My aim in this chapter is to contribute to what the volume calls the ‘third move’ in International Relations norm studies, which explicitly addresses the legitimacy of the norm being studied as well as its influence on practice. I build on the work of those who point to the relevance of classical American Pragmatism, which considers how we know that what we are doing is appropriate once we realise that norms are the product of social and historical practices rather than abstract moral foundations. I trace the Pragmatist’s commitment to deliberative inquiry through the ideas of Charles Peirce and John Dewey and relate it to Antje Wiener’s arguments that normativity is sustained through proactive contestation. While there are overlaps between the two approaches, I argue that Deweyan Pragmatism can help us understand when it is appropriate to defend a norm against contestation. It does this by drawing on what Dewey called a ‘stock of learning’, understood as the background knowledge that has epistemic authority because it is the product of a deliberative and inclusive process of inquiry. I develop this with reference to debates within Pragmatist philosophy before applying it to offer a preliminary assessment of global health norms.

This chapter addresses the book’s first question by focusing on the Realist critique of classical Pragmatism. This insists that political interests corrupt processes of social learning and argues that power determines how best practice (and the public good) is defined. This criticism was levelled directly at Dewey by his contemporaries, especially Morgenthau and Niebuhr, and it continues to inform neorealism. Inspired by Dewey’s response, the chapter argues Pragmatism is not blind to power or self-interest, it simply emphasizes, like contemporary IR constructivists, that understandings of the self (its identity and its interests) are not fixed; they are instead contingent on the self’s experience of interacting with its material and social environment. The normative implication for Pragmatists is that theorists should render that process intelligent by subjecting it to ‘conscientious reflection’. That process is a political one to the extent access to a community of inquiry is contingent on power. Part of the Pragmatist ‘vocation’ is a commitment to balancing political power by supporting Deweyan ‘publics’: those who are indirectly affected by practice but excluded from the relevant communities of practice. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the implication for key concepts in Realist and Pragmatist thought, including tragedy, prudence and learning.

This chapter applies Pragmatic Constructivism to assess communities of practice in global health governance. It focuses on the problem of containing contagious diseases. This is one of the tasks of the World Health Organization (WHO) and its practice of declaring a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). Given the uncertainty surrounding such a practice, which could lead to the isolation of an effected state, the decision inevitably involves judgement calls rather than the pre-reflexive implementation of pre-planned steps. Applying the first Pragmatic Constructivist test to this practice means asking if the community of practice charged with making that judgement is properly constituted and sufficiently inclusive. The evidence suggests that it is not. The chapter problematizes practice that unduly privileges technical (in this case epidemiological) expertise over social and political advice. A second application of the two Pragmatic Constructivist tests focuses on an inconsistency internal to global health practices as they relate to the distribution of vaccines. Practices that achieve more comprehensive coverage, such as the local manufacture of vaccines, are being prevented by intellectual property practices. The chapter considers how the knowledge of the Covid pandemic challenges the epistemic authority of intellectual property practices.

This chapter begins to answer the book’s second question: how should international practitioners act and adapt. It serves as a bridge between the theoretical discussion in Part I and the empirical analysis in Part II. The chapter identifies a ‘Pragmatic Constructivist’ approach to IR and discusses how it can be operationalized. That approach focuses on problems that are immanent within, and emerge from, actual international practice. A problem occurs when a practice fails to keep pace with material change, when lived experiences suffer and when epistemic doubt emerges. The chapter illustrates this with a discussion of how John Dewey and Jane Addams were influenced by the material transformations of their time and how those processes ‘eclipsed’ the public interest. The chapter draws parallels between the emerging ‘associations’ and ‘publics’ that early Pragmatists wrote about and the ‘communities of practice’ that contemporary constructivists identify as the ‘software’ of global governance. It extends IR research by arguing that Pragmatic Constructivists can assess how well communities of practice learn to ameliorate lived experiences in the face of contemporary global challenges. That assessment is based on two tests: the extent to which communities of practice are characterized by inclusive reflexivity and deliberative practical judgement.

This chapter draws conclusions based on the impacts of exclusionary and hierarchical practices, the relative value of ‘top-down’ reform and ‘bottom-up’ activism, and the place of global learning in a gradualist approach to progressive change. Beyond that, the chapter considers how an approach inspired by American Pragmatism informs Global International Relations, which seeks to construct a discipline that is more inclusive of non-Western perspectives. The chapter draws parallels between the book’s reading of classical Pragmatism and non-Western ‘cosmologies’ like Confucianism. This has been introduced to contemporary Western IR mainly through the works of Yaqing Qin. The chapter does, however, build on other works identifying resonances across Deweyan Pragmatism and Confucian philosophy. The chapter argues that if the Pragmatist turn in Western IR continues, then it can be more easily harmonized with non-Western approaches. This at least signposts a path ‘towards’ Global IR, even if it does not fix the path’s end point. Indeed, the chapter argues that we should follow such signs because they do not fix the destination. Those points are for practitioners and global publics to construct and reconstruct as they work collectively to mitigate lived problems through communities of practice that are inclusive, reflexive, creative and deliberative.

