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I. Introduction
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II. What Is Constructivism?
III. Types of Constructivism
IV. Constructivist Empirical Research Program
V. Criticisms of Constructivism
VI. Conclusion
I. Introduction
The last decades of the 20th century were marked by significant transformations on a global scale. The arrival of new forces created by discoveries in the realms of technology, transportation, and communications changed the patterns of social life and structures of international relations. The end of the cold war and ideological confrontation, decline in state sovereignty, and spread of globalization enlivened scholarly thinking about international relations and fostered academic debates about the nature of global politics and ways in which one can know and study it.
The arrival of constructivism in the late 1980s was precipitated by these earthshaking changes in international relations and lively discussions within the discipline. This novel heterodox approach imbibed the criticisms of the mainstream perspectives on international relations, particularly the theories of neorealism. The latter was faulted for its inability to account for changes in the global realm because of its neglect of the transformational power of knowledge and ideas. Instead of prioritizing the role of material factors in international relations, the constructivist perspective emphasized ideational forces. Instead of accepting relations and structures in global politics as the natural or given order of things, it maintained that a reality of international relations was contingent and dependent on people's thinking about it.
Beginning at the margins of the field, constructivist scholarship expanded rapidly throughout the 1990s. It developed its own program of empirical research focusing on identities, culture, institutions, knowledge, and norms. By shedding new light on the nature and impact of norms and ideas in international relations, interrogating identities and interests of states, and establishing ideational bases of the social order, constructivism has broadened theoretical confines of the discipline of international relations and contributed to reconceptualization of its key themes. Today, constructivist fortunes show no sign of waning, and the quality and depth of constructivist research has substantially improved.
The goal of this research paper is to take stock of constructivist work. It begins by explaining what constructivism is and laying out the main constructivist premises that hold this diverse perspective together and set it apart from other approaches within the discipline. Thinking about constructivism as a homogeneous approach obscures its rich philosophical roots that gave rise to numerous permutations within this approach. Therefore, the second section discusses various constructivisms and highlights divisions within the approach. Next, the research paper provides an overview of some of the seminal empirical works applying constructivist assumptions and methods, followed by a section discussing critical appraisals of the constructivist scholarship and directions for future research.
II. What Is Constructivism?
There is no unanimous agreement among scholars of international relations on what constructivism is. There is, however, broad consensus on what it is not. Constructivism is not a theory of international politics (Checkel, 1998; Finnemore, 1996; Wendt, 1999). It does not put forward general explanations for what individuals and states do, why societies differ, or how the world changes. Neither does it advance any claims about the content of international norms and institutions or the nature of participants of world politics. "Constructivism is empty as far as assumptions, propositions, or hypotheses about international relations are concerned" (Jørgensen, 2001, p. 41). What constructivism does offer is a set of ideas about the nature of reality and the ways in which it can be grasped, and these ideas can inform people's understanding, interpretation, and theorization about world politics. In this way, constructivism can be thought of as an approach to studying social relations or a framework of propositions that lays the basis for social theories of international relations (Kratochwil, 2001).
Although in practice constructivist scholarship is very diverse and divided on a number of philosophical issues, most constructivists would agree that a defining aspect of this approach is the idea of the socially constructed nature of international politics. This idea encapsulates two interrelated processes: (1) The social environment makes individuals, states, and other actors of world politics into the kinds of beings and entities they are; and (2) conversely, individuals, states, and other actors of world politics make the world what it is through various forms of interaction with each other (Onuf, 1998).
First, for constructivists, the environment surrounding states and other actors of world politics is both social and material (Checkel, 1998; Jepperson,Wendt, & Katzenstein, 1996). The social world is composed of shared ideas and knowledge, whereas the material world manifests itself in the presence of nuclear weapons, the absence of world government, and other observable manifestations of international relations. However, the material aspects of world politics do not come classified. Material structures, beyond some biological characteristics, have certain meanings insofar as individuals and their collectivities create shared understandings of what those material structures signify, and individuals and groups attach this collective knowledge to physical reality (Adler, 2002). Things that individuals perceive as objective, such as money, human rights, or sovereignty, are made largely of ideas. They are the so-called social facts that depend on human agreement that they exist and make sense because people have imbued them with certain meanings (Ruggie, 1998).
Take, for example, human rights. They are the social constructions or inventions of the human mind that exist because of individuals' beliefs in human rights and practices reinforcing their existence (Schmitz & Sikkink, 2002). The norms of sovereignty or the institution of self-help have been perceived as natural and taken for granted. But they are nothing more than the artifacts of what people collectively believe in and practice (Wendt, 1992). These shared beliefs, understandings, knowledge, culture, and norms constitute an ideational context, which, according to constructivists, exerts a powerful impact on world politics because it defines the meanings of what individuals encounter and experience. Meaningful behavior in international relations is impossible without these shared understandings because people and states act toward others on the basis of meanings that they ascribe to them (Hopf, 1998; Wendt, 1992). States' foreign policies toward other states, for example, will differ depending on whether their counterparts are perceived as enemies or friends. Nuclear weapons in and of themselves are less consequential for foreign policy choices than are our perceptions of states that possess them. The United States, for example, is not concerned with a sizable nuclear arsenal held by the British. However, North Korea's aspiration to join a nuclear club is a major cause for alarm (Checkel, 1998; Wendt, 1992).
The effects of ideas penetrate deeper than states' policies and behavior. Ideational context influences the basic character of states, the so-called state identity, the "relatively stable, role-specific understandings and expectations about self" (Wendt, 1992, p. 398). Actors' identities tell them and others who they are and predispose them to embrace a particular set of interests and preferences over choices of action. An identity of great power furnishes a particular set of interests different from those implied by the identity of a European state. Because actors have multiple identities, constructivism does not accept the notion of fixed interests (Hopf, 1998).
Wendt (1999), for example, speculates that the international system of states can have at least three kinds of ideational contexts—Hobbesian, Lockean, or Kantian— distinguished on the basis of what kind of roles—enemy, rival, or friend—dominates the system. Each ideational context predisposes states to take a distinct position or orientation toward each other with respect to the use of violence. For Wendt, the contemporary system of states has a Lockean structure in which states assume role identities of rivals, recognize each other's rights to life and liberty, and restrain their violence toward each other by observing the other's right to exist.
Constructivists describe norms, beliefs, and knowledge that serve as the foundational blocks of the ideational context as intersubjective. The quality of intersubjectivity implies that meanings ascribed to social facts are not simply the aggregations of beliefs of individuals. Rather, they represent collective knowledge. This knowledge is created through dialogical relationships and interaction of actors (Fierke, 2001). The second premise of constructivism is that the meanings in terms of which individuals' and states' actions are organized arise out of interaction (Wendt, 1992). By doing what they do and saying what they say, individuals create intersubjective meanings, thus making the world (Onuf, 1998). The repetition of these processes leads to the reproduction of intersubjective meanings that over time solidify and become objective social facts that are not easy to change or transform.
To recapitulate, in the constructivist worldview, international relations are inherently social. They are made of intersubjective understandings about the world as well as material objects. The intersubjective ideational structures define international actors, shape their identities, preferences, and interests and influence their behavior. The ideational structures themselves arise out of the actors' interaction. Individuals participate in the production, constitution, and fixing of the social reality through their actions, interactions, and discourse (Hopf, 1998; Wendt, 1999). The simultaneity of the processes of production of collective meanings and knowledge and the impact of the knowledge structures on actors' behavior and identities is known as the mutual constitution of agents and structures in the constructivist parlance.
The mutually constitutive relationship is one of the most challenging constructivist ideas to grasp. An easier way to comprehend it is through comparison with a more familiar causal relationship. Causal relationships are usually postulated in the form X causes Y or X leads to Y: Toxins cause cancer, fluctuations in crime rates cause changes in housing prices, and a plurality rule electoral system leads to the creation of a two-party system (Duverger, 1972). Causal relationships typically answer the why questions: Why did the housing prices drop? Why does one country have a two-party system, while another one has a multiparty system? By formulating answers to these types of questions in the form of a causal relationship between two phenomena, one typically assumes that the cause (X) and effect (Y) are independent of each other; the cause, temporarily, precedes the effect; and the latter would not have taken place without the former (Wendt, 1998).
