I want to bring it back to the blog post I did prior to the beginning
of Module two and expressing my frustration with the readings in failing to
determine a route for detecting the ideas of an actor(s). In a conflict, for
example, it seems like it would be much easier to draw a line between the interests
of two actors but once you start to look at it from the constructivist point of
view that becomes much more complicated.
I’m in agreement with the argument of Laffey and Weldes that
interests are ultimately the products of ideas. So, if it’s the case that it’s
easier to determine interests than ideas, but interests are products of ideas we’re
once again faced with the question: how can we accurately determine ideas OR
interests?
I struggled with this through the activity for Module two. I
landed on my topic when I started to think about the global economic crisis of
2008 and started looking at the actors that instigated various financial
reforms to initiate recovery. The G20 was seen as a major deliberator on the
reforms. The effectiveness of the G20 is almost constantly under criticism. I think a rationalist might say, like the UN,
they are an inefficient and unnecessary body. But looking further and further into
their enhanced role in 2008, facing a global economic meltdown, they were so
essential in instilling ideas of cooperation among the most important
international players. The economic interests were clear and maybe the ideas
they were instilling did not originate with the G20, but they did reiterate them,
and the world did notice. In this case we can’t track the origination of the
ideas but perhaps we can demonstrate where the ideas took root and I think that
is an important step to determining where an idea might begin to develop into
interest.
"how can we accurately determine ideas OR interests?"
ReplyDeleteThis is the thing that haunts me about constructivist theory. It is so reasonable in its explanation of how it all works, far more compelling than realism or even institutionalism, but in my mind it renders a lot of predictive modeling almost impossible. Knowing what others are thinking, what they believe, is near impossible to gauge. Knowing their interests is slightly easier because even states telegraph their interests whether they want to or not. I 100% agree that it is by far a better explanatory theory for human behavior and state actors, but applying it is quite difficult because the "why" of things is so hard to determine.