Constructivism
Constructivism is a framework for sociological and psychological study of politics.
Contents
Description
Constructivism is defined by a resistance to assuming incentive and preference structures. As a result, most constructivist study is determining what individuals, organizations, states, etc., do want. This is generally done following sociological or psychological methodology. Instrumentalism is similar but assumes that social constructs are a means to some end, effectively inserting a rationality assumption.
The term 'constructivism' is largely only used in the context of international relations, where it is in stark contrast to realism, institutionalism, and rationalism.
In political science, it can be difficult to disambiguate constructivism from comparative politics. Consider it as such: did the presence of an ethnic cleavage make some structure inevitable in a manner that is inherently transferable to other countries? Or did ethnic conflict cause people to develop norms around structures that are uniquely localized?
Reading Notes
How "Us" and "Them" Relates to Voting Behavior--Social Structure, Social Identities, and Electoral Choice; Simon Bornschier, Silja Häusermann, Delia Zollinger, and Céline Colombo; 2021
Level Up! Priming Hobbyist Political Identity Using Survey Experiment, Pavel Bačovský, 2024
The Future Is History: Restorative Nationalism and Conflict in Post-Napoleonic Europe; Lars-Erik Cederman, Yannick I. Pengl, Luc Girardin, and Carl Müller-Crepon; 2024
Rally Around the Winner--A Two-Wave Panel Survey on the Impact of the U.S. Election on Foreign Policy Stances, Eyal Rubinson and Gal Bitton-Alayof, 2025
Venturing Beyond the Vote: Routes to Feeling Represented through Unelected Representation; Andrea Vik, Pieter de Wilde, Oliver Treib, and Lene Aarøe; 2025
Far-right against green: the re-emergence of geographically defined voting patterns and the new environment cleavage in Western Europe; Daphne Halikiopoulou, Christos Vrakopoulos, and Christoph Arndt; 2026