Constructivists study social facts made of shared ideas and intersubjective understandings. Because they are interested in ferreting out what gives the cause (X) and effect (Y) certain meanings and how the relationship between X and Y came to be defined, the constructivists' goal is to account for the properties of social facts by referencing ideas and practices in virtue of which they exist (Wendt, 1998). This goal is accomplished by asking "How" and "What" questions (Wendt, 1998): How is it possible that chemical and nuclear weapons have become regarded as illegitimate instruments of warfare (Price & Tannewald, 1996)? What is Eurasian regionalism? What makes a region (Mansfield & Milner, 1999)? The answers to these questions are based on a different kind of logic that explains how various ideational factors—norms, identities, culture, and knowledge—define what the social facts are, not what determines them. The factors in a constitutive relationship are not independent and separated in time: The factors constituting Europe or human rights neither exist apart from Europe or human rights nor precede them in time. Democratic culture, traditions, geography, and individual states do not cause Europe just as an international law of human rights does not cause human rights. They are constituted by intersubjective understandings, ideas, and beliefs about what Europe is and what human rights are.
III. Types of Constructivism
Thinking about constructivism as a homogeneous approach obscures the wide range of alternative conceptions of world politics and ways of studying it that exist under this rubric. There are numerous variants of constructivism— sociological, feminist, interpretive, emancipatory, and others. There are transnational constructivists who emphasize the influence of international norms, institutions, and other ideational structures (Boekle, Rittberger, & Wagner, 2001), and there are societal constructivists, also known as culturalists (Farrell, 2002), who stress the importance of domestic institutions, culture, and norms (Hopf, 2002; Katzenstein, 1996).
Although all variants of constructivism share their commitment toward denaturalization of the social world—that is, toward uncovering the socially constructed nature of institutions, objects, and practices that we perceive as objective (Hopf, 1998)—they disagree over the extent to which the empirically identifiable social relations can be discerned and studied (Barkin, 2003). One group, variously labeled as thin, classical, or conventional constructivists (Fierke & Jørgensen, 2001) to indicate that the group remains rooted in the classical or conventional tradition of viewing and studying international relations, maintains that an identifiable reality exists out there and can be examined and understood by applying appropriate methodologies for empirical investigation. Thin constructivists undertake to isolate sets of ideas, norms, and beliefs and specify a set of conditions under which one can expect to observe their impact on the behavior of states or other actors of international politics.
The other group, labeled as think, critical, or postmodernist constructivists, contends that reality does not exist independently of individuals' or scholars' knowledge about it. It is apprehended in the form of multiple, intangible mental constructions derived from social experiences that may be specific or shared among many individuals and cultures. These constructions are neither false nor true; they are more or less informed and sophisticated (Guba & Lincoln, 1994; Schwandt, 1994). In thick constructivism, what exists (social reality out there) is entirely contingent on processes of social construction, in which an observer inescapably takes part. Researchers contribute to the construction and reconstruction of reality through their scientific exploratory practices (Albert, 2001). They can never know for certain if what they observe really exists independently of their observation because the findings of social inquiry are literally created as the investigation proceeds. What can be known is inextricably intertwined with the interaction between an investigator and his or her object of study (Guba & Lincoln, 1994).
The bulk of constructivist scholarship can be characterized as conventional or thin constructivism (e.g., Checkel, 1997; Finnemore, 1996; Finnemore & Sikkink, 1998; Katzenstein, 1996; Wendt, 1999), albeit there are important differences and disagreements within this group. Some conventional constructivists grudgingly accept the dualism of a researcher and his or her object of inquiry and often use the language of causality and explanation in much the same way as positivists do. Others abandon dualism and think about human knowledge as being socially constructed and the relationship between an investigator and the objects of investigation as interactive with the values of an investigator inevitably influencing the inquiry. But instead of focusing on the matter of individual meaning-making activity of the individual mind as critical constructivists do, conventional constructivists concentrate on how people create intersubjective meanings and knowledge about the world in the process of social exchange (Schwandt, 1994).
IV. Constructivist Empirical Research Program
Constructivist insights about the role of ideas in world politics provided an impetus for a variegated and rapidly expanding research program. Since constructivists are primarily interested in the social construction of international relations, their focus of inquiry has been on a range of social phenomena, such as norms, institutions, principled beliefs, culture, and knowledge.
Constructivists' studies of norms remain the staple of their scholarship, and a comprehensive list of the literature in this analytical realm would be impossible to compile. Researchers have documented the impact of separate norms, such as norms prohibiting colonization (Goertz & Diehl, 1994) and slavery (Ray, 1989), or sets of related norms, such as norms prohibiting certain types of conduct in the situations of war (Raymond, 1997) on different international outcomes, decolonization (Jackson, 1993), international support for the termination of slavery, and the emergence of weapons taboo (Price & Tannewald, 1996). Other scholars have demonstrated how the emergence of global standards of appropriate behavior, such as the norm of racial equality (Klotz, 1995), women's suffrage (Keck & Sikkink, 1998), and human rights (Forsythe, 1991) have led states to redefine their interests and change their behavior even in the absence of material incentives to do so.
The constructivist approach to norms differs from the perspectives on norms maintained by other theoretical approaches to international relations, particularly the treatment of norms within the realist and liberal schools of thought. Realists do not ascribe an independent causal role to a norm, while liberals treat norms instrumentally as tools for maximizing utility of the gain-seeking actors. In contrast, for constructivists, norms are independent forces, the effects of which reach much deeper than simply constraining states' behavior. Norms not only regulate the behavior of actors in international relations, but also create and define their very identities and interests (Checkel, 1997, 1998; Finnemore, 1996).
Before a norm reaches the status of an independent and constitutive force, it usually passes through several lengthy and uneven phases of its life cycle. Finnemore and Sikkink (1998) describe the pattern of the rise of a norm as a three-step process. The emergence of the norm is the initial stage. Norms are typically introduced and propelled by the norm entrepreneurs. The next stage is called the norm cascade when state actors begin to adopt the norm. This process culminates in a tipping point, at which a sufficient number of the relevant actors accept the norm. The last stage involves norm internalization. Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink (1999) suggest an alternative spiral model that outlines five steps in norm adoption. During the early stages of the norm adoption cycle, a government does not acknowledge the existence of the norm and denies violations but may be pressed into tactical concessions by domestic and international social actors demanding compliance with the norm. In the last two stages of the cycle, the norm reaches a prescriptive status and, ultimately, becomes internalized by the state actors leading to their rule-consistent behavior.
Different stages of a norm's life cycle and steps in the adoption of the norm may involve different actors. Stages of a norm's life cycle are also characterized by different social processes, logics of action, and causal mechanisms connecting driving forces for the norm's emergence and adoption with certain outcomes. For example, constructivist studies illuminated the role of norm entrepreneurs— the networks of activists, knowledge-based experts, and "epistemic communities" (Finnemore & Sikkink, 1998)— at the initial stages of norm emergence and progression from the local to global level. The key processes at the early phase of the life cycle of norms are framing that aims to make the norm appealing and comprehensible to the public and engaging in persuasion to convince the leaders of states and international organizations to embrace new norms. When the norm reaches the global arena, it is the international organizations and like-minded states that serve as an organizational platform for advocating the norm and teaching new normative views to other states (Finnemore, 1996). They can exert international pressure or use legitimation as mechanisms for socializing the states into becoming the norm followers (Finnemore & Sikkink, 1998).
The life cycle of a norm, or phases of norm adoption, is not a linear process. Internalization of the norm is never a guaranteed outcome. Constructivist scholarship offers an impressive catalogue of what are called the scope conditions under which norms are likely to fail or succeed (Zürn & Checkel, 2005). Some of these conditions encompass the properties of the norms themselves, such as norms' specificity, commonality, and durability (Boekle et al., 2001; Raymond, 1997), while others apply to the properties of actors and institutions that trigger socialization. Another group of conditions includes the properties of domestic political systems—the nature of political regimes, the strength of civil society, and the lines of political contestation—that can either facilitate or obstruct the implementation of norms. Finally, the content of issues (for instance, human rights or democratic governance) and the nature of interaction between socializing and socialized actors (for instance, intensity of contact and discourse) also condition the impact of norms (Zürn & Checkel, 2005).
