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Liberal-Idealism: A Constructivist Critique

Author(s): Brent J. Steele
Source: International Studies Review, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Spring, 2007), pp. 23-52
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The International Studies Association
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International Studies Review (2007) 9, 23-52

Liberal-Idealism: A Constructivist Critique1

BRENT J. STEELE
Department of Political Science, University of Kansas

Recently, scholars have connected US constructivism to liberal-idealism.

International relations theorists have branded US constructivists as
"liberal theorists" for three notable reasons: (1) realists apply an "ideal-
ist" tag on constructivism so that it can efficiently be dismissed as a form
of theoretical naivete, (2) rational choice empiricists are motivated with
amending constructivist assumptions to make them viable for quantita-
tive analysis; and (3) certain constructivist scholars have attempted to
build bridges with rationalist scholarship, especially on epistemological
terms, and this "bridge-building" has opened a door for a liberal-con-
structivist synergy. This essay demonstrates how constructivism can, and
must, be distinguished from liberalism. It uses the recent Iraq War to
illustrate three constructivist critiques of an important liberal theory:
democratic peace "theory." The three critiques are (1) ontological-
liberal democratic peace researchers' focus on events leads to an
incomplete understanding of processes, structures, and agency; (2)
epistemological-unlike constructivism, liberal democratic peace re-
search fails to acknowledge the contamination of subject and object or
that state agents use theory to inform their actions; thus the traditionally
positivist emphasis on outcomes instead of processes makes for faulty
conclusions; and (3) normative-liberalism's radical celebration of the
individual desocializes states thereby inhibiting, in structurationist
terms, the reflexive monitoring of actions. The essay concludes with
some general theoretical statements about democratic peace's future as a
paradigm for research.

There have always been limits to the level of human misery and deprivation that
the many can suffer to reify a liberal paradise for the few.

Rodney Bruce Hall, National Collective Identity (1999:29)

The Much-Needed Constructivist Distinction from Liberal-Idealism

Several scholars have recently asserted that constructivism, notably the "US" ver-
sion, echoes many liberal-idealist understandings of state cooperation. They posit
that constructivism, although focused on how "intersubjective norms affect defin-
itions of interest ... [is also] liberal-idealist, in the sense that these norms are ac-
cepted largely uncritically as good ones" (Barkin 2003:335). Instead of focusing on

1An earlier version of this essay was presented at the 2005 annual meeting of the International Studies As-

sociation in Honolulu. Special thanks to Jon Carlson for his thorough comments as a discussant of this presentation
and to Michael Struett and Jon Acuff for their detailed questions on the presentation. The author would like to
especially thank Jack Amoureux, Rodney Bruce Hall, and Jeremy Youde for their comments on this essay at various
stages in its development as well as the editors and anonymous reviewers of this journal.

2007 International Studies Review.

Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA02 l 48, USA, and 9600Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK.
24 Liberal-Idealism: A Constructivist Critique

the differences between constructivism and liberalism, these theorists have sought
instead to separate constructivism into "liberal" and "realist" branches. Such a
division would be unfortunate if true, given that constructivist researchers have
come to the fore in international relations (IR) theory precisely because of their
ability to establish an independent, stand-alone approach to the study of world
politics.
Is constructivism really that similar to liberalism? Can we distinguish between the
two approaches? In answering these questions, this essay has two central objectives.
The first is to propose why constructivism is charged with being similar to liber-
alism. The second is to use the Iraq War to illustrate a constructivist critique
(a certain "type" at least) of the liberal-idealism in democratic peace theory, with
a focus upon the systemic argument of that particular research paradigm.
To distinguish between two loosely coherent approaches within IR is bound to
prove challenging, of course, and when doing so one is reminded of the parable of
the blind men and the elephant. 2 Therefore, this essay critically reviews liberal
theory by focusing on three noteworthy distinctions between liberal democratic
peace research and constructivism. Using the structurationist approach of Anthony
Giddens (1984, 1991), an approach that has also motivated several other construc-
tivist studies, this essay will focus, first, on how constructivism might problematize
the systemic democratic peace scholars' ontology, which views structure trumping
agency (using Giddens' view on the "duality of structure") and, second, on how the
positivist epistemology of a "value-free" science, wherein phenomena are observed
without affecting the objects of observation (contra Giddens' "double herme-
neutic")-which is assumed by democratic peace scholars-is also problematic.
Third, and finally, the essay will assert how liberal-idealism's desocialization of in-
dividuals has led to problematic "ends-justifying-means" outcomes, and how the
largely unqualified nature of many democratic peace predictions for the future are
echoed within the blind faith discourse the Bush Administration uses when jus-
tifying its Iraq policy.
This essay has three sections. First, the charges Jennifer Sterling-Folker (2000),
Samuel Barkin (2003), and others have made that constructivism, namely its US
variant, represents liberal-idealism are reviewed. The first section focuses on why
this is a valid claim and explains why three groups of IR scholars (namely, realists,
constructivist "bridge-builders," and liberal empiricists) support the linking of
constructivism with liberal-idealism. The second section argues that this view is
overstated and somewhat inaccurate because constructivists themselves eschew lib-
eral-idealism as having the potential to explain social life. The third section intro-
duces the author's particular constructivist contentions with liberalism on
ontological, epistemological, and normative grounds, motivated by the skeptical
view that certain constructivists take of evolutionary models of international politics.
In advance of these arguments, it should be noted that the author does not
believe that constructivism is "better" than liberalism but that each paradigm is
different philosophically and ontologically. No doubt certain scholars will voice quite
reasonable objections to what is written here and, in fact, it is hoped that such is the
case because the larger goal of this essay is to promote discourse over the issue of
subject-object contamination in the context of studying world politics, and thus
which perspectives most adequately understand such contamination. If anything, it
is the author's wish that those who read this article will recognize a tacit commit-
ment to pluralism in all its forms; indeed, democratic peace research as well as
liberalism will, and should, continue to hold a prominent position in a pluralist field
of IR.

2The author thanks Jon Carlson for his observation at the ISA panel, where these ideas were first presented, that
much work on liberalism parallels the blind men-elephant parable.
 BRENT J. STEELE 25

The stakes of this inquiry are important. On a purely pedagogical level, distin-
guishing (a certain) constructivism from liberalism benefits students of international
politics who wonder in their first encounters with both how the two are really "that
different." Many textbooks introducing students to the fields of IR and foreign
policy present "constructivism" as related to liberalism; in fact, some even go so far
as to claim constructivism is a form of idealism (see, for instance, Papp, Johnson,
and Endicott 2005: 18; Chittick 2006: chapter 1). Admittedly, the "constructivism"
developed in this essay will be markedly different from what many observers call
"Wendtian" constructivism. As Patrick Jackson and Daniel Nexon (2004) have
pointed out, there are "variants" of constructivism that can at any time share cer-
tain assumptions with realists and liberals because constructivism is not one pre-
dominantly uniform research "program" but, rather, a loose paradigm of related
interpretations.
Nevertheless, generalizations can be made. Most constructivist approaches as-
sume to varying degrees that the world is held together by social ideas and inter-
subjective understandings, which constitute, and are constituted by, social
identities-identities that can take many forms (self or collective). States are agents
that "are usually aware enough of their identities, singular and collective, to have an
interest in fostering" them (Onuf 1998:64). "Norms" are endogenous entities that
come into being through the practices and actions of states and, thus, are not
independent of social action and should not be understood as entities "bracketable"
outside human beings or states. Social construction occurs in the context of the
material world. States remain the most prominent (but not sole) actors through
which international society is realized. Materials are still important, but it is only
through the intersubjective understandings of agents that the materials of the
world become recognized as resources that can help in the attainment of goals
(Onuf 1998).
Therefore, the "type" of constructivism distinguished here from liberalism is
informed, as noted above, by Anthony Giddens' structuration theory. Like Wendt's
constructivism, it assumes that the world of international politics is created and
recreated by human beings capable of agency who use it to construct their own
structures in relation to their sense of self and collective identities. In the words of
Nicholas Onuf ( 1998:59), "people make society, and society makes people." But
unlike Wendt ( 1999), the perspective developed here allows for much greater
contagion between the scholarly pursuit of IR, on the one hand, and the practice of
IR, on the other. The Iraq War is the most recent, but by no means first (or,
probably, last), example of such spillover. Thus, contra Wendt, this view of con-
structivism envisions a "contamination" loop between subjects who study interna-
tional politics ~IR scholars) and the objects that they study (leaders, states, and
organizations). Such a vision leads to a different perspective regarding epistemol-
ogy, as Steve Smith (2002:77) has noted:

Wendt is fundamentally a positivist and a naturalist on questions of knowledge ...

the crucial distinction is that whereas Wendt ends up painting a world that seems
very similar to that painted by rationalists, the social worlds seen by [construc-
tivists] Onuf and Kratochwil are a very different kind of social world from that
seen by Wendt.

The main departure here from Wendt regards what Giddens (1984, 1991) has
called the "double hermeneutic" of social life: how in the social sciences subjects
and objects influence one another. This departure becomes important when, in the
third section below, the author's constructivist perspective is distinguished from

3 In this vein, see also Edward Kolodziej's (1992) critique of Stephen Walt's (1991) view of security studies.
26 Liberal-Idealism: A Constructivist Critique

systemic democratic peace scholarship, a form ofliberal-idealism, using the context

of the Iraq War for illustration.
This inquiry is important for a second reason: we should be concerned with how
the study of international politics affects its practice. Social theories and the empirical
studies they produce can develop into the epistemic philosophies that inform the
behavior of state agents. Sometimes these theories become more than that. Spe-
cifically, scholars should be troubled, but not surprised, to see world leaders using
their theories to explain state behavior and to justify the policies they (as world
leaders) institute. Regardless of whether IR scholars agree with what is discussed
below about constructivism and liberalism, they need to consider several facts re-
garding the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq: (l) the invasion was fought
under the false pretense that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and
connections to terrorism; (2) the Bush Administration justified its policy, in part, by
using the democratic peace proposition presented below; (3) members of Bush's
Administration have continued to use this proposition to justify the long-term pol-
icies of the United States, believing that its "democratic and peaceful" results are
absolute and that, until recently at least, US citizens have found this justification
credible; and, finally, (4) the current Iraq policy, which was supposed to promote
this "democratic peace," has, instead, alienated America from many established
democracies throughout the world and increased global disapproval of American
policies and its public.
As a constructivist, the present author finds both the liberal democratic peace
scholarship and the Bush Administration's policies problematic because the two
appear to be inextricably linked. This statement is not meant to blame liberal
democratic peace scholars for the tragedy of the Iraq War. Indeed, certain liberals,
like John Rawls (1999), have considered the implications of their theories for in-
ternational justice. Nor is this essay intended to speak for all constructivists. Al-
though this analysis extracts examples from three prominent constructivists who
find a variety of problems with liberalism, certain constructivists (and therefore a
"type" of constructivism) might be semideserving of a "liberal" moniker. That
stated, this essay challenges the positivist assumption so inherent in liberalism that
we can observe the social world independently, "measuring" and "predicting"
outcomes without at the same time affecting the processes that produce these out-
comes. The more researchers try to act like scientists in the traditional sense, col-
lecting and observing data and making predictions as if the objects of our study are
like the protons of the physicist, the more inaccurate our predictions are likely to be
and the more bewildered scholars will become when the "outcomes" do not accord
to their models.

