The Importance of Africa to The World System After 9/11 Attacks: War on Terrorism or Integration for Sustainable Development

Criticism;

According to (ibid 2001:19-20), although constructivism is an important corrective to some strand of realism and the individual rational choice methodology of neo classical economics, it calls for the abandonment of our knowledge of international politics and start fresh on a constructive base is not compelling and as such it lacks a pro theoretical base.

It criticize realism as purely materialistic, and analyzed the world in terms of technological forces, physical circumstances and other objective factors, stressing over determinism of political world over which human beings have no control, for example where is the logic of power in the American foreign policy.

The constructivist share ideas of how to socially construct the world but which they themselves are unable to use. Ideas are important but the world is made up of many economic, technological and other powerful constraints that limit wisdom and practicality of certain ideas, it lacks such as where is the logic of power in the Rwandan genocide.

The constructivist accused the realist of neglecting the importance of identity and focuses only on material interests and power considerations (ibid 2001:20) validate this accusation of realist stressing interests over identity emphasizing the importance of the national system of political economy in determining the economic behaviour of individual state example of stakeholder society as Germany and Japan as oppose to Britain and US or political and economic ideologies opposing US to USSR.

In response the realist disagree with the constructivist position of identity as the most important determinant of a nation’s foreign policy. The state centric interpretation of IPE reject acknowledgement of a belief that economic and technological forces have eclipsed the nation state, leading to the end of state in favour of a global world economy to which political boundaries and national government are not important. The argue that though economic and technological forces are profoundly reshaping IR and influencing the behaviour of states, however in a highly integrated global economy, states continue to use their powers to implement policies to channel economic forces in ways favourable to their own national interests and that of their citizenry, such as states acquiring a favourable share of gains from IE activities, or preserving national autonomy. The EU and NAFTA are examples of collective national efforts to reach these goals.