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The article focuses on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 which exempts model aircraft from future FAA rulemaking. It mentions that two competing theories of jurisprudence such as pragmatism theory of Richard Posner and constructivism theory of Ronald Dworkin. It also mentions that the comparison of two theories to evaluate which theory would be preferred for the best intended effect on the model aircraft industry.

The article discusses the concept of constitutional constructivism in relation to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the 1798 case Calder v. Bull which deals with the application of a prohibition against ex post facto laws in an American state court-based civil probate matter. The views of then-U.S. Supreme Court Justices James Iredell and Samuel Chase are examined, along with natural laws and rights and various interpretations of the nation's Constitution.

Debates about policies affecting the consumption of oil, and on how to support development of substitutes, often represent environmental politics at its most polarizing. How can we explain the serial reversals in energy policy that result from changing perceptions about the availability of renewable versus non-renewable energy supplies? Application of a range of theories to the case of the United States since 1973 suggests that two distinct types of explanation interact to play crucial roles: socially constructed deliberation takes place over the purposes of energy policy; meanwhile, physical constraints in natural resources are also observed and processed into updated perceptions of relative feasibility among policy choices. Over time, different policy priorities – varying in emphases on economic growth, sustainability, scarcity, or innovation – rise and fall as market conditions test how policies correspond with reality. Opportunities to develop successful policy strategies for managing this century's energy transition – in any of the four directions described – will depend similarly on the absence or presence of political will, a condition shaped by perceptions of material feasibility. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The idea of interdisciplinarity can be articulated in different ways. The aim of the article is to criticise the view that interdisciplinarity is to be treated as a quality of the historian's approach to his subject-matter, and to argue for a constructivist interpretation of that notion. A constructivist account of interdisciplinarity relies on the thesis that the latter is one of the manifold ways in which it is possible to give sense to the historical records of which the historian wants to gain knowledge. In the paper it is maintained that the function of the notion of interdisciplinarity is to account for the clash of languages that can be found when disciplines converge. This new paradigm is highlighted by taking into consideration the history of American pragmatism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper surveys constructivist scholarship in the study of international political economy (IPE) in China. Chinese scholars in the field of IPE have until recently rarely used constructivism as an approach to study IPE for two reasons. The first, like Western IPE, is the short history of constructivism as a theoretical perspective. The second, unlike Western IPE, stems from the long-standing dominance of Marxism, China's official state ideology, in the academic field. In China, Marxism's materialist core shapes the basic research questions of IPE. Unsurprisingly then, constructivist analysis is quite alien to the dominant intellectual discourse in China. Nonetheless, of late, more Chinese scholars have begun to apply constructivist analysis. This paper surveys these developments and is divided into three sections. The first section provides an overview of how Chinese Marxist scholars approach the major issues of IPE as they relate to China. The second section provides an overview of the work of liberal-minded Chinese scholars who work on major IPE issues, another counterpoint to the Marxist school. The third section, which is the major focus of this paper, examines how Chinese scholars have applied the constructivist concepts to study major IPE issues in the Chinese context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Modem free speech theory is dominated in the courts and the academy alike by a constructivist style of reasoning: it posits a few axiomatic purposes of speech and from these deduces detailed rules of law. This way of thinking can make the law blind to the actual consequences of legal rules and damage both individual liberty and democracy. I develop this claim through a critique of the work of Martin Redish, who has developed the most sustained and sophisticated constructivist theory of free speech. Free speech constructivism is not the only way to understand the First Amendment. It is a fairly recent development, emerging only in the 1970s. The idea of free speech, on the other hand, dates back to Milton's arguments in the 1640s. This Article identifies the pathologies of constructivism and recovers an older, more attractive free speech tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comparative reluctance of German historians to engage the postmodern challenge suggested the need for a reflection on what post-structuralist impulses might have to offer for analyzing the Central European past. In the United States the criticism voiced by Geoff Eley and David Blackbourn had already undercut the hegemony of the Sonderweg paradigm, promoted by the "societal historians" of the Bielefeld school which was slow to respond to feminist and everyday history approaches. Michael Geyer and I therefore set out to initiate a discussion about the deconstruction of "grand narratives" about the German past, in order to create more interpretative space for stories that did not fit into the model of "historical social science." In the American intellectual climate this objectivist and modernist outlook seemed no longer persuasive enough, since various minorities promoted views that emphasized the constructivist character of historical understanding. Our joint programmatic essay therefore tried to open space for recovering a greater plurality of experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This autobiographical retrospective discusses Konrad Jarausch's scholarship as an example of the topical and methodological development of contemporary history. In contrast to nationally bound scholars, his career in the United States and involvement in German debates illuminates the transatlantic connections