Reviewing the Charges: Liberals in Sociologist's Clothing?

Several works have pointed out the connections between constructivism and lib-
eralism. Sterling-Folker (2000: 100, emphasis in original), for instance, makes the
argument that neoliberal institutionalism and constructivism share more than the
latter are willing to admit, and that:
not only do constructivists and neoliberal institutionalists rely on the same func-
tional-institutional logic to explain social change, they actually share the
same ontology so that neoliberal institutionalism is "rationalist" only to a point.
Ultimately constructivism makes explicit an assumed but unexplored step in sit-
uationally strategic liberal arguments, which accounts for the maintenance of co-
operation. Thus when the metatheoretical commitments made by constructivists
and neoliberal institutionalists are closely compared, one discovers that the epis-
temological and ontological differences disappear, and they turn out to be com-
plementary theories within the larger framework of liberal IR theory.
 BRENT J. STEELE 27

Sterling-Folker maintains that both constructivists and neoliberal institutionalists

derive their assumptions from neofunctionalism because both posit a story about
"functional institutional efficiency." Focusing on the tendency of certain construc-
tivists, notably Wendt, to assume pre-given collective interests that are exogenous to
social interaction, Sterling-Folker concludes that both constructivists and liberals
share a "process-based ontology."
It is true that certain constructivists and certain aspects of constructivism seem to
various degrees similar to liberals and liberal theory, respectively. She is right to
point out that Wendt's work does not fully accommodate interest formation given
that domestic social practices are either bracketed or only considered in the "initial
stage of institutional preference innovation" (Sterling-Folker 2000: 100). Wendt
(1999:33) himself admits that his "social theory" contains "much (that is) associated
with Liberalism: the possibility of progress, the importance of ideas, institutions,
and domestic politics." Sterling-Folker (2000) is also correct in arguing that func-
tional logic permeates the work of Wendt-even more correct now that Wendt
(2003) sees a "world state [as being] inevitable." Ann Florini's (1996) work on the
"evolution of norms" also assumes a functional logic, as does Martha Finnemore
and Kathryn Sikkink's (1998) work on "norm cascades." The processes proposed
by each of these constructivists imply linearity, inevitability, and an outcome
(cooperation) "predicted" by most liberal scholars.
Yet, much constructivist scholarship assumes that states are not only social actors;
rather, they are social actors capable of reflexively monitoring their actions. Thus,
actors must find legitimate social structures, a search that is hardly a linear or evo-
lutionary process. A major reason why constructivists have made inroads into the
field of IR is that they have distinguished their approach from liberals who ascribe a
uniform rationality to international actors (individuals, states, and international
organizations). As she would likely admit, Sterling-Folker (2000) is addressing a
certain type of constructivism (drawing heavily from Wendt) promoted by certain
constructivists. Many other constructivists, on the contrary, promote a view of agents
as purposive actors seeking out structures that give meaning to their action. The
process develops with no guarantees. As one recent critique (Drulak 2006: 143) of
Wendt's work noted, the constructivist focus on reflexivity and contingency means
that "reflexivity, which is often viewed as a positive move that improves the human
condition, does not have to be treated this way. Contingency works either way and
social innovations can be both good and bad." 4 Another critic of Wendt (Shannon
2005:582, emphasis added) has stated:

Constructivism's promise relates to the role of both agent and structure in ex-
plaining world politics. Structures constrain and shape actor identity and behav-
ior, while the possibility of free will permits structural change, not mere
reproduction.

Although both constructivists and liberals assume a process-based ontology, they

do not share the same process-based ontology (as demonstrated below). Unlike the
majority of constructivists, most liberals are at heart "traditional" positivists who
solely view outcomes to interpret actors' intentions; the constructivism identified
later seeks to uncover how the legitimacy of processes influences outcomes. Ster-
ling-Folker may rightly point out that both constructivists and liberals will, at times,
understand similar processes on the basis of pretty similar reasons (cooperation

4 For an example of where the identity commitments of a state have led to a normatively "suboptimal" outcome,

see Youde's (2005:430-431) study on the development of a counter-epistemic community regarding HIV in South
Africa. The creation of a new South African identity actually impeded the ability of that country to confront HIV/
AIDS, with Thado Mbeki "employ[ing] narratives of political resistance to white domination and its global order."
"The twin forces of history and identity have made the South African government reluctant to embrace public
health interventions for AIDS."
28 Liberal-Idealism: A Constructivist Critique

under anarchy because of a Lockean respect for absolute gains), but such affinity is
contingent upon what is being studied.
J. Samuel Barkin's (2003:334) recent "Realist-Constructivism" piece notes how
"an argument can be made that most current constructivist theorists working in the
United States are, in fact, liberal idealists." The macro-approach to this argument
makes the claim that constructivists try to show how norms and ideas "make the
world better," and, thus, the use of norms and intersubjective ideas that are in-
tended to show how mutual understandings can lead to cooperation. Because they
do this, Barkin claims, without using, or even at times acknowledging, the role of
power in the formation of these mutual understandings, constructivists are liberals
in sociologist's clothing.
Barkin (2003:335) advances his argument through two claims: (1) constructivists
tend to study issue areas compatible and uncritical of liberal-idealism, and (2) they
"use as philosophical touchstones theorists of a liberal-idealist bent." The issue
areas that constructivists have chosen to explore include human rights (Sikkink
1993; Klotz 1995; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999; Bur-
german 2001), security communities (Adler and Barnett 1998), and multilateralism
(Ruggie 1993). More important, it is not what these constructivists study, according
to Barkin (2003:335), but the uncritical way in which they study these issues:
"we can note a tendency to approach certain types of issues in a non-self-critical
fashion."

Discoursing on an "US" Idealist Constructivism

Why would those working within constructivist theory ever want to do research that
could be construed as liberal? This seems especially unlikely considering how hard
constructivists have worked to establish their theory as a stand-alone approach.
Barkin (2003:336, emphasis added) points out that "all of the constructivists discussed
above work in the United States; [so] it is probably both fairer and more accurate to
ascribe the liberal-idealist tendency only to US constructivism, not constructivism
more broadly." This statement by Barkin is plainly incorrect. Several of the con-
structivists he labels "liberals" do not work in the United States (for example,
Thomas Risse in Germany and Emmanuel Adler in Israel). Moreover, the two
constructivists he cites as accepting "power" in their arguments and, therefore, who
presumably make the liberal-idealist charge less than "universal" and less "US"
(Rodney Bruce Hall and Martha Finnemore), were both working in the United
States at the time his article was published. 5
We can identify three tendencies (beyond those noted by Barkin and Sterling-
Folker) that better account for why constructivists get tagged as liberal-idealists.
Two of these originate outside constructivist scholarship, and the third has been
generated by certain constructivists themselves. First is the practice by realists of
branding constructivists as "idealists." The more effectively realists promote this
talking-point, the more quickly they can dismiss constructivism as a viable ap-
proach. As Barkin (2003) notes, most realists take constructivism to task for its
promotion of an idealism that eschews considerations of power. As Cecilia Lynch
(1999:59) has observed, this is a familiar tactic of realist scholarship: "realist in-
ternational relations theory has created a narrative that uses the rhetorical device of
dichotomization to set itself up as the standard of prudent statecraft against the
utopianism of 'idealists.'" One can understand why Wendt (1999:33) tried to dis-
tance himself from liberalism for just this reason: "but ever since Carr's devastating

5 Hall moved from the University of Iowa to the University of Oxford in the fall of 2003; Finnemore remains at

George Washington University. Risse did, for a time, work in the United States at Cornell, Yale, Stanford, and the
University of Wyoming, but he has been at the Freie University in Berlin for several years now and worked at the
European University Institute in Italy prior to that.
 BRENT J. STEELE 29

cnuque 'Idealist' has functioned in IR primarily as an epithet for naivete and

utopianism, connotations which naturally I want to avoid." Before Wendt even
wrote this statement, realists had already attempted to present constructivism in
such terms. John Mearsheimer (1994-1995:39) conflated several forms of what he
considered "critical theory" (which included the work of constructivist Emmanuel
Adler) to assert that such theorists "hope to create a world in which all states
consider war to be an unacceptable practice" (see also the subsequent critique by
Wendt 1995).
It is important to note that the constructivists cited by Barkin used "liberal" issue
areas not necessarily to promote liberal practices nor to create a pacifist world, but
rather to show how these issues influence the behavior of states. The concern for
constructivists, to generalize from Oran Young's (2001:161, emphasis added) com-
ments on environmental ethics, was
not whether ethical principles ought to guide behavior in this realm or what the
content of such principles ought to be. Rather, the question to be addressed con-
cerns the roles that ethical standards or codes of conduct actually play in a social setting
considered by many to be antithetical to the operation of normative principles.

