2. A critique of the sectarian policing of rigid IR theory boundaries

It has been more than 20 years since IR scholars engaged in the third debate.Footnote ³ Throughout the third debate, as Waever (quoted in Sterling-Folker, Reference Sterling-Folker and Sterling-Folker2006: 11–12) points out, ‘there is no such repressive tolerance’ between rationalists and reflectivists, because ‘they rather see each other as harmful, at times almost “evil”, definitely not as a legitimate parallel enterprise’. In practice, far from seeing a rapprochement between rationalists and reflectivists, the debate has been heated and bitter. For IR scholars, two decades after the third debate, it might be high time to call into question the third debate, particularly its residue and tenability, by contemplating the following questions. Are rationalism and reflectivism conflicting (or totally different) across the board? In excluding or ignoring each other, have IR scholars in different camps tended to essentialize the differences between rationalism and reflectivism in order to secure their own theoretical turf? Associated with this, what and where is the actual fault line between constructivism and poststructuralism? In addition, what have we gained by regarding the discipline in the rigidly dualistic way (rationalism vs. reflectivism or conventional constructivism vs. critical constructivism) and what have we lost? Is there anything to be reaped from its continued dualistic configuration? More bluntly, is it worth carrying on? If so, what are we expected to gain for the future development of IR? Moreover, is the continuation of the sectarian policing of rigid IR theory boundaries something that the discipline desires? Does this sectarian policing possibly prevent us from considering other ways of understanding the discipline and world politics? (Waever, Reference Waever, Smith, Booth and Zalewski1996; Patomaki and Wight, Reference Patomaki and Wight2000; Wight, Reference Wight and Carlsnaes2002)

Indeed, understanding the various IR debates is important in the sense that ‘the meanings generated by IR theories are conditioned by the specific context in which theoretical debates take shape’ (Steans and Pettiford, Reference Steans, Pettiford and Diez2005: 18). As Waever (Reference Waever, Dunne, Kurki and Smith2007: 300) mentions, the various IR debates (in particular, great debates) have been part of the disciplinary structure of IR, so we should take these seriously in order ‘to understand how our discipline works, and there are power and privileges at stake’. Besides, for the sake of pedagogical simplicity and analytical clarity, it is useful to map out various IR theories in a dualistic way, such as the third debate. Although grasping the various debates in IR, two decades after the third debate, it is now worth problematizing the ongoing sectarian policing of rigid IR theory boundaries, based largely on the third debate's meta-theoretical dualistic form. This is not to say that meta-theoretical discussions are meaningless or unimportant. Rather, this article would call into question the ongoing, turf-securing-purpose way of debating, which has displayed lack of respect toward meta-theoretically different theoretical camps.

As Wight (Reference Wight and Carlsnaes2002: 40) points out, ‘The idea that one has to declare which tribe one belongs to and that this determines one's ontological frame of reference, epistemology and appropriate methods seems a bizarre way for a discipline to proceed.’ In a similar vein, Hay (Reference Hay2002: 7) also maintains that ‘The conventional “textbook” presentation of the discipline's principal fault-lines has never been much more than a crude and distorted cliché – a one-dimensional depiction of a multi-dimensional reality’ in political studies. Furthermore, when understanding the IR discipline as a ‘structured field permeated by relations of power’ or ‘institution’ (Waever, Reference Waever, Dunne, Kurki and Smith2007: 289–90), the sectarian dualism has ‘implications for professional status and job security’ (Klotz and Lynch, Reference Klotz and Lynch2007: 108–9) in the IR scholarship. Partly for this reason, the dualistic framing of IR theory remains tenacious, showing that ‘we [IR scholars] benefit more from arguing with each other than from learning with each other’ (Klotz and Lynch, Reference Klotz and Lynch2007: 108–9; also see Klotz, Reference Klotz, Klotz and Prakash2009; Sil and Katzenstein, Reference Sil and Katzenstein2010). The sectarian policing of IR theory boundaries thus deters a constructive conversation among IR scholars in different camps, obstructs us from shedding light on substantive issues of importance, and misrepresents the multi-dimensional issues. More importantly, it secures the domination of the existing mapping of IR theory while possibly keeping us from having a new perspective of understanding the discipline and world politics.

