week12

Week 12 Summaries

Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane, eds. Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change, Cornell University Press, 1993. Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6.

Chapter 1: "Ideas and Foreign Policy: An Analytical Framework"

This book explores the role of ideas in shaping foreign policy outcomes. The authors do not argue for the primacy of ideas over interests, but rather that both have causal weight in the explanation of human action. Realist and liberal accounts of IR have focused on rational explanations of behavior that relegate ideas to a minor role. On the other hand, “reflectivist” approaches such as that of Alexander Wendt focus on ideas but fail to articulate or test hypotheses. The authors argue that ideas can play three important roles that are conducive to empirical evaluation: providing principled or causal road maps, affecting strategies where there is no unique equilibrium, and becoming embedded in institutions.

Three Types of Beliefs:

World Views – conceptions of possibility embedded in the symbolism of a culture and deeply affecting modes of thought and discourse. Includes things like religion, human rights, sovereignty, Stalinism, market rationality, etc. The volume does not focus very much on this type of beliefs.

Principles Beliefs – normative ideas that specify criteria for distinguishing right from wrong and just from unjust. Includes ideas like “slavery is wrong” and “abortion is murder.” These are usually derived from world views but world views are usually sufficiently expansive to allow for opposing perspectives. Changes in principled beliefs have a profound impact on political action, such as the adoption of human rights norms after WWII.

Causal Beliefs – beliefs about cause-effect relationships which derive authority from the shared consensus of recognized elites. Provides guides for how to achieve objectives and strategies for the attainment of goals. Examples include scientific knowledge being used to eliminate disease or Hungarian and Polish revolutionaries drawing lessons from East Germany and Czechoslovakia in 1989. These can change relatively rapidly, as evidenced by policy changes related to new information on chlorofluoro-carbons (CFCs).

The Impact of Ideas on Policy:

Ideas as Road Maps – Even under rational utility maximization, ideas can play a key role in allowing actors to form preferences and expectations as well as select the means through which to attain goals. This will especially be the case when actors face continual uncertainty over their preferences and how to maximize them.

Ideas as Focal Points and Glue in Coordination – The folk theorem shows that under repeated games, virtually any outcome can be sustained as an equilibrium. Ideas can serve as focal points in selecting among these many equilibria.

Institutionalization – Once ideas influence the design of institutions, their influence will be reflected through the operations of that institution. Here, political institutions include administrative agencies, laws, norms, and operating procedures. Ideas that become institutionalized play a role in generalizing rules and linking issue areas.

Methodology:

In each chapter, the null hypothesis is that the actions described can be understood on the basis of egoistic interests in the context of power realities. This null will be compared to the contention that ideas mattered. Ideas present a methodological problem because they are difficult to measure. Inference will be based on evidentiary inference (historical/critical examination of evidence to attach probabilities to what happened) and descriptive inference (engaging in counterfactuals). Since theory and empirical evidence is limited, the analysis will necessarily be incomplete, indeterminate, and methodologically imperfect. The study seeks to establish the plausibility of the assertion that ideas matter.

Chapter 4: Nina P. Halpern, "Creating Socialist Economies: Stalinist Political Economy and the Impact of Ideas"

Halpern argues that “Stalinist Political Economy” or “the Soviet model” played an important ideational role in guiding the policies of communist countries after their establishment. Stalinist ideas consisted of a causal argument about the best way to bring about economic growth and a principled one about correct “socialist” choices leading towards an eventual classless society of communism. Specifically, Stalinism mandated state ownership for industry and collective ownership for agriculture. Micro and macroeconomic decisions would be made by state bureaucrats, and economic growth would be measured according to quantity of products rather than prices.

Stalinist ideas were powerful for three principal reasons. First, Stalinism existed in the absence of credible alternatives (i.e. communist growth models) and under apparent success in the USSR. Second, a regime that rejected these ideas would face a coordination problem and great uncertainty over what path to take and what to expect. Third, once institutionalized, Stalinist ideas proved remarkably impervious to reform.

In order to provide a convincing case against the null hypothesis that Stalinist ideas were adopted for material interests such as brute pressure or inducements from the USSR, Halpern chooses two cases where such interests mattered very little: China and Yugoslavia. In China, Stalinist policies were not adopted until after Stalin’s death and have persisted despite cooling of relations with the USSR in the 1960’s. The Chinese never developed an alternative to Stalinism despite having significant potential to do so. Through institutionalization in the administrative structure and the economic profession, Stalinist ideas persisted despite inefficiency and incompatibility with underlying economic conditions in China.

In Yugoslavia, Tito demonstrated a willingness to contradict Stalin in adopting Stalinist policies more rapidly than Stalin wished. Yugoslavia also moved further in the direction of full-fledged Stalinism after being evicted from the Cominform. This makes it unlikely that Tito was bowing to political or economic pressure from the USSR in adopting Soviet style policies. However, after the break with the USSR, Stalinism could no longer serve the functions of legitimation or economic development and were substituted with a “worker-managed economy” much more oriented towards the market system.

Halpern argues that the Chinese and Yugoslav cases suggest that other East European countries would have embraced Stalinism even in the absence of overt pressure from the USSR. The overall conclusion is that countries, especially after revolution, seize on preexisting ideas to guide them through times of high uncertainty and to facilitate legitimation and coordination of action.

Chapter 5: Robert H. Jackson, "The Weight of Ideas in Decolonization: Normative Change in International Relations"

Jackson describes decolonization as a normative process in which a fundamental change in principled beliefs led to institutional change. Prior to World War II, colonialism was widely accepted as legitimate insofar as the colony was incapable of managing its own affairs. If a political system was not “civilized,” it had no standing in international society and sovereign states had the right to intervene and establish a tutelary regime. While utilitarian calculations played some part, the colonial enterprise was also deeply normative, based on notions of civilization and racial supremacy. Hence, legitimacy could be questioned and undermined.

The notion of self-determination ultimately destroyed colonialism. However, this notion itself underwent a remarkable transformation. During the French Revolution, self-determination was associated with peoples and their right to statehood, but such notions did not extend to the Third World. After World War II, the “self” in self-determination became associated with colonial boundaries which were political artifacts formed by Western colonizers. Often times, multiethnic colonies resembled to old empires of Eastern Europe which were the original targets of self-determination. Many ethnic groups became abandoned peoples because their geography did not correspond to colonial boundaries.