This chapter addresses the book’s first question by focusing on what classical Pragmatism can tell us about the ‘practice turn’ in International Relations. It assesses the value – both descriptive and normative – of defining practice as pre-reflexive or habitual. Dewey was clear: habits can be useful, but only if those subject to their hold can improvise when practice produces unwanted consequences. Applying this to International Relations, the chapter shows how a failure to adequately reflect on the situational value of an ideological commitment to ‘democracy promotion’ – what Bourdieusian-informed Practice theory might call a Western ‘habitus’ – contributed to the maladapted response to the humanitarian crises in Syria and Myanmar. This again points to the centrality of reflection, deliberation, judgement and learning to the Pragmatist approach. The chapter develops that argument by examining how Dewey’s ‘pedagogic creed’ aimed to put individuals and societies in control of their habits and how his critique of the unhelpful hierarchies in formal education was extrapolated to form a theory of social learning, which included an emphasis on the role democracy plays in facilitating the reflexivity and deliberation.

This chapter applies Pragmatic Constructivism to interpret and assess two communities of practice: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which frames the problem of global warming, and the Conference of Parties (COP), which meets annually to discuss international society’s response within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Applying the book’s two normative tests – inclusive reflexivity and deliberative practical judgment – the chapter demonstrates how the IPCC maintains epistemic authority by appropriately managing the boundary that separates expert knowledge from non-expert opinion. The analysis of COP operates at a micro level (e.g. how physical space at the Conference is organized) and the macro level (e.g. whether it would be better to organize deliberations on a ‘minilateral’ basis). The chapter notes how this debate has been bypassed by the Paris Agreement and the decision to commit to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) for emissions reduction. It assesses the consequences of that collective judgement in light of the progress made at the 2021 Glasgow COP. The chapter concludes that the problem should now be framed in terms of states delivering on the commitments they have made, and it considers the usefulness of nationalist dispositions and citizens assemblies in that process.

This chapter introduces the book and its context. It argues that the philosophical Pragmatist’s commitment to experimentalism and learning, and the social and political theory emerging from that, is well placed to address global security, climate and health challenges. To recognize that, International Relations and ‘new constructivism’ has to bring Pragmatism in from the margins. The chapter summarizes IR’s current relationship to Pragmatism focusing on the methodologies of analytical eclecticism, the historical accounts of the progressive foreign policy agenda that classical Pragmatism informed and the attempts to use Pragmatism as a tool of analytical and normative analysis. The chapter sets three questions, which structure the rest of the book: (1) what can classical Pragmatism bring to debates in IR, including those centred on the perennial question of how norms, practices and interests interact to influence international society and its practitioners? (2) How, if at all, should international practices and practitioners adapt in the face of pressing global security, climate and health challenges? (3) Given the Pragmatist answer to these first two questions, what normative conclusions can we come to about actual practice in contemporary international society? A summary of how each chapter contributes to answering these questions is provided.

This chapter begins the application of Pragmatic Constructivism by interpreting and assessing how, as a community of practice at the macro level, international society has responded to mass atrocity and its challenge to the practices of state sovereignty. It demonstrates how political mobilization on behalf of excluded publics (vulnerable populations) contributed to a reimagining of sovereignty as a responsibility to protect, as well as a normative reassignment of that responsibility to international society when states ‘manifestly fail’. It applies the two tests – inclusionary reflexivity and deliberative practical judgement – to the micro level by assessing the working practices (e.g. penholding, veto reform) of the UN Security Council. While greater inclusivity signposts ways in which the Council can better respond to the public interest, the impact of micro-adaptation is ultimately contingent on a deeper level of change in the identity of member states. Practices of atrocity prevention in the R2P context can act as a pedagogic tool, helping to mobilize the transnational activism that is a necessary part of that progressive change. This discussion extends to nuclear atrocity prevention and the way vulnerable publics deconstructed the Cold War, a lesson that should inform a renewed commitment to deep arms control practices.

This chapter addresses the book’s first question by focusing on what classical Pragmatism can tell us about constructivist-inspired norm theory. Pragmatism can contribute to a new wave of norm research, which focuses on how normativity (or appropriateness) is established and not just how norms change. Pragmatism finds normativity in experimental processes that test a norm’s ability to ameliorate the lived experience in social and political contexts (rather than in abstract theorizing). This requires a commitment to epistemic fallibilism, deliberation and inquiry. Drawing on the writings of Peirce and Dewey in particular, the chapter argues that this process can only resolve normative doubt and establish epistemic authority if the knowledge of those affected by a practice is included in the community of inquiry that establishes normativity. What Dewey called a ‘stock of learning’ emerges from this process, which can be used as a starting point for acting in uncertain situations and judging the relative strength of the alternatives offered in processes of norm contestation. The chapter relates this argument to important contributions to norm theory, including the Habermasian-inspired ‘logic of arguing’ and Antje Wiener’s ‘theory of contestation’. It illustrates the Pragmatist contribution with reference to the debate on the anti-torture norm.