In an era of collapsing certainties—where the liberal international order frays at the edges, where great-power rivalry intensifies alongside civilisational reassertion, and where the vocabulary of global politics is being fiercely contested—the dominant theories of International Relations are proving increasingly insufficient. Realism, with its iron logic of power and self-help, and liberalism, with its faith in institutions and economic interdependence, offer valuable but partial maps of a terrain that is shifting beneath our feet. It is constructivism—a paradigm too often relegated to the academic periphery—that provides the most incisive tools for understanding what is actually happening in the world today, writes Mateo Rojas Samper. The author is a participant of the Valdai—New Generation project.
Constructivism does not deny the reality of military arsenals, GDP rankings, or trade flows. It insists, rather, that these material facts are given meaning through social and ideational processes. As Alexander Wendt argued with elegant simplicity, “anarchy is what states make of it.” The international system is not a mechanical structure that determines behaviour automatically; it is a social construction, continuously reproduced through shared understandings, collective identities, and evolving norms. State behaviour is not driven by pre-given interests but by a constantly evolving sense of identity.
The post-September 11 world provided a vivid illustration of constructivism’s explanatory power. The emergence of global terrorism as the defining security threat of the early twenty-first century was not a simple recognition of pre-existing reality. It was an act of collective meaning-making on a planetary scale. The category of ‘terrorism’—as an existential threat demanding military coalitions and the suspension of ordinary legal norms—was socially constructed through political speech, media narratives, and institutional decisions. A ‘War on Terror’ against a non-state network was not a logical necessity; it was a choice shaped by a particular constructed understanding of who the enemy was and what kind of response it demanded.
This same logic applies today to how states frame China's rise, Russia's foreign policy, or the assertiveness of the Global South. Whether these actors are understood as ‘revisionist threats’ or ‘legitimate powers seeking due recognition’ is never a neutral reading of facts. It is an act of interpretation shaped by the identity of the interpreter and the normative frameworks through which they perceive the world.
The emerging multipolar order cannot be understood purely through the lens of shifting power balances. What is at stake is not merely a redistribution of material capabilities but a profound contest over identities, narratives, and the normative foundations of world order itself. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is a case in point. Economically significant as it is, the BRI is simultaneously an identity project—an effort to construct China as a benevolent development partner and a leader of South-South cooperation, an alternative to Western conditionality. How other nations receive it depends not only on economic calculation but on their own identities and histories.
India’s foreign policy trajectory tells a parallel story. As New Delhi deepens its engagement with the Quad while simultaneously maintaining its voice in BRICS and the Global South, it is not simply hedging between blocs. It is navigating a profound question about what kind of great power India wishes to become—and how it wishes to be recognised by others. The South China Sea disputes offer yet another arena where competing identity claims prove more analytically powerful than simple power calculations. China's historical sovereignty narrative clashes not only with the material interests of other claimants but with their identities as states embedded in an international legal order. The United States, meanwhile, frames its naval presence as guardianship of a ‘rules-based international order’—itself a constructed identity, now fiercely contested by those who had no voice in its creation.
Constructivism and the Crisis of Liberal Universalism
There is a deeper reason why constructivism is urgently relevant at this historical moment. We are living through a global crisis of universalism—a moment in which the claim that Western liberal norms represent universal human values is being challenged simultaneously from within and without. This challenge is, at its core, a constructivist argument: it asserts that what has been presented as universal is, in fact, particular—the product of specific historical processes, power configurations, and cultural assumptions. The ‘rules-based international order’ is not a neutral framework; it is a social construct bearing the imprint of its creators.
This recognition does not lead to nihilism or the abandonment of normative aspiration. It leads, rather, to a more honest and dialogic approach to global order—one that acknowledges the plurality of identities, civilisations, and legitimate interests that must be accommodated in any durable international architecture. A multipolar world is not merely a world of competing power centres; it is a world of competing meaning systems, each asserting its right to contribute to the shared grammar of international life.
Conclusion
As the twenty-first century deepens its contradictions—technological acceleration, ecological crisis, civilisational reassertion, and the dissolution of post-Cold War certainties—the need for theories that capture the role of ideas, norms, and identities becomes ever more pressing. Constructivism offers not the false comfort of predictive laws but something more valuable: an honest account of the social nature of international life, and a reminder that the world we inhabit is, in the deepest sense, the world we are collectively making. Understanding this is not merely an academic exercise. It is a prerequisite for any serious engagement with the fundamental question of our time: what kind of world do we wish to construct together, and on what shared foundations can we build it?