The post-WWII normative transformation turned colonialism from a legitimate institution into a crime against humanity. Power, interest, and the Cold War cannot account for the abandonment of the colonial system. While some armed resistance movements were successful, most Third World colonies had very little capability vis-à-vis their colonial masters. The colonies had not become an economic burden. Cold War rivalries played some role, but most colonies were not important from the big picture of the bipolar conflict. From a counterfactual standpoint, if decolonization was all about power and interests, one should observe a much greater variety of patterns and timing based on capacity, resolve, the value of the colony, etc. Such local circumstances counted for very little. Although power and interests played some role in decolonization, ideas and norms are necessary to account for the whole picture.

The normative shift associate with decolonization can be attributed to greater democratization among Western states. Greater suffrage for women and racial groups at the domestic level paralleled a greater recognition of the right to self-determination. The USSR gave up its empire only after it democratized. Once norms such as self-determination are granted, they become irreversible, especially when institutionalized in international regimes such as the United Nations.

Chapter 6: Kathryn Sikkink, "The Power of Principled Ideas: Human Rights Policies in the United States and Western Europe"

Sikkink identifies the central role of principled ideas in shaping human rights policies in the United States and Europe after World War II. Empirically, the Europeans rapidly embraced a multilateral human rights regime in the form of the European Convention on Human Rights with significant intrusion into domestic sovereignty. In contrast, the United States did virtually nothing until the 1970’s and then adopted an external human rights policy with a minimal multilateral component. Only in the 1990’s did the US start to embrace some multilateral policies such as the UN Convention on Genocide.

This divergence across the Atlantic is attributed to several key factors. The Europeans experience the horrors of the Holocaust first hand and sought to prevent a future recurrence. Multilateral human rights policies also became embedded in a broader process of European integration. In the United States, a strong coalition of “cold-warriors, conservatives concerned about states’ rights, traditional isolationists, and segregationists” blocked ratification of UN treaties that would allow the federal government to intervene in state civil rights issues. In the 1970’s the picture dramatically changed with the Civil Rights Movement and post-Vietnam trauma which changed the focus to restoring US moral leadership and reigning in what many saw as the imperial presidency and realpolitik of Nixon and Kissinger.

Alternate explanations of human rights policies are unconvincing. Realism cannot account for the adoption and implementation of human rights policies, especially in cases like Greece and Argentina where countervailing geopolitical concerns were very large. An ideologically self-interested argument that the West adopted human rights norms to combat the appeal of Communism fails to explain differences in the timing and sequence of adoption. In particular, human rights norms were largely ignored by the US during the height of the Cold War but became increasingly prominent after the demise of the USSR. Hence, ideas provide the most convincing explanation of the US-Europe divergence. In the US, human rights policies were adopted much more slowly because a cluster of more powerful ideas such as segregationism and anticommunism were prominent for much of the post-WWII period. Only when these ideas eroded did human rights policies emerge at the forefront of US foreign policy.

Peter M. Haas, ed. Knowledge, Power and International Policy Coordination, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992. (Also in International Organization, 46:1) Chapters by Haas, Adler, Haas, Ikenberry, Sebenius and Adler and Haas.

Peter M. Haas, "Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination," pp.1-35

This volume aims to enhance the existing literature on international cooperation and international policy coordination. According to Haas, existing analytic approaches focusing on system-level and unit-level factors that affect international cooperation have only offered fragmentary insights. This volume examines the role of epistemic community networks in helping states identify their interests and in setting the issues for debate and international cooperation. “An epistemic community is a network of knowledge-based experts who have an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within the domain of their expertise.” (Sebenius, p.351) Members of transnational epistemic communities can influence state interests either by directly identifying them for decision makers or by illuminating the salient dimensions of an issue from which the decision makers may then deduce their interests. The epistemic communities approach thus suggests a nonsystemic origin for state interests and identifies a dynamic for persistent cooperation independent of the distribution of international power. (p.4) While the form of specific policy choices is influenced by transnational knowledge-based networks, the extent to which state behavior reflects the preferences of these networks remains strongly conditioned by the distribution of power internationally, and this volume focuses on the extent of that conditioning by international and national structural realities. (p.7)

After WWII, the modern administrative state witnessed a revolutionary expansion in professionalization, bureaucratization and the grounding of an epistemic community (i.e. the knowledgeable elite. Through decolonization, this expansion spread to developing world countries which wanted to emulate the Western development models. The expansion and professionalization of bureaucracies coupled with uncertainty and the complexity and growing technical nature of issues considered in the international agenda have fostered an increase in the deference paid to technical expertise and in particular to that of scientists. Haas purports that epistemic communities can: 1) elucidate the cause and effect relationships and provide advice about the likely results of various courses of actions following a shock or crisis 2) shed light on the nature of the complex interlinkages between issues and on the chain of events that might proceed either from failure to take action or from instituting a particular policy 3) help define the self-interests of a state or factions within it and 4) help formulate policies.

Members of epistemic communities not only share a common worldview, but also have shared notions of validity and a shared policy enterprise. Their authoritative claim to policy relevant knowledge in a particular domain is based on their recognized expertise within that domain. (p.16) Epistemic communities basically consist of scientists or individuals from any discipline or profession who have a sufficiently strong claim to a body of knowledge that is valued by society. What distinguishes epistemic communities from interest groups or other bureaucratic agencies is the combination of having a shared set of causal and principled beliefs, a consensual knowledge and a common policy enterprise (i.e. common interests). Because the behavior within and by an epistemic community is guided by various normative and causal beliefs as well as circumstances, it will differ from the behavior typically analyzed and predicted by rational choice theorists.

