The international relations literature regularly embraces sovereignty as the primary constitutive rule of international organization. Theoretical traditions that agree on little else all seem to concur that the defining feature of the modern international system is the division of the world into sovereign states. Despite differences over the role of the state in international affairs, most scholars would accept John Ruggie's definition of sovereignty as “the institutionalization of public authority within mutually exclusive jurisdictional domains.” Regardless of the theoretical approach however, the concept tends to be viewed as a static, fixed concept: a set of ideas that underlies international relations but is not changed along with them. Moreover, the essence of sovereignty is rarely defined; while legitimate authority and territoriality are the key concepts in understanding sovereignty, international relations scholars rarely examine how definitions of populations and territories change through-out history and how this change alters the notion of legitimate authority.

Constructivism appears to have taken a place in the literature on international relations (IR) theory in direct opposition to realism. Constructivists who claim their methodology is incompatible with realism focus on the association between realism and both materialism and rationalism. Realists who claim their paradigm is incompatible with constructivism focus for the most part on a perceived tendency for constructivists to be idealists or utopians. Neither argument, however, holds up. This essay examines constructivist epistemology and classical realist theory, contending that they are, in fact, compatible; not that constructivism is necessarily realist, but that constructivist research is as compatible with a realist worldview as with any other. Having a realist constructivism could prove useful in IR theory beyond clarifying methodological debates, including helping to specify the relationship between the study of power in international politics and the study of international relations as a social construction.r 2003 International Studies Review.

This article examines the effects on international cooperation of the rivalness and excludability of international goods. Rivalness affects bargaining power when the negotiating states have different discount rates; with rival goods states with higher discount rates will be empowered, while with nonrival goods states with lower discount rates will be empowered. Excludability affects the enforceability of agreements once reached; multilateral agreements about nonexcludable goods cannot be enforced through retaliation-in-kind. As such, agreements concerning international toll goods are likely to reflect the interests of the state(s) with the lower discount rate(s), and be multilaterally enforceable. Agreements concerning international public goods should similarly reflect the interests of those with the lower discount rates, but be more weakly enforced. Finally, agreements concerning international common pool resources should both reflect the interests of those with higher discount rates, and be weakly enforced. The article concludes with some strategies to mitigate the negative effects on cooperation discussed.

Attempts by some contemporary realists to both claim that international politics are objectively predictable and at the same time prescribe particular foreign policies cannot hold together logically, because they are internally contradictory. The core argument of this article is that these attempts not only fail to fulfill their goal, but that the attempt to be scientific, to see the world as predictable, is ontologically incompatible with the core insight of classical realism, that we must see the world as it is, rather than as we want it to be. There are two ramifications of this observation for a realism that is not internally contradictory. The first is that a prescriptive realism must be a theory of foreign policy, not a theory of systems structure. And the second is that a realism that works as a theory of foreign policy prediction needs to be reflexive, needs to examine its own assumptions and biases as an integral part of the process of studying international politics.

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