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Theodore Hopf
Theodore Hopf is Associate Professor of Political Science at The Ohio State University and a research associate at the Mershon Center. His interests include international relations theory, identity, qualitative methodology, and the former Soviet space.
Hopf is author or editor of more than 30 articles and book chapters and five books including Social Construction of International Politics: Identities and Foreign Policies, Moscow 1955 and 1999 (Cornell University Press, 2002), winner of the Marshall D. Shulman Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.
In Social Construction of International Politics, Hopf uses a social constructivist approach to account for Soviet and Russian foreign policy in 1955 and 1999. He argues that a state’s domestic identity has an enormous effect on its international policies. To explore Russian identity, Hopf uses sources as varied as daily newspapers, official discourse, popular novels, film reviews, and memoirs. He finds that the different identities expressed in these materials shaped the worldviews of decision makers, with a profound effect on Soviet and Russian foreign policy.
Hopf’s latest edited volume is Russia’s European Choice (Palgrave, 2008). Produced during a five-year appointment at the Finnish Institute for International Affairs and Finnish Academy of Sciences, the book examines Russia’s relationship with Europe. From the early 1700s until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Europe and Moscow both relied on material power to balance against the other’s threat. Recently, Europe has adopted a strategy of making Russia non-threatening by seeing it as European. However, Russia has been resisting this mission of assimilation. Contributors to this volume wrestle with the question of whether the European project is feasible, desirable, or even ethical.
Hopf is currently working on a social constructivist account of the Cold War called Reconstructing the Cold War: Identities, Institutions, and Interests in Moscow’s Foreign Policy since 1945. Hopf is recreating Soviet and Russian national identities for the entire span of the Cold War, then determining whether these identities affect foreign policy choices made in relation to the United States, Eastern Europe, China, and the decolonizing world. Besides conducting research at Russian archives in Moscow, Hopf used archives at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, where he was senior research fellow in 2006-07.
Hopf has two other research projects in progress. In “Anarchy is What Societies Make of It,” Hopf argues that systemic constructivism, or the idea that interaction among states produces meaningful national identities, is too blunt an instrument to explain the wide variety of relationships among states. For example, during the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union cooperated on nuclear arms control in Europe while competing furiously in the decolonizing world. No single systemwide culture of anarchy could account for so much variety. Instead, a nation’s domestic identity, in interaction with other actors across the world, produces the variety in international politics. Thus, Hopf proposes a theory of societal constructivism that emphasizes national identity.
In “The Logic of Habit in International Relations,” Hopf examines several explanations for social action including cost-benefit calculation, normative appropriateness, affect, and tradition. International relations theorists usually explain events as conscious choices by states based on cost-benefit analysis. However, Hopf argues that many foreign policy decisions are a result of habit. Because habits are unconscious and automatic, theorists must take into account how they are formed, how they can be broken, and their implications for international relations.
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Theodore
Hopf
Associate Professor of Political Science
The Ohio State University
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