Though the number of members in these epistemic communities tends to be relatively small, the political infiltration of an epistemic community into governing institutions can lay the groundwork for a broader acceptance of the community's beliefs and ideas about the proper construction of social reality. The intent of the articles in this volume is to analyze this process in numerous concrete cases and discern the extent to which the substantive content of policies was shaped by community views and the extent to which other actors and political forces played a role. "The view presented in this volume is that epistemic communities are channels through which new ideas circulate from societies to governments as well as from country to country." (p.27)

The research techniques for demonstrating the impact of epistemic communities on the policy making process are straightforward but painstaking. They involve identifying community membership, determining the community members’ principled and causal beliefs, tracing their activities, and demonstrating their influence on decision makers at various points in time. While the members of any knowledge-based group may share criteria of validity and a policy enterprise, members of an epistemic community in addition share principled and causal beliefs. A robust study of an epistemic community’s influence calls for comparative studies of organizations in which the community has been active and those in which it has not. The aim of this volume is to demonstrate that "...epistemic communities have exerted their influence on decision makers in a wide variety of issue-areas. Generally called upon for advice under conditions of uncertainty they have often proved to be significant actors in shaping patterns of international policy coordination" (p.35)

Emanuel Alder, “The Emergence of Cooperation: National Epistemic Communities and the International Evolution of the Idea of Nuclear Arms Control.”

Adler studies the arms control epistemic community as a subset of the broader literature on international cooperation. He analyzes “the notion that domestically developed theoretical expectations which were created by a national group of experts and were selected by the US government as the basis for negotiations with the Soviets became the seed of the ABM partial security regime.” Accordingly, he argues that the signing of the 1972 ABM treaty did not result from changes in the balance of power or in nuclear technologies (which would be a structural-realist explanation) nor from “any deep sharing of strategic cultural or political goals, but because they were able to converge on an American intellectual innovation as a key to advancing both their irreconcilable interests and their shared interest of avoiding nuclear war.”

“The political selection, retention, and diffusion at national and international levels of new conceptual understandings” is described as an evolutionary process. This process is at odds with explanations that are based on structural realism. To demonstrate this difference, Adler suggests that in the theoretical world of structural realists “structural reality constrains behavior and then challenges agents to coordinate their behavior.” By contrast, in Adler’s theoretical world, “agents coordinate their behavior according to common practices that structure and give meaning to changing international reality.”

The epistemic community approach offers the following “comparative advantages” in explaining the emergence of the arms control regimes between the US and the Soviet Union. (1) It explains why super power cooperation was designed around arms control concepts. (2) It increases the sensitivity to the role of domestic political factors in affecting both different interpretations of the national interest and of international practices (i.e. a two-level game approach). (3) It demonstrates the impact of scientific knowledge on international cooperation processes. (4) It demonstrates that the two super powers were able to reach an agreement to govern only certain aspects of their strategic interaction (although they had many conflicting political interests and visions) due to their shared understanding of specific issue-areas. (6) The common epistemic understandings seem to have out-lived the Cold War and to continue to guide the US-Russian bilateral relationship. This provides evidence to the strength and viability of this concept.

To describe the above selection, retention, and diffusion process, Adler offers an “evolutionary research framework.” The framework consists of five variables: (1) Units of variation – consists of the existing interpretations, meanings, and expectations that circulate “within the academic and political communities;” (2) Innovation – the process of packaging the units of variation into a collective understanding that can be coherently presented to the public and to decision makers; (3) Selection – “the political processes that determine which policies are effectively adopted by the government;” (4) Diffusion – “the spread of expectations, values, and other types of ideas to other nations;” (5) Units of effective modification – the patterns of normative behavior of two or more states that result from the effective diffusion of the new norms.

The main body of the article consists of a detailed historical description of the emergence of the arms control epistemic community from the 1950s until the 1970s. The description is structured around the five variables. For instance, to analyze the first variable, Adler describes the prevailing mainstream views in the US in relation to the its nuclear strategy during the 1950s (i.e. it elaborates on the units of variation).

The seven working hypotheses that “inform” the article’s theoretical approach are: (1) Expectations are not deterministically derived from a structural condition. Instead, they emerge from meanings and understandings or “theories” that yield an interpretation of structure. (2) When there is no prior experience with a certain phenomenon, theories (that are based on abstract generalizations, propositions, and models) are more likely to shape the political approach to it. (3) Due to the technical and scientific nature of these theories they are likely to be developed in the academic circles and then taken to the political circles. (4) Nations transmit to each other the content of their theories thru direct and indirect means (e.g., international conventions of scientists). (5) The transfer of meaning and concepts across national boundaries enables decision makers to rationally calculate each nation’s pay-offs. (6) The sharing of epistemic criteria induces decision makers to behave according to it. (7) International cooperation evolves with, and depends upon, the ability of decision makers to make the rational choice to learn of those shared meanings and expectations.

Peter M. Haas, "Banning Chlorofluorocarbons: Epistemic Community Efforts to Protect Stratospheric Ozone," pp.187-224

A striking example of international cooperation is—according to Haas—the agreement on the protection of the stratospheric ozone. The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer was adopted in September 1987 imposing severe limits on global use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) even though there was not enough data to justify that such decreases will actually have any effect on the ozone layer. Haas attributes the successful coordination of national policies to protect the ozone layer to the activities of an ecological epistemic community, “a knowledge-based network of specialists who shared beliefs in cause-and-effect relations, validity tests, and underlying principled values and pursued common policy goals.” (p.187) Haas argues that the epistemic community was largely responsible for identifying and calling attention to the existence of a threat to the stratospheric ozone layer and for selecting policy choices for its protection. Its viewpoint prevailed in policy disputes within the US administration and influenced the major CFC producer DuPont, creating market incentives for smaller actors to eliminate CFCs. Thus, the epistemic community directly affected outcomes through the activities of its members within their own governments and organizations, and it indirectly affected outcomes by altering the market conditions from which smaller actors formulated their interests and strategies.

The ozone negotiations were framed by a transnational ecological epistemic community composed of atmospheric scientists and policymakers sympathetic to the scientists’ common set of values for the preservation of environmental quality. Though there was great confluence of views among the epistemic community which included among others scientist from the US, Britain the Netherlands and the USSR, the scientists nevertheless faced opposition from groups who drew different conclusions and policy implications when confronted with the same scientific evidence. This team, which included the CFC manufacturers in the US, would at most tolerate a freeze in production levels while additional research was undertaken. The epistemic community’s most potent political resource was its ability to articulate what scientific developments implied for policy, an ability based on its reputation for expertise in the field. As the science improved, the credibility of the epistemic community was enhanced.