Rational choice empiricists also engage in a practice that helps account for the
apparent constructivist affinity with liberal-idealism. These scholars present con-
structivism in their own terms by extracting constructivist concepts for use in em-
pirical tests. They "bracket" processes constructivists find important, such as the co-
constitution of identities and interests, in order to predict outcomes through causal,
usually quantitative, analysis. They additionally consider norms to be "variables"
subject to causal analysis. Most of this work assumes that norms are exogenous
entities waiting to be "grasped" or acquired by states, thus combining the liberal
proclivity for positivism with a certain static understanding of the "shared mean-
ings" that constitute norms. For them, analyses are concerned solely with outcomes,
not processes. These scholars cleanse states of reflexivity so that proper models of
international relations can adequately capture through "rigorous measurement"
reified forms of international "behavior."
For example, Sara Mitchell (2002) proposes a "norm" of democracy as a de-
pendent outcome variable-third party settlement-that is influenced by
the proportion of democracies in the "system" of states. Mitchell (2002:758) pur-
sues this analysis because "it is rare to find a general theoretical model
in this (constructivist) literature (Finnemore and Sikkink's 1998 article is one ex-
ception)." Mitchell, thus, evaluates the propensity for nondemocracies to engage in
this behavior. Yet, it is interesting to note how Finnemore's (2003:57, emphasis
added) most recent statement on norms is markedly different from this view; she
asserts:
the importance of viewing norms not as individual "things" floating atomistically
in some international social space but rather as part of a highly structured social
context. It may make more sense to think of a fabric of interlocking and interwoven norms
rather than to think of individual norms concerning a specific issue, as current scholarship,
my own included, has been inclined to do. 6

Certain constructivists engage in a third practice that promotes a liberal-

constructivist synergy by "building bridges" with other approaches. For example,
in his book Wendt ( 1999) intended to make constructivism more amenable to other
approaches in the study of international politics, thereby linking his constructivism
to more positivist perspectives in the study ofIR. Wendt's (1999:40) purpose was to

6 It is important to note that Friedrich Kratochwil (1989), a pioneer in the study of norms in international politics,

sees norms not as causes but rather as reasons for action.

30 Liberal-Idealism: A Constructivist Critique

"find a 'via-media' through the Third Debate by reconciling what many take to be
incompatible ontological and epistemological positions." Other scholars, using
Wendt (and only Wendt) as their constructivist resource, have attempted to com-
bine constructivism with the liberal democratic peace proposition. In this vein,
Ewan Harrison (2004: 10) noted that "constructivism remains troubled by its failure
to generate empirical research." As such, this is an incorrect assertion, given that
scores of constructivist scholars have used "empirical" evidence to understand im-
portant processes in international politics (see, for example, Finnemore 1996, 2003;
Hall 1999, 2003; Crawford 2002; Klotz 2002; Lowenheim 2003). In fact, some of
the most compelling critiques of constructivism take it to task for being too ground-
ed in an empirical "reality":

it (constructivism) accepts as given a "reality" from which enquiry must start, a

"reality" which reasonable people would presumably be able to recognize. This is
both bewildering in the face of the lack of agreement on what this reality is ... and
problematic as positing such a "reality" naturalizes what is made (Zehfuss
2002:254).

What Harrison might mean is that constructivist insights have not yet been ad-
equately made amenable to quantitative empirical analysis. Thus, his purpose is to
synthesize the liberal peace proposition with constructivism to do just this. Har-
rison's (2004: 10) two critiques of constructivism are (1) that it has a nontelological
nature and (2) "that there are immense difficulties in operationalizing" Wendt's
constructivism. Not surprisingly, Harrison approvingly cites Wendt's (2003) article
on the inevitability of a world state as a "major extension of his framework" that
"acknowledges the potential significance ... of the idea that the international sys-
tem contains a background cultural selection logic that favors capitalist liberal de-
mocracy. "7 Regarding operationalizaton, Harrison proposes how states are
"socialized" into a democratic community, but he does so by understanding (via
Wendt) "socialization" as an outcome rather than as a process. Because outcomes of
socialization can be quantitatively measured, Harrison's move lays the groundwork
for a more "scientific" empirical analysis that both constructivists and liberals can
follow.

The Premature Hybrid

For Barkin (2003), the best "chance" for constructivism to compete in the field of
IR is to address the parallels between it and realism, thus positioning constructivism
in direct opposition to a more idealist form of constructivist theory. Not surpris-
ingly, Barkin's article became the subject of a Forum in a later issue of the same
journal (International Studies Review 2004:337-352), and even though all the par-
ticipants in the Forum disagreed with aspects of his argument (most notably his
proposed version ofrealist-constructivism-not the position in and of itself), hardly
any of the participants chose to take issue with Barkin's charges regarding con-
structivism and liberal-idealism. 8 In fact, it is this aspect of Barkin's essay that

7 0ne could almost construct an annotated bibliography that tracks the growing approval Wendt has received

from liberal scholars over time for his increased interest in teleology. Wade Huntley (1996:62, fn. 28), writing in
1996, seemed most concerned with the lack of teleology in Wendt's work up to that date: "given its apt recognition of
systemic constraint-'intersubjective constructions confront actors as obdurate social facts'-Wendt's approach
seems to leave history to twist in the winds of fortune." Reflecting upon such a comment, one could simply argue
that Wendt's 2003 article represents his ontology finally "catching up with" his earlier epistemology.
8A brief exception to the charge was made by Janice Bially-Mattern (2004:344), when she defended Adler and

Barnett ( 1998) from the liberal-idealist charge. "In short, Adler and Barnett deploy all of the analytic lenses
demanded by Barkin's realist constructivism: the dialectic between ideas and power, with a specific focus on the
carriers of norms and morality."
 BRENT J. STEELE 31

Patrick Jackson and Daniel Nexon (2004:338, emphasis added) seem to agree with
the most:
Barkin is right that mainstream US constructivism is liberal and idealist. In this
respect, his article serves as an important overarching statement of a position implicitly
taken by a growing number of constructivist scholars. 9

For purposes of differentiation, attempts to build a realist-<:onstructivist (or con-

structivist-realist) hybrid are to the present author unnecessary given that prom-
inent constructivists find fault with liberalism already. 10 Although there are many
more that could be included, three are noted here. Rodney Bruce Hall concludes
his 1999 book with a section titled "International Change and Hopeful Nondeter-
minism." Those who brand constructivists as "liberals" would do well to consider
this US scholar's (Hall 1999:298) challenges to liberalism:
Note that I employ the term historical "development" rather than, for example,
"evolution." I do so because it is not my purpose to argue that the international
system evolves as a progressive outgrowth of social interaction among a rational or
enlightened human species .... I do not argue that the Kantian "enlightenment
project" of global pacification and progress is in the process of being realized by
rational man-infinitely perfectible through the expansion of human reason.

Hall (1999:298) problematizes liberalism especially for how its economic variant
overtly constrains individuals and how counterforces may arise to challenge its
hegemony precisely because liberal propositions are more ideological than factual.
I have not argued, with the liberals, that human history has terminated in the
triumph of democracy and the blessings of the self-regulating market .... The
effect of the globalization of liberalism on human well-being has by no means
been uniformly sanguine. While resistance to this project has experienced dif-
ficulty in acquiring a globally coherent voice, it is by no means clear that the left
will not ultimately marshal an alternative program (see also Hall 2003).

Mlada Bukovansky (2002:6) is also skeptical of what she calls the liberal "faith" in
progress, stating in her study on the transformation of political "legitimacy" in
international politics that:
even for those who have faith in liberal progress, the Kantian perspective leaves
many questions about the trajectory of the development of democracy un-
answered .... Whatever faith one might have in progressive liberalism, and
however one might choose to define it, the specific contours of the changes in
legitimacy that were born in the mid-eighteenth century and came to dominate
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are not adequately described, let alone
fully explained, by the notion of liberal progress.

Martha Finnemore ( 1996: 148, emphasis added) concludes her book by admitting
some similarity between her version of constructivism and liberalism. But she also
presents a compelling constructivist critique of liberalism observing:
While the tension in liberalism between community and individuals, between
affect and self-interest, has enlivened and enriched liberal philosophy, it is not

9 See also Jackson and Nexon's (2004:339, emphasis added) further comment: "Within constructivism, as Barkin
rightly points out, such divisions (regarding the issue of power transcendence) are obscured because 'most construc-
tivist theorists working in the United States are, in fact, liberal idealists'."
1This is not to ignore the impressive recent work that has resurrected the critical voice of classical realism into

an approach that we might term "reflexive" or "willful" realism (Lang 2002; Lebow 2003; Williams 2005a, forth-
coming).
32 Liberal-Idealism: A Constructivist Critique

easily accommodated in liberal social science. The response of liberal social sci-
ence has been to jettison this concern in order to retain methodological indi-
vidualism, with the result that, from a constructivist perspective, the liberal
"society" specified by social scientists using the term is not very social. It is a
collection of individuals who interact and who may choose to form institutional
arrangements through which they can further their individual welfare. But the
glue ... of this society is very thin ... norms do not reconfigure properties of actors: they
have no prior ontological status.

It is important to note that, contra Barkin's assertion above, all three of these
scholars were working in the United States when they wrote these passages. Hall
and Finnemore especially find the tension of liberalism's radical celebration of the
Self somewhat troubling for international politics, a concern about liberalism that
even Wendt (1999) shares, asserting it as one of the impediments to the transition
from a Lockean to a Kantian culture of anarchy.
Liberalism "desocializes" the individual ... drawing a veil over his inherently
social qualities and treating them as purely individual possessions instead ... thus,
since that dependence could be threatened by being self-interested all the way
down, liberalism arguably contains a deep tension between its legitimation of self-
interest and the fact that individuals have an objective interest in the group which
makes their individuality possible (Hall 1999:294).

Which Liberalism?
To these constructivist critiques of liberalism should be added one more, using
structurationist social theory to distinguish a constructivist approach from liberal-
ism on ontological, epistemological, and normative grounds. The Iraq War will be
used as the context, as will be liberalism's democratic peace proposition.
To summarize, democratic peace is an empirical observation based upon nu-
merous, mostly quantitative, studies, which have demonstrated that (1) individual
democracies are less likely to go to war-the "monadic" form of this proposition,
and (2) democracies rarely, if ever, go to war with other democracies-the more
robust "dyadic" form of the proposition. Liberalism has provided the theoretical
explanation for this proposition. For Michael Doyle ( 1997: 10), the reason demo-
cratic states do not go to war with one another is due to mutual respect.
Since morally autonomous citizens hold rights to liberty, the states that demo-
cratically represent them have the right to exercise political independence. Mu-
tual respect for these rights then becomes the touchstone of international liberal
theory ... these conventions of mutual respect have formed a cooperative foun-
dation for relations among liberal democracies of a remarkably effective kind.

