Ideas and identity from rationalism to theories of recognition

Abstract

All approaches to foreign policy analysis deal with ideas and identity; the issue is how they do so. The underlying theory of action, from utilitarianism to discursive ontologies and theories of recognition, provides the methodological assumptions of their respective analyses. The chapter develops first how the methodology of utilitarian approaches like recent versions of realism and liberalism deals with ideas, norms, and identity. It will be found lacking for objectifying ideational factors and for applying them in a causal efficient explanatory framework. A second section will then show how identity has been more coherently applied in constructivist foreign policy analysis, including in approaches to ontological security. They meet however a different set of problems, such as its often homeostatic assumptions, its more acute problem with anthropomorphization, and not least the pathologies of turning an observational theory into a nationalist foreign policy apology.