In general, public sentiment and the activities of nongovernmental organizations had little direct impact on the adoption of CFC controls and countries in which the ecological epistemic community did not consolidate its influence have tended to be less directly supportive of CFC controls other than those which were in effect determined by altered market conditions. (p.217-8) “The ecological epistemic community played a switchboard role, communicating with policymakers and CFC manufacturers alike, accelerating their endorsement of the ozone research findings and encouraging corporate decision makers to hasten their search for new products that would enable the Montreal protocol cuts to be achieved.” (p.220) The epistemic community operated differently at various levels of international relations. Its influence was exercised in part through usurpation of decision-making channels and in part through persuasion. The rapid adoption of convergent policies to control CFCs is explained by the epistemic community’s ability to exercise influence at both the national and international levels.

G. John Ikenberry, "A World Economy Restored: Expert Consensus and the Anglo-American Postwar Settlement" pp. 289-321.

US and British officials held markedly different views during the initial negotiations for a postwar economic order, notably over a nondiscriminatory multilateral system versus a system of preferential economic groupings. American officials at the State Department wanted to reconstruct an open trading system, while British officials in the wartime cabinet wanted to insure full employment and economic stability with the continuation of the imperial preference system and bilateral trading. Despite these differences, the British and the Americans were able to reach watershed trade and monetary agreements that set the terms for the reestablishment of an open world economy.

Ikenberry explains the Anglo-American settlement reached at Bretton Woods in 1944 by identifying a community of British and American economists and policy specialists who embraced a set of policy ideas inspired by Keynesianism. The author then examines how this community played a critical role in defining government conceptions of postwar interests by shaping the negotiating agenda. In particular, economists overcame a political stalemate by shifting the focus of negotiations from highly contentious trade issues to monetary issues about which there was an emerging “middle ground” created by Keynesian ideas. As a result, it was possible to build political coalitions in support of the postwar settlement.

Ikenberry argues that structural explanations, based on underlying configurations of power and interests, are helpful but leave important issues unresolved. Given the range of postwar economic “orders” that were possible and the divergent and conflicting views both within and between the two governments, structural factors do not adequately account for why the international economic order took on the particular shape it did after WWII. At critical turning points in history, the interests and capacities of the dominant actors matter, but uncertainties about power structures and dissatisfaction with the prevailing definitions of interests create opportunities for the recasting of interests. Keynes, White and the other “new thinkers” were particularly well situated to shape the resolution of these uncertainties: the transgovernmental “alliance” that they formed allowed them to shape the agenda while the complexity of the issues gave them a privileged position to advance proposals. Finally, their ideas were particularly well suited to building winning political coalitions.

Anglo-American monetary experts were a collection of professional economists and policy specialists who shared a set of normative and technical views about 1) a managed multilateral order with monetary and trade practices subject to international agreement and supervision, 2) currency stability and convertibility, 3) the establishment of an international stabilization fund, and 4) an overall system that would work to facilitate Keynesian economic policy and social welfare goals. These experts agreed that new techniques of international economic management should be devised to reconcile the movement of capital and trade with the policies that promote stable and full employment economies, i.e. currency exchange commitments must not undermine expansionary domestic policies.

The structural and historical setting in which the Anglo-American experts operated was important in that it simultaneously constrained and empowered them. Constructing a new economic order inevitably involved a postwar reworking of the sociopolitical order in Western capitalist democracies and recognition of dominant American economic power. The resulting system was hegemony by consent: open but reciprocal and agreed upon rather than opposed. Building postwar coalitions was hence key in legitimating the exercise of American power and was accomplished by promulgating a postwar system that had a normative appeal to elites in other nations.

The Bretton Woods agreement articulated a middle position between a 19th century style free trade system and regional or nationalist capitalist arrangements by allowing the operation of a relatively open system of trade and payments as well as arrangements to support domestic full employment and social welfare. British and American Treasury Department officials effectively shifted the negotiations to monetary arrangements and an agreement was eventually reached, undercutting the US State Department’s more conventional but also controversial free trade position. With its synthesis of interventionist and liberal goals, the Bretton Woods agreement had a political resonance within wider and more contentious British and American policy circles, and thus played an important politically integrating role.

James K. Sebenius, "Challenging Conventional Explanations of International Cooperation: Negotiation Analysis and the Case of Epistemic Communities," pp.323-366

In this article Sebenius proposes a different approach to understanding cooperation under anarchy. He criticizes existing approaches on grounds of “analytic and empirical confusion, needless distinction and false dichotomy.” (p.323) Sebenius finds three primary problems with existing approaches on cooperation. First, by largely treating cooperation as a binary problem, they direct attention away from key issues of distribution and integrative potential. Second, even when they capture distributional conflict and Pareto inferiority, they typically do so by suppressing the exceedingly important consequences of inherent uncertainty and the need to learn. And, third, even when they take both power and knowledge-dependent joint gains into account, they often treat the two as competing alternatives or as analytically separable. (p.324 & 332)

Though more sophisticated game theory models could address these issues, Sebenius argues that this road would be less useful than an emerging “negotiation-analytic” approach. As far as game theory is concerned, “the number of plausible solutions and equilibrium concepts, the multiplicity of equilibria, the deviations from fully rational behavior, the frequent luck of common knowledge, and the widely scattered empirical results…all cast doubt on the reliability with which the structure and rules of a given situation can be mapped onto a unique negotiated outcome.” (p.350) Though based on game theoretic concepts, the negotiation-analytic approach de-emphasizes the search for fully rationally determined, unique equilibrium outcomes. Additionally, this approach offers a more precise characterization of power; recognizes that actors’ interests are not always material in nature; and takes informational factors into account.