In this seminal article, Doyle presented two tables-one listing what he called the
"Pacific Union" of liberal democracies, in chronological order of when each was
established; the second, also chronological, all post-1815 international wars. These
two tables firmly established the nature of the many empirical studies produced
since Doyle's article was initially published in 1983, most being "quantitative studies
that attempt to show that the virtual absence of war between democracies is statis-
tically significant .... [while] controlling for the possible effects of geography, alli-
ances, and levels of development" (Brown, Lynn-Jones, and Miller 1997:xiii).11
"Given the prima facie plausibility of the assumption that major war imposes net
costs on society as a whole, it is not surprising that the prominent republican liberal
argument concerns the 'democratic peace'" (Moravcik 1997:531).

11 For a host of qualitative case studies, some of which prove to be problematic for the democratic peace, see

Elman (1997).
 BRENT J. STEELE 33

Democratic peace is, thus, a form of liberal-idealism and, as a result, shares two
general assumptions with liberal theory writ large. First, it assumes that democracy
is a universal good and, therefore, an end to be reached by "rational" states and it
employs a rather narrow view of legitimacy: "only republics ... can be 'legitimate'
in Kant's sense" (Huntley 1996:60). The only moral requirement, it seems, for
liberal democracies to be "legitimate" is that they are liberal democracies. Fur-
thermore, this legitimacy shields liberal democracies from outside interventions:
"Political legitimacy is thus seen as the proper foundation of state sovereignty. The
question of internal legitimacy must be resolved prior to the question of non-
intervention.... sovereignty is to be respected only when it is justly exercised"
(Teson 1992:92). The "only just international arrangement is an alliance of liberal
democracies" (Teson 1998: 107).
Second, because liberal theory sees universals (such as democracy) as applicable
to all states, it therefore assumes that state relationships can be studied "scientif-
ically." For Morgenthau (1946: 127), this "scientism believes that the same kind of
knowledge and of control holds true for the social world and the social sciences
simply emulate this model. The 'method of the single cause' is but a faithful copy of
the method of the physical sciences." Thus, just as in the natural sciences, the liberal
theorist assumes a subject-object separation as well as aspires to parsimonious ex-
planation. The overwhelming majority of democratic peace research assumes a
"scientific approach" akin to the fields of epidemiology and physics (Russett and
Oneal 2001; Russett 2005). 12
Because the constructivist quibble in the present essay is more with where dem-
ocratic peace scholarship is headed than where it has been, the current critique
focuses on the macrostudies that inquire about the relationship between democracy
and international conflict and, almost invariably, predict that we are heading to-
ward a time when a "Perpetual Peace" will be realized. Therefore, in what follows,
the emphasis will be on the particular assumptions underlying this body of liter-
ature to demonstrate how these empirical studies of the democratic peace are based
upon a "faith-based" approach to democracy in which (1) outcomes are privileged
over processes (ontology), (2) belief in the "value-free" approach to science pre-
vents these scholars from recognizing the implications of subject-object contam-
ination (epistemology), and (3) the inability to question the "rightness" and
"rationality" of democracy serves to assist in fashioning the policies of international
actors-namely the policies of the current US administration, which appears to
believe in the inevitability of a perpetual peace no matter how that peace is fash-
ioned (normative).

A Constructivist Challenge to Liberal-Idealism

There are three challenges that constructivists can pose to liberalism in general and
to democratic peace theory in particular. Moreover, they are especially relevant in
the context of the Iraq War. As noted earlier, this essay will use concepts from
Giddens' (1984, 1991) structuration theory to resource these challenges-specif-
ically what Giddens calls the "duality of structure" (ontology) and the "double
hermeneutic" (epistemology). Some general normative problems that arise with
liberalism's celebration of individual autonomy and the sense of "moral certitude"
it imbues in liberal citizens will be outlined as well as how these inhibit what
Giddens terms the "reflexive monitoring of action."
The connections with, and influences of, structuration theory upon constructiv-
ism are evident and well documented. Structuration theory heavily informs the

12 This is one of the benefits for liberal theorists such as Moravcik (1997:531) of the democratic peace as a form of

liberal theory: "republican liberalism nonetheless generates parsimonious predictions where conflictual policies
impose extremely high costs and risks on the majority."
34 Liberal-Idealism: A Constructivist Critique

work of prominent constructivists such as Onuf. 13 It is defined by Giddens

(1984:376) as "the structuring of social relations across time and space" and can be
placed between structuralism and functionalism (such that structure trumps agency),
on the one hand, and poststructuralism, on the other. 14 It is both an epistemological
and ontological outlook on social action. In the former realm, "the basic domain of
study of the social sciences ... is neither the experience of the individual actor nor
the existence of any form of societal totality, but social practices ordered across
space and time" (Giddens 1984:2). Regarding ontology, social activities are "not
brought into being by social actors but continually recreated by them via the very
means whereby they express themselves as actors" (Giddens 1984:2). These two
concepts make Giddensian sociology influential in all of the social sciences. As one
scholar (Tucker 1998:12) notes, "among the bevy of theoretical concepts (Giddens)
introduces, perhaps the notions of the duality of structure and the double herme-
neutic best illuminate his theoretical goals."
The duality of structure is an ontological contribution regarding the relationships
between agents and structures. Giddens (1984:374, emphasis added) defines this
concept as "structure as the medium and outcome of the conduct it recursively or-
ganizes; the structural properties of social systems do not exist outside of action but
are chronically implicated in its production and reproduction." The double herme-
neutic assumes that social science and social action are co-constituted, that is, the
objects who study and the subjects who are studied influence one another. Indeed,
the double hermeneutic is "the meaningful social world as constituted by lay actors
and the metalanguages invented by social scientists; there is constant 'slippage'
from one to the other involved in the practice of the social sciences" (Giddens
1984:374).

Duality of Structure: Against a Liberal Process-Based Ontology

Liberal-idealists commit what Nicholas Wheeler (2000:71) has called "the positivist
fallacy of assessing the legitimacy of a normative practice by studying overt behav-
ior." As a form of liberal-idealism, structural accounts of the democratic peace
assume a rather linear process that privileges the outcome of a state becoming
democratic. There are two related practices that define this type of democratic
peace scholarship-or "systemic democratic peace idealism." 15 First, it assesses
how "systemic properties," namely, the number of democracies in a system, 16 in-
fluence the behavior (conflict) and development of states.17 This is a view of struc-
ture seen solely as constraint. States in an international system are constrained from

13 Giddens has been called the father of social theory. Wendt (1999:32) calls his argument a "constructivist

approach to the international system" and says that it is "rooted more in social theory than in IR," although it
appears more in line with Roy Bhaskar's social theory than Giddens (see also Kessler 2006). Onuf(l989:esp. 52-66)
was the first to term his work "constructivist" and to discuss Giddens in detail. Maha Zehfuss (2002: chapters 2 and
4) has noted the influence of Giddens in the work of both scholars.
14This middle-ground placement of structurationism in social theory (writ large) is mirrored by constructivism's

"middle-ground" placement in IR theory (see Adler 1997).

15 Prominent democratic peace scholar James Lee Ray sees this turn in democratic peace research toward the

systemic effects of democracy as problematic. Ray (2003:236, fn. 102) cites the following studies as falling into this
systemic level of research: McLaughlin (1996), Gleditsch and Hegre (1997), Bueno de Mesquita et al. (1998),
Crescenzi and Enterline ( 1999), and Maoz (2001 ).
16 Examples of systemic variables abound in the literature on democracy and war. Consider the proportion of

democratic states in a system or a region as an independent variable used to predict the likelihood of conflict
(Crescenzi and Enterline 1999) and the "strength" of a democratic community assessed by combining the cap-
abilities of states with their regime scores used to predict the likelihood of democratic survival in the system (Kadera,
Crescenzi, and Shannon 2003).
17 Democratic peace theory exists on two "levels of analysis": the domestic and the systemic, sometimes at the

same time. This theory is viewed as a domestic proposition when it refers to the internal properties of states and as a
systemic proposition when it is used to explain the total amount of war in a system. This essay is most concerned with
the latter form of democratic peace research.
 BRENT]. STEELE 35

going to war or if they go to war are constrained in whom they go to war with for
both domestic institutional (consent of the people, constitutional constraints) and
normative (liberal republican fondness for peace) reasons. States also have a ra-
tional propensity to become democracies in such a system. Indeed, "nondemocratic
states are more likely to mimic behavior characteristic of democratic interaction,
such as the use of third parties in the dispute resolution process, as the proportion
of democratic states in the system grows" (Mitchell 2002:757). Bruce Russett and
John Oneal (2001:181) have stated:

the Kantian states, we believe, have influenced the evolution of both international
norms and institutions and, thereby, affected the probability that force will be
used even by states that are not Kantian .... increases in the Kantian influences at
the system level may constrain the behavior of dyads that are not particularly
democratic, interdependent, or involved in international organizations.

Second, through a particular reading of Kant, much of this research assumes that
war between democracies and nondemocracies, "mixed dyads," has been and con-
tinues to be a well-established (and legitimate) way to increase the number of
democracies in the "system." For example, Sarah Mitchell (2002:752, emphasis
added) has observed:

According to Kant, war is the strongest force creating more democracy in the
international system, pushing us ever closer to a federation of free states, one
pillar of perpetual peace. War justifies the development of democratic govern-
ments and creates a more widespread peace, which is essential to the survival and
improvement of republican constitutions.

Huntley's (1996:56, 61, emphasis added) study also centers on this "final stage" of
Kant's argument, which

focuses on the role of war (actual or threatened) as the "most essential" force for
peace .... the necessary elements of the rule of law-civil law, international law,
and the law of world citizenship-all emerge from human conflict, most espe-
cially war.... [Furthermore] conflict is the fountainhead of progress . ... conflict and
its incumbent violence impel and justify both the emergence of republican gov-
ernments and the greater peace necessary to their survival and improvement.