Hence, this article would argue that, depending on particular research questions, it is possible (even more productive at times) to denaturalize an ossified artefact of the dualistic representation of the discipline in substantive empirical research. As is often the case, in practice, an IR scholar has various academic interests regarding the particular social, global phenomenon s/he wants to examine. There can thus be different sets of research questions (which are, at times, multi-paradigmatic) in his/her mind. Perhaps some questions can be well addressed by rationalism, while others by reflectivism. It seems not at all strange and wrong for IR researchers to deal with different puzzles using different theoretical frameworks, as scholars of comparative politics often do (Finnemore and Sikkink, Reference Finnemore and Sikkink2001: 404). IR researchers can choose the theoretical lens and methods that are best suited to their particular research questions, without avowedly positioning themselves in one specific ‘ism’. In this pragmatic sense, we can assume that the relationship between rationalism and reflectivism need not necessarily be conflictual all the time, unlike the case of the third debate. Rather, the relationship can be complementary, in the sense that both camps enrich and deepen our understanding of world politics in different ways. In other words, making sense of different (even contentious) theories can provide us with the various ways of observing and grasping the multiple aspects of any particular event or topic.

In fact, no single perspective can fully render all of the intricacy of contemporary world politics, and, at some point, all approaches become ambiguous and short of full coherence: ‘Each perspective . . . illuminates slightly different elements of a given topic or event and hence patterns relevant to it, revealing aspects and details that were not obvious or particularly pertinent in other perspectives’ (Sterling-Folker, Reference Sterling-Folker and Sterling-Folker2006: 5). Considering all of the discussion, based on various research questions that one might have in mind, in substantive empirical research, one would be better off with a various array of competing ideas rather than a single orthodox theoretical perspective in order to explain the different puzzles relating to his/her specific case. There is no need to either overturn the rationalist mainstream or marginalise the reflectivist alternatives (see Crotty, Reference Crotty1998; Waever, Reference Waever1998; Walt, Reference Walt1998; Smith, Reference Smith2000a, Reference Smith, Dunne, Kurki and Smith2007; Barnett, Reference Barnett, Baylis, Smith and Owens2005; Rengger and Thirkell-White, Reference Rengger and Thirkell-White2007; Sil and Katzenstein, Reference Sil and Katzenstein2010).

While this article has argued for denaturalising the ossified artefact of the dualistic representation of the discipline in substantive empirical research, this is not to say that meta-theoretical debates are unimportant or useless. Simply, being critical of the ongoing sectarian policing of rigid IR theory boundaries between rationalism (or conventional constructivism) and reflectivism (or critical constructivism), we need to tone down the over-heated meta-theoretical debates and concentrate more directly on substantive empirical research through different theoretical perspectives to capture various aspects of complex international relations today.Footnote ⁴ This strategic suggestion for IR empirical research would prefer to ‘leave the ‘bigger [epistemological and ontological] question’ to the world's philosophers’ (Steans and Pettiford, Reference Steans, Pettiford and Diez2005: 13; also see Klotz and Lynch, Reference Klotz and Lynch2007: 105–11; Klotz, Reference Klotz, Klotz and Prakash2009).

3. Constructivism(s) and the unflagging third debate in IR

In IR, although Nicholas Onuf introduced the term ‘constructivism’ in 1989 in his book entitled World of Our Making, to many within the discipline, it is connected with Alexander Wendt (Reference Wendt1999). In spite of aiming to build a structural account of international politics, Wendt (Reference Wendt1999: 1–44) explicitly pits himself against Kenneth Waltz's (Reference Waltz1979) neorealism (structural realism). For neorealists, in international politics, the structure of the system is anarchic, and thus the nature of the international system is a conflictual Hobbesian world which is immutable and a priori. Under this circumstance, state action should be based on the notion of self-help for national survival. Therefore, what matters for the state is not its function but its capability: states show similar foreign policy behaviour regardless of their different internal systems and contrasting ideologies. In this respect, ‘we need not be concerned with the functions performed by the units [states], since they are functionally alike’ (Keohane, Reference Keohane and Keohane1986: 14). This neorealist indifference to the state in itself reveals that, although states can change their actions, it is impossible for them to change themselves – their identities and interests. More to the point, the state's identity and interests are unproblematic in the anarchical international system, and are exogenously pre-given on the basis of a power-maximising rationality. The above neorealist understanding of the relationship between states (agents) and the international system (structure) eventually leaves aside an investigation of the changes in states’ identities and interests (Nye, Reference Nye1988).