The epistemic community approach is relevant to the “negotiation-analytic” approach given its emphasis on the interplay between power and knowledge in influencing outcomes. Both negotiation analytic and epistemic community based explanations centrally focus on both the process of reaching and the content of cooperative agreements. From a negotiation-analytic perspective, the major contributions of an epistemic community are the fact that: 1) it directs attention toward the conditions under which a coalition will form and expand 2) insists on the importance of perception and learning in negotiation and 3) deepens our knowledge of how actors come to define their interests. However this approach also suffers from some of the same failures of the other approaches. For instance, cooperation appears as a binary construct, with little regard to distributive or integrative issues. “The epistemic communities approach generally seems to separate cooperation and conflict and as a theoretical matter pays little explicit attention to the presence or resolution of conflict….thus while the studies of these communities often contain rich descriptive accounts of the strategic interaction leading to given outcomes, they offer little more than ad hoc generalizations about the conditions under which the influence of epistemic coalitions will affect outcomes.” (p.365)

Emanuel Adler and Peter M. Haas, "Conclusion: Epistemic Communities, World Order and the Creation of a Reflective Research Program," pp.367-390

“International relations lacks a credible theory and set of explanations for the sources of international institutions, state interests, and state behavior under conditions of uncertainty….In this volume, not only do we develop ‘particular studies that…can illuminate important issues in world politics’, but we also offer a research program with which students of world politics can empirically study the role of ideas in international relations.” (p.367) According to Adler and Haas, the epistemic communities approach, is a methodologically pluralistic approach which erases the artificial boundaries between international and domestic politics. They feel that no single theoretical approach taken alone offers an adequate explanation of international coordination. Neorealist approaches are unable to deduce state interests from international structures without resorting to auxiliary assumptions about domestic politics, communication and socialization. Additionally, rational choice assumptions which incorporate exogenously determined preference orderings don’t take into account important sources of expectations lying at the individual and institutional levels. “The theory building process we are involved in can nevertheless be extremely useful for rational choice analysis because, ultimately, we provide the necessary prerequisites for rational choice, explaining where alternatives and payoffs come from.” (p.369) The epistemic community doesn’t oppose the neorealist institutional approach which argues that states can work together through international institutions despite anarchy; on the contrary, Adler and Haas claim that the epistemic community theory picks up where the neorealist theory left off. Epistemic community theory relates institutions to the dynamic interaction between domestic and international political games and describes these games not only in terms of material interests but also as part of the bargaining and negotiation that take place by epistemic communities and policymakers. It is thus an approach that bridges rational choice and reflective institutional approaches, explaining the source of interests and institutions.

The authors contend that the most fruitful metaphor for thinking about epistemic communities is that of evolution. “..we do not relate to the tradition of evolutionary biology…instead, we rely on developmental biology in which evolutionary changes to structures, once in place, are largely irreversible and virtually determine the array of subsequent choices available to the species.” The epistemic community framework is thus a path dependent evolutionary model which implies that the effects of epistemic involvement are not easily reversed. Such a process of policy evolution has four primary steps: policy innovation, policy diffusion, policy selection and policy persistence. Within a framework such as that envisioned by Putnam’s two level game, epistemic communities play an evolutionary role as a source of policy innovations and a channel for innovation diffusion. The policy ideas of epistemic communities evolve independently rather than under the direct influence of government sources of authority. Their impact is institutionalized in the short term through political insinuation of their members into the policymaking process and in the longer term through socialization, which is particularly important for international policy coordination. (p.373)

The authors end their piece by suggesting interesting areas for further research on epistemic communities. Among others, they mention epistemic communities emerging from international institutions but focusing on or operating within specific regions, as well as epistemic communities emerging in developing countries and in non-Western societies.

Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Chapters 6 and 7

Chapter 6: Three Cultures of Anarchy

In this chapter, Wendt makes two arguments: (1) anarchic structures construct their elements and (2) anarchy can produce three logics of macro structure based on what kind of roles (enemy, rival, and friend) dominates the system. Structure is defined to be shared ideas or culture of an anarchic system, and these structures and roles are instantiated in states’ representations of Self and Other and acquire logics and tendencies that persist through time through ensuing practices and collective representation. Wendt argues that states in the system are functionally differentiated, and this functional differentiation depends on role differentiation, which care attributes of structures, not agents.

Each logic of anarchy is in turn has three different degrees of internalization (compliance, self-interest, and legitimacy), which determine how deeply embedded the states are in that culture. As enough number of states acquire the particular conception of Other (enemy, rival, and friend), the logic of anarchy becomes a collective representation, taking on a life of its own and becoming a property of the system. In the first degree of internalization, the norms of the system are followed because states are coerced to do so. In the second degree, the states follow the norms for the instrumental reason of achieving their self-interests. In the third degree of internalization, the norms become legitimate. Only in this situation can it be said that the norms are so deeply internalized as to affect the states’ identities and interests. “The Other is now inside the cognitive boundary of the Self, constituting who it sees itself as in relation to the Other.” (273)

The Hobbesian culture is characterized by the representation of the Other as an enemy, who does not recognize the Self’s right to exist as a fee agent. In this culture, security is a zero-sum game, and security dilemmas are acute because of intentions of other actors in the system. The Lockean culture represents the Other as a rival. The rival differs from the enemy in that it recognizes the Self’s right to life and liberty, and expects others to do the same. State sovereignty is such a right in the current international system and has become an institution shared by many states. This culture tends to be more peaceful as states recognize one another’s sovereignty and hence generates the possibility of reciprocity. The Other’s conception in the Kantian culture is friendship. Friendship requires states to (1) settle disputes without war or threat of war and (2) states will fight as a team if security of any one is threatened. In effect, these rules create a security community in which there is the assurance that the member states of that community will not settle disputes physically but in some other way.

The cultures have both causal and constitutive effects on the internalization of identity. The causal effect concerns “the role that the culture plays in the production and reproduction of Other’s identity over time.” (274) The constitutive effects of culture show, on the other hand, that “identities and interests depend conceptually or logically on culture in the sense that it is only in virtue of shared meanings that it is possible to think about who one is or what one wants.” (274)

Chapter 7: Process and Structural Change

Wendt first discusses the two models of “what’s going on” in the social process. One is the rationalist model, which takes agents as exogenous to process. What is at stake in this model are behavioral choices. i.e. “the social process consists of interlocking actions seeking to satisfy given identities and interests by adjusting behavior to changing incentives in the environment.” (366) The other model is the constructivist model, which takes agents as endogenous to process. This model assumes that agents themselves are in process. What is at state in this model is the identities and interests of the actors, while agents still choose behaviors in response to changing incentives.