Constructivist scholarship is not limited to norms. The burgeoning analyses of individual and collective identity, how it is created and sustained, and how it generates and shapes interests and policies of international actors constitute a big chunk of constructivist research (Cronin, 1999; Jepperson et al., 1996). Constructivists have broken new ground in the studies of institutions—that is, relatively stable collections of rules and practices prescribing and proscribing certain kinds of behavior for a group of actors (March & Olsen, 1998)—by showing how institutions not only help to coordinate, pattern, and direct behavior of states, but also partake in the creation of new collective identities, definition of shared interests, and promotion of new practices. Finally, constructivist analyses of nonstate actors and issues of international governance have made a substantive impact on the international relations discipline (Adler, 2002).
V. Criticisms of Constructivism
Constructivism has been subjected to scrupulous internal and external evaluation. Scholars within and outside constructivism have found important limitations and shortcomings of multiple substantive theories and empirical studies informed by this approach. The major criticisms of constructivism originate from those theoretical perspectives that fall under the rubric of positivism. The latter prioritizes causal laws and generalizations describing and explaining the realty that is assumed to be independent of people's thinking about it, even if this thinking is never complete and perfect (Fierke, 2001). Positivist tenets underlie the mainstream perspectives on international relations, such as realism and liberalism.
The critics of constructivism contend that its usefulness as a guide for studying international relations is limited. Theories informed by constructivist assumptions are not parsimonious or elegant, their causality is indeterminate, and relationships are not clearly specified. Constructivists devise cumbersome models including different actors and describe complex mechanisms of influence and scope conditions that are difficult to apply beyond the situations and processes under their investigation.
A constructivist idea of the mutually constitutive relationship between actors and structures has become a target of many attacks. Constructivists have been faulted for their inability to disentangle the mutually constitutive relationships and establish their temporal sequence: What comes first, a norm that affects the identity of actors or actors' identities that influence the nature of norms? The simultaneity of interaction makes it very difficult to capture the self-reinforcing nature of norms, institutions, or cultures and the ways in which states, individuals, and other social agents create and change the social order of things.
Grounding their explanations in unobservable (intersubjective) ideational structures, constructivists have to tackle two formidable methodological challenges. First, they need to demonstrate the existence of norms, and second, they need to prove their impact on the behavior of states (Farrell, 2002). To show the existence of shared beliefs, constructivists rely on the artifacts of actors' interactions, such as public statements, decisions of authoritative bodies, or official memoirs. The residues of the culture and norms have also been found in international and domestic legislation. To tease out the meanings that actors ascribe to social facts and situations, constructivists have employed interpretive methods and a narrative mode of explanation (Klotz & Lynch, 2007) that have been regarded as less methodologically robust tools of research.
Another complaint about the constructivist agenda is that it has tended to be liberal idealist, concentrated on Western liberal norms of democracy, human rights, or multilateralism (Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Risse et al., 1999). Although constructivists have begun examining the so-called bad norms and pathological identities (Farrell, 2002; Rae, 2002), their research has overwhelmingly focused on so-called good norms. One of the implications of this selection bias is the erroneous representation of the West and Western organizations as promoters of good liberal norms that stimulate progress in international relations.
Excessive emphasis on the ability of the good norms and other ideational factors to change the world and insufficient attention to material coercion and political contestation in world politics has created an image of constructivism as an approach dismissive of the role of power in the creation and dissemination of norms and ideas (Barkin, 2003). By ignoring or downplaying the advantages that material resources and power give to some social actors of international relations, constructivists overlook significant interrelated effects of social and material inequalities on the nature, patterns of diffusion, and ultimate success of international practices and norms.
The ambivalence toward or neglect of the role of power structures in international relations by some constructivists can, to a certain extent, be attributed to insufficient attention to domestic politics and the lack of a theory of agency in constructivist research. Constructivism emerged on the wave of the growing dissatisfaction with the neorealist individualistic and systemic orientation. Yet it has been conspicuously inattentive to the state-level accounts of world politics. Certainly, there are constructivists who attend more closely to domestic power constellations and culture as mediating factors in the adoption of norms or domestic sources of foreign policies and international relations (see, for example, Checkel, 1997, 1998; Hopf, 2002). However, the bulk of constructivist scholarship has remained at the international level of analysis continuing to treat states as unitary actors.
Most of the failings identified by constructivism's critics are not terminal. They can be cured in future research that should respond to the needs of theory building and greater attentiveness to the role of power in the social world. As stated previously, constructivism is not a theory of international relations. For it to serve as a valuable guide into the exploration of the social world, its abstract philosophical categories and insights about the nature of social relations need to be translated into the middle-range theory with a more limited scope and aiming at explaining a set of specific social phenomena. Constructivist scholarship has seen laudable efforts to formulate and test middle-level theories specifying the actors and mechanisms of social influence and articulating conditions under which social influence occurs. There is still an unfortunate deficit of constructivist theory building in international relations, and there is a lack of conversation among constructivists of different genres (Checkel, 1998). Future studies inspired by constructivist propositions need to elaborate the causal pathways and transmission mechanisms that link norms, actors, and their policy choices in various social situations. There is also room for specifying the meaning of concepts and relationships and detailing conditions under which different mechanisms of normative influence can be observed.
Opening up the black box of domestic politics for theoretical and empirical exploration and attending more closely to the structures of power in domestic politics and international relations will facilitate constructivists' efforts at theory building and enhance their explanations and reconceptualizations of practices and structures in the international realm. Having demonstrated the importance of ideational forces in world politics, constructivists need to contemplate how and why certain norms and beliefs get successfully diffused, promoted, and adopted by international actors but others do not. What is the relationship between social and material power, how is it wielded, and to what end? Future constructivist studies should consider not only the impact of ideational factors on the structures and exercise of power in the international realm, but also the ways in which power and political contestation in domestic politics and international relations influence and condition the impact of norms (Barkin, 2003). The accomplishment of these goals will require a synthesis of constructivist and other theoretical approaches and bridge building between constructivism and rationalism. Efforts at integrating constructivism with other theoretical perspectives are well under way (Barkin, 2003; Checkel, 1997; Risse et al., 1999), but there are obstacles toward the bridge building and reconciliation.
Furthermore, future constructivist studies should expand their research agenda to include norms, institutions, and identities that are not accepted as good and critically assess ethical implications of the diffusion of good norms. Constructivist scholars need to refine their research designs and hone their methods of empirical investigation. Much of the empirical constructivist work has focused on examining single countries or issues. Cross-national or longitudinal designs as well as considerations and tests of alternative explanations would help to reduce the problem of overdetermination that is evident in much of the constructivist research, where ideational factors are invoked as one of the explanatory factors, yet little consideration is given to other variables and how much of the outcome they can account for (Checkel, 1998).
VI. Conclusion
Constructivism in international relations is a fairly new approach that focuses on the social construction of world politics. It emphasizes ideational factors, such as ideas, beliefs, and knowledge, and their constitutive and regulative effects on the social reality and agents that create, reproduce, and reify it. Intersubjective ideational contexts influence actors' behavior and identities by embedding material objects, including other actors, with which they interact with certain meanings, and those shared meanings become the source of the agents' reasons, interests, and practices. Social actors themselves create intersubjective meanings through their discourse and interactions. For constructivists, a reality is always the product of human activity; therefore, it is never objective or given but is always historically bound and contingent. Constructivist scholarship is extremely variegated and divided along philosophical, theoretical, and methodological issues. However, all constructivists share their commitment toward denaturalization of the world—that is, discerning how material objects, practices, and institutions that individuals treat as given and natural are the products of social construction (Hopf, 1998).
One of the important strengths of the constructivist approach is its capacity to account for what the mainstream theoretical perspectives cannot—namely, change in the structures and agents of international politics, including visible shifts in the goals, behaviors, and strategies of states (Locher & Prügl, 2001). For constructivists, preferences and interests are the products of human activity; therefore, they can change with instantiation of new social practices, although this process can be incremental and slow (Wendt, 1999). For realists and liberals, qualitative changes in interests and goals are difficult to explain because they are postulated as exogenous to the actors, and therefore, not variable.
Constructivist scholarship is not devoid of limitations and shortcomings. Future constructivist studies need to pay closer attention to the development of theory, the mediating role of power in the emergence and diffusion of ideas and norms, and the design of the empirical research. Despite the criticisms, constructivism's contributions to international relations cannot be underestimated. The constructivist approach has significantly broadened theoretical and empirical contours of the discipline. It has improved understanding of some of the conceptual foundations of international relations theory and suggested novel ways of thinking about key themes and concepts in international relations, such as anarchy, balance of power, and the security dilemma, to name a few (Hopf, 1998). By attending to the issues of identity and construction of interests bracketed by mainstream theoretical perspectives, constructivist studies have put forth alternative interpretations of international phenomena and offered new solutions for a number of puzzles of international relations (Checkel, 1998). Constructivism's empirical research on principled beliefs, culture, knowledge, and norms has filled in a clear lacuna in the contemporary international relations literature.
