Wendt`s main goal was to create a link between rationalists and reflectivists by applying a

Constructivist aproach about the social construction of identities and interests to an anarchic

international system. His main goal was to ``argue against the neorealist claim that self-help is given

by anarhic structure exogenously to process``. (Wendt, 1992, 394)

Taking in consideration this approach, neorealists cannot assume that the international

system will be based on self-help, which strengthens the liberal perspective of the ability of

institutions to change the states behavior. From Wendt`s perspective identity is the key concept.

Anarchy is a condition that inevitably leads to self-help.

Therefore, anarhic and self-help depend on the way in which actors see themself in relation

with other, other which depend on the way they interact.

He argues that self-help and power politics do not follow either logically or causally from

anarchy and that if today we find ourselves in a self-help world, this is due to process, not structure.

There is no ``logic`` of anarchy apart from the practices that create and instantiate one structure of

identities and interests rather than another. Self- help and power politics are institutions, not essential

features of anarchy. (Wendt, 1992, 395)

In order to understand that self-help under anarchy is an institution then Wendt’s

understanding of institutions needs to be taken into account.Therefore, Wendt defines the institution

as a relatively stable set or ``structure`` of identities and interests. (Wendt, 1992, 399)

Institutions are fundamentally cognitive entities that do not exist apart from actors`s ideas about how

the world works (Moscovici, 1984, 3-36). As a collective knowledge, they are experienced as having

an existance ``over and above the individuals who happen to embody them at the moment`` (Berger,

Luckmann, 1966, 58). In this way institutions come to confront individuals as more or less the social

facts related to the use of threats or force, but they are still a function of what actors collectively

``know``. Identities and such collective cognitions do not exist apart from each other, they are

``mutually constitutive `` (Czempiel, Rosenau, 1989, 51-74).

International regimes or scholarship dont always share the point that institutions could be

cooperative or conflictual. When it is realised that there has to be a focus on identities as well as not

disregarding the cognitive process, then institutions can be changed.

The processes of identity-formation suggests that each person has many identities linked to

institutional roles, such as brother, son, teacher, and citizen. In the same way a state may have

multiple identities as ``sovereign``, ``leader of the free world``, ``imperial power`` and so on (Wendt,

1992, 398). The commitment to particular identities vary, although each identity is an inherently social

definition of the actor grounded in the theories which actors collectively hold about themselves and

one another and which constitute the structure of the social world(Wendt, 1992, 399).

He shows us how important important interaction among states is for the constitution of their

identities and interests.

Furthermore he ilustrates how entities define themself with regard to other entities, suggesting

that it is upon the cognitive variation that the meaning of anarchy and the distribution of power

depends (Wendt, 1992, 400).

He`s doing so by presenting the behavior of the entities in relation to other entities in different

security systems such as competitive, in which they identify negatively under anarchy leading to a lack

of trust, collective action becoming impossible in such systems due to the fear of being atacked by the

other.

Another type of security system presented by Wendt is the individualistic one, a sistem in

which the entities follow to maximaise their absolute gains, and not the relative gains. They are

passive about the connection between their own security and others. Although we must take in

consideration Wendt`s statement that states are ``egoist``(Wendt, 1992, 400).

Both competitive and idividualistic systems are ``self-help`` forms of anarchy in Wendt`s

perspective, system in which entities have to treat security as individual responsability of each of the

members of the system, taking in consideration that they do not positively identify the security of self

with that of others.

This is in oposition to the ``cooperative`` security system, in which entities identify positively

with another so that the security of each is perceived as the responsibility of all. This is not self-help in

any interesting sense, since the ``self`` in terms of which interests are defined is the community;

national interests are international interests (Wendt, 1992, 400).

Taking in consideration thoese asumption, we can conclude that institutionalization is a

process of internalizing new identities and interests, not something occuring outside them and

affecting only behavior,seeing the socialization process as a a cognitive one, and not a behavioural

one.

Both of the arguments are necessary for his overall purpose of demonstratinc contrary to the

neorealist apropach of Waltz that self-help is a function of anarchy, given the fact that he tries to

explain that institution are the result and not a function of anarchy. He is doing so by emphasizing the

important of a stable set of identities and interests that form an institution, implying that all the

constitutive parts of international relations are socially constructed, and how this institution can be

change, emphasizing the importance and consequences of how states conceive themselves or

compared with other.

References

Farr.R, Moscovici.S, The Phenomenon of Social Representations. Cambridge University Press (1984):

Print.

Berger.P.L, Luckmann.T, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of

Knowledge. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books (1966): Print.

Czempiel.E.O, Roseneau.J, Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges. Lexington, Mass. Lexington

Books (1989): Print.

Wendt.A, Anarchy is what States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics. International

Organization,vol. 46, no. 2, The MIT Press (1992): Print.