of historicizing the recent past. The need to confront the Nazi dictatorship initially privileged political history, but the societal upheavals of the 1960 shifted interests towards quantitative methods and the new social history. The peaceful revolution of 1989 then challenged historians to establish a nuanced interpretation of the GDR in scholarship and memory culture. At the same time the cultural turn called for an engagement with postmodern methods of narratology, transforming theoretical approaches towards constructivism. The growing sensitivity towards the European and global embeddedness of the German past finally inspired a move towards transnational perspectives. This intellectual trajectory is therefore emblematic of successive changes which opened contemporary history towards a new plurality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper compares the rational and the constructivist approach to the study of international political economy (Ipe). In doing so, the paper focuses on the ontological and epistemological features that allow distinguishing between the two approaches. This distinction is further itemized in the illustration of the two main, contemporary Ipe schools: the American and the British school. The article concludes by reflecting on the modalities through which recent studies have attempted to reconcile the rational and the constructivist approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korea's strategic thought toward the United States has been evolving from a blood alliance during the Cold War era, to a transitional alliance during the post-Cold War era, and to a strategic alliance after September 11. Despite some trials and errors, South Korea has successfully adjusted itself to new strategic challenges by transforming and reinventing its alliance with the United States. As part of a soft-balancing strategy, this endeavor has been conducted in parallel with South Korea's improved relations with other major powers than the United States and its support for multilateral security cooperation so that the United States may not impose its own strategic preferences on South Korea. In these attempts, we can discover strategic elements that are realist (utilizing the U.S. as a strategic balancer between China and Japan), liberal (going beyond the military alliance), and constructivist (joining the regional community-building). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotional forces shape not only market tendencies to ‘manias, panics and crashes’, but also policy debates as they predispose agents to definitions of state and societal interests. Nevertheless, IR scholars often downplay emotional influences, casting them as secondary to coalitional or cognitive forces. In this article, I address these limitations by disaggregating intersubjective understandings into popularly resonant traditions of thought and elite-based paradigmatic frameworks. Drawing on the insights of Reinhold Niebuhr and Richard Hofstadter, I then argue that elite anxieties regarding populism can engender the ‘technocratic repression’ of emotion from paradigmatic debates in ways that paradoxically render policy less stable and pragmatic. Firstly, such repression obscures the emotional bases of market trends and engenders overconfidence in the ability of monetary fine-tuning to restrain manias and to contain panics. Secondly, in isolating paradigmatic debate from everyday language, technocratic repression frustrates deliberation and can exacerbate populist resentments, requiring the construction of crises to advance change. Shifting to an empirical focus, I suggest that tendencies to technocratic repression in the 1990s and early 21st century engendered overconfidence in monetary fine-tuning. In the post-subprime context, the key question is the extent to which this bias in favour of monetary policy has been reversed, or whether constructions of the subprime crisis have legitimated a revived regulatory stress. In sum, this analysis highlights the reality of emotion as an influence on the international political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Piaget, children learn best when they are actively engaged in the learning process and when they are challenged to construct their own understanding of the world. This theory formed the basis for the theoretical approach known as constructivism. Although constructivist ideas, such as Piaget's are identifiable in current ideologies of national organizations for early childhood education, it is the field of neuroscience that has provided scientific legitimacy to constructivism. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 made clear that children must be proficient on state academic achievement standards by the 2013-2014 school year. In light of this, it is expedient that brain research provides teachers, school administrators, and policy makers with compelling and research supported arguments for the use of constructivist theory in the formation of effective learning environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article claims that realist and constructivist ideas are compatible. Structural realism is needed to understand the constraining and stabilizing role of material factors. Furthermore, it detects process in a law-like tendency towards international power equilibrium which is achieved via balancing. Constructivism, in turn, highlights the importance of ideas and norms as engines for change and the creative role of agency. The article therefore combines a materialist and an idealist perspective. It both detects elements of stability and argues for necessary improvements in current international relations (IR) by looking at the issues of United States hegemony, the rise of new challengers and the threat of sub-state international terrorism. This article, therefore, takes up important claims made by Kenneth Waltz on realism, hegemony and terrorism, and interprets them in the light of IR theory today. It is argued that structural realism and Waltz's ideas are still important and viable, but that we need to combine them with additional perspectives, notably constructivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights some scholarly works on the intellectual and cultural history of American perspectives on international law. Emphasis is placed on three specific contributions, among them enriching and improving the historical image of American relations to international law. The different caricatures of U.S. relations to international law are cited, one of which is American exceptionalism. Constructivism is noted as one of the various theories of compliance that benefited most from such historical studies.