These are curious passages by Mitchell and Huntley when one considers alternative
readings of Kant's view of war and democracy:

the question of what these dictates prescribe in specific situations, however, is left
largely unanswered by Kant. Kant does not provide a laundry list of acceptable
action in particular contexts. Nevertheless, when the state is situated in a histor-
ical context in which it is both granted moral personhood and bound by duty, it
becomes evident that certain types of action broadly conceived are proscribed. In
particular, the concepts of moral duty and autonomy mean that legitimacy cannot
be granted to external intervention .... Intervention ... implies some element of
coercion that may be economic, political, or military. Kant is clear in warning
against such coercion, as well as against decision makers' attempts to cloak inter-
ventionist policies in moral garb (Lynch 1994:57, emphasis added).

The idea of a perpetual peace represents in its most radical terms the liberal-
idealist nature of democratic peace theory. The proposition also celebrates ration-
ality and determinism. As the number of democracies in a system increases, a
system constituted solely of democracy emerges, which inevitably means a system
totally devoid of war. In effect,
36 Liberal-Idealism: A Constructivist Critique

as their number grows, democracies seem able to influence international norms

and institutions, thereby affecting the probability that force will be used even by
states that are not themselves particularly democratic. This influence is also
plausible because democracies are more likely to win their wars than autocracies
are .... This systemic influence is another indirect benefit of democracy for peace
(Russett and Oneal 2001:275).

In such a world, becoming democratic as well as peace with other democracies are
rational behaviors. 18 For example, Zeev Maoz (2001: 173) has stated:

Democratic networks, once they rise beyond critical mass . . . tend to have a
spillover effect on the entire strategic network. This spillover effect is a result of
the tendency of states-just as in the evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma-to emulate
seemingly successful behavior.

A slightly more cautious conclusion is drawn by Kelly Kadera, Mark Crescenzi, and
Megan Shannon (2003:246):

both theory and political evidence demonstrate that the survival rate of new
democracies increases with the strength of the democratic community. This re-
inforcing mechanism suggests an eventual trend toward democratic governance.
While this trend is by no means fully determined, our model predicts that if it
occurs it will be accompanied by peace.

This constraining view of international structures makes systemic democratic

peace idealists sound much like Waltz (1979: 111) when he asserted that "structural
constraints cannot be wished away, although many fail to understand this." Essen-
tially, no agency exists in systemic studies of the democratic peace, although one
must also ponder just how much agency exists in the domestic realm of the dem-
ocratic peace; an assumption is made that democracies are hamstrung by their
institutional (or normative) domestic "traits" from going to war with other dem-
ocracies and, as noted above, that being a democracy makes a state a priori sus-
picious of nondemocratic states.
A contrary view is Giddens' duality of structure or the practice of agents pro-
ducing and reproducing actions that then develop into structures. Agents create
routines to cope with everyday life. These routines must answer the questions
agents have about themselves and those with whom they interact. Agents "reflex-
ively monitor" their actions to make sure the routines that structure these actions
answer the questions the agents have about themselves and their relationships with
others. Reflexivity defines the "purposive, or intentional, character of human be-
haviour" (Giddens 1984:376).
Structures are reproduced actions; they can be "rules and resources, or sets of
transformation relations, organized as properties of social systems" (Giddens
1984:25). Thus, structures must constrain and enable agents to perform actions (see
Dessler 1989; also Onuf 1989). When agents have a personal stake in "legitimate"
routines, social structures become deeply embedded. This happens because our
own sense of being, our self-identity, is linked to our routines. What we do implies
who we are and how we (and others) see ourselves. Structures are deemed "le-
gitimate" when they provide existential answers for self- and collective-identity.
At the level of interstate relations, the consistency and continuity of state action
depends upon the degree to which states feel enabled by international structures.
Thus, structurationist perspectives generate sets of questions about the motives
behind state behavior. Do structures provide answers to questions of self-identity? If

18Although most realists have argued that this liberal form of rationality is "dangerous," see the work of

Mearsheimer (1990) and Layne (1994).

 BRENT]. STEELE 37

a state's actions are constrained by these structures, will such participation provide
comfort and self-worth? Such agent perceptions will also be influenced by how a
state entered into that structure. Did it choose, for instance, to join the community
of free states of its own free will and as a capable agent? Did its members wish to
become democratic but not possess the capabilities to do so? Or, were its members
forced by an external party and the barrel of a gun to join this structure and the
community that reproduces it?
It is because structures are ideational (ideas about who an agent is and therefore
what an agent can do), practiced (must be reproduced by decisions to act through
time and space), and, most important, ideological (a subjective collection of ideas that
prescribes and proscribes proper sets of action) that states must see them as "le-
gitimate" and, thus, why the issue of structure is so important in constructivist work
and why constructivists focus upon process-based issues like legitimacy (see Kra-
tochwil 1989; Hurd 1999; Bukovansky 2002), social purpose (Ruggie 1982; Finne-
more 2003), moral prestige (Lowenheim 2003), and moral authority (Hall 1997).
This view of structure also informs constructivist work on narrative, as Cecilia
Lynch (1999:62) noted in her study on interwar peace groups:

Structural constraints matter ... but the narrative sees these "structures" as
themselves socially constructed .... this narrative rejects realism's dichotomiza-
tion and delineates the process by which the claims of government officials and
peace groups at times intersect, but more often vie, for normative legitimacy.

This approach to structure distinguishes constructivism from, on the one hand,

realists who see power fixed regardless of its legitimacy or how such power was
constituted and projected, and, on the other hand, liberals who reify a form of
rationality without ever problematizing it.
Duality of structure focuses on processes as well as outcomes by uncovering both
the end results of action and the means used to accomplish them. Systemic dem-
ocratic peace idealists work through a "problem-solving" approach to social science
and thus outcomes are most important because they are "events" that can be
quantified and placed into causal models for analysis (as mentioned in the discus-
sion of Harrison's work above). This makes prediction possible, which is, in turn,
supposed to help us solve the pertinent problems of our time. This love of out-
comes, much like the fetishization of structures-as-(solely)constraint, is also evident
in the George W. Bush Administration's justifications for its Iraq policy. The process
(war) is unimportant: "We've rid the world of a brutal dictator." How we go about a
war is immaterial: Iraq is now a democracy. 19
Of course, the Bush Administration has used democratic peace theory to select-
ively focus upon certain outcomes over others. We hear from Bush and his admin-
istration officials about the democratic result of the Iraq War (whatever that means),
without a mention ofjust how this war has alienated most European and many non-
European democracies nor how it has led to a sharp increase in global disapproval
for the United States. The irony that a "democratic peace" is best secured through a
policy that produces these last two results is lost upon systemic democratic peace
scholars as well as upon the Bush administration. The latter has written these
troubling outcomes off as an inevitable result of a flawed international perspective
on how to handle problems, reminding Europeans in a speech at the Whitehall
Palace in London on November 11, 2003 that "Europe's unity was achieved ... by
allied armies of liberation and NATO armies of defense." Even though certain
democratic peace scholars, such as Russett and Oneal (2001 ), have argued that any

19 Russett (2005) has recently criticized Bush's use of democratic peace theory to justify the Iraq War, noting the

literature (all produced after the Iraq War began, incidentally) that demonstrates some important contingencies
existing within this body ofresearch regarding "leadership style" (Cederman and Gleditsch 2004; Keller 2005).
38 Liberal-Idealism: A Constructivist Critique

democratic peace must be reinforced by international organizations and economic

interdependence, the quotes by Wade Huntley and Sara Mitchell above demon-
strate that systemic democratic peace idealists actually propose war as a legitimate
tool, part of a "selection mechanism" that pushes the system of states toward a
perpetual peace with no apparent qualifications regarding how wars might alienate
other democracies.
Thus, the problem is not that both constructivists and liberal democratic peace
theorists share, in Barkin's (2003) words, a scientific pursuit to show how the
"ought" becomes the "is" or, put another way, how best to foster and promote
cooperation over conflict. The problem is that liberals, because they are at heart
positivists, privilege outcomes, whereas constructivists focus upon the degree to
which states find a legitimate stake in structures and the processes that perpetuate
them. Constructivists accommodate the agency of states as it relates to questions of
self-identity; the "agency" in democratic peace propositions, if it exists at all, is
represented by a deterministic sense of one rationality. This contrast between
structural accounts is stark. Constructivists worried about "legitimacy" find the Iraq
War most troubling, regardless of whether the United States removed a dictator
from power, because of the means used to attain this goal. Based upon their "pre-
dictions," systemic democratic peace idealists, on the contrary, might even interpret
the Iraq War as both rational and reasonable given that we are presumably left with,
at the end of this process, one more democracy in the system.

The Double Hermeneutic: Shattering the Subject-Object Distinction

It is not the purpose of this essay to argue against the problem-solving approach of
all positivist social science. Such approaches have their place, especially in
those detailed, relatively short-term contexts in which prediction is best
suited. Yet, democratic peace scholars appear to be especially motivated by a be-
lief in a value-free approach to studying international politics by assuming that the
entities and actions we observe, record, and predict operate independent of our
theories:
To understand some of the influences that promote or inhibit interstate conflict
... we will be using the same methods that medical scientists use to understand
the causes of disease. More and more, international relations scholars are adopt-
ing such scientific methods to investigate the causes of war (Russett and Oneal
2001: 82).

