The mightie frame : epochal change and the modern world / Nicholas Greenwood Onuf.

"Nicholas Onuf is one of the originators of constructivist theory in international relations, and is credited with providing the school of thought with its name. His writings have focused on how rules for governing have come to be, arguing that "rules for rule" have solidified over time through repeated behaviors that work themselves out into a system of social uniformity and hierarchy. Rules set out who is a member of society, establish goals, provide opportunities to act, and dictate who sits on top -- i.e., what any political society looks like in a particular time and place. This book looks at the political society that has evolved since the Renaissance, or what might be called "the modern world" in order to consider what is yet to come. Like Foucault, Onuf sees the rules of governance changing in tandem with changes in the way a society thinks -- what together constitute any society's "mighty frame". Unlike Foucault, Onuf argues that modernism marked an end to societal and political transitions, and that we have entered a period during which established conditions of rule are likely to be reinforced-and the mighty frame grow ever mightier"-- Provided by publisher.