AMERICAN IDENTITY AND NEUTRAL RIGHTS FROM INDEPENDENCE TO THE WAR OF 1812

Constructivists have argued that interest-based explanations cannot fu lly account for important international phenomena and that analysis of the social construction of state identity may explain the genesis of state interests. This argument can be applied to the early development of neutral rights policy in the United States, when a weak and divide d state clung to a policy that was opposed and consistently challenged by far stronger powers. My explanation poses a principled conception of identity: if leaders adopt a principle that constitutes a specific international role for the state and commands domestic legitimacy, the n diverse interests will converge on that principle, generating foreig n policy continuity While neorealist and liberal institutionalist theo ries each provide fragments of an explanation, a constructivist hypoth esis comprehensively explains the relative continuity of the policy ov er time.