Reconstructing World Politics: Norms, Discourse, and Community

This Article argues that the conventional (rationalist) approach to world politics characterized by political bargain cannot fully capture the new social reality under the contemporary global ambience where ideational factors such as ideas, values, culture, and norms have become more salient and influential not only in explaining but also in prescribing state behaviors. After bringing rationalism’s paradigmatic limitations into relief, the Article offers a sociological framework that highlights a reflective, intersubjective communication among states and consequent norm-building process. Under this new paradigm, one can understand an international organization as a “community” (Gemeinschaft), not as a mere contractual instrument of its contracting parties (Gesellschaft). The Article applies the new paradigm to the World Trade Organization (WTO) as it describes the WTO’s institutional evolution from a power-oriented, tariff-reducing contract to a norm-oriented world trade community

3. 1989 as Rebirth

The events of 1989 were not a revolution (neither liberal, nor self-limiting, nor velvet, nor anti-revolutionary). They were not simply reforms or restoration. They were a rebirth, and rebirths (not revolutions, as Marxists would have it) are the locomotives of history. It is symptomatic of the uniqueness of these events, and the inadequacy of contemporary social science and political theory, that we still argue not just about the causes, consequences, or significance of them, but about what ..