For Wendt (Reference Wendt1992: 294–5), on the contrary, anarchy is necessarily neither conflictual nor cooperative: ‘There is no “logic” of anarchy apart from the practices that create and instantiate one structure of identities and interests rather than another; structure has no existence or causal powers apart from process . . . Anarchy is what states make of it.’ It is in this context that the interaction between states determines the nature of anarchy in international politics, and self-help is an institution as produced and sustained by states’ interaction. The international system, formed by the states’ practices, is thus ‘a social rather than material phenomenon’ (Wendt, Reference Wendt1999: 20). Moreover, a state's actions do rely on its identity and interests, which are changeable. Unlike neorealism (more broadly, rationalism), therefore, identities and interests are neither fixed nor pre-given. Here, against a materialist feature of neorealism, stressing the importance of idealism in IR, it is argued that socially shared knowledge, such as the manifested norms, is important, in that the knowledge not only regulates the state's actions but also constructs its character which serves as a basis for the national interests (Jepperson et al., Reference Jepperson, Wendt, Katzenstein and Katzenstein1996; Wendt, Reference Wendt1999). It is thus crucial for constructivists to examine how identities and interests, which in turn shape the national policies, are constructed – how they are shaped or generated in and through specific international interactions defining the character of the international system (Weber, Reference Weber2005: 61–8).

By introducing his version of constructivism in IR, which is often called conventional or modernist or sociological constructivism, Wendt (Reference Wendt1999, 394) locates his theoretical position within the framework of the third debate between rationalism/positivism and reflectivism/post-positivism: ‘My objective . . . is to build a bridge between these two traditions . . . on behalf of the liberal claim that international institutions can transform state identities and interests.’ Towards this end, Wendt (Reference Wendt1995: 72, Reference Wendt1999: 1) argues that ‘constructivists are structuralists’ who are more concerned with idealism than materialism in international politics – ‘structural idealism’. Viewed in this way, the world we want to know is social and not static, which shows an idealist ontology. Wendt (Reference Wendt1999: 75) adds that ‘Constructivists . . . are modernists who fully endorse the scientific project of falsifying theories against evidence’, which reveals a positivist epistemology. The above meta-theoretical positioning gives birth to the significant facet of Wendt's constructivism vis-à-vis other theoretical paradigms. In his Social Theory of International Politics, drawing on scientific realism, Wendt (Reference Wendt1999, 38–40) states that ontologically he is post-positivist, while epistemologically he is positivist. Based on this meta-theoretical position, Wendt (Reference Wendt1999, 40) believes that his constructivism can provide the ‘via media’ (the middle path) between rationalism and reflectivism, in the context of the third debate in IR. This is really the gist of the debate, in the light of contemporary IR, between Wendt and the radical reflectivists (see Campbell, Reference Campbell1998: 207–27; Reference Campbell2001; Alker, Reference Alker2000; Doty, Reference Doty2000; Keohane, Reference Keohane2000; Krasner, Reference Krasner2000; Smith, Reference Smith2000b; Wendt, Reference Wendt2000). This article will not repeat the details of this contemporary via media debate here. Yet, it is worth briefly examining the different views on the typology of constructivism prior to offering a novel way of using both conventional and critical constructivisms in security studies empirical research on state identity formation in the following section.

