Constructivism in Security Studies on Pacific Asia: Assessing Its Strengths and Weaknesses*

Abstract

In the last decade or so, security scholars have paid attention to non‐material factors in trying to make sense of the varied behavior of states in Pacific Asia. Although they do not totally reject material rationalism, constructivists have found it inadequate or misleading and sought to prove that ideational factors help shed better light on states' security policies. Constructivism on security in Pacific Asia has at least three variants: Cultural realism, social interactionism, and historical culturalism. Cultural realists build their theories on the concept of strategic culture, emphasizing the role of central decision‐makers; social interactionists stress the importance of socialization; historical culturalists pay considerable attention to cultural change in domestic political attitudes. This paper asks whether constructivism, one of today's most influential competing paradigms, has supplanted or supplemented realist perspectives on national security. As the latest challenger in security studies, constructivism has become a general approach in security studies, but still needs to prove itself further before it can claim to be superior to realism. This paper also suggests what its proponents should do to improve their social theories and farther shows that constructivism should be treated essentially as a theory of difference, which implies that states are most likely to behave in ways that conform to balance‐of‐threat logic.