In order to avoid both theoretically eclectic and redundant approaches to constructivism, this article proposes one possible and coherent reconstruction of constructivism understood as a reflexive meta-theory. This reconstruction starts by taking seriously the double sociological and interpretivist turn of the social sciences. Based on `double hermeneutics', constructivism is perhaps best understood by distinguishing its position on the level of observation, the level of action proper, and the relationship between these two levels. On the basis of this distinction, the article argues that constructivism is epistemologically about the social construction of knowledge and ontologically about the construction of social reality. It furthermore asks us to combine a social theory of knowledge with an intersubjective, not an individualist, theory of action. Finally, the analysis of power is central to understanding the reflexive link between the two levels of observation and action. The argument is embedded in a contextualization where constructivism is seen as inspired by `reflexive modernity', as well as more directly by the end of the Cold War.

Rather than exploring once again what the concept of power can mean for constructivists, this article analyses what constructivism implies for doing a conceptual analysis; here, of power. It will try to show that besides an analytical assessment (`what does power mean'), a constructivist conceptual analysis includes a study of the performative aspects of concepts (`what does `power' do'?), which, in turn is embedded into a conceptual history or genealogy (how has `power' become to mean and able to do what it does?'). The analysis will show that a neutral or descriptive meaning of power cannot be found, since the meaning of power is always embedded in a theoretical context; hence conceptual and theoretical analysis interact with each other. It will further argue that attributing `power' has the effect of `politicising' issues, moving actions into the scrutiny of a public realm where justifications are needed. Finally, it sketches one hypothetical lineage for understanding the origins of these particular performative effects, which relates developments in German political theory to political realism in International Relations. At the same time, the article is meant to convey a more general point for the relationship between constructivist conceptual analysis and power: by stressing the reflexive relationship between knowledge and social reality, such a conceptual analysis is itself part (but only part!) of a more general constructivist power analysis.

Realism explains the ruling of the international system through the underlying distribution of power among states. Increasingly, analysts have found this power analysis inadequate, and they have developed new concepts, most prominently structural power. The usage of structural power actually entails three different meanings, namely indirect institutional power, nonintentional power, and impersonal power. Only the first, however, is compatible with the current neorealist choice-theoretical mode of explanation. This is the basic paradox of recent power approaches: by wanting to retain the central role of power, some international relations and international political economy theory is compelled to expand that concept and to move away from the very theory that claims to be based on power. Neorealism does not take power seriously enough. At the same time, these extensions of the concept are themselves partly fallacious. To account simultaneously for the different meanings of structural power and to avoid a conceptual overload, this article proposes that any power analysis should necessarily include a pair or dyad of concepts of power, linking agent power and impersonal governance. Finally, it sketches some consequences of those concepts for international theory.

International Relations theory is being squeezed between two sides. On the one hand, the world of practitioners and attached experts often perceive International Relations theory as misleading if it does not correspond to practical knowledge, and redundant when it does. The academic study of international relations can and should not be anything beyond the capacity to provide political judgement which comes through reflection on the historical experience of practitioners. On the other hand, and within its disciplinary confines, International Relations theory is reduced to a particular type of empirical theory with increasing resistance to further self-reflection. Instead, this article argues that neither reduction is viable. Reducing theory to practical knowledge runs into self-contradictions; reducing theorizing to its empirical mode underestimates the constitutive function of theories, the role of concepts, and hence the variety of necessary modes of theorizing. I present this twofold claim in steps of increasing reflexivity in International Relations theory and propose four modes of theorizing: normative, meta-theoretical, ontological/constitutive and empirical.

The article seeks to offer a way forward in discussions about the status of securitization theory. In my reading, this debate has been inhibited by the difficulty of finding an appropriate version of ‘understanding/explanation’ that would be consistent with the meta-theoretical commitments of a post-structuralist theory. By leaving ‘explanation’ and/or all versions of causality to the positivist other, the Copenhagen School also left its own explanatory status often implicit, or only negatively defined. Instead, the present article claims that the explanatory theory used in securitization research de facto relies on causal mechanisms that are non-positivistically conceived. Using the appropriate methodological literature renders this explanatory status explicit, exposing the theory’s non-positivist causality and thus, hopefully, enhancing its empirical theory.

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The present article argues that the discipline of international relations is bound to repeat its rounds of debates about realism as long as the underlying dynamic intrinsic to the realist tradition is not understood. Whereas present debates tend to criticize contemporary realists for going astray (an unhappy conjuncture, as it were), this article claims that there exists a systematic theoretical problem with the way realist theorizing has developed within international relations, and consisting of two fundamental dilemmas. The first or ‘identity dilemma’, the choice between distinctiveness and determinacy, results from the characteristics of the central concept ‘power’ — realists either keep a distinct and single micro–macro link through concepts of power/influence which provides indeterminate explanations or they improve their explanations, but must do so by relaxing their assumptions, thereby losing distinctiveness. The second or ‘conservative dilemma’, the choice between tradition and justification, results from the fact that realism is a form of practical knowledge, which needs some form of justification other than the recourse to mere tradition. Hence, realists either update the practical knowledge of a shared diplomatic culture while losing scientific credibility or, reaching for logical persuasiveness, cast their maxims in a scientific mould which distorts the realist tradition. Realism in international relations is fated to return to these dilemmas until it abandons its own identity as derived from the ‘first debate’ between realism and idealism. By doing so, however, it would be free to join a series of metatheoretical and theoretical research avenues which it has so far left to other schools of thought.