However intuitively plausible or obvious this may seem, it is important to notethat it sits in some considerable tension to almost all existing neoinstitutionalist
scholarship. For, conventionally, it is actors’ material interests rather than their
perceptions of those interests that are assumed the key determinants of their behavior.
Though convenient and parsimonious, this is unrealistic—and this is the construc-
tivist’s point. Yet, there is some ambiguity and inconsistency in the manner in which
he operationalizes this important insight, which speaks to a potentially wider
ambiguity within constructivist institutionalism. For, on occasions, Blyth refers to
interests as ‘‘social constructs that are open to redeWnition through ideological
contestation’’ ( 2002 , 271 ; see also Abdelal, Blyth, and Parsons 2006 ). All trace of a
materialist conception of interest is eliminated at a stroke. At other points in the text,
however, interests are treated as materially given and as clearly separate from per-
ceptions of interests, as for instance when he counterposes the ‘‘ideas held by agents’’
and ‘‘their structurally-derived interests’’ ( 2002 , 33 – 4 ). Here, like many other con-
structivists, Blyth seems to fall back on an essentially material conception of interests
(see also Berman 1998 ; McNamara 1998 ; Wendt 1999 ). Obviously it makes no sense to
view the latter as social constructs. To be clear, though these two formulations are
mutually exclusive (interests are either social constructs or given by material circum-
stances, they cannot be both), neither is incompatible with Blyth’s core claim (that in
order to be actionable, interests have to be capable of being articulated). They are
merely diVerent ways of operationalizing that core assumption. Yet it does serve to
hide a potentially more fundamental lacuna.
This only becomes fully apparent when Blyth’s second core premise is recalled:
crises are situations in which actors’ interests (presumably here conceptualized as
social constructs rather than material givens) become blurred. In itself this is far
from self-evident and, given the centrality of the claim to the overall argument he
presents, it is perhaps surprising that Blyth chooses not to defend the claim. It is
not clear that moments of crisis do indeed lead to uncertainty about actors’
interests. Indeed, whilst crises might plausibly be seen to provide focal points
around which competing political narratives might serve to reorient actors’ sense
of their own self-interest, in theWrst instance are they not more likely to result
in the vehement reassertion, expression, and articulation of prior conceptions of
self-interest—often in the intensity of political conXict? Is it not somewhat
perverse, for instance, to suggest that during the infamous Winter of Discontent
of 1978 – 9 (as clear an instance of crisis as one might imagine), Britain’s striking
perceived interests and those we might attribute to them given an exhaustive analysis of their material
circumstances, this is assumed to be a function solely of the incompleteness of the actor’s information.
Arguably this is itself a gross simpliWcation. Interests are not merely a reXection of perceived material
circumstance, but relate, crucially, to the normative orientation of the actor towards her external
environment. My perceived self-interest with respect to questions of environmental degradation, for
instance, will reXect to a signiWcant extent my normative sense of obligation to other individuals
(living and yet to be born) and, conceivably, other species.
constructivist institutionalism 69