies that are hung on that framework, and the international monetary systems that result, we need a constructivist methodology (p. 41).

Barkin goes on to apply this argument to three cases in which infrastructural public goods were provided to varying degrees: the “ad hoc” leadership of the Dutch in the early 1600s; the “comprehensive” leadership of Great Britain from the middle of the 1800s to 1914; and the “multilateral” and “institutionalized” leadership of the United States after World War II. In each case, he explores the domestic constituents who demanded leadership and the particulars of domestic politics that led to the type of leadership supplied. A fourth case, the interwar years and the Great Depression, underscores his premise that no leadership is forthcoming in the absence of a nation-state with more than half the systemic total in foreign investment holdings. Yet the chapter is written as if his argument expected leadership to have been provided, and in fact, it is clear that Barkin subscribes to Charles Kindleberger's argument that in conditions of anarchy, only leadership can provide the public goods necessary for stable and efficient international economic interactions (pp. 17–22).

One immediate question provoked by Barkin's interesting attempt to combine rationalism and constructivism is whether it will satisfy proponents of either perspective. For a number of reasons, I suspect that rationalists will find it more convincing than constructivists. Of course, there are many different types of constructivists, and Barkin's self-description as “thin constructivism” that accepts the scientific assumption that there is “a clear distinction between researcher and data” (p. 9) is consistent with some forms of constructivism in the IR main-stream. John Odell's contribution to the volume edited by David Andrews, C. Randall Henning, and Louis Pauly strikes a similar note, suggesting to constructivists that “there is no inherent reason why shared beliefs or intentions could not be conceived theoretically and studied empirically as properties of individuals as well as of groups, within a neo-positivist epistemology” (p. 189). Odell's chapter would be a good companion piece to Barkin's book in this regard.

“Thick” constructivists will be less satisfied with Barkin's attempt at a compromise, however, because it is the logic of money, not the logic of social construction, that is the dominant logic in his analysis. While he acknowledges that “money is thus not an objective phenomenon: it is a social category the full content of which can only be understood in historical context,” still he agrees with economists that “there is something inherent in the nature of money that makes monetary systems behave in a certain way” (p. 25). This produces a constructivism that is only important on rationalist terms. The logic of money determines that leadership will be provided under the right empirical conditions, but there is just enough wiggle room left for differences in the form leadership will take. Constructivism is then employed to explain those differences, but ultimately they are still deviations from an assumed norm of leadership in the provision of infrastructural public goods. So, for example, the British attachment to the sterling is an example of “contextually specific historical quirks” (p. 38), Dutch economic leadership is shaped “by the quirks of the system of government” (p. 65), the failure to provide leadership results “from the peculiarities of the individual domestic political cultures and processes” (p. 94), and variety in policy outputs are due to “the peculiarities of the domestic political structures” (p. 159).

Far from being central to an understanding of how international monetary leadership is constructed, then, the logic of social constructivism is employed to explain why there is deviation from the logic of money. As Barkin puts it, “the logic of international economic leadership is one of functions fulfilled by policy, rather than one of specific policies” (p. 158). Of course, this is what makes the Andrews, Henning, and Pauly volume interesting in comparison, since it is about the logic of money, too. Yet according to the editors, “the questions of how to govern supranational monetary areas effectively, and how to render such governance authoritative, remain open” (p. 5). The result is different interpretations regarding what sort of governance the logic of money demands, which significantly undercuts any rationalist claim that there is an “objective” logic of money that should be privileged over the logic of social constructivism.

Some of the contributors to the volume concur with Barkin that a powerful nation-state is needed to provide commercial infrastructural public goods. For example, Robert Gilpin argues that governance structures such as international regimes are established to obtain the interests of powerful nation-states, and Miles Kahler argues that the institutional design of monetary governance reflects a combination of functional monetary demand and the particulars of domestic politics. Other authors in the volume, such as Thomas Willett and Odell, also argue that “functions are fulfilled by policy”: however, it is not the logic of leadership that dominates the functions in their analyses but the logic of organizations and human decision making instead. The chapters by Peter Kenen and Pier Carlo Padoan examine currency union as a particular form of monetary governance that does not require leadership to be realized. Nor is leadership important to Kathleen McNamara's study, which examines the role that warfare plays in the development of a consolidated monetary union. Finally, there are those chapters in which not only is leadership irrelevant to international monetary governance structures but so too are nation-states. Eric Helleiner's examination of the deterritorialization of money indicates that many states are simply abandoning any attempt at regulating their currencies, while Philip Cerney argues that increasingly markets are serving “as quasi-political governance structures in their own right” (p. 198).

The point here is not to argue that Barkin is wrong about leadership while these other interpretations of the logic of money are right. It is, instead, to underscore that if different interpretations exist, if there is no single rationalist logic to money, then why give it causal billing over the social construction of the logic itself? Why does each instance of international economic leadership or governance, and lack thereof, not change the meaning of the logic of money? In fact, the Andrews, Henning, and Pauly volume can be reread as an example of how the logic of money is being socially constructed among the current generation of IPE scholars. After all, monetary governance has been of interest to IPE scholars for some time, but the framing of the questions and the answers given have been very different at various points in time. As the editors themselves note, for example, “optimum currency area theory was the analytical workhorse of economic approaches to monetary integration,” and they were “fairly realistic in the 1960s but hardly appropriate to the 1980s and 1990s” (p. 6). This implies that the logic of money is not simply an empirical, objective fact but also a socially constructed category that must be rethought and hence reconstructed. Indeed, if what was considered “common sense” in 1960 is now inappropriate, what is left of the rationalist claim to the objective logic of money?

The temptation to cut into the issue of “governance” or “leadership” with a “logic of money,” and leave the rest to constructivism, is entirely understandable from a traditional IPE perspective. But how governance, leadership, and the logic of money become the “common sense” categories of the international economic system, and hence the scholars who study it, is also the stuff of constructivism. In the final analysis, however, whether this initial marriage between rationalism and constructivism in IPE will satisfy proponents of either is probably less important than the attempt itself, which reflects a willingness on the part of IPE scholars to explore and incorporate new ideas and different perspectives. Barkin's book does so by pushing us to consider the relationship between rationalism and constructivism in IPE more fully, while the Andrews, Henning, and Pauly volume asks us to consider equally plausible but alternative perspectives on monetary governance. At a time in the discipline of IR when debates are more dismissive than heated, such willingness to take seriously alternative theoretical positions and to honestly engage them is much needed.