And this information for the democratic peace scholar, like that collated by our
physician, can be used to "prescribe" certain suggestions to cure the ailment of war:
good macro-level epidemiological work can provide strong indications of caus-
ality and, even before the micro-level mechanisms are well understood, can offer
practical advice about what kinds of exposures or behaviors individuals should
avoid if they wish to stay healthy (Russett and Oneal 2001 :83)

As reassuring as this might sound, it is a misguided view of social science. What

Giddens' terms the "double hermeneutic" of social life challenges this idea that the
social sciences may be pursued in the same way as the natural sciences. What
separates the former from the latter is that the objects of study and the subjects who
study them in the social sciences know about one another. As Giddens (1984:351)
has noted,
discoveries of social science, if they are at all interesting, cannot remain discov-
eries for long; the more illuminating they are, in fact, the more likely they are to
be incorporated into action and thereby to become familiar principles of social
life.
 BRENT J. STEELE 39

Several IR traditions maintain this view of subjects and objects. Among the many
assumptions that English School theorists share with constructivists is the "scep-
tic(ism) of the possibility of a scientific study of International Relations . . . [by
recognizing] the interdependence between subject (scholar) and object (world)"
(Dunne 1998:7). Timothy Dunne (1998:197) also has observed how the original
British Committee that led to the English School approach "highlighted their op-
position to key tenets of positivism. (They believed that) international relations were
not amenable to the search for behavioural laws of action, and there was no such
thing as value-free enquiry in the social world."
Ido Oren (2003) addresses the double hermeneutic in the context of US
foreign policy. His primary purpose is to uncover how the research of US
political scientists has been shaped through their historical view of the United
States and its enemies. Oren (2003:7) "probes the character of the discipline as
reflected in the characterization of America's chief enemies in the twentieth century
and its actual involvement in the wars against America's enemies." His comments
about the prospects for an objective science are thus not surprising: "the intimacy
between political science and the politics of US foreign policy challenges a central
presupposition of the scientific approach to politics, namely that the researcher and
the object of study are separate" (Oren 2003: 14). Also not surprising is when Oren
(2003: 178) notes in his conclusion the propensity for democratic peace scholars to
"repeatedly quote, approvingly in most cases ... [that] 'this absence of war between
democracies comes as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international
relations.' " 20 Additionally noteworthy is that Oren (2003:20) views his book as
fitting "within the contours of the 'social constructivist' school. ... my focus on the
relationship between foreign relations and political scientists' evolving visions of the
US speaks directly to this agenda."
What evidence do we have of this subject-object contamination in the context of
the Iraq War (see also Atlas 2003)? There is indeed so much evidence of Bush and
other neoconservatives in his administration using democratic peace arguments as a
theoretical resource that it is impossible to exhaust the examples here (see also
Williams 2005b). Let us focus here on two of the most noteworthy: (1) Bush's 2004
State of the Union address and (2) a political advertisement for Bush's 2004 re-
election campaign.
Bush gave his 2004 State of the Union speech on January 20. Facing intense
criticism for the Iraq policy from Democratic opposition in an election year, Bush
set out to justify what the long-term purpose for the US invasion was. In the section
of the speech titled Iraq, Bush noted how the United States was providing a "uni-
versal good" in bringing democracy to the Iraqis:
We also hear doubts that democracy is a realistic goal for the greater Middle East,
where freedom is rare. Yet it is mistaken, and condescending, to assume that
whole cultures and great religions are incompatible with liberty and self-govern-
ment. I believe that God has planted in every human heart the desire to live in
freedom. And even when that desire is crushed by tyranny for decades, it will rise
again. 21

Bush then justified the purpose behind the Iraq War by literally stating the end goal
of a "democratic peace":
America is a nation with a mission, and that mission comes from our most basic
beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a
democratic peace, a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and

2 TI:ie oft-heard quote is Jack Levy's (1988:662).

21 Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040120-7 .html (accessed March 27, 2005).
40 Liberal-Idealism: A Constructivist Critique

woman. America acts in this cause with friends and allies at our side, yet we
understand our special calling: This great republic will lead the cause of freedom. 22

Although implied, the point is clear: the ends of the Iraq policy justified the means.
The "great American republic" needed to use war to move Iraq out of tyranny and
to insure a long-term peace for the United States and all democracies. Although it
may seem ironic that war must be used to insure peace, systemic democratic peace
idealists, with Kant as their inspiration, have sought to prove that war can be used to
produce democracy. War is not antithetical to a democratic peace, it is an essential
component.
The Bush reelection campaign also issued a television advertisement titled "Vic-
tory" during the 2004 Athens Olympics, which focused on the number of dem-
ocracies in the world now as compared to 1972. Using images ofa swimmer as a
backdrop, an announcer says

in 1972, there were 40 democracies in the world. Today, (there are) 120. Freedom
is spreading throughout the world like a sunrise. And in this Olympics, there will
be two more free nations. And two fewer terrorist regimes. 23

In the background, the flags of Afghanistan and Iraq were displayed. The adver-
tisement then cut to a picture of the Iraqi soccer team.
These examples are noteworthy for two reasons. First, and foremost, the Bush
administration seems to believe that the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan can be
justified largely because both countries are now democracies. In Iraq especially, the
Bush administration continues to justify its policy based not just on democratizing
another country, but that democracy in the Middle East itself will be an engine for
regional change. 24 Second, what the Bush administration is saying is coupled in
importance with when they are saying it-in the context of a political campaign for
political purposes.
The concern here is not with whether Bush's understanding of democratic peace
caused him to a priori invade Iraq. What seems a more important question is why
Bush's use of the democratic peace to justify the Iraq War at that time played so
effectively with the American audience. How does such reasoning trump all of the
negatives (for some Americans) that pervaded, and continue to pervade, Bush's
Iraq policy? One conclusion is that the democratic peace proposition itself consti-
tutes the fabric of American discourse and American perceptions.
Wendt (1999:76) argues that "social kinds" (collectivities like states) can be reified
so that "there is a clear distinction between subject and object." This is an important
view for him to propagate, because asserting otherwise jeopardizes the legitimacy of
the positivism he supports. He acknowledges that "there are occasions when col-
lectivities become aware of the social kinds they are constituting and move to
change them, in what might be called a moment of 'reflexivity.'" But, in general,
"in all but society's most reflexive moments, there is a distinction between subject
and object" (Wendt 1999:77).
Although not exactly sure what a reflexive "moment" would look like, here is an
educated guess: when leaders start justifying their policies with an explanatory theory of

22 Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040120-7.html (accessed March 27, 2005).

Emphasis is added.
23 ''Victory" advertisement. Available at http://www.georgewbush.com/News/MultiMedia/VideoPlayer.aspx
?ID= 984&T = 5 (accessed September 24, 2004).
24 Interestingly enough, Zeev Maoz (2001: 172-173, emphasis in original) concluded one study by stating that the

results implied that "it is where and how this spread takes place" that makes democratic networking relevant and that,
furthermore, "conflict and war are likely to persist in regions where democratization is slow or takes place in non-
networked patterns, specifically, the Middle East, East and South Asia, and Africa .... in the absence of a pacifying
force entailed in democratic networks, the future in these regions is all but rosy."
 BRENT j. STEELE 41

political science, and they do so not only because they believe in it but because their citizens do
as well. What Bush referenced in his State of the Union address is not a norm of
democracy, it is a social scientific theory with such apparent predictive success that it
has been termed as "empirical law." Wendt may believe it possible to separate
subject from object, and in his approach he shares much with the many positivists in
IR. However, perhaps a more relevant "empirical" exercise would be to under-
stand how actors create meanings for their actions, as the Bush administration did,
in part, by referencing the notion of a democratic peace in regards to its Iraq
policy. 25 The fact of the matter is that states and their leaders are always capable of
reflexively monitoring their actions. The rarities are those "moments" when they
avoid doing so.
In short, it is this aspect about democratic peace scholarship-the positivist as-
sumption that subject and object can be distinguished-that is one of the biggest
concerns for prominent constructivists.
Precisely because social reality is not "out there" but is made by the actors, the
concepts we use are part of a vocabulary that is deeply implicated with our pol-
itical projects. Nowhere does this become clearer than in the "empirical" evidence
presented in support of the theory of democratic peace (Kratochwil 2006: 11 ).

Furthermore, we should consider democratic peace discourse as a form of dom-

inant narrative that constructs social realities and, therefore.judgments of right and
wrong. Lynch (1999:217, emphasis added) warns us to be wary of such narratives:
Not only should we be wary of the narratives constructed by participants in these
cases, but we should also be critical of the narratives we construct to analyze them. This
can lead, for example, to an oversimplified view of religion and culture as causing a
"clash of civilizations," or to the story that because democracies are "good," non-
democracies should be subject to intervention under international law.

Again, it is derivative of the idealist nature of liberal theory that systemic dem-
ocratic peace idealists are largely unconcerned with how their models of interna-
tional politics are influencing the objects that they study. Some are so blatantly
unaware of this problem that they quote leaders who also justify their policies and
purpose with the same language as Bush's, but instead use these quotations to
evidence their propositions. And some even go so far as to advocate foreign policy
based upon their empirical study of the democratic peace:
Perhaps most important, understanding the sources of democratic peace can
have the effect of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Social scientists sometimes create
reality as well as analyze it. Insofar as norms do guide behavior, repeating those
norms helps to make them effective. Repeating the norms as descriptive principles
can help to make them true. Repeating the proposition that democracies should
not fight each other helps reinforce the probability that democracies will not fight
each other. lt is an empirical/act (Russett 1993:136, emphasis added). 26

25 "Meaningful action is created by placing action within an intersubjectively understood context, even if such
imputations are problematic or even 'wrong' in terms of their predictive capacity. To have 'explained' an action often
means to have made intelligible the goals for which it was undertaken" (Kratochwil 1989:24).
26See also Russett (1997: 11 l): "Democratic peace theory should affect the kinds of military preparations believed

to be necessary, and the costs one would be willing to pay to make them. It should encourage peaceful efforts to
assist the emergence and consolidation of democracy." Other examples abound and, indeed, policy justifications
based on a "democratic peace" preceded the Clinton Administration. Doyle (1996:309) has noted President Ronald
Reagan's "crusade for freedom and campaign for democratic development," and President George H.W. Bush's
justification for the Panama invasion "as a way to protect U.S. citizens, arrest Manuel Noriega, and bestow dem-
ocratic freedom to the people of Panama." Farber and Gowa (1997:239) have referred to Clinton's "noting that a
strategy of enlargement serves U.S. interests because 'democracies rarely wage war on one another.'" The authors
then say that "several empirical analyses suggest that the Clinton administration's (policy) is well-grounded."
42 Liberal-Idealism: A Constructivist Critique

We should keep the above quote in mind when Russett complains about George
W. Bush's use, indeed repetitive use, of the democratic peace proposition to justify
the Iraq policy, because a constructivist understanding of the blurring of subject
and object generates an expectation quite contrary to this "self-fulfilling prophecy."
Humans do indeed intervene into processes whereas natural objects of study can-
not in fact do so:
As a general rule, the more people think that they understand the environment
in which they operate, the more they attempt to manipulate it to their advantage.
Such behavior can relatively quickly change the environment and the rules that
appear to govern it (Lebow et al. 2000:51, emphasis added).