This article responds to criticism of the author's work on the problem of money laundering by the scholar Ian Roberge in the article "Bringing the United States Back in: A Response to Rainer Hülsse's 'Creating Demand for Global Governance." The author disagrees with Roberg's account of constructivism and the role of the U.S. in the development of money laundering investigation mechanisms by the Financial Action Task Force. The role of persuasion and the development of an intellectual account of the damage that money laundering causes in international economic relations is emphasised.

This article, which is a response to the article "Creating Demand for Global Governance: The Making of a Global Money Laundering Problem" by Rainer Hülsse, presents the establishment of the Financial Action Task Force as The author questions Hülsse's argument that the development of the FATF preceded the establishment of the fact that money laundering was an issue requiring multilateral changes to governance. The author presents the case that money laundering is an issue faced by the U.S. that can only be dealt with multilaterally.

We investigated how third party managers from China, Japan and the USA intervened in employees' disputes. Consistent with predictions, we found (using non-linear HLM analysis) that managers who were superiors to the disputants behaved autocratically and/or decided on conservative (e.g., contract adhering) outcomes; but managers who were peers (especially in China and the USA), generally involved disputants in decision-making and obtained integrative outcomes that went beyond initial contract related mandates. Our results extend prior research and theorizing using the dispositional and constructivist perspectives on culture by introducing norm complexity as an explanation for variations in third party conflict intervention behaviour within one culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A variety of constructivists have begun to address emotions in IR, viewing emotional events and memories as important dimensions to the social construction of identity. But it is not clear that constructivist tools, designed in most cases for interpreting discursive representations, are equipped to study affective phenomena. This article offers a critical assessment of constructivism's ability to theorize affects - nonconscious and embodied emotional states - in global politics. Using as an example the ontology developed by Alexander Wendt, the article suggests that common presuppositions in orthodox constructivism in fact obstruct the study of affect and its role in social and political life. To grasp the depth, intensity, and fugitivity of emotional phenomena, constructivism needs to rethink its attachments to reflective agency, ideational processes, and symbolic meaning. Through a brief discussion of the American response to 9/11, the final section develops several propositions on the role of affect in forging political identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The methodology of "theory construction" developed in the U.S. around 1970 established an approach for the development of sociological theories. However, this methodology underestimates the value of studies conducted on classical sociological theories. According to Laudan's philosophy of science, the studies on the classical theories can develop current sociological theories by solving conceptual problems, identifying anomalies, and comparing the strengths and weaknesses of several sociological research traditions. By studying these classical sociological theories, we can find problems that require a solution and clues to solve these problems. However, it is very difficult to develop a theory only through studies on these classical theories because conceptual and empirical problems are closely connected to each other. In order to solve an empirical problem, we must gather and analyze data. Therefore, we must solve both conceptual and empirical problems simultaneously in order to develop sociological theories. This can be achieved through derivation and by joining a "good" research group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why did the Bush administration take the United States to war with Iraq in the aftermath of September 11, 2001? The constructivist approach used in this article to answer this question argues that the ideas of a handful of policy intellectuals affected political outcomes in remarkably consequential ways. These ideas shaped administration assessments of every major aspect of the Iraq war, beginning with its necessity and justification. Although the administration's ideational commitments were complex and evolving, four sets of ideas were central to its risk-filled gambit in the Middle East: a belief in the necessity and benevolence of American hegemony, a Manichaean conception of politics, a conviction that regime type is the principal determinant of foreign policy, and great confidence in the efficacy of military force. Taken together, these ideas defined the social purpose of American power, framed threats to the United States, and determined appropriate solutions to core problems. Ideas are not the sole factors setting the course of u.s. foreign policy, but they are essential to explaining an otherwise puzzling administration decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is likely to be the future character of the relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China? Will it be marked by convergence toward deepening cooperation, stability, and peace or by deterioration that leads to increasingly open competition and perhaps even war? The answers to these questions are of enormous importance. They are also, at this point, unknown. Most analysts who write on U.S.-China relations deploy arguments derived from the three main camps in contemporary international relations theorizing: realism, liberalism, and constructivism. Those whose basic analytical premises place them in one of these three schools, however, do not necessarily have similar views regarding the specific question of the future of U.S.-China relations. It is possible to identify realists who believe that the relationship will basically be stable and peaceful, liberals who expect confrontation and conflict, and constructivists who think that things could go either way. The six basic positions in this debate all rest on claims about the importance of particular causal mechanisms or sets of similarly aligned causal forces. In reality, one set of forces may turn out to be so powerful as to overwhelm the rest. But it is also conceivable that the future will be shaped by a confluence of different forces, some mutually reinforcing and others opposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses issues related to the conservation of racial authenticity, political commitment and racial reality in the U.S. Growing interest in racial ontology in philosophical circles; Analysis of the concept of social constructivism.

