The problem of change in constructivist theory: Ontological security seeking and agent motivation

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Introduction

One of the fundamental questions in International Relations (IR) is how can the world be changed into a better place. Yet, despite the normative aspirations to change dysfunctional, and often violent, practices, the IR discipline developed a widespread understanding that 'the international' was characterised by continuity and recurring patterns, and that the aspiration for making a better world, was an idealistic - even a utopian - project. The belief that change was unattainable became so ingrained in the discipline that when the Cold War ended, most had not even considered the possibility that such a change could take place¹and some even questioned its theoretical relevance.²Moreover, change was seen as one of those intellectual nettles that would be better left alone³rather than as something that could be theorised, categorised, and conceptualised or indeed used prescriptively.⁴Therefore when constructivism entered the discipline proclaiming that 'the world is of our making'⁵and that 'anarchy is what states make of it',⁶it not only opened up a completely new research agenda focused on change and agency, but it also returned the discipline to its original normative aspiration to be able to prescribe how to make change happen.

The new constructivist research agenda soon produced a voluminous literature enquiring into change. Emanuel Adler underlined the importance of change for constructivist research by suggesting that 'if constructivism is about anything, it is about change'.⁷Change has been central to all constructivist theorising because of the fundamental premise that change is possible through the mutually constitutive relationship between structure and agency and the belief that the constancy of structure may be mitigated through agent practice, whilst agents' identity and occasionally could be altered following structural change or through social processes of interaction.⁸Moreover with the constructivist insistence that structure is not just material but is ideas (nearly) all the way down,⁹relevant change was no longer just material structural change, but any kind of change that occurred when agents, through their performance altered the rules and norms that were constitutive of international interaction and in the process changed identities and hence interest.¹⁰The clear implication of constructivist theory was that if the world really is 'what we...