Two models of identity formation: (1) Natural Selection: Natural selection occurs when organisms that are poorly adapted to the competition for scarce resources in an environment fail to reproduce and are replaced by the better adapted. This process works iff survival is difficult.
(2) Cultural Selection: It occurs through imitation or social learning. Imitation refers to the situation where “actors adopt the self-understandings of those whom they perceive as ‘successful’,” (325) while social learning is the mechanism in which “identities and their corresponding interests are learned and then reinforced in response to how actors are treated by significant Other.” (327) This takes place when actors interact, as they take a particular role identity and then cast the others in a corresponding counter-role that makes their own identities meaningful.

Collective identity and structural change: structural change here refers to cultural change and occurs when actors redefine who they are and what they want. In other words, since the structure of any internalized culture is associated with a collective identity, “a change in that structure will involve a change in collective identity, involving a breakdown of an old identity and the emergence of a new.” (338) The transformation of collective identity comes about trough the mechanism of cultural change, especially social learning based on reflected appraisals of the Self and the Other.

Master variables

Lastly, the author examines four causal mechanisms, or “master variables” that could explain why states in a Lockean world would engage in prosocial security policies and thereby spur collective identity formation. The master variables are interdependence, common fate, homogeneity, and self-restraint. The first three can be grouped as efficient causes of collective identity, and the last as permissive cause. Through the operation of these four master variables, states may transform the collective conception of the Self and the Other, enabling a collective identity to emerge and resulting in the Kantian culture of anarchy.

Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, "A Framework for the Study of Security Communities", in Security Communities, edited by Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1998. pp. 29-65.

Adler and Barnett's introductory essay serves two purposes: it is definitional, and outlines a sequence of expected development of security communities that is "heuristic", "social constructivist" and "path dependent" rather than "teleological". A framework for studying the emergence of security communities is presented as having three tiers:

1) "precipitating factors that encourage states to orient themselves in each other's direction and coordinate their policies" (face-to-face interactions, policy coordination for whatever reason),

2) "structural elements of power and ideas, and the process elements of transactions, international organizations, and social learning" (development of a "we-feeling", states drawn by power "like a magnet" into interaction, development of liberalism and democracy, purposeful trust-building, social learning), and

3) the "development of trust and collective identity formation" through dynamic interaction of tiers 1 and 2 that lead to "dependable expectations of peaceful change" and the creation of a "collective identity".

The sequenced causal relations between these three tiers is responsible for the production of "dependable expectation of peaceful change", which is the definition of a security community. Included in the definition of "community" are shared identities, values, meanings; many-sided and direct relations; and reciprocity, long-term interest, and even altruism (31).

A security community is not an alliance, rather, it is a crude governance structure. "We may conceive the habits and practices of the peaceful resolution of conflicts, and the shared norms on which they are based, as a crude governance structure. Governance can be best defined as activities backed by shared goals and intersubjective meanings that 'may or may not derive from legally and formally prescribed responsibilities and that do not necessarily rely on police powers to overcome defiance and attain compliance'"(35). The more tightly coupled the security community, the more the role of the state is transformed to serving community goals.

Adler and Barnett present a good example of security community in their discussion of Tier 3. "Democratic nuclear powers do not feel threatened by each other's nuclear weapons; even when in 1965 France withdrew from the NATO integrated command and insisted on maintaining an independent nuclear force, other NATO allies did not interpret this as a military threat against their physical survival. But these same countries are quite concerned when Iraq or Iran are feared as developing a nuclear weapons program" (46).

Adler and Barnett provide three phases in the development of security community that appear to overlap somewhat with the three tiers of security community. The three phases are:

In Phase I: Nascent Security Community, characterized by states that have reasons to develop a security community, for example a common security threat, the desire to "capitalize on an international division of labor or gains from trade" that encourage the development of international institutions, "cultural, political, social, and ideological homogeneity" across states, and the "existence of powerful states that are able to project a sense of purpose," for the security community (52).

In Phase II: Ascendant Security Community, the community is defined by "increasingly dense networks; new institutions and organizations that reflect either tighter military coordination and cooperation and/or decreased fear that the other represents a threat; cognitive structures that promote "seeing" and acting together and, therefore, the deepening of the level of mutual trust, and the emergence of collective identities that begin to encourage dependable expectations of peaceful change" (53). These increased institutional interactions and social learning increase mutual trust.

In Phase III: Mature Security Community, war becomes highly improbable because of trust, institutionalization, and a community of identity. "Regional actors share an identity and, therefore, entertain dependable expectations of peaceful change and a security community now comes into existence" (55). A mature security community includes multilateralism, changes in military planning in which "worst-case" scenaries do not include community members, common definitions of threat, normative discourse reflect community standards, policy coordination against internal threats, free movement of population between member states, internationalization of authority, and a "multiperspectival" polity in which "rule is shared at the national, transnational, and supranational levels" (54-57).

Security communities are subject to disintegration, especially after crises such as the end of the Cold War, or during the buildup or decline of empires.

Emanuel Alder, "Seeds of Peaceful Change: the OSCE's Security Community-Building Model," in Security Communities, edited by Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp.119-160.

Adler traces the development of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in light of his constructivist and path dependent theory of security communities. His argument is that face-to-face interactions, "seminar diplomacy", intrusive but accepted verification missions, and moral shunning in the context of the OSCE has led to increased trust between Western European states and former Soviet republics, and that these processes have been closely imitated by parallel institutions in NATO, for example the Partnership for Peace, as well as non-European regional security associations, to create a broad base for trust, cooperation, and shared identity.

The OSCE was constituted by the Helsinki Final Act (1975), which created three broad areas of activity known as baskets. "Basket One contains the ten basic principles of the OSCE, as well as the guidelines for a "cooperative security" system based on confidence-building measures, disarmament, and mechanisms for the peaceful resolution of disputes. Through the years it has added injunctions concerning human rights and international terrorism. Basket Two created the framework for economic, scientific, and environmental cooperation, stressing the elimination of restrictions to trade, industrial cooperation, and technology transfer. In Basket Three, dealing with the "human dimension," members committed themselves to cooperate on all sorts of humanitarian issues that encourage human contacts and enhance human freedoms" (123).

