Regional Powers and Contested Leadership by Hannes Ebert & Daniel Flemes

Author:Hannes Ebert & Daniel Flemes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Constructivism: Socialize China into the Existing Order

Constructivists highlight the role of norms, culture and ideas in constituting state behavior (Wendt 1999). Although they agree that China’s rise is a challenge to the international order, they suggest that the prevailing norms, culture and ideas can socialize China’s behavior to make it fit with the existing international order. For example, Alastair Iain Johnston suggests that Chinese foreign policy elites have been socialized by cooperative security norms and rules through participating in multilateral institutions since the Cold War (Johnston 2008). This socialization effect in turn allowed Chinese foreign policy elites to educate their leaders about what China should do in the international system and directly contributed to the cooperative direction of China’s foreign policy in the post-Cold War era. Jeffery Legro , like Johnston , suggests that Chinese political leaders are experiencing a clash of ideas and intentions regarding China’s future role in the international system (Legro 2007). Other powers, especially the United States, should keep their ideational engagement with China so that Chinese political elites can be further socialized by Western ideas, especially democracy and liberalism.

Like liberals, constructivists stress the endurance of the Western order, although they focus on the ideational one. For them, China can rise in the international system, but it will still be constrained by the Western ideas and norms. Constructivists also face difficulties in explaining China’s “assertiveness turn” in foreign policy after 2009. One possible explanation may lie in the contingent nature of ideas and intentions as well as the non-linear socialization process. For example, Johnston might argue that the socialization process of cooperative security norms is interrupted by other norms, such as nationalism or realpolitik.

While all three schools of thought contain some elements of truth, they suffer two analytical weaknesses: a static and holistic view of the international order and insufficient attention to China’s different strategies in challenging the international order. First, “order” is a contested concept in IR (He 2015). James Rosenau suggests that an analytic concept of order or an “empirical order” can “be located on a continuum which differentiates between those founded on cooperation and cohesion at one extreme and those sustained by conflict and disarray—i.e., disorder—at the other (Rosenau 1992).” On the other hand, scholars can claim normative meanings to “order,” that is, a desirable outcome of states’ interactions. Bull defined order as “a pattern that leads to a particular result, an arrangement of social life such that it promotes certain goals or values” (Bull 1977). Similarly, Muthiah Alagappa conceptualizes order as “a formal or informal arrangement that sustains rule-governed interaction among sovereign states in their pursuit of individual and collection goals (Alagappa 2002).”

In fact, the so-called international order has many components or sub-orders. It leads the transformation of the international order more dynamic than widely believed. According to Alagappa (2002), order is built on the interaction among states. Different types of state interactions, therefore, can create different sub-international orders , such as an economic order , a political order and a security order in the world.

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