On the Antiquity of Us: Continuity of Conceptions of Collective Identity in International Relations

This paper has been adapted from the first section of a larger work which will focus on strategic threats to the current global international political system. It lays the theoretical foundations for more concrete analysis to be pursued later in the work. It is thus necessarily abstract. My main focus in analysing geo-strategic matters will be accompanied by a synthesis of two principal strands of International Relations (IR)theory, namely realism and constructivism. This is begun here by means of identifying underlying similarities in the two streams.The paper begins by outlining in skeletal form the beginnings and development ofconstructivism as a critique of (neo)realism. This critique can be summed up as anexplicit consideration of the influence on state behaviour of norms, rules and sharedunderstandings associated with collective identity. Differences between the twoschools amount to differences of perspective and of the relative importance given tovarious units of analysis. In section three, however, I point out that collective identity(or CID) ... it provides, is evident, moreor less implicitly, throughout classical realist and neorealist thought.