Constructivism and the Capitol riots: Beyond single dominant narratives, towards eventful sociology

Constructivist research has observed punctuated equilibria in international politics, with rapid changes interspersing more prolonged periods of stability, characterised by a single and enduring dominant security narrative. However, in the contemporary era of affective polarisation, single dominant security narratives are no longer the norm. This, in part, reflects the decline of the bully pulpit, following the rise of a cacophony of storying actors. We argue that constructivism requires a theoretical supplement to help make sense of this new empirical reality. Drawing on eventful sociology, we complement extant IR research on narrative with greater focus on contingency, iterative interaction, and agentic creativity as part of a configurational account of the storying of political events. We explore this in the US case – characterised by inward-looking, hyper-partisan politics. Analysing a new dataset of 1288 political and media texts, we trace the construction of the Capitol riots, through the combined actions of myriad storying agents, within two distinct, enduring, and synergistic national security narratives. The outcome is surprising: highly divergent but intimately entwined stories of continuity. Our findings suggest that constructivism requires updating – to be more contingent, agentic, and configurational – to meet the demands of the new, hyper-polarised era.