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- Ray, J. (1989). The abolition of slavery and the end of international war. International Organization, 43, 405-439.
- Raymond, G. (1997). Problems and prospects in the study of international norms. Mershon International Studies Review, 41(Suppl. 2), 205-245.
- Risse, T., Ropp, S., & Sikkink, K. (Eds.). (1999). The power of human rights: International norms and domestic change. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Ruggie, J. (1998). What makes the world hang together? Neo utilitarianism and the social constructivist challenge. International Organization, 52, 855-885.
- Schmitz, H., & Sikkink, K. (2002). International human rights. In W. Carlsnaes, T. Risse, & B. Simmons (Eds.), Handbook of international relations (pp. 517-537). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- Schwandt, T. (1994). Constructivist, interpretivist approaches to human inquiry. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 118-138). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- Wendt, A. (1992). Anarchy is what states make of it: The social construction of power politics. International Organization, 46, 391-425.
- Wendt, A. (1998). On constitution and causation in international relations. Review of International Studies, 24, 101-118.
- Wendt, A. (1999). Social theory of international politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
- Zürn, M., & Checkel, J. (2005). Getting socialized to build bridges: Constructivism and rationalism, Europe and the nation state. International Organization, 59, 1045-1079.


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Acquire customers
How Small Businesses Can Win on Amazon
2018 Tory Burch Fellow Sashee Chandran explains how her product became a bestseller.
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Our 2018 Tory Burch Fellow Sashee Chandran is the founder and CEO of Tea Drops, organic pressed teas that dissolve in hot water. They're a fan-favorite among the likes of Chrissy Teigen, Michelle Obama and Oprah. They're also an Amazon bestseller–Sashee sells 100,000 units on their marketplace each year! That success has given her major credibility when it comes to sourcing venture funding. Sashee participated in an ask me anything-style Q&A on our Instagram to answer all your questions about making Amazon work for, rather than against, small businesses.
Q: How do you handle shipping of a perishable food product without issues of melting? Also do you find Amazon profitable?
A: Perishables are fulfilled by merchant if they can't be stored at room temp. Tea Drops sells as a third-party seller and Amazon pays every two weeks like clockwork. When you sell 1P [first-party relationship], you get paid net-60 with lots of random fees deducted.
Q: How do you stay organized and keep track of insights from Amazon to best maximize sales on the marketplace?
A: We log into our seller dashboard often. We also partner with Elevate Growth Group to help accelerate our sales.
Q: You mention influential women who use your product. Did you reach out to them first before using their names? I want to know how to best utilize our customer base that also includes some pretty big names.
A: Typically if it is already listed in a publication, we use that knowledge as public knowledge. However, we would never divulge customer information unless publicly stated by the celebrity or figure.
Q: Do you manage shipping in-house or do you use a third party?
A: We now have a 3PL (third-party logistics company) to manage shipping to the Amazon warehouse.
Q: How do you keep your products relevant in your market?
A: We are always looking at tea trends and customer asks. That was a big driver in our decision to launch Boba kits this summer. From idea to launch, it took about 1.5 months
Q: Any product description secrets? How do you stand out on Amazon?
A: Be as thorough as possible in your description and anticipate any questions might one have about your product. For us, that means addressing how our teas actually "dissolve" and the tea fiber that sits at the bottom of your cup. Having visuals and photos in your listing to demonstrate this is a big plus.
Q: Do you pay additional fees to be at the top of the search?
A: We do engage in Amazon advertising and keyword bidding. Amazon has gotten better with additional placements that help you highlight more of your brand's differentiation.
Q: Is selling on Amazon actually profitable?
A: Yes. Less profitable than your website for sure, but you can work to make it a profitable channel over time. It's a more expensive channel to sell on, so make sure to bake in all your costs into your pricing structure!
Q: Does your brand ambassador program generate sales or is it most helpful for brand awareness?
A: It actually achieves both!
📲 Follow us on Instagram for conversations with our Fellows and so much more!

subset: commoncrawl


text: At Mount Waverley North Primary School, our camping program provides each child with the opportunity to gain knowledge, experience and a sense of achievement through a variety of challenging situations within different environments. The camping program promotes students' independence and builds positive teacher-child and peer group relationships.All school camps are fully accredited with the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.Year 1/2 Stay LateIn preparation for our external Camping program beginning in Year 3, our Year 1/2 students participate in a 'Stay Late'. This is a great opportunity for students to experience spending longer hours away from home and with their classmates one evening, complete with activities, food and a movie.Year 3/4 Camping ProgramIn Years 3&4, students attend a 3-day camp each year:Camp Jungai (near Lake Eildon)Camp Jungai is bordered by State Forest and accommodates students in newly upgraded facilities. Camp Jungai promotes race reconciliation and with strong ties to the local community - local indigenous leaders take educational walks and courses in both bush tucker, and native plants traditionally used for medicine - Jungai is perfect for studenets to immerse themselves in indigenous Australian culture, and test their physical abilities via a wide variety of land, and water-based courses.The Island (Phillip Island)Situated on 2.5 hectares of landscaped gardens, The Island is nestled in the heart of Cowes, within strolling distance of safe sandy beaches, the picturesque coastal township and a short drive to Phillip Island's world-renowned tourist attractions. The Island provides a mix of on-site adventure activities together with opportunities to experience the natural wonders of this significant location. A trip to the penguins is always a highlight! Year 5/6 Camping ProgramIn Years 5&6, students attend a 5-day camp each year.Camp Coonawarra (near Bairnsdale)Camp Coonawarra is situated on 140 hectares, nestled in a wonderful bush setting on the Iguana Creek, East Gippsland Victoria. Activities can include archery, campfire cooking, canoeing, giant games, bush walking, flying foxes, hut building, initiative activities, raft making, ropes courses, team rescue and the giant swing.Camp Rumbug (near Foster)The beautiful Camp Rumbiug is located in the majestic hills of South Gippsland, two hours from school, and set in 200 acres of glorious temperate rainforest overlooking Wilson's Promontory National Park. Activities at camp include abseiling, archery, flying fox, giant swing, low ropes, orienteering, raft building, team challenge, bush craft and trust exercieses.


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Five Lash Technician Horror Stories
Ask anyone on the street what sends shivers up their spine and they'll list ghosts, demons or spiders. Ask a Lash Tech and the list will be very different. From stickies to chemical burns, broken tweezers to client no-shows - we thought now would be the perfect time to take a close look at this particular set of horror stories and what we can do to avoid them!
A stickie is, basically, one lash stuck to another - this can be an extension stuck to a neighbouring extension, or to a natural lash. In the worst cases there are more than two lashes involved. There are 4 main types of stickies, and we need to avoid them at all costs if we want our clients to come back to us, and to have any kind of positive reputation as a lash artist.
Stickies pose such a huge threat to the health of our clients' lashes, and to our business - they result in pain, discomfort, and they potentially kill off the hair follicles entirely, meaning that our clients' lashes will end up with gaps if we don't separate stickies when they occur.
We should be setting aside 10-15 minutes at the end of each lash appointment to separate any stickies which do occur - simply go through lash by lash and use both pairs of tweezers to gently pull the lashes apart which are stuck together. Remember that even if we take every precaution possible stickies happen so easily that it's entirely normal to find at least a couple at the end of every set.
If you're not too familiar with stickies, take a look at this blog post for a really in-depth look at how they come about, and how to avoid and fix them.
Dropping Your Tweezers
Not a lot needs to be said here - the thought alone of dropping your tweezers is enough to send a shiver through the core of even the hardiest of Lash Artists. Tweezers will always land on their tips - this is either due to aerodynamics, or just the universe having a little laugh at your misfortune - either way, it's not ideal.
One of the main ways our tweezers can meet this end is due to our clients knocking them off of the pillow and not actually due to us dropping them, so when we have to put our tweezers down for a moment it's always better to have somewhere super safe to put them.
