Social Construction of Foreign Policy: Identities and Foreign Policies, Moscow, 1955 and 1999
"In this impressive work of interpretivist international relation theorizing, Ted Hopf seeks an understanding of how the identities contained within a state affect the ways in which that state views others."—Virginia Quarterly Review, 79:3"Identity, the author believes, is crucial in shaping one's understanding of states as adversaries, allies, or something in between. Identity's content, however, can be conjured not by drawing on a priori categories but only by uncovering society's discourses, and these emerge not only from speeches, texts, essays, and editorials, but even from pulp fiction."—Foreign Affairs, March/April 2003."Ted Hopf, a professor of political science at Ohio State University and author of works on both American and Russian foreign policy, has produced an intriguing book. Social Construction of International Politics is an examination of how Soviet and, later, Russian leaders understood the USSR, Russia, and other states in terms of social identities, and how those social identities were instrumental in shaping Soviet and Russian foreign policy choices. . . . For specialists of Soviet and/or Russian foreign policy, or international relations theorists, this is a worthwhile read and one that I recommend."—Nathaniel Richmond, Utica College, The Russian Review, 62:4, October 2003."Ted Hopf has long been at the forefront of linking theories of social construction and identity to the empirical study of foreign policy. In this long-awaited magnum opus, he develops valuable insights from the social theory of identity, invents a highly sophisticated inductive method for discovering political identities, and demonstrates the method with fascinating case studies from the history of Soviet and Russian foreign policy. No serious student of international relations, qualitative methodology, or Russian politics can afford to ignore this path-breaking work."—Matthew Evangelista, Author of Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War"Ted Hopf's discussion of what identity entails, his careful delineation of the lines between individual and social cognition, and his approach to discerning the very diverse axes that define identity are all among the most sophisticated treatments of these issues I have seen in the literature on international relations."—James Richter, Bates College"Social Construction of International Politics is one of the most original and important works to appear in international relations theory in many years. This book will become the definitive theoretical statement of interpretivist constructivism, one rooted in cognitive psychology and symbolic interactionism."—Douglas Blum, Providence College