In philosophy and sociology, constructivism is an incredibly broad movement covering various schools of thought, such as hermeneutics, Weberian interpretative sociology, variants of Marxism, symbolic interactionism, structuration theory, communication theory, postmodernism, and so on (Palan, Reference Palan2000; Adler, Reference Adler and Carlsnaes2002; Delanty, Reference Delanty2005). Owing to this diverse background and different related meta-theoretical positions, ‘There are many constructivists, and thus perhaps many constructivisms’ in IR (Price and Reus-Smit, Reference Price, Reus-Smit and Linklater2000: 1811). Due partly to this reason, IR scholars are still having trouble pinning down what constructivism is. It is thus common in IR to talk explicitly or implicitly about what sort of constructivism is indicated in one's academic work, when engaging with constructivist empirical research on a substantive issue. According to Zehfuss (Reference Zehfuss2002: 7), ‘The definitional problem of what constructivism is is not just a matter of whether different scholars claiming the constructivist label are engaged in the same project, of how diverse the constructivist camp is.’

Here, the controversial point is whether we should treat postmodernism (more specifically, poststructuralism) as a variant of constructivism or not. Katzenstein et al. (Reference Katzenstein, Keohane and Krasner1998: 678) argue that we should sharply differentiate constructivism from postmodernism in IR, since ‘postmodernism falls clearly outside of the social science enterprise, and in international relations research it risks becoming self-referential and disengaged from the world’. Postmodernists are thus seen as being unwilling to openly join in a scholarly debate with rationalists. (Kubalkova et al., Reference Kubalkova, Onuf, Kowert, Kubalkova, Onuf and Kowert1998b: 20) also argue that, although constructivism takes issue with rationalism, it rejects ‘neither empirical research nor social science as such’ (also see Farrell, Reference Farrell2002; Fierke, Reference Fierke, Dunne, Kurki and Smith2007). Rather, constructivism ‘rejects the “slash-and-burn” extremism of some post-modern thinkers who leave nothing behind them, nowhere to stand, nothing even for themselves to say’ (Kubalkova et al., Reference Kubalkova, Onuf, Kowert, Kubalkova, Onuf and Kowert1998b: 20). By understanding the term ‘constructivism’ in a broad sense, conversely, some include postmodernism under the banner of constructivism in IR (Ruggie, Reference Ruggie1998: 35–6; Hobson, Reference Hobson2000: 145–73; Pettman, Reference Pettman and Kubalkova2001: 256–7; Adler, Reference Adler and Carlsnaes2002: 97–8). Some postmodernists, on the other hand, reject any inclusion into the constructivist domain, because constructivism is likely to serve as a mere complement to empiricist social science, such as rationalism, at the expense of the postmodernist critical ethos (Doty, Reference Doty1996: 163–71; Campbell, Reference Campbell1998: 218–21, Reference Campbell2001; Smith, Reference Smith and Kubalkova2001; Zehfuss, Reference Zehfuss2002: 8).

Again, this discussion on the inclusion and exclusion of postmodernism into the constructivist domain possibly leads us to engage in an occupying-a-position problem within the positivist(rationalist)/post-positivist (reflectivist) spectrum, like the via media debate. In the typology of constructivism, if one includes postmodernism as one of the constructivist variants, in effect, constructivism appears to bridge the gap between rationalism and reflectivism. Or, in categorising constructivism, it is possible to position critically informed theory on constructivist turf, ruling out postmodernism. This could also be seen as bridging the gap between rationalism and reflectivism. In this respect, the meta-theoretical discussion on how to define and classify constructivism could be seen as a hybrid of the via media debate. Partly for this reason, it seems that some constructivists and postmodernists still attempt to draw the boundaries of their own theoretical domain by means of either the inclusion or exclusion of radical reflectivism. Related to this, furthermore, it could be argued that the via media debate, including different (at times conflicting) views on constructivism's theoretical scope, is considered as a derivative of the third debate in the broad context of IR theory. In fact, it is difficult to think of the via media debate without its starting ground; that is, the third debate between rationalism and reflectivism. The via media debate has thus become embedded in the continuum of the third debate. Considering this, despite the recent success of conventional constructivism in IR, it would seem that the third debate has yet to finish; rather, it exists in derivative forms. As argued earlier, in not ignoring but slightly toning down the meta-theoretical contention operating at the abstract level, the following section presents a pragmatic application of the two different (or conflicting) constructivisms to capturing a more complete picture of state identity formation in substantive empirical research of constructivist security studies.