Adler ascribes causal power to the OSCE's seminar diplomacy and promotion of human rights in the downfall of the Soviet Union. Elite members of the Soviet military establishment interacted with their Western counterparts in seminars on democracy, human rights, peacekeeping, etc., and were thus "socialized" to Western norms. OSCE diplomats interacted directly with civil society groups within the Soviet bloc. These Soviet groups and elites began pressuring Soviet leaders for reform. Gorbachev responded to this pressure, not in order to fracture the Soviet state, but to increase the legitimacy of communism both internally and externally. These reforms, however, led to the breakup and democratization of the Soviet Union. "The innovation of cooperative security and human rights practices by the OSCE contributed not just to the recovery of East-West relations but also 'to the emergence of a 'civil society' in various Eastern countries which prepared the ground for the revolutions of 1989'. Thus, it ended up having a subversive effect on the Soviet empire, promoting and speeding its demise by peaceful means" (127).

After the OSCE declared the end of the Cold War in 1990 in the Charter of Paris, their diplomats involved themselves primarily in "securing the internalization of liberal norms by former Communist countries and devising the means of conflict prevention and norm implementation to guarantee the evolution toward security community-ascendance and, later, maturity" (127), as well as providing a location for debate and signing of arms-control agreements, human rights monitoring, and peacekeeping (128). With only one exception, no state has refused entry to OSCE human rights inspectors (129). Adler admits that the effectiveness of the OSCE is limited to prevention of conflict. When hostilities erupted in Bosnia and Chechnya, the organization was powerless to stop the violence.

In his conclusion, Adler underlines the constructivist approach to international institutions. "Institutions not only prescribe behavioral roles and constrain activity, they also constitute the identity of such agents and empower them to act on the basis of their institutional reality. . . . [and] help determine which shared understandings will be culturally and politically selected to become the practices and interests of governments" (150).

Peter Katzenstein, ed. The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Chapters 1 (Katzenstein), 5 (Finnemore), 10 (Risse-Kappen) and 12 (Kowert and Legro). (pp. 1-32, 153-185, 357-399, 451-497)

Chapter 1: "Introduction: Alternative Perspectives on National Security"

This is a book attempting to resurrect sociological perspectives on international relations. Explanations that take state interests for granted are limited because interests are constructed through a process of social interaction by actors who respond to cultural factors. Both neorealism and neoliberalism could not foreshadow the momentous changes in the international system starting in the mid-1980’s. This volume concentrates on two underattended determinants of national security policy: the cultural-institutional context of policy on the one hand and the constructed identity of states, governments, and other political actors on the other. The theoretical perspective is “sociological institutionalism,” which focuses on the character of the state’s environment and on the contested nature of political identities.

Definition of terms:
Norms – collective expectations for the proper behavior of actors with a given identity. Norms can either define (constitute) identities or prescribe (regulate) behavior, or both.
Identity – a label for varying constructions of nation- and statehood, based typically on explicitly political conflicts between actors.
Culture – a broad label denoting collective models of nation-state authority or identity, carried by custom or law. Culture refers to both a set of evaluative standards (such as norms and values) and a set of cognitive standards (such as rules and models) that define what social actors exist in a system, how they operate, and how they relate to one another.

The end of the Cold War has opened up the key question of how to define national security. Unconventional, broader definitions of national security include economic competitiveness, human rights, and human welfare. Examples of historical shifts on conceptions of national security are demonstrated by changing views towards population policy and the transformation of plutonium from a security to an environmental issue. However, this volume deals with traditional, “hard” issues of national security for the sake of being taken seriously.

Neorealism and neoliberalism are particularly weak in focusing on systemic factors and failing to predict interests, which requires an analysis of domestic politics. Scholars who admit some role for sociological factors such as Gilpin and Krasner do so sloppily or by relegating them to the distant past. This volume relaxes two core assumptions of the two paradigms by 1. Conceiving of the environment of states not just in terms of the physical capability of states and 2. Focusing on aspects of institutions besides their impact on interests, such as their constitutive function.

Social Determinant 1: Cultural-Institutional Context – Neoliberalism sees regimes as acquiring their own dynamic and changing the calculations of state interests. This perspective is too behavioralist and ignores how social change engenders a process of self-reflection and political actions that are shaped by collectively held norms. State interests and strategies are shaped by a never-ending political process that generates publicly understood standards for action. Neoliberalism is subsumed by this perspective, but the two views are fundamentally similar.

Social Determinant 2: Collective Identity – Institutions not only change actors’ incentives and regulate their behavior but also constitute the actors themselves. The state is a social actor embedded in social rules and conventions that constitute its identity and the reasons for the interest that motivate actors. The domestic and international environments of states are arenas in which actors contest norms and construct and reconstruct identities.

Chapter 5: Martha Finnemore, "Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention"

This essay focuses on the role of humanitarian norms in shaping patterns of intervention over the past 150 years. Though not decisive, the failure of traditional theories to explain the patterns and the correlation of changing norms with behavior establishes the plausibility of the author’s norm-based argument.

Contrary to realist and liberal predictions, states have often intervened militarily to protect citizens other than their own since the end of the Cold War. Often, the targets of intervention are geostrategically unimportant states such as Somalia and Cambodia. Norms provide a plausible alternative explanation for interventions. Such norms provide justifications that connect actions to standards of justice or standards of acceptable behavior. These norms have changed considerably over time, especially in terms of which human beings merit intervention and how intervention should be carried out. Institutionalization of these norms in organizations such as the UN tends to increase their power and elaboration.

Prior to the twentieth century, intervention for the protection of non-nationals solely involved Christians under duress from the Ottoman Turks. Geostrategic concerns were often important, but humanitarian claims couched in religious terms were often used as justifications. Public opinion seemed to play a small but important role. Humanitarian goals were rarely taken when it jeopardized other stated goals or interests of a state, as non-intervention during the Armenian genocide demonstrates.

During the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the conception of who deserved protection increased.   The abolition of slavery and decolonization universalized humanity with a set of rights that contributed to an evolution of humanitarian intervention norms. The early movement against slavery did not produce an interventionist norm since perpetrators were often Christian nations and slaves were often black Africans. Colonization unraveled as Asians and Africans increasingly became seen as humans with rights similar to those of Europeans.

