This project builds on a series of research articles that have dealt with different aspects of the social-philosophical implications of IR theory’s turn to sociological analytical inventories under the constructivist heading. In this paper, I take some of the insights and criticisms developed in the previous work further, and into the direction of explicating the contours of a relationally reconceptualised International Political Theory. The article comprises three main parts: The critical-reconstructive first part traces the implications of what I call the positional orientation of classical political theory in IR theorizing; focusing on the construal of »rule« in this mode, I demonstrate how the positional orientation structures both, mainstream constructivist research outlooks, as well as a surprisingly wide range of heterodox approaches. The second part of the article deals with the literature that has registered some discontent with this, focusing specifically on attempts to pad out the register of recognition, more reflexive approaches to questions of legitimacy, and instances of the increasingly more self-conscious deployment in International Political Theory of the language of the relational. Again focusing on how »rule« is construed in such contexts, I show that by failing to explicate the constrictive conceptual implications carried along, these attempts too fall short of making good on the promises of relational analysis. The third part spells through the constructive possibilities of construing »rule« on the basis of a more thoroughly conceptualized relational political theory. To make such a move plausible, I draw on the social-ontological premises underpinning recognition-theory. (Martin Weber)