We'd highly recommend a Magnetic Tweezer Case to keep your tools safe and clean, you can find out all the reasons that a tweezer holder is great for business in this blog post! We have also recently introduced the new Tweezer Insurance Policy, where we will replace any damaged tweezers for only £9.99.
Client No Shows
This might not sound like a horror story as such, more of an annoyance. What about the loss of income though? Let's say your average price for a treatment is £150 - one missed client a week becomes £600 a month, or £7,200 a year.
What can you do to prevent this? The easiest way possible is to have a deposit system which involved clients paying a portion of the final treatment price at the time of booking - it's not unusual to set this at 50% for the simple reason that it covers you for the time slot that you can no longer fill. Sure, you didn't have to use any products but for a set of lashes, you're looking at closer to £10 for products (less, actually, we'll have a blog post on this soon 👀) so all told, you're still losing out on about £140, which pays your rent, bills, insurance, salary, etc….
For in-depth advice on cancellation and no-show policies you can implement, check out this blog post.
Chemical Burns
There are few things more disappointing than your client opening their eyes at the end of treatment with the most amazing set of lashes, only to see their eyes red and bloodshot. Not only does this make for a less-than-perfect set of photos for your instagram feed, but it's uncomfortable for the client - some start to panic thinking their eyes will never go back to normal while others will just politely smile and say it's fine.
What causes chemical burns is actually the fumes from the eyelash extensions glue, which gets into the eyes if they are opened at all during the treatment. This can happen because your client checked their phone (yes, it happens), because they were chatting or fell asleep and their eyelids were flickering, or even due to the shape of their eyes.
Chemical burns are easier to avoid than you might think, it's all about keeping those eyelids closed! For a super in-depth look at chemical burns and how to avoid them, check out this blog post whichcompares chemical burns and allergic reactions.
Running out of Glue
Plan as we might, this is bound to happen at some point! Maybe we didn't notice that we were opening our last bottle, maybe we left our glue out and it dried up - whatever happens to cause us to run out of glue, it's a nightmare sitting down to lash and finding out that the main component of your kit is not available.
What can you do to prevent this? Well it depends on exactly why your glue is no good, but the main tips here would be:
- Don't lose track of how much glue you have, keep inventory
- Try something like a glue subscriptionso that your glue is just delivered when you need it
- Don't leave your glue sitting out - it needs to be in an airtight container somewhere cool and dry away from sources of heat and direct sunlight
Check out this blog post for the lowdown on our very own glue subscription service, and why it's one of your most valuable tools as a business owner!
Whatever happens during this spooky season and beyond, it's always good to know that there is a hack or tip to help you solve the issue!


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Nice little shop you got here. I like the basic, minimalist approach- you probably keep all the good stuff for yourself, huh? Hey, relax, I'm just kidding! Though I will say, I couldn't help but notice a few blind spots in the three minutes I was browsing. I'm talking about albums no self-respecting record store should be without. Namely, these specific records I have in this crate, which, coincidentally, I am trying to sell you right now.
No I'm not the guy from last week wearing a different jacket, why do you ask?
Anyway, your jazz section is looking a little thin, but I've got some smokin' Al Hirt sides for you. This is some really rare stuff and the sleeve mold hasn't even spread to the vinyl yet. This daddy really cooks, kitty cat!
This stack here is all self-released 7-inches from regional bands I traded merch with on tour. They're all very hard to come by unless you know any of the band members personally and then it's easy because they've got boxes of this shit that they don't have the heart to throw away.
Your bins are surprisingly lacking in 2000s Pitchfork-approved indie rock. I've got all the Best New Music alumni here- Tapes 'n Tapes, The Hold Steady, and who can forget the third album by Bloc Party? It's time to allow for a whole new generation to condescendingly pretend this music is good.
I've got everything you need. Have you heard Jefferson Airplane? Well here's Jefferson Starship. Do you like Van Morrison? I've got his 80s stuff. There's Barbara Streisand, big band classics, Christmas albums put out by tire companies, and that James Taylor record with just his face on the cover that seems like it might be something cool at first glance but it turns out it's just James Taylor- it's all here! Oh, and this lame version of the White Album that the store fucked up and stamped "0000001" on. You can just have that one.
I'm gathering from the look on your face that now you're even less interested in buying these records so I'll take them back out to the car. But sit tight and I'll be right back with my CDs.


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Brian McLaren asks, thirdly, 'Is God Violent?' We can eliminate the effects of the Greco-Roman distortion of the biblical narrative, we can read the Bible as a library rather than as a constitution, we can bring into the focus the stories of God as good creator, passionate liberator, and reconciling king, but we are still left with the fact that there are some much less palatable images of God to be found in scripture – 'violent images, cruel images, un-Christlike images' (98). We do not see anything as frightening as the Greco-Roman Theos-Zeus-Jupiter 'god', who sponsors religious totalitarianism and consigns the greater part of humanity to 'eternal conscious torment'. But the problem is real enough.
The answer, McLaren argues, is to recognize that scripture presents us with an evolving and maturing understanding of God. This is apparent in five different areas: 1) in the development of an exclusive monotheism; 2) ethically in the shift from a preoccupation with 'religious and ceremonial fidelity' to a prophetic concern for social justice; 3) in the development from tribalism to universalism; 4) in changing perspectives on divine agency, from sporadic and exceptional intervention to a more balanced providential presence; and 5) in the development of the divine character, from violent and capricious to gentle and compassionate (100-102). The following statement is a little convoluted, but it summarizes the thesis quite well:
I am saying that human beings can't do better than their very best at any given moment to communicate about God as they understand God, and that Scripture faithfully reveals the evolution of our ancestors' best attempts to communicate their successive best understandings of God. As human capacity grows to conceive of a higher and wiser view of God, each new vision is faithfully preserved in Scripture like fossils in layers of sediment. (103, italics removed)
In other words, because scripture is a library and not a constitution, its record of Israel's understanding of God is cumulative and untidy rather than systematically coherent. A more narratively constructed theology would obviously be able to accommodate this sort of theological development in a similar way. McLaren then adds a rather controversial corollary: if our understanding of God has evolved thus far, there is no reason to think that it will not continue to evolve. 'To be a member of a faith community, in this understanding, is not to be a lucky member of the group that has finally arrived; it is to be in a cohort that is learning together' (105).
It is also important to understand, McLaren argues, how the biblical stories of divine violence were, generally speaking, a significant improvement on other narratives being told in the Ancient Near East. For example, although today many people would think that a God who destroys the whole of humanity bar one lucky family in a global flood ought not to be counted worthy of honour, in the Gilgamesh Epic the flood is ordered 'in part because human beings are too noisy, keeping the gods from getting a good night's sleep' (109). So at least in the biblical story it is 'humanity's inhumanity and injustice' that provoke the catastrophe – there is a legitimate morality at work here.
The point is that while we may struggle to understand the God of the biblical narrative at this point, the story is a moral improvement on its predecessors. Jesus, of course, pushes the biblical concept of God even further. McLaren suggests, for example, that the stories of the healing of the daughter of a Canaanite woman and of the feeding of the four thousand (Matt. 15:21-39) are 'perfectly poised to overturn the original encounter between Jews and Canaanites' as it is told in Deuteronomy 7 (110-111).
McLaren appreciates the hazards involved with an evolutionary model of our understanding of God. The risks are not so great, in his veiw, that we should abandon our quest, particularly in view of the ethical abuses of the Bible that have been described so far; but we may avoid falling into serious error, nevertheless, by keeping three guiding principles in view as we plot the evolutionary trajectory. First, 'we must align ourselves with the trajectory set for us by the Scriptures read in a narrative rather than constitutional way'; secondly, we orient ourselves towards a desired future, defined by the biblical prophets, beyond which, thirdly, we keep in sight the person of Jesus, who is 'for us as Christians the ultimate Word of God'.
Now we have not only a rich sense of the biblical narrative in the past and a sense of a desired future, but also a profound sense of the character of God whose light shines through the whole story, from beginning to end, alpha to omega. In this way, God's character is never revealed fully at any single point in the story, nor can it be contained simply in any list of propositions or adjectives derived from the stories of the past. Instead, we can only discern God's character in a mature way from the vantage point of the end of the story, seen in the light of the story of Jesus. (114)
This argument is worth taking seriously – a narrative theology must grasp the inherent contingency of its theoretical conclusions. There is no reason in principle why scripture should not present us with an evolving understanding of God – closely linked, I would argue, with the political nature of the people's existence in the world, as a nation threatened, bullied, pulled this way and that, by other more powerful nations with their seemingly more powerful gods. This seems hardly less true even today, though we are for the most part blissfully ignorant of the extent to which our conception of God has been shaped not only by the Greco-Roman argument, but also by modern Western philosophical traditions, and the complex experiences of (post-)imperialism.