In the post-1945 period, virtually all interventions have been made on behalf of non-Christians and/or non-Europeans. Strikingly, humanitarian intervention must now be multilateral to be considered legitimate. Countries engaging in unilateral interventions such as India in East Pakistan and Vietnam in Uganda could not convincingly claim humanitarian justifications for their actions. Multilateralism induces transparency and defrays costs but also has disadvantages. The choice depends largely on the normative context, which sees multilateralism as the only legitimate means for providing intervention of this sort. Additionally, institutionalization has delegitimized interventions that are not composed according to UN procedures.

Chapter 10: Thomas Risse-Kappen, "Collective Identity in a Democratic Community: The Case of NATO"

Risse-Kappen challenges conventional explanations for the emergence and persistence of NATO. Realist explanations fail to explain or are indeterminate about West European and US choices at critical junctures during and after the cold war. An alternative explanation based on republican liberalism links domestic polities systematically to the foreign policies of states.

Realism, both of the Waltzian and Waltian types, provides indeterminate predictions about the origins, cooperation patterns, and endurance of NATO. Risse-Kappen proposes an alternative liberal constructivist approach. Liberal democracies form an “in-group” of friends and an “out-group” of potential foes. Social identification allows for the creation of a “we-feeling” based on a mutual ability to predict each other’s behavior. Democracies also form democratic international institutions by externalizing internal norms when cooperating with each other. Power is downplayed and persuasion, compromise, and consultation valued. Actors make an effort to anticipate the preferences of their partners and define their preferences to be compatible with their friends. Norms serve as collective understandings of appropriate behavior. While hard bargaining will occur, issues such as domestic constraints will matter more than power. Actors can hold multiple identities but historical contingency and contextuality produced a zone of democratic peace in the Northern Hemisphere.

The argument is demonstrated in reference to the various stages of the development of NATO. At the inception, there was nothing inevitable about the Cold War. Perceptions of the USSR as the “other” based on their non-liberal status and refusal to join the liberal order pushed the US towards an alliance with the Western Europeans.

During the 1956 Suez Crisis, the community temporarily broke down when both sides of the Atlantic felt the other had betrayed community norms. The US felt deceived by the British and French, while the Europeans saw the US as duplicitous. The US used its overwhelming financial power to strong arm the Europeans only when it felt basic norms of the community were violated.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, there was much more interallied consultation than conventionally assumed. The need to preserve NATO was a key issue at all stages of ExComm discussions. Berlin was as much of a concern as New York City, and Jupiter missiles in Turkey became a contentious bargaining chip because they had come to be seen as a symbol of US commitment to the security community.

In the post-Cold War world, NATO remains alive and well contrary to Waltzian predictions. The “otherness” of the Russians has diminished due to significant democratic reforms. The community will expand into Eastern Europe and may eventually create a “pacific federation” of liberal democracies from “Vladivostok to Berlin, San Francisco, and Tokyo.” NATO may not necessarily survive, but some institutional embodiment of liberal democratic partnership will.

In terms of other alliances and cooperative institutions, the EU and the US-Israeli security relationship seem to exhibit a strong identity component. The US-Japan security relationship, in contrast, is domestically contested in Japan and seems to be an anomaly. Alliances among non-democracies should conform to more traditional realist expectations.

Chapter 12: Paul Kowert and Jeffrey Legro, "Norms, Identity, and Their Limits: A Theoretical Reprise"

Kowert and Legro provide a critical review of the norm-based approach presented in the volume. They argue that norms must be distinguished from identities, which are regulative accounts of actors themselves. Social prescription should be divided into two categories: prescriptive accounts of actors themselves (identities) and behavioral prescriptions for the proper enactment of these identities (behavioral norms).

A “sociological turn” in international relations theory can serve to uncover blind spots left by other theories focusing on interests and capabilities alone. The neoclassical microeconomic foundations of neorealist and neoliberal theories marginalize norms, only allowing for a minor role in the institutional context. Structural theories in IR tend to ignore social attributes of structure. Norm-based approaches problematize the assumptions of these theories. Interests are constructed rather than assumed. Norms shape the instruments available to actors to pursue their interests. Normative structure shapes identities and constitutes the rules by which actors interact.

The source of norms is not a fully explored topic in the volume. Oftentimes constructivists take norms as exogenous. Scholars need to develop more explicit theoretical propositions about the construction of sociopolitical facts. Three tentative processes are identified:

Ecological – processes resulting from the patterned interaction of actors and their environment. Ambiguity seems to have some role in fostering norms. “But the effects of ambiguity are… ambiguous.” (471) Iteration has a tendency to strengthen norms over time. It is unclear, however, when norms will solidify and when they will fade away. Environmental shocks can loosen commitments and undermine norms. However, defining a shock can be problematic.

Social – generalizations about the way human beings, organizations, states, or other political agents interact. One possibility is that norms spread through social diffusion. But which norms, and through what channels? Second, norms and identity might arise from a process of in-group/out-group differentiation and social role definition. However, nations can relate to each other in numerous ways, making such analysis complicated.

Internal – processes operating within political actors. These may include psychological processes, the use and interpretation of language, or the attempts of utility maximizers to attain efficient outcomes. This approach faces a serious aggregation problem since it focuses on atomic agents.

The authors also identify five challenges in the study of norms as follows:

Knowing Norms – defining what constitutes a norm is highly problematic. The strength of a particular norm is very difficult to measure. A “revealed norm” method is unreliable if some deviation from a norm does not imply repudiation. An interpretive approach faces issues of how to distinguish manipulation and deception from genuine forms of communication. The field is also biased towards “norms that work” and more attention needs to be paid to the failure or obsolescence of norms.

An Embarrassment of Norms – since multiple norms can influence a single actor, it is difficult to distinguish the ones that matter. One can almost always identify, post hoc, a norm to explain a given behavior.

Continuity and Change – accounting for both is very challenging. Culture exhibits an inertial force that resists change, but explanations of change are less straightforward. One could get around this problem by analyzing different levels of a culture, but this could lead to an endless appeal to nests within a given culture.

Material and Normative Worlds – norms do not exist independent of the material world, but the relationship between the two is relatively unexplored. Norms attached to strong nations or groups may have an advantage over others.

Agency and Norms – norms can influence interests, but actors can also manipulate or change norms. Even an actor’s own identity can be manipulated for strategic reasons. A distinction between internal and external norms seems to be salient. For collective actors, identity is different from the presentation of identity. Allowing for conscious manipulation of norms complicates analysis considerably.