Alex Wendt Views

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Alexander Wendt (born 1958 in Mainz, West Germany) is one of the core social constructivist scholars in the field of international relations. Wendt and scholars such as Nicholas Onuf, Peter J. Katzenstein, Emanuel Adler, Michael Barnett, Kathryn Sikkink, John Ruggie, Martha Finnemore, and others have, within a relatively short period of time, established constructivism as one of the major schools of thought in the field. A 2006 survey of American and Canadian International Relations scholars ranks Wendt as first among scholars who have been doing the most interesting work in international relations in recent years. [1]

Alexander Wendt was born in 1958 in Mainz in West Germany, and read political science and philosophy at Macalester College before receiving his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Minnesota in 1989, studying under Raymond Bud Duvall. Wendt taught at Yale University from 1989 to 1997, at Dartmouth College from 1997 to 1999, at the University of Chicago from 1999 to 2004, and is currently the Ralph D. Mershon Professor of International Security at the Ohio State University. He is married to Jennifer Mitzen, also a member of the Ohio State political science faculty. He is currently working on two projects: arguing for the inevitability of a world state, and investigating the possible implications of quantum mechanics for social science.

In 1992, Alexander Wendt shook up the world of International Relations Theory by publishing an article titled 'Anarchy is what States make of it: the social construction of power politics'. Wendt argues that anarchy can be a structural fact about the world that states inhabit, but that it is up to politicians (and IR scholars) to decide how to deal with that anarchy. Since then, Wendtr’s social constructivist approach to International Relations has gained a lot of interest and one cannot talk about IR Theory without mentioning his work.

Alexander Wendt is the Ralph D. Mershon Professor of International Security at The Mershon Center and Professor of Political Science at the Department of Political Science of the Ohio State University, and he is currently working on questions of global governance, IR Theory, and the philosophy of social science.