Legal Framework for International Business

III.Actors

Many constructivists and adherents of the English School concur with the realists’ view that states are the primary actors in the international system. Overall, however, constructivists and English School theorists have a more nuanced and contextualized view of state identities and interests. Rather than viewing state interests as uniform or fixed, they view state identities and interests as malleable [^|mӕliəbl] and subject to change. State identities and interests evolve over time, and this evolution can occur due to interaction with other states and processes of learning.

From a constructivist perspective, international institutions are not merely arenas for states to pursue their self-interests. Rather, they are sites of socialization and norm-promotion. State identities and interests are changed through their interaction with international institutions. International institutions are promoters of new norms and identities that can fundamentally reshape the preferences of state actors. States come to internalize new norms and develop new identities. International institutions can socialize states to take on new self-understandings and engage in new practices.
For example, when East European states joined NATO they had to develop new domestic understandings of civil-military relations and took on the identities of ‘liberal democracies’. Similarly, states that become members of the European Union have to accept the Copenhagen Criteria (EU membership criteria that include democratic governance, human rights observance, and market economies) and then incorporate the body of EU accumulated law, into their domestic legal systems.
Social constructivists would focus less on the legal process through which this occurs, and more on the effects this process has on the identity and self-understanding of states. Constructivists, like other IR theorists, rarely speak directly of international law as part of this process, preferring instead to study socialization processes, norm diffusion and identity change. Yet the relevance to international law is clear: a focus on the internalization of new norms and changing identities suggests that states comply with international legal obligations not simply out of fear or narrow self-interest, but rather that values, beliefs, and normative affinities play an important role in achieving compliance.
In addition to international organizations, such as NATO or the EU, constructivists pay a great deal of attention to the role of transnational actors who may influence the behavior of states through their norm promoting activities. These include NGOs, transnational advocacy networks, or individual ‘norm entrepreneurs’. Constructivists, like liberals, play a strong emphasis on the role played by international civil society actors in shaping the normative environment in which states operate.