Constructivism in International Relations

9013 Words37 Pages
A defense of political constructivism Nicholas Tampio Department of Political Science, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458, USA. nicholas.tampio@gmail.com Abstract In Political Liberalism, John Rawls describes a metaethical procedure – political constructivism – whereby political theorists formulate political principles by assembling and reworking ideas from the public political culture. To many of his moral realist and moral constructivist critics, Rawls’s procedure is simply a recent version of the ‘popular moral philosophy’ that Kant excoriates in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. In this article, I defend the idea of political constructivism on philosophical and political grounds. Initially, I argue that political constructivism is the best available methodology for self-legislating, socially embedded and fallible human beings; then I show that political constructivism may produce principles that could garner the principled assent of Euro-American Muslims such as Taha Jabir Al-Alwani. The article concludes by considering how political constructivism might be employed to formulate new political principles for Euro-American societies experiencing and confronting the Islamic revival. Contemporary Political Theory (2012) 11, 305–323. doi:10.1057/cpt.2011.27; published online 20 September 2011 Keywords: political constructivism; Rawls; Kant; Hegel; Islam; Al-Alwani Where do political principles – the basic rules or laws that govern a political body – originate? In Political Liberalism, John Rawls canvasses three possibilities. For moral realists, political principles emanate from a transcendent moral order accessible to theoretical reason. For moral constructivists, political principles emerge from the activity of pure practical reason. For political constructivists, political principles originate from reassembling ideas in the public political
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