Drawing upon a multi-faceted understanding of human rationality, this essay highlights the role of three generic social mechanisms - strategic calculation, cognitive role playing and normative suasion - in promoting differing degrees of cooperation within international institutions. I focus in...

Social constructivism has come of age in contemporary international relations (IR) theory. Indeed, more and more submissions to presses and journals in both Europe and America characterize themselves as constructivist or situate their arguments vis-à-vis those of constructivists. In substantive...

Constructivist approaches to the study of Europe are trendy. Deliberation, discourses, norms, persuasion, socialization, identity, arguing – such concepts and terms are now frequently invoked in debates over the past and future of the European project. As I argue in this essay, however,...

Process tracing is in, acquiring near buzz-word status in certain circles. Europeanists do it; IR scholars do it – all with the goal of bringing theory closer to what really goes on in the world. This makes our scholarship more policy relevant and increases the reliability of our findings -...