4. Constructivst approaches to internal and external faces of state identity in security studies

In an effort to promote conceptual clarity of state identity in constructivist security studies, this section begins by looking at Wendt's discussion on state identity. In his theoretical work, Social Theory of International Politics, Wendt (Reference Wendt1999: 224–33) discusses four sorts of identity: (1) corporate; (2) type; (3) role; and (4) collective. Of these kinds of identity, attention should be directed to corporate and collective identitiesFootnote ⁵ in order to grasp the tension between conventional and critical constructivists and then display the practical necessity of both constructivisms in substantive empirical research to understand different aspects of state identity formation.

According to Wendt (Reference Wendt1999: 224–5), corporate (or in the case of individuals, personal) identities ‘are constituted by the self-organizing, homeostatic structures that make actors distinct entities . . . states are actors with certain essential properties. This identity always possesses a material base; for example, people and land for states. More importantly, corporate identity as a purposive actor's identity has an awareness and memory of Self as a distinct site of thought and activity. In this sense, members of a state have joint narratives of themselves as a corporate agent, and, to that extent, corporate identity takes the collective identity of individuals as fact. The formation of the state's corporate identity is more internal than external, which is often bound up with constructing nationalism aimed at consolidating internal cohesion. Hence, the state as a ‘group Self’ is capable of group-level cognition (Wendt, Reference Wendt1999: 215, 225). In a similar vein, Kowert (Reference Kowert1998/9: 4, 7) uses the term ‘internal identity’ which is defined as ‘the cohesion or uniformity of the nation-state's parts and, in particular, the way such cohesion manifests itself in loyalty to the nation-state’, in comparison with the term ‘external identity’ which is ‘somehow distinct from other nation-states, with different interests, purposes, preferences, and so on’.

By imputing anthropomorphic properties, like desires, beliefs, and intentionality, onto the state, the above understanding of corporate identity can allow conventional constructivists to take the ontology of states for granted in international relations: ‘states are ontologically prior to the states system, [and the] state is pre-social relative to other states in the same way that the human body is pre-social’ (Wendt, Reference Wendt1999: 198). This indicates that, in conventional constructivism, the state as an intentional actor is essentialized, and the corporate identity is understood as the foundational identity which is ‘a site or platform for other identities’ (Wendt, Reference Wendt1999: 195, 197–8, 201, 225). In the same sense, the sociological thrust of The Culture of National Security's (Katzenstein ed., Reference Katzenstein and Katzenstein1996) argument is based on the ontological idea that ‘nation-state actors are somehow contextless or ultimately “real”’ (Jepperson et al., Reference Jepperson, Wendt, Katzenstein and Katzenstein1996: 71). Indeed, for conventional constructivists as well as rationalists, since corporate identity refers to the internal coherence of the nation-state, taking it for granted creates ‘a permissive condition for international relations (both the academic discipline and its subject matter)’ (Kowert, Reference Kowert1998/9: 7). However, against IR rationalism, which is based on the thick essentialism regarding a state's ontology, conventional constructivism strips down the state, arguing that many of the properties often assumed to be inherent to states (such as power-seeking, egoism, the meaning of power, the terms of sovereignty, and so on) are, in fact, contingent, shaped by the international system (Wendt, Reference Wendt1999: 198, 245). Overall, regarding state identity, conventional constructivists defend a minimalist vision of foundational (or essentialist) theory.

Compared with conventional constructivists, in seeking a deeper understanding of state identity, critical constructivists see the state as open and malleable, and have a non-essentialist view of its subjectivity. For critical constructivists, the state cannot exist of its own accord, for it has no ontological foundation apart from the many discursive practices of self/other and inclusion/exclusion that bring it into being. As Weber (Reference Weber1998: 78) argues, the sovereign state ‘is the “ontological effect of practices which are performatively enacted” . . . “sovereign nation-states are not pre-given subjects but subjects in process”’. In the parallel non-essentialist sense, Campbell (Reference Campbell1998: 12) also argues that ‘states are never finished as entities . . . states are (and have to be) always in a process of becoming’. As a consequence, in Benedict Anderson's (Reference Anderson1991) terms, the nation-state is ‘imagined’ in the sense that it does not exist as a complete and exclusive unity, given that it is unceasingly performing: ‘there is statecraft, but there is no completed state’ (Devetak, Reference Devetak, Burchill, Linklater, Devetak, Donnelly, Paterson, Reus-Smit and True2005: 181). What emerges here is the key ontological difference (or tension) between the conventional and critical constructivists: ‘whether we want to take the constitution and nature of agency seriously . . . or whether we are happy in the final instance to merely posit the importance of certain agents’ (Campbell, Reference Campbell1998: 220). Conventional and critical constructivists thus frame their initial concern – state identity – in crucially different ways (either essential/foundational or non-essential/non-foundational), and it leads them to adhere to different protocols of inquiry.