Whether to interpret September 11 as an act of war or a criminal act is embedded within a larger dispute about the preferred nature of global security rules in the post-cold war world. Interpreting September 11 as war is consistent with a preference for Westphalian global security rules; interpreting September 11 as a crime is consistent with a preference for global society rules. We present evidence of a dramatic interpretive gulf between US and other leaders around the world in their understanding and portrayal of September 11 and the ensuing ‘war on terrorism’. Using a rule-oriented constructivist approach, we argue that this interpretive dispute perpetuates two dominant post-cold war trends: attempts by many in the international community to construct global collective security rules, and resistance to that project from a hegemonic United States.International Politics (2005) 42, 135–151. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800102 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little research exists on how the conception of world order in terms of globalization defines security policy. The way the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, on 11 September 2001 were understood highlights how globalization defines threats, and the policies adopted to deal with them, in the post-Cold War international order. This article utilizes three elements of the globalization discourse (globality, globalization and globalism) identified by Ulrich Beck in analysing the Western reaction to the events of 11 September 2001. It is argued that the attacks reflected a new 'strategic globality' in which the new civilian infrastructure of globalization enabled Third World groups to intervene in the West. In terms of globalization, the events of 11 September were seen as the realization of scenarios for post-Cold War insecurity that dominated the late 1990s. The terrorist attacks actualized the 'ontological insecurity' which followed from the notion that globalization enabled threats to proliferate with the same force as trade. Focusing on 'globalism', the article analyses the strategies for creating safety in a globalized world that presented themselves immediately after the events. The author presents three globalisms: particularism, imperialism and cosmopolitanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the role of culture on international security and relations by examining the case North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The author analyzes the cultural aspects of the military relations between states in view of constructivism which argue that ideas and discourse matter, norms, values and identity heavily influence political life. He also considers the notions of American political scientist Samuel Huntington and French philosopher Michel Foucault in examining the transatlantic relationship. With the cultural differences between Europeans and Americans, and the undermining of NATO's cultural basis, the author believes that the translantic organization will not lasts as cultural differences among allies will complicate cooperation in international security.

This article argues for a redefinition of how secondary music teachers might think about teaching content. Rather than considering only performance-based education that reaches only a small portion of the secondary school population, music teachers should consider composition, improvisation, and active listening as important additional concerns for a wider population of students. Such an approach is important for serving gifted and talented students as part of mainstream instruction and is in tune with latest developments in curriculum design and research. Constructivism as an educational philosophy is suggested as a conceptual base and advances in music technology and the encouragement of creative thinking are cited as important contributions to this reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role of mathematics teachers. It states that mathematics teachers should make an effort to use research constructs in order to build a group of mathematics educators. It further states that social interaction is necessary to build relationship among educators but mutual negotiated interpretations and radical constructivism are also important for mathematics teachers.

In this article the author replies to a criticism of his article "Some Problems with Spontaneous Order," that appeared in the summer 2009 issue of this journal. The article examined the social thought of philosopher F. A. Hayek. The author defends himself stating that he had no intention of declaring that there were no spontaneous orders but wished to point out their roots in rational constructivism. The author refers to the U.S. Constitution as providing nothing more than a framework for spontaneous processes.