Friedrich Kratochwil (born 1944 in Břeclav, Moravia) is a German university professor who studied at the University of Munich before migrating to the United States, then subsequently returning to Europe. He received a PhD from Princeton University.
He is one of the main representatives of constructivism in international relations. Central to his work is the conceptualization of language as action. Language is closely related to norms and rules that produce inter-subjective meanings that allow players in international relations to act socially (i.e. in relation to others).
History
Kratochwil was born in Lundenburg (former Czechoslovakia). After graduating in 1963 from the humanistic Maximiliansgymnasium in Munich, he studied philosophy, history and political science at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität. He received in 1969 his university degree (M.A.) in International Relations from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. In 1976, he received his doctorate (Ph.D.) from Princeton University in political science with a focus on international relations.
Kratochwil taught at American universities in Princeton, Columbia, Pennsylvania and at the European University Institute in Florence. Until 2003, Friedrich Kratochwil was Professor of International Politics at the Geschwister Scholl Institute of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich.
One of his famous books is Rules, Norms and Decisions (1989), introducing constructivism to the discipline, a landmark study in the discipline of international relations.
He has been the editor of the European Journal of International Relations and member of the editorial boards of several journals, including the Journal of International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, World Politics, and member of the editorial advisory board of Millennium: Journal of International Studies.
Books
International Order and Foreign Policy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1978). The Humean Conception of International Relations, Center for International Studies, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J., 1981. International Law: A Contemporary Perspective (Boulder, Colo., Westview Press, 1985) co-edited with Richard Falk, Princeton University, and Saul Mendlovitz, Rutgers Law School. Peace and Disputed Sovereignty, Reflections on Conflict over Territory (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985), co-authored with Paul Rohrlich and Harpreet Mahajan. Rules, Norms and Decisions, On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), Paperback edition March 1991. International Organization: A Reader (together with Ed Mansfield, eds. (New York: HarperCollins, 1993). The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory (editor, with Yosef Lapid), Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1996. Transformative Change and Global Order (editor, with Doris Fuchs), LIT Verlag, 2002 International Organization and Global Governance: A Reader, Friedrich Kratochwil and Edward D. Mansfield (eds.), Pearson Longman, Second Edition, 2005 The Status of Law in World Society: Mediations on the Role and Rule of Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Praxis: On Acting and Knowing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.