And so why has the inevitable "destiny" proposed by Adam Smith, Karl Marx, or
Malthus not materialized? "Their predictions were not fulfilled, at least in part,
because their analyses of economics and population dynamics prompted state and
corporate intervention designed to prevent their predictions from coming to pass"
(Lebow et al. 2000:51-52, emphasis added). As such, "human prophecies-which
are a form of prediction-are often self-negating."
Russett (2005:396) has one particularly fascinating assertion in his recent article
regarding Bush's use of the democratic peace proposition to justify the Iraq War:
Many advocates of the democratic peace may now feel rather like many atomic
scientists did in 1945. They had created something intended to prevent conquest
by Nazi Germany, but only after Germany was defeated was the bomb tested and
then used-against Japanese civilians whose government was already near de-
feat. Our creation has been perverted.

Unfortunately the analogy is incorrect because Russett and other democratic peace
scholars are not in the physical sciences. Atomic scientists study atoms-and their
theories shed light upon how atoms worked. More important, the theories used by
those scientists could not influence the physical makeup of what they were studying.
What they theorized about the atom would never be "discovered" by that atom, let
alone used by that atom to create meanings for its present and future actions.
Democratic peace theorists, on the contrary, are social scientists whose theories
influence the arrangements and patterns of what they study. Or, building on the
"epidemiological" stance taken by Russett and Oneal (2001) and mentioned earlier,
wars are unfortunately not diseases that states "catch"; they are conscious decisions
made by state agents (usually accompanied by large support in democracies) for
political purposes. Although Russett (2005) explicitly acknowledges this problem, he
never takes the logical additional step of assessing what it means for the "scientific"
and "value-free" approach that democratic peace scholarship assumes.
Democratic peace theory is by no means the first social science theory to shatter
the subject-object distinction, let alone the only such theory that has been used by
the objects of our study for political purposes. Primordial assumptions about ethnic
conflict provided, to paraphrase Nicholas Wheeler (2000), a "comforting mecha-
nism" that helped absolve Western countries from acting to stop the genocide in
Rwanda. The assumptions of modernization theory, when put into practice, pro-
pelled many Latin American governments to bureaucratic-authoritarianism rather
than democracy. Consider Richard Rosecrance's (1986:41) assertion that "one rea-
son why no single theory of international politics has ever been adequate is that
nations modify their behavior in the face of experience and theory. If statesmen
believe that the balance of power must determine their policies, then they will act in
such a way as to validate the theory." It demonstrates how realist assumptions about
the balance of power have influenced the states that supposedly "objectively" op-
erated under such a maxim. And George Kennan (1985-1986:214) seemed to
imply that the cloak of power politics may have allowed, mistakenly in retrospect,
 BRENT J. STEELE 43

the United States to engage in "clandestine skulduggery." As IR scholars, we should

be well aware of how our theories might be used by the objects we study for
political, and even immoral, purposes.
This is not to say that we should avoid "making the world a better place." On the
contrary, it is vital to provide concepts and theories that can be incorporated into
the social world. Giddens himself is a foremost "public intellectual" in the United
Kingdom who has served as an advisor to, among others, Tony Blair. 27
Yet, two issues are important to consider here. First, to the extent that construc-
tivists engage in liaisons, dangerous or not, with critical theory (Price and Reus-Smit
1998), it is precisely because they see the purpose of knowledge production as
opening spaces rather than creating "control" or "prescription"-in the same vein
as the critical theorists of the Frankfort School, like Jurgen Habermas, Theodor
Adorno, and Max Horkheimer, from which critical-constructivists draw much of
their theoretical (and normative) inspiration. As two IR theorists (Diez and Steans
2005: 129) recently posited:

Habermas argued that the dominance of positivism in the social sciences was
problematic because it had given rise to a tendency to regard all human problems
as technical problems amenable to technical solutions, thus forgetting that knowl-
edge about the human world was sought to foster greater autonomy, not greater
control.

Second, the most "normative" works of the political science "discipline" are
usually marginalized as being "unscientific." In order to make prediction possible,
in order to disseminate a positivist view of political science, the discipline's text-
books caution students and scholars of international politics against being "nor-
mative." Some go so far as to state that such normative works do not even qualify as
political science (see, for example, Isaak 1985:8). It is strikingly ironic, then, that
the democratic peace proposition has, indeed, become a very normative approach
to foreign policy. Democratic peace scholars, through their studies based upon the
"democraticness" of countries, have become normative. "Data banks are not simple
storage places for our unadulterated facts, but they are part of our political un-
derstandings and projects" (Kratochwil 2006: 13). Their normative approach is
even more radical because of the assuredness with which they present their find-
ings. Consider that the first chapter in Russett's (1993) seminal book on the topic is
titled "The Fact of Democratic Peace." Yet, Giddens (1991:21, emphasis added)
reminds us of the historical tension that has always existed in such scientific
(enlightenment-based) perspectives:

the reflexivity of modernity turns out to confound the expectation of Enlight-

enment thought-although it is the very product of that thought. The original
progenitors of modern science and philosophy believed themselves to be pre-
paring the way for securely founded knowledge of the social and natural worlds:
the claims of reason were due to overcome the dogmas of tradition, offering a sense of
certitude in place of the arbitrary character of habit and custom. But the reflex-
ivity of modernity actually undermines the certainty of knowledge, even in the
core domains of natural science. Science depends, not on the inductive accumu-
lation of proofs, but on the methodological principle of doubt.

To sum, this doubt has been largely absent from democratic peace research, and
it is derivative of the hard scientific posture this literature has assumed, or what
certain scholars (Lebow et al. 2000:48) have termed "physics envy," that makes
those producing it fully unaware (until it is too late) of the suboptimal futures that

27 See also Wesley Widmaier's (2004) proposal for a "pragmitist-<:onstructivist" research program in the vein of

John Dewey and John Kenneth Galbraith.

44 Liberal-Idealism: A Constructivist Critique

are possible when state agents acquire "covering law" knowledge to use for their
own political purposes.

Desocialization and Inhibiting Reflexivity

There is another issue to consider regarding liberalism that is also relevant in the
context of the democratizing of Iraq. This issue echoes the charge that liberalism
"desocializes" individuals. In essence, because liberalism celebrates the rights of
individuals, liberal citizens and states do not need to worry about their communities
or about other citizens. Desocialization becomes most problematic in international
society, in which the citizens of liberal regimes can recognize "human rights" abuse
but not care whether anything is done to prevent such abuse unless it affects them
directly. Or, more specifically, liberal citizens may appreciate that there are certain
inalienable rights of all global citizens, but still select certain situations and indi-
viduals to whom such rights no longer apply. In addition, because they are liberal
citizens and because they know that their own conception of "rights" is universal,
they may feel even more empowered to punish those who do not share this same
outlook on rights. Thus, the absolutism of a liberal identity, its teleological purpose,
is implicated in how liberal citizens (or soldiers) treat nonliberal individuals or
groups. This inhibits, in structurationist terms, the ability to "reflexively monitor
the actions of the self" (Giddens 1984:376). There can be little if any reflexivity by
states or scholars who support an evolutionary teleology. If the future is already
determined, why worry about the present?
Presciently, John Dewey (1915b:420; see also 1915a) viewed Kantian ethics as
caught up in the making of unreflective German policies during World War I,
asserting how:
the prevalence of an idealistic philosophy full of talk of Duty, Will, and Ultimate
Ideas and Ideals, and of the indwelling of the Absolute in German history for the
redeeming of humanity, has disguised [from] the mass of the German people,
upon whose support the policy of the leaders ultimately depends for success, the
real nature of the enterprise in which they are engaged.

For Dewey, in World War I Germany the vision of a just outcome ratified the
means used to get there, and Kant provided the philosophical resources for this
vision. Of course, in liberal philosophy there exist "normative" theorists who are
concerned with process in general and, in a context much like the current Iraq War,
how liberal regimes should treat nonliberal peoples. John Rawls (1999:44-54)
shares the view with Kant and systemic democratic peace idealists of the democratic
peace's historical record and also that war may be needed to transform (what he
terms) "outlaw regimes" into societies respecting his "Law of Peoples." "Outlaw
states are aggressive and dangerous; all peoples are safer and more secure if such
states change, or are forced to change, their ways" (Rawls 1999:81 ). If we assume
that Hussein's Iraq qualifies as one of these "outlaw regimes," then one could use
Rawls' to interpret Iraq as a 'just intervention." But Rawls (1999:96) goes further
than just simply suggesting that outlaw regimes should be ousted by liberal re-
gimes, when he demonstrates how liberal regimes should treat the citizens and
soldiers of these outlaw regimes by linking the "universality" of human rights to
their treatment. Liberal soldiers should respect:
the human rights of the members of the other side, both civilians and soldiers, for
two reasons. One is simply that the enemy, like all others, has these rights by the
Law of Peoples. The other reason is to teach enemy soldiers and civilians the
content of those rights by the example set in the treatment they receive. In this
way the meaning and significance of human rights are best brought home to
them.
 BRENT J. STEELE 45

Surely almost every liberal democratic peace scholar would agree with Rawls' sug-
gestion above. But among them are two types of liberals: those who are only con-
cerned with the outcome of gaining more democracies in the system and those who
are additionally concerned with the details of how this transformation should be
carried out. Critical theorist Jacque Amoureux (2005) points out how the "reflexive
liberalism" of Alexis de Tocqueville, James Madison, and John Stuart Mill was
concerned with both process (ontology) and the influence of scholarship upon the
real world (epistemology)-both were important for normative reasons. She
(Amoureux 2005: 14) also notes how such reflexive concern is absent from con-
temporary liberalism:

Both Tocqueville and Madison reflected on how Rousseau's political principles

played out in the French Revolution and its aftermath, and took lessons for
liberalism. Contemporary liberals should also seek to define how political theory
can speak to today's injustices and malconditions and explore how liberalism may
have contributed to or failed to alleviate them.