There are all sorts of questions about the details. The argument about the progressive emergence of a universal ethical monotheism in scripture should be largely uncontroversial, but the relationship between ritual observance and social justice cannot be adequately represented by a linear evolutionary model. The conventional distinction between a brutal, vindictive Old Testament God and a kind, forgiving New Testament God who looks like a passivist Jesus is a massive over-simplification. The God who brings his people out of Egypt is no less compassionate than the God who sends his Son into the world to save sinners – whatever we mean by that exactly. The problem is that Israel repeatedly abused the grace of God. Conversely, the violence of God is not restricted to the Old Testament. Central to Jesus' message is the warning to Israel that the nation faces destruction and that this destruction will be an expression of God's anger against his irremediably disobedient people. When he says, 'Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the land. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword' (Matt. 10:34, my translation), he is not speaking metaphorically. This is the Roman sword by which hundreds of thousands of Jews were to perish. Yes, Jesus embodies a self-giving non-violent response to both Jewish and Roman hostility, but this still belongs to a historically constrained narrative of divine judgment.
The problem is that if we stand back far enough to get a sense of the shape of the whole forest, the individual trees inevitably become indistinct. This will be a substantial challenge for the renewal of theology – can we maintain, with sufficient intellectual, pastoral and prophetic integrity, the necessary alternation and interaction between detailed interpretation and expansive re-imagination?
In the end, though, it seems to me that we arrive at oddly orthodox conclusions. If the evolutionary trajectory of our understanding of God is determined retrospectively by the prior biblical narratives and prospectively by the prophets' visions of the future and by the person of Jesus as the ultimate revelation of the character of God, it seems to me that McLaren has actually given us a cautious – and remarkably biblical – framework for the further evolution of a Christian understanding of God.
I am saying that human beings can't do better than their very best at any given moment to communicate about God as they understand God, and that Scripture faithfully reveals the evolution of our ancestors' best attempts to communicate their successive best understandings of God. As human capacity grows to conceive of a higher and wiser view of God, each new vision is faithfully preserved in Scripture like fossils in layers of sediment. (103)
McLaren worries me when he uses words like 'evolution' in relation to an understanding of God. Doesn't he realise that the word is loaded - especially as it has influenced a 'history of religions' paradigm - in which we have (supposedly) evolved from primitive stages of religion to the more advanced, just as we have (supposedly) evolved from primitive to more advanced stages of civilisation?
Likewise he uses the word 'reveals' ('scripture reveals' etc) to describe not a divine but human process of understanding, through which a more advanced view of God evolved. Confusing for anyone who has the slightest feeling for the word 'reveals' as it has been applied to God in the bible. 'Progressive revelation' is a fairly standard category for describing God's self-presentation in the bible. To speak of a developing capacity of the human mind to comprehend God is at best only a half-truth, and at worst could be said to be very misleading without further clarification.
And is 'fossils in layers of sediment' really a good way of describing 'each new vision' of God in the Old Testament? If McLaren means what he says, it says a lot about his view of the Old Testament as a body of literature which can speak (or from his point of view, fail to speak) to us today.
Is McLaren in danger of imprecision in his use of terminology?
I'm sure he realizes the word 'evolution' is loaded and may well have used it for precisely that reason. You're right about an imprecision of terminology – he is often accused of being evasive, and that may be part of the problem. My feeling is you have to look beyond his rhetoric, but of course it will be hard to agree about what we find there.
If to speak of the developing capacity of the human mind to comprehend God is getting on for a half truth, that is still rather important. To my way of thinking any account of revelation has to reckon with the human medium through which revelation occurs. How significant are the personalities of the prophets or the cultural and educational backgrounds of men like Matthew and Luke for the form that 'revelation' takes in their works? My understanding of God has 'evolved' over the years – would it be inappropriate to say that God has, therefore, been 'revealed' to me progressively, with some significant corrections along the way?
Plus, as I said, I suspect (no more than that) that we grossly underestimate the extent to which the Christian understanding of God has mutated since the New Testament was written. We do not read scripture the way the early church did – or the Byzantine church, or the Roman Catholic church, or the Protestant Reformers, or the Pietists… or the emerging church, and so on. Why then should we want to contradict the obvious historical assumption that the Biblical communities – in so far as they constituted the necessary social medium through which revelation was received and interpreted and expressed – developed in their understanding of their place in the cosmos and amongst the nations, of their relationship with God, of the workings of God? As McLaren points out, Job must to some extent qualify the outlook of Deuteronomy, Isaiah sees God differently to Exodus.
What is really at stake, theologically, in thinking that the biblical narrative presents us with a messy, complex, not entirely coherent, developing understanding of God? Human culture is always in a state of flux. Why shouldn't that be true of the culture that wrote and gathered the 'library' (to use McLaren's metaphor) of scripture?
It occurs to me that this all has to do largely with the problem of the texts in which God commands violent destruction of life. In the end, McLaren wants to find some way of dealing with what for many is a show-stopping contradiction between the God of the conquest and the God of Jesus. The problem is a real one. Is McLaren's solution really any worse than others on offer?
He uses other metaphors than the fossils one – the cumulative process of learning and unlearning that is involved in the process of education, for example.
I still haven't read 'A new kind of Christianity' - I think the title puts me off as much as what you have described about the content.
Trawling throught the archives of Open Source Theology, I came across the thread at www.opensourcetheology.net/node/869 from 2006, in which you seem to express similar sentiments to those above, and I make some furious objections - but not to you; rather to another contributor at the time.
There's a problem, I think, in not giving enough credence to the place of revelation (of God, about himself, his purposes) within the biblical writings, just as there's a problem in giving too much credence to the view that this was always clearly understood - or even (as in the thread) that religions are just human constructs, pure and simple.
I think there may be a middle ground between andrew and peter's response to mclaren's use of "evolutionary" language. It involves staying anchored to covenantal revelation.
God reveals himself differently through the principal covenants and at each juncture created by those covenants, he is (fairly) clear about what is involved in covenantal faithfulness. In this sense, there is a progression in what is revealed about God's nature. However, it would be inaccurate to call it an evolutionary progression—implying subtle, inaccessible, practically indiscernible changes.
In the messiah, Yeshua, Jesus, and the "new covenant" that he inaugurates, there is a sense that there is an ultimate, final revelation of God's nature. In this sense, the idea that there is more to understand has a limit to it. It is not that God will reveal more, it is that we see in a glass dimly — but we do see.
Comblin, in The Meaning of Mission: Jesus, Christians and the Wayfaring Church, explores the historical and cultural progression of Christianity and the development of our shared, corporate understanding of what mission is. Missiology as a discipline is increasingly aware of the reality that Christianity historically has adapted within every culture within which it has established itself. There is no one cultural expression that can claim to be definitive.
It seems to me that the emerging church is another adaption, a post-Christendom adaption, that is taking place and will continue. The more we measure faithfulness to the covenant in terms of our missional faithfulness, rather than our doctrinal faithfulness, is the more at home we will be with that reality. That is an observation, by the way, not a value judgement!


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Subscriptions have turned into a booming business for app developers, accounting for $10.6 billion in consumer spend on the App Store in 2017, and are poised to grow to $75.7 billion by 2022. But alongside this healthy growth, a number of scammers are now taking advantage of subscriptions in order to trick users into signing up for expensive and recurring plans. They do this by intentionally confusing users with their app's design and flow, by making promises of "free trials" that convert after only a matter of days, and other misleading tactics.
Apple will soon have an influx of consumer complaints on its hands if it doesn't reign in these scammers more quickly.
However, the company's focus as of late has been more so on getting developers to give subscriptions a try — even holding "secret" meetings where it evangelizes the business model that's earning developers (and therefore Apple itself) a lot of money. In the meantime, a good handful of apps from bad actors have been allowed to flourish.
Utilities Top Grossing Apps are worst offenders
Today, the majority of the Top Grossing apps on Apple's App Store are streaming services, dating sites, entertainment apps or games. But when you get past the market leaders — apps like Fortnite, Netflix, Pandora, Tinder, Hulu, etc. — and down into the top hundreds on the Top Grossing chart, another type of app appears: Utilities.
