Alexander Wendt
From Freepedia
Alexander Wendt is one of the core social constructivist scholars in the field of international relations. He was born in 1958, and received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Minnesota in 1989, studying under Raymond "Bud" Duvall. Wendt and scholars such as Peter Katzenstein, Michael Barnett, Kathryn Sikkink, John Ruggie, Martha Finnemore, Nicholas Onuf, and others have, within a relatively short period of time, established constructivism as one of the major schools of thought in the field (alongside with realism, liberalism, and institutionalism).
Wendt's most influential work to date is Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1999), which builds on and goes beyond his 1992 article "Anarchy Is What States Make Of It". In Social Theory of International Politics Wendt argues that the realist notion of anarchy constitutes a Hobbesian "culture" which drives states to competition, but that this culture is only one among three possible forms that the ordering principle of the international system may take, the other two cultures being Lockean and Kantian. Wendt argues that while Hobbesian anarchy (competition) may be an accurate description of the world during certain periods, there is no logical necessity to this state of affairs. Cooperation, much as competition, is a "social fact" that acquires causal significance by virtue of the fact that states in the international systems abide by the rules of conduct they have constructed collectively. In other words, his work takes aim at the stasis that is found in the realist conception of world politics, and offers a philosophical look at the possibility of structural transformation in world politics, namely, the migration from a particular (Hobbesian) logic of anarchy to another. In the same work, which draws on social theory and the philosophy of (social) science, he also elaborates on "state centrism" (the notion that states ought to be the units of study within international relations), the nature of structural/systemic theorizing, the relationship between agents and structures, the causal force of norms and ideas, etc.
Wendt taught at Yale University from 1989 to 1997, at Dartmouth College from 1997 to 1999, at the University of Chicago from 1999 to 2004, and is now the Ralph D. Mershon Professor of International Security at the Ohio State University. He is currently working on two projects, arguing why a world state is inevitable, and investigating the possible implications of quantum mechanics for social science.
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Works by Wendt
Book
- Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
Articles in major International Relations journals
- "The agent-structure problem in international relations theory" International Organization, vol. 41, no. 3, 1987.
- "Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics" International Organization, vol. 46, no. 2, 1992.
- "Collective identity formation and the international state" American Political Science Review, vol. 88, no. 2, 1994.
- "Constructing international politics" International Security, vol. 20, no. 1, 1995.
- "Driving with the rearview mirror: on the rational science of institutional design" International Organization, vol. 55, no. 4, 2001.
- "Why a world state is inevitable," European Journal of International Relations, vol. 9, no. 4, 2003.
- "The state as person in international theory," Review of International Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, 2004.
Major Areas of Interest
External links
