Making Identity Count - Hopf

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Résumé :
Constructivism, despite being one of the three main streams of IR theory, along with realism and liberalism, is rarely, if ever, tested in large-n quantitative work. Constructivists almost unanimously eschew quantitative approaches, assuming that variables of interest to constructivists, defy quantification. Quantitative scholars mostly ignore constructivist variables as too fuzzy and vague. And the rare instances in which quantitative scholars have operationalized identity as a variable, they have unfortunately realized all the constructivists' worst fears about reducing national identity to a single measure, such as language, religion, or ethnicity, thereby violating one of the foundational assumptions of constructivism: intersubjectivity.

Making Identity Count presents a new method for the recovery of national identity, applies the method in 9 country cases, and draws conclusions from the empirical evidence for hegemonic transitions and a variety of quantitative theories of identity. Ted Hopf and Bentley B. Allan make the constructivist variable of national identity a valid measure that can be used by large-n International Relations scholars in a variety of ways. They lay out what is wrong with how identity has been conceptualized, operationalized and measured in quantitative IR so far and specify a methodological approach that allows scholars to recover the predominant national identities of states in a more valid and systematic fashion. The book includes national identity reports on China, the US, UK, Germany, France, Brazil, Japan, and India to both test the authors' method and demonstrate the promise of the approach. Hopf and Allan use these data to test a constructivist hypothesis about the future of Western neoliberal democratic hegemony. Finally, the book concludes with an assessment of the method, including areas of possible improvement, as well as a description of what an intersubjective national identity data base of great powers from 1810-2010 could mean for IR scholarship....

Biographie:
Ted Hopf is the Provost Chair Professor of Political Science at National University of Singapore. His most recent book, Reconstructing the Cold War: The Early Years, 1945-1958 (Oxford 2012), won the 2013 American Political Science Association Robert Jervis-Paul Schroeder Award for Best Book in International Relations and History.

Bentley B. Allan is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on science and global politics, environmental politics, global governance, and qualitative methods. His book manuscript, From Means To Ends: How Scientific Cosmology Changed International Politics, traces the effects of scientific discourses on the values and goals of states.

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Sommaire:

• Chapter One


• Making It Count: Constructivism, Identity, and IR Theory, Ted Hopf


• Chapter Two


• Recovering Discourses of National Identity, Bentley Allan


• Chapter Three


• 'The Rascal's Paradise:' Brazilian National Identity in 2010, Marina Duque


• Chapter Four 'Development' as a means to an unknown end: Chinese National Identity in 2010, Liang Ce and Rachel Zeng Rui


• Chapter Five


• Whither La France? French National Identity in 2010, Benjamin Chan Jian Ming and Rebecca Oh


• Chapter Six


• The Politics of Responsibility: Germany National Identity in 2010, Kai Lim Heng


• Chapter Seven


• Talented Democrats in a Modern State: Indian Identity 2010, (English), Jarrod Hayes


• Chapter Eight


• India's Choice: Western or Asian Global Liberal Hegemony? Indian Identity 2010 (Hindi), Shivaji Kumar


• Chapter Nine


• Conflicted Identities: Japanese National Identity 2010, Nanaho Hanada


• Chapter Ten


• 'The Only Friend the US Has in the Western World:' UK National Identity in 2010, Srdjan Vucetic


• Chapter Eleven


• The Country upon a Hill? American Identity in 2010, Ki Hoon Michael Hor


• Chapter Twelve


• Making Identity Count: Looking Beyond IR, Srdjan Vucetic


• Chapter Thirteen


• What Have We Learned, Ted Hopf and Bentley Allan


• Appendix


• National Identity Report Code Book