The ideas debate in mainstream IR/IPE was generated by cumulative dissatisfactions with rational choice theory and with Realist tenets. This article examines the contours of this debate and explains how it reached its limit in the form of ‘conventional constructivism’, a bowdlerised form of critical theory and Gramscian cultural studies. ‘Context’ and Gramsci's ‘common sense’, however, are sufficiently equivalent terms to enable productive conceptual connections across the intradisciplinary divide. The overarching obstacle remains the resistance of mainstream IR to integration with other social sciences.