Based on the above critical constructivist stance, Smith (Reference Smith and Kubalkova2001: 50–1) argues that, as states are ‘pre-social’ and ontologically pregiven in the Social Theory of International Politics, ‘Wendt's account of the foreign policy behavior of states leaves no room for domestic factors’. It thus seems that, in Wendt's constructivism, states’ identities and interests are produced and altered through social interactions with one other in the international system, rather than as a consequence of occasions in their foreign policy decision-making processes. As for Wendt's conceptualization of state identity, Zehfuss (Reference Zehfuss2001: 335, 337) also argues that ‘Wendt's anthropomorphic concept of the state cannot cope with identities which are unstable in themselves’ and that Wendt overlooks ‘the constitution of states as subjects in the first place’, which means corporate identity remains unspecified in conventional constructivism. Zehfuss (Reference Zehfuss2001: 316) goes on to argue that Wendt's rendering of relatively stable and circumscribable state identities ‘threatens to undermine the possibility of his constructivism’. From a critical constructivist point of view, conventional constructivism is unable to interrogate the practices that constitute the states themselves, particularly the state's corporate identity which is intrinsically linked to the question of what is to be secured.

In the Social Theory of International Politics, however, in focusing on not capturing the formation of state identity but building a social theory of the international system,Footnote ⁶ the corporate identity issue is largely toned down: ‘systems of states presuppose states, and so if we want to analyze the structure of those systems we cannot “de-center” their elements all the way down’ (Wendt, Reference Wendt1999: 244). Due to this author's academic interest in the international system, Wendt (Reference Wendt1999: 229) pays special attention to collective identity which ‘is a distinct combination of role and type identities, one with the causal power to induce actors to define the welfare of the Other as part of that of the Self, to be “altruistic.” Altruistic actors may still be rational, but the basis on which they calculate their interests in the group or “team.”’ Related to this, Wendt's typology of an enemy (Hobbesian), rival (Lockean), and friend (Kantian) implies different collective identities among plural states. As such, the collective identity is the crucial intersubjective meanings that construct the social fabric of international relations – the international system. This identity emerges from social interaction, and perhaps changes through social interactions in international relations. States interacting in a given culture come to know one another as the bearers of certain identities. When this happens, the states appeal to certain prospects as to each other's actions based on these identities (Kahl, Reference Kahl1998/9: 104–5; Wendt, Reference Wendt1999: 318–43). In this respect, the collective identity subsumes reputation; having a particular collective identity is enough to supply the necessary diagnostic information about a state's likely behaviour with reference to other states in particular cultures (Hopf, Reference Hopf1998: 190). In short, focusing on social interactions among states, the construction of collective identity is more external than internal, which often tells us to what extent the state feels secure or insecure in relation to other states in a certain international system. On this basis, conventional constructivism (more specifically, Wentian constructivism) is mainly concerned with environmental structures and their effects on agents (changes in the distribution of collective identity) in taking the state itself (corporate identity) for granted in international relations. Using conventional constructivism, therefore, we can make sense of the construction of collective identity among states which has been ignored in rationalism.Footnote ⁷

