Wendt's Violation of the Constructivist Project: Agency and Why a World State is Not Inevitable.

The article presents a critique of Alexander Wendt's article ""Why a World State is Inevitable." According to the author Wendt's argument suffers from irreconcilable neglect and reliance on agency. The author is not addressing the philosophy of teleology per se. According to the author, by focusing on the inevitable World State, Wendt detracts from debate about agency and conditionality that could make a world state possible. Wendt, one of the founding fathers of constructivist International Relations in the 1980's, abandons the spirit of the constructivist project in favor of a top-heavy structuralism, while arguing for an inevitable world state. With teleology comes the concomitant withering of agency and the core constructivist insight that nothing is inevitable--human history may move forward or backward. For a constructivist, a world state is possible but by no means inevitable. Constructivism's promise relates to the role of both agent and structure in explaining world politics. Structures constrain and shape actor identity and behavior, while the possibility of free will permits structural change. Wend, although, argues for unintentional change through material forces of recognition, anarchy and increasingly destructive weapons technology.