Constructive Sovereignty

Constructive Sovereignty is an emerging international relations (IR) model intended to allow IR scholars to address changing international realities. Specifically, the model endogenizes phenomena such as non-state actors and globalization's increasing onslaught against state sovereignty. Constructive Sovereignty maintains that states are not the primary actors, their constituents are. Therefore preferences are not fixed as in state-centric models. Since states merely represent the preferences of their respective constituents, they will only adhere to and ultimately embed those international norms that their constituents will accept. However, rather than attempting to explain, describe and predict the adoption of such international norms via the influence of international organizations (as with liberalism’s top-down approach), or via state- centric regimes (as with neo-liberalism’s bottom-up approach), Constructive Sovereignty posits that ultimately change comes from the inside out.