Yet, it is important here to remember that, as Hopf (Reference Hopf1998: 195) points out, ‘Any state identity in world politics is partly the product of the social practices that constitute that identity at home. In this way, identity politics at home constrain and enable state identity, interests and actions abroad.’ To have a more complete picture of state identity formation affecting the policy, therefore, attention should be paid to ‘not only how [the] state's identities are produced in interactions with other states, but also how its identities are being producing in interaction with its own society and the many identities and discourses that constitute that society’ (Hopf, Reference Hopf2002, 294). Given this valid point, the conventional constructivists ‘focus on the construction of identity through norms only covers half the relations that produce identity’ (Callahan, Reference Callahan2004: xxiii). Even Wendt (Reference Wendt1999: 11) admits that the international system bears on state identity formation ‘in ways that are consequential for thinking about international politics, but state identities are also heavily influenced by domestic factors that I do not address’. It is thus necessary to consider not only collective identity but also corporate identity to grasp how national interests are defined and what security policies they lead to. Regarding the construction of state identity at home, Wendt (Reference Wendt1999: 275–6) hints that David Campbell's Writing Security (Reference Campbell1998) offers ‘the hypothesis that discourses of danger produce the distinction between “internal” and “external” in the first place and as such constitute the whole idea of a distinct group on which the state's corporate identity depends’. Indeed, critical constructivism, which often interrogates the performative practices that produce the state itself through the exclusion of difference, is a useful tool for examining the construction of corporate identity which sets broad limits on security-policy choices.Footnote ⁸

Considering all this discussion, to explore state identity formation at home and abroad, we can be better off with both conventional and critical constructivisms in substantive empirical research of constructivist security studies: collective identity is well addressed by conventional constructivism, while corporate identity by critical constructivism. Whether one adopts either constructivism depends not on selecting the correct way to comprehend the nation-state, but rather on research purpose and question. In this sense, this article would argue for adopting a pragmatic way of using conventional and critical constructivism in empirical case studies addressing state identity formation in constructivist security studies. The pragmatic approach is that, without being immersed heavily in the meta-theoretical strife between the two seemingly conflicting constructivist camps, both constructivisms should be treated as different analytical frameworks for capturing different (internal and/or external) faces of a state's identity and relating practices with which a scholar wants to deal in his/her research: scholars in security studies can use conventional constructivism in looking at the external construction of state identity, while using critical constructivism in examining the internal one. Hence, in focusing more on the analysis of state identity formation rather than on constructivist meta-theoretical concerns per se, researchers can use both, albeit meta-theoretically conflicting, constructivisms to look at the state's collective as well as corporate identities in their substantive empirical research on national security. This is not to say that this article strives for the synthesis of conventional constructivism with critical constructivism; rather, these two contending constructivist analytical perspectives should be applied and judged, as far as possible, in their own fashion in empirical research, according to research questions as to internal and/or external faces of state identity. In so doing, we do not feel as obliged to maintain a consistent theoretical identity or ensure that our empirical researches secure a particular ‘camp’ in the IR theory trench wars. We do not need to determine which constructivism is superior, but rather assess which analytical tools and concepts are useful for understanding particular aspects of a certain case. Therefore, in examining state identity formation, the pragmatic usage of different constructivisms will not be undertaken in a competitive spirit, and they just differ in the questions they enquire about state identity in international politics and the methods adopted. Used in this pragmatic way, both constructivisms offer various, significant accounts of a state's identity formation that informs its interests and policies towards itself and other countries. It also allows us to grasp important aspects of the state's identity politics associated with its national security, projecting policy-relevant implications for security and diplomacy in international politics.

About the author

Young Chul Cho is Associate Professor at the Jindal School of International Affairs of O.P. Jindal Global University, India. His current research interests are International Relations (IR) theory, IR scholarship, interpretative research methods, critical geopolitics, and international politics of the Asia-Pacific. His articles have been published in International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, East Asia: An International Quarterly, Korea Observer, The Korean Journal of International Relations, and so on. Earlier drafts of this article were delivered at the 2009 Annual Conference of Korean Political Science Association and at the 2011 Winter Conference of Civil Politics Association at Kyung Hee University. The author of this article thanks William A. Callahan, Jung-Hyun Shin, Hyun Kim, Sang Joon Kim, Hee-Tak Koh, Chun Hee Yang, Goo Lee, and anonymous reviewers of JJPS for their critical, constructive comments and warm support.