How are apps like QR code readers, document scanners, translators and weather apps raking in so much money? Especially when some of their utilitarian functions can be found elsewhere for much less, or even for free?
This raises the question as to whether some app developers are trying to scam App Store users by way of subscriptions.
We've found that does appear to be true, in many cases.
After reading through the critical reviews across the top money-making utilities, you'll find customers complaining that the apps are too aggressive in pushing subscriptions (e.g. via constant prompts), offer little functionality without upgrading, provide no transparency around how free trials work and make it difficult to stop subscription payments, among other things.
Here are a few examples. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but rather a representative one, just to illustrate the problem. A recent Forbes article listed many more, if you're curious.
Scanner App – This No. 69 Top Grossing app is raking in a whopping $14.3 million per year for its document scanning utility, according to Sensor Tower data. It has an unbelievable number of customer reviews, as well — nearly 340,000 as of today, and a rating of 4.7 stars out of 5. That will lead most customers to believe this is a good and trustworthy app. But when you parse through the critical reviews, you'll see some valid complaints.
Tap around in the app and you'll be constantly prompted to subscribe to a subscription ranging from $3.99 a week to $4.99 per month, or start a free trial. But the subscription following the free trial kicks in after only 3 days — something that's detailed in the fine print, but often missed. Consumers clearly don't understand what they're agreeing to, based on their complaints. And many of the negative reviews indicate customers feel they got duped into paying.
Update, 10/19/18: Following this report, this app disappeared from the App Store. It returned after updating its payment screen with clearer language about its free trial and subscriptions. (We understand that Apple has been working with the app makers to make their subscription screens less misleading.)
The app maker claims all its reviews are real, and notes canceling a subscription is not hard. It says that all major apps will have critical reviews.
"We are using a weekly subscription when offering a trial as most people use one of the premium features and then cancel the subscription to continue using the free app," the developer says. "Those who are using our premium features on daily basis prefer to purchase the annual subscription."
Scanner App is representative of a range of subscription scanners making large amounts of money. BP Mobile, the developer of this app, operates a number of subscription utilities, including, a second non-US version of Scanner App.
Scanning apps are a popular categories for utility subscriptions. Scanner PDF makes around $800K per month, as does Scanner for Me. Again, many of these companies negative reviews include those from people who think they were tricked into subscriptions.
QR Code Reader — Forbes recently found that TinyLab's QR Code Reader was tricking users into a ridiculously priced $156 per year subscription. This has now earned the app the rank of No. 220 Top Grossing across the App Store, and annual revenue of $5.3 million.
QR Code Scanner, via Forbes
Again, this "free" app immediately starts pushing you to upgrade by starting a "free trial." And again, this trial converts to a subscription after only 3 days. Can you imagine paying $156 per year for QR code scanning — something the iPhone camera app now does natively?
Weather Alarms – With a 4-star rating after hundreds of reviews, this weather alerting app seems to be handy. But in reality, it's been using a "dark pattern" to trick users into pushing a button that will start a free trial or sign them up for subscription. And it's working — to the tune of over a million in annual revenue.
A full screen ad appears in the app, offering two buttons — try for free or pay. The small "X" to close the ad doesn't even immediately appear! Users then end up paying some $20/month for weather alerts. That seems… excessive.
Legitimate developers have complained about this app for months, but Apple even featured it on its big screen at WWDC. (Watch the video embedded below. It's incredible.)
*After speaking to Apple about this app, Weather Alarms was removed from the App Store over the weekend. The developer runs several apps businesses with other potentially suspect apps, like Color Your Call app which is making $3 million per month. We have not investigated their full suite of apps, but the numbers alone make them worth a second look.
Translate Assistant – The same developer behind Weather Alarms offers this real-time translation app promising instant translations across more than 100 languages and has 4.7 stars after nearly 4,000 ratings.
But the app is also super aggressive about pushing its subscriptions. With every app launch, a splash screen appears with three different boxes — 1 month ($12.99/mo), 12 months ($44.99/year) or the "free trial," which converts users to a pricey $7.99/week plan after only 3 days.
Meanwhile, the option to "continue with a limited version" is in small, gray text that's intentionally been designed to be hard to see.
The app is making $1.3 million a year, per Sensor Tower data.
As you can tell, the issue with many of these scammy apps is that they capitalize on people not reading the fine print, or they allow an app's design to guide them to the right button to tap. Trickery like this isn't anything new — it's been around on the web as long as software has been sold. It's just that, now, subscriptions are the hip way to scam.
These developers also know that most people — especially if they've just downloaded a new app — aren't going to immediately subscribe. So they push people to their "free trial" instead. But that "free trial" is actually just an agreement to buy a subscription unless you visit the iTunes Settings and cancel it right away.
Many of these "free trials" convert almost immediately, too, which is another way developers are cashing in. They don't give you time to think about it before they start charging.
"It's incredibly frustrating how little has been done to thwart these scams," says Contrast founder and longtime developer David Barnard, whose apps include Weather Atlas and Launch Center Pro. "It erodes trust in the App Store, which ultimately hurts Apple and conscientious developers who use subscriptions," he says.
Apple also buries Subscription management
The issue of scam apps may not always be the failure of App Store review. It's possible that the scammy apps sneak in their tricks after Apple's App Review team approves them, making them harder to catch.
But for the time being, users have to take it upon themselves to cancel these sneaky subscriptions.
Unfortunately, Apple isn't making it as easy for users to get to their subscriptions as it could be.
Compare Apple's design with Google Play, where the option to manage Subscriptions is in the top-level navigation:
On the iPhone, it takes several more taps and a bit of scrolling to get to the same area in iOS Settings:
Above: Getting to subscriptions in the iPhone Settings (click images to view larger)
In the App Store itself, you can navigate to subscriptions in fewer taps, but it's not obvious how. You first tap on your profile icon on the top right of the Home page, then your Apple ID, then scroll down to the bottom of the page. It's still buried further than need be, considering how critical it is to manage these auto-payments.
"I firmly believe this is not the future we should be aspiring for in terms of user experience," says Denys Zhadanov, VP at Readdle, makers of Scanner Pro, Spark, PDF Expert and other productivity apps, speaking about these scam apps. "Apple as a platform, as an ecosystem, has always been a symbol of trust. That means people can rely on it for personal life and work needs," he continues.
"The App Store has always been a great place, overseen and curated by highly intelligent and ethical people. I believe the App Store can stay as it always has been, if the right measures are taken to deal with those developers who trick the system," Zhadanov adds.
Today, most subscription-based businesses thriving on the App Store come from legitimate developers. But they know how scammers could easily ruin the market for everyone involved. If allowed to continue, these scams could lead to consumer distrust in subscriptions in general.
In a worst-case scenario, consumers may even go so far as to avoid downloading apps where subscriptions are offered as in-app purchases in order to protect themselves from scams.
For now, Apple is largely relying on user and developer reports via reportaproblem.apple.com — a site most probably don't know exists — to help them fight scammers. It needs to do more.
In addition to making access to your subscriptions easier, it also needs to better police "Top Grossing" utilities and productivity apps — especially if the service's value is questionable, and the 1-star reviews are specifically calling out concerns like "sneaky billing" or mentions other subscription tricks.
We reached out to the app developers mentioned in the piece, but did not give them time to update their apps to remove their tricky screens before the post went live. Comments, if provided, have been added.
Apple declined to comment on the matter, but its Developer Guidelines clearly prohibit fraudulent behavior related to subscriptions, and insist that apps are clear about pricing. In other words, Apple has grounds to clear out these scammy subscription apps, if it chose to focus on this problem more closely in the future.


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CURRENT STATUS: Pre-Certified Labor Doula
BUSINESS NAME/AFFILIATION: SuperNaturalEssence
SERVICES PROVIDED: Labor Doula Services
AREAS SERVED: Prescott, Arizona
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Phone: (928) 533-7271
Website: https://supernaturalessence.com/
Professional Lifetime Certification
Background/Experience that you think is beneficial to Doula work: For a year I worked at a Specials Needs Facility helping and organizing games/events for the clients to participate in as well as getting certified for CPR, learning how to take blood pressure and other things. Then, working at a chiropractic office for four years has taught me a lot about the autonomic nervous system, what it entails to heal from the inside out as well as what its like to help serve clients through good and bad health. I'm very passionate about educating others about all sorts of different options for different health goals to help others feel empowered about making decisions for themselves.
