State Identity

State identity generally refers to the body of interests, values, self-understandings, and orientations from which states act in the world. As a term, state identity posits that it is meaningful to understand the political community of a state as having a collective identity or sense of itself at a highly generalized, but nevertheless important level. The body of interests, values, and self-understanding that makes up state identity is rooted in a country's history and cultures, human and physical geography, economy and underlying strategic context. At the same time, state identity is shaped by the state's experience of the process of international interaction through time.

A number of fundamentally important features of the concept of state identity flow from this. Although complex and multilayered, a state's identity has considerable stability. This gives the concept real analytic value because analysis can be framed in a way that appeals to general principles (of international politics in particular) while being sensitive to the dense particularity of specific states. Even though state identity is relatively stable, however, it is also flexible and evolving. Many of the elements in which state identity is embedded, or their significance, are changing through timecultures are dynamic, the economic or strategic value of resources can change, and so on. Thus, the concept does not demand an essentialist or ahistorical account of identity. Moreover, as with individual or group identity, the ongoing development of state identity occurs to a significant extent through interaction with other states and international actors. This gives the concept of state identity particular relevance to questions of foreign policy as well as to efforts to theorize the nature of international politics.

The idea of state identity is closely associated with one of the leading contemporary theories of international relations: constructivism. As the name implies, constructivists understand states’ identities as constructed through the process of [Page 783]international interaction. Conversely, the nature of the international sphere is constituted through the character of states’ identities and actions. This emphasis contrasts with the other theoretical perspectives dominating mainstream international relations theory: neorealism and neoliberalism. In the words of Alexander Wendt, a leading exponent of constructivism, “anarchy is what states make of it”that is, the international arena is as conflictual or as cooperative as states determine through their interactions over time. This is a dynamic, interactive grasp of international politics, which gives self-directed human action (or agency) a central role in shaping the character of international politics while providing a way of conceptualizing the complexity and difficulty of change. The concept of a socially constructed state identity also gives constructivists a way of understanding meaning and value as well as power and material interests as drivers of action in the international arena. This capacity to account for change, in ways that give norms and values a potentially significant role without being idealist, has given constructivism considerable appeal as a practical reflection on international politics.