If constructivism does share, as Sterling-Folker (2000) suggests, a "process-based

ontology" with liberalism, then it is the "reflexive" form of liberalism with which
constructivists share such an ontology, as it is necessary for "liberalism [to not] fail to
interrogate the normative aspects of interstate behavior, for without such reflexivity
unjust state practices are allowed to continue and later regretted" (Amoureux
2005: 16). Systemic democratic peace idealists who believe that they are the scien-
tists who have provided evidence of liberalism in international politics simply be-
cause the number of democracies (as they are so coded) in a system is correlated
with a decreased likelihood of war would do well to read, even once, the normative
theory of Rawls and other liberals concerned with the content of this systemic
democratic peace.
How does a constructivist view processes in normative terms? Regarding the
abuse of prisoners and civilians during the Iraq War, the present author is appalled
both as a constructivist and as an American because these actions challenge: (1) his
self-identity as an American who sees his country materially and socially capable of
promoting human rights abroad and at home and (2) the collective identity shared
with other citizens of an international society who consider such treatment of any
human being as wrong and immoral. This does not mean that liberals would ever
endorse such abuses either, but, contrary to what liberals assume, no rights are
"absolute." 28 Why is this important? An argument can be made that precisely because
the United States has participated in the construction of these rights, it therefore
deems them as essential (Donnelly 1999:84). The identity of the nation-state, like
the self in Giddens' (1991 :52, emphasis added) structuration theory, "presumes
reflexive awareness .... self-identity, in other words, is not something that is just
gfoen ... but something that has to be routinely created and sustained [through]
reflexive activities." Thus, for US constructivists, tacit (or explicit) support of
human rights abuse constitutes a threat to identity. That is, self-identity is strongly
linked with how my country sees itself in the way it interacts with the rest of in-
ternational society and collective identity is strongly linked with how my country
carries out the shared norms of the international community. Both these identities
have been reflexively fostered through time (see also Ignatieff 2004). The endo-
geneity of such norms becomes quite clear; although formalized into international
agreements (like the Geneva convention), they were instituted in part by the United
States in its projection of American identity and interests at the international level.
Constructivists continue to inquire about the importance of "intersubjective un-
derstandings." With this inquiry comes the added indirect intention of showing

28 For a good summary of different views on human rights, see R.J. Vincent (1993).
46 Liberal-Idealism: A Constructivist Critique

why international agreements are important. Constructivists find the Iraq invasion
problematic, not because they think the United States does not have the "right" to
defend itself from security threats but because the Bush administration's Iraq policy
has alienated European allies, put undue stress upon the NATO alliance, and, more
important, compromised the norms of conduct and diplomacy we once shared with
those European allies. Constructivists find this last development most troubling
because they know that intersubjective understandings of proper conduct, although
persuasive when they are shared, prove fragile when they are systematically
undermined. In other words, for constructivists, international institutions, agree-
ments, and organizations are not concrete forms of absolute "Kantian principles"
but social constructions. Christian Reus-Smit (2005:88) has described international
society in similar terms: "We should not forget, however, that society among sov-
ereign states is as vulnerable as it is impressive. It rests ultimately upon a series of
social understandings that have become enshrined as cardinal international
norms."
This discussion does not mean, however, that the present author is a "liberal-
constructivist" who "believe[s] that considerations of power can, at least in part, be
overcome in world politics because anarchy has few effects independent of the
norms and identities of actors" (Jackson and Nexon 2004:339). It is not that iden-
tities transcend (or "overcome") power so much as identities transform power into
action by informing the way power should be projected. As a person, one can believe in
agency and free will but also understand how both can be constrained by social
forces that we might not see, let alone control. Yet, it is because the United States is
currently the most "powerful" state in international politics that it is capable of choice
regarding the way it deploys such power. Contrary to the deterministic world as-
sumed by the realists, the United States was not forced by power considerations to
fight in Iraq. It chose to do so.

Conclusion: The Constructivist Critique of Liberal-Idealism

This essay has challenged the notion that US constructivism shares much with
liberal-idealism. Specifically, the tradition in democratic peace research that sees a
progressive (and deterministic) trend of democratic expansion producing an end-
point of perpetual peace has been linked to the Bush administration's use of that
proposition to justify the Iraq War. This connection suggests that there are some
serious problems in the ontological and epistemological assumptions of democratic
peace research.
Russett's (2005) comments noted above imply that democratic peace theorists
have been "victimized" by Bush's Iraq policy. Perhaps, yet we should consider
several more issues that the Iraq War illustrates. First, Russett suggests that one of
the "contingent" factors in the democratic peace is leadership; he cites Jonathan
Keller's (2005) study, which demonstrated how the attributes of leaders in com-
bination with regime type influence the likelihood of using force. This seems to
place the blame for Iraq policy largely with the leadership of George W. Bush. Such
accountability is refreshing, but those of us who lived in the United States during
the lead-up to the Iraq War recall that President Bush was not the only war en-
thusiast, standing in sharp contrast to the assertion that "liberal democratic insti-
tutions tend not to provoke such wars because influence is placed in the hands of
those who must expend blood and treasure and the leaders they choose" (Moravcik
1997:531). During the lead-up to the Iraq War, we recall a democratic electorate's
inability to skeptically challenge its Executive, the inability of the American "free"
press or its national legislature to challenge the information being disseminated by
that same Executive, and, therefore, the willingness of the American media, its
Congress, and its electorate to overwhelmingly support a preventive invasion. The
Iraq War demonstrates something much deeper than "bad leadership." Bush used
 BRENT]. STEELE 47

democratic peace justifications because they resonated not simply with policy wonks
but with the American electorate as well. Many who lived in the United States at
that time recognized how:

The majority in the United States has immense actual power and a power of
opinion which is almost as great. When once its mind is made up on any question,
there are, so to say, no obstacles which can retard, much less halt, its progress and
give it time to hear the wails of those it crushes as it passes (de Tocqueville
1969:248).

Indeed, during the run-up to the Iraq War, the United States possessed more of de
Tocqueville's "Tyranny of the Majority" than any "loyal but independent political
opposition [that] limit[ed] the ability of a democratic government to wage a capri-
cious, ill-advised war" (Russett and Oneal 2001:274).
Second, Russett's claim of victimization in no way implies a democratic peace
theorist's mea culpa that adequately accounts for the epistemological implications of
the subject-object contamination obvious in the case of the Iraq War. In fact, Russett
has in the past advocated that a focus on a democratic peace become part of US
foreign policy. Even though his assertions are usually qualified with warnings that
the maxim "fight them, beat them, and make them democratic is irrevocably fl.awed
as a basis for contemporary action" (Russett 1993:135-136; Russett and Oneal
2001:303; Russett 2005:396), the presence of advocacy requires him and other
democratic peace scholars to address what this means for the "scientific" approach
that underpins their research.
There should be no doubt that liberal democratic peace theory and research is
popular in IR in part because of its parsimonious explanation for cooperation; it is
popular with George W. Bush, his administration, and, until recently, the American
public for the same reason. This fact should be enough for IR scholars to critically
question the amount of emphasis placed upon "parsimony" 29 as a criterion for
evaluating IR research, and it leads to a further set of critical questions about social
scientific inquiry. Why do we seek parsimonious solutions to complex problems? Is
it possible that erring on the side of parsimony makes the practical solutions that
follow from our research either meaningless in form or, even worse, dangerous in
implementation? Removing the nuance and complexity from our explanations and
understandings of international politics has its price.
Democratic peace scholars of all kinds will probably object to what has been
stated here. On the connections posited between their propositions and the Bush
administration's Iraq policy, these scholars could reasonably argue that even though
their models tend to "predict" a cosmopolitan end state-and that such a state can
be realized through war-nothing in what they say or write advocates the specific
type of Iraq policy the Bush administration implemented. They could also point
out how the delineation here between process and outcomes mischaracterizes their
position as deterministic. Indeed, Ray (2003:211, emphasis added) has posited (in
Lakatosian terms) that "the proposition at the heart of the hard core (so to speak) of
the democratic peace research program in its more widely supported version is
probabilistic rather than absolute in character." Democratic dyads are less likely to go to
war with one another, and this likelihood is statistically significant. But systemic
democratic peace idealists generally posit their predictions in a "deterministic"
fashion.
That stated, Bush's use of the proposition to justify the Iraq policy represents a
choice within constraints. If this is the case, then we should ask whether the

29This is also a core tenet of liberal theory in general: "A theoretical restatement should be general and par-
simonious, demonstrating that a limited number of microfoundational assumptions can link a broad range of pre-
viously unconnected theories and hypotheses" (Moravcik 1997:515).
48 Liberal-Idealism: A Constructivist Critique

"structure" of systemic "democraticness" solely constrains states or if it also enables

them to implement their choices and turn them into actions. And if such is the case,
then that particular international democratic "structure" that has been thus en-
abled must enable the new democracies in their actions as well. To do so means that
these new democracies must find some self-worth or legitimacy in that systemic
structure that organizes and arranges their actions.
Certain scholars who sympathize with constructivism will probably also object to
what has been written here. Some will share Wendt's view that objects and subjects
can be separated and, therefore, that the distinction between natural and social
science is quite arbitrary (although considering the examples provided in this essay,
we might ponder whether Wendt's constructivist account is now the exception
rather than the rule). Other constructivists may have problems with the view of
structure presented here. They may see it as improperly ignoring certain "facts"
that confront and affect agents who are firmly out of their control. These are all
reasonable objections. And, yet, constructivism is a viable enough approach on its
own to be properly differentiated from liberal-idealism. This differentiation, when
placed in the context of democratic peace theory's role in the Bush administration's
Iraq policy, is radical enough that the "realist-constructivist" approaches proposed
by Barkin (2003), Jackson and Nexon (2004) and others are a bit unnecessary.
Although the objective of this essay was to distinguish constructivism from lib-
eralism, the way this objective was pursued-by implicating liberal-idealism (dem-
ocratic peace, especially) with the Iraq War-may seem out-of-bounds to many. Fair
enough, but democratic peace scholars should consider not only what their work
has done to influence US policies but also how the outcomes of US policies might
affect the promise of their research program. In other words, they must be more
reflective. It is guessed that the Iraq War has given pause to even those systemic
democratic peace idealists who view the condition of "democracies constitute[ing] a
majority of states in the international system, and the absence of war between
democracies" as the basis on which to conclude their studies with "an optimistic
view of future peaceful international relations" (Mitchell 2002:757). Like the "ide-
alists" of the First Debate, these scholars have been confronted by events in in-
ternational politics that could effectively tarnish the presumptions that have made
the democratic peace seem so rational, reasonable, and logical. This statement will
remain viable if (I) the Bush administration continues to justify its policies based on
the spread of democracy, and (2) the world continues to hold those precise US
policies with contempt.

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