What led you to become a Doula?: I worked in a chiropractic office for 4 years as a Certified Chiropractic Assistant. Through those 4 years we served everyone from babies right out of utero to 95+ years old. This experience showed me what it's like to value quality of life and to help educate those around me about options that would best suit them and their needs. Our office had a huge focus on pregnant mama's, about 50% of our patients were pregnant mamas, family and children. I was able to hear and learn a lot about good and bad birth experiences and all of it lit a fire inside of me to help serve women in this area.
What are some positive comments made about you by other people?:
A lot of people admire my calm energy that I bring into a room as well as my ability to listen and hear others when they are sharing personal goals/concerns with me. I am a very hard worker, whenever I am given a task I am diligent to do it correctly and with joy. I am passionate about helping others and supporting them through whatever goals they have set for themselves and I absolutely love celebrating with others when they succeed in their goals.


text: 50's For Yo Momma 50K, Circleville, OH 4,4 Elevation Gain: ~5000'; High Point: 700' May 12, 2012 - The day dawned just as the picture above as we assembled near the starting line with the sun filtering orange behind the clouds over Hargus Lake. I signed up for this race because it sounded fun, from the name, and it was off the beaten path that I had been following with a more aggressive racing agenda. I've grown weary of taking it all too seriously, so planned to run this one just for sheer entertainment (and I was not disappointed). After driving the four and a half hours the evening before and sleeping in the car bohemian-style I arrived dark early to pick up my packet and relax a bit before the 0645 start. Temps were at 48 degrees, but a short-sleeve shirt seemed quite comfortable to start an event where temps were forecast to rise into the seventies by early afternoon. The lake area in A.W. Marion State Park was very pleasant. A mockingbird was singing its heart out and everyone seemed to have come for the same reasons as me - no one seemed anxious to set a PR by running too hard. The runners in the 50-mile event started at 0630 to prevent trail congestion. We'd all be following a 5.2-mile trail around the lake multiple times until we achieved our distance - for the 50Kers that would be six laps. Normally I have little patience for a lap race and get bored by the second time around. Not so with this one. The woodsy trail is so varied, challenging and pretty that I never lost my interest. As trails go this one was everything a trail runner could dream of - the perfect trail. While extremely rooty it did not have that many rocks to kick or lose footing on. Generally wide enough to pass anywhere along the trail it wound back and forth through the woods with tight turns as it undulated non-stop, up and down, with both gradual and steep hills. My first two trips around the lake and back to the starting area were casual. While I deliberately tried not to engage in too much conversation it was not because I had put on my race face; it was to keep my focus on the changing terrain and the endless roots. I absolutely hate to catch a tip and stumble, or worse - crash. I told one fellow that I had not decided whether I would race or not, which was accurate. My tempo was conservative, I walked when I could have run sometimes, and all systems seemed good. I was tired though. Too much training or racing or working or something. Just plain tired, but my attitude was good. Each loop took about an hour to complete, equating to about a 5 mph pace, which was fine, given the trail challenges and hazards. I completed the fourth loop in four hours before slowing on the fifth and sixth loops. Once I got into a rhythm after the second loop I socialized more and put more effort into the hills and more speed into the straight-aways. It just felt good to work at it. I gained on the field throughout the race, continually improving my finishing place. I considered it a smart race - not too fast, but no letting up either. The two aid stations enabled me to run light, without the need to wear a waist pack or carry gels. Wearing my Brooks Cascadias kept me as light as possible, so I was able to glide comfortably despite being generally tired. Despite multiple stream crossings I was able to keep from getting muddy or wet by being careful or creative in my crossings. The only fall I sustained was an outright tumble near the halfway point. I was speaking to a hiker along the trail and not paying attention. Aside from a bruised shoulder and a few scrapes, there was no blood and I was able to continue without distress. I must have stumbled most of a hundred times during the event, always catching myself before hitting the ground. Stumbling causes more wear, I sometimes think, than the running itself. Following the race my legs are generally good - it's the rest of me that is sore from either falling or saving myself from a fall. I rolled into the finish in 6:18:36 for 14th place of the 67 people I started with. Lots of people got beat by the trail, but then lots of first-timers achieved their first ultra as well. It was a good event. A beautiful course. I was appropriately prepared to run it and ran it with strength. Yo Momma didn't kick my butt. After a quick trigger point session with a masseuse to work out a cramp in the hamstring of my driving leg I returned home looking forward to some rest before celebrating Momma's Day with the family the next day. |


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Autoptimize makes optimizing your site really easy. It can aggregate, minify and cache scripts and styles, injects CSS in the page head by default but can also inline critical CSS and defer the aggregated full CSS, moves and defers scripts to the footer and minifies HTML.
If you consider performance important, you really should use one of the many caching plugins to do page caching. Some good candidates to complement Autoptimize that way are e.g. WP Super Cache, HyperCache, Comet Cache or KeyCDN's Cache Enabler.
The Autoptimize plugin can aggregate, minify and cache scripts and styles, injects CSS in the page head by default but can also inline critical CSS and defer the aggregated full CSS, moves and defers scripts to the footer and mini files HTML. As such it can improve your site's performance a lot. Best for woocommerce accommodation bookings website.
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One of the most potent outside liberal-oriented political groups announced on Thursday that it would back Hillary Rodham Clinton if she chooses to seek the White House in 2016, the latest sign that senior members of President Barack Obama's team were looking to line up with the former first lady.
Priorities USA brought on board Jim Messina, Mr. Obama's 2012 campaign manager and the latest Obama insider to join a pro-Clinton group. With so many Obama veterans lining up to help clear the way for a Clinton campaign, it perhaps adds pressure on Ms. Clinton to go forward with another White House bid.
Ms. Clinton, a former secretary of state, senator and first lady, has not yet decided if she will again seek the White House. But that has not stopped supporters from building a political machine in case she decides to turn the key.
The early alignment for Priorities USA sends a clear signal that high-dollar donors were awaiting a Clinton decision and were ready to fork over millions to promote and defend Ms. Clinton from Republican criticism that conservative groups have been leveling for months, trying to weaken her standing should she choose to run.
Other pro-Clinton outside groups have been forming and working to defend her record in her absence. Correct the Record, for instance, has been trying to debunk Republicans' criticism of her decades in public service while Ready for Hillary has been organizing low-dollar fundraisers for her aimed as much at showing grassroots support as building a list of would-be-volunteers if Ms. Clinton joins the race.
But the formal shift for Priorities USA signals that big-dollar donors were ready to join the Clinton bandwagon.
Priorities USA helped raise millions for Mr. Obama's re-election and ran some of the election's toughest television ads defining Republican nominee Mitt Romney as a heartless corporate raider.
After 2012, the group considered various options but its donors clamored for Priorities USA to become the de facto pro-Clinton super PAC.
The addition of Mr. Messina and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, which had been expected, puts the leadership of the super PAC in the hands of one of Mr. Obama's most trusted advisers and a longtime Clinton supporter.
Before directing Mr. Obama's re-election campaign, Mr. Messina was a top 2008 campaign aide and a White House adviser who played a key role in the passage of the president's health care overhaul. Ms. Granholm had previously announced her support of Ms. Clinton through a separate super PAC, Ready for Hillary, and had supported Ms. Clinton during the 2008 Democratic primary.
Mr. Messina joins a number of top former Obama campaign aides who have backed outside efforts to bolster Ms. Clinton's standing should she run for president. Senior campaign aides Jeremy Bird and Mitch Stewart are advising Ready for Hillary. Buffy Wicks, who led the campaign's voter mobilization effort, recently signed on as executive director of Priorities USA Action.
The early efforts have begun to create an impression that Ms. Clinton is the favored heir to Mr. Obama's White House, as opposed to Vice President Joe Biden, who has kept open the option of a third White House campaign.
The outside groups have formed an early de facto campaign organization to help Ms. Clinton compete vigorously against Republican opponents who are already trying to negatively define her tenure as secretary of state. The organizations are building the network without her direct consent but she has not raised any objections, offering a tacit endorsement that has encouraged Democrats to push forward in preparation for a campaign.
The group's alignment had been expected for months but first confirmed Thursday by The New York Times. The group's spokesman confirmed the group would be supporting Ms. Clinton if she runs.


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