Political Science Resource Blog

Comparing Marx and Rousseau

2007-02-04T17:03:00.000-08:00

Rousseau and Marx in Comparative Perspective

Introduction

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Max shared a hesitation about the liberal project articulated in part by John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. But their hesitation stemmed from different sources. For Rousseau, the problem was a specifically political; namely, the problem of liberal individualism and consent as the sole component of producing government. Rousseau’s alternative was a highly participatory ‘General will’. Marx’s criticism was more radical. In short, economics was the problem and only by overturning the economic class system could a viable democratic state be achieved. Taken to its logical end that state would actually “wither away” because it would shed its political and economic character. This essay will address these concerns in depth.

Rousseau’s Social Contract

Thomas Hobbes and John Locke both articulated contrasting, yet similar, versions of the social contract. Hobbes’ social contract relayed how rational, self-interested humans gave up the constant “state of war” for protection from the sovereign. In Hobbes’ famous maxim, life in the state of nature was “solitary, nasty, brutish and short.” Locke, on the other hand, described a state of nature that was less bleak. For Locke, “laws of nature” existed that helped to restrain the behavior of humans. But Locke also believed that man’s ability to trade and barter would eventually lead to the creation of money. Once money — and its rampant acquisition — became a prevalent aspect of society, government would need to be created to protect property and moneyed interests. In each case, individuals consent to give up their freedom in the state of nature to obey a sovereign.

Rousseau is in some ways troubled with the aspects of Locke’s and Hobbes’ earlier formulations. Rousseau wrote that Hobbes’ made men nothing more than “herds of cattle,” and that any human willing to live under Hobbes sovereign was probably crazy. In Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau argues that Hobbes treats socialized traits as a given. Their wickedness is learned, not simply a given (Rousseau 278). Locke’s “social contract” also presents problems because it places the protection of individual property rights at the center of the need for government. In what some have called the most important puzzle in political theory, Rousseau argues in The Social Contract,“ Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains” (Rousseau 49). For Rousseau, the puzzle is how to reconcile the chains of government with the “natural state” of freedom. Rousseau’s project is to develop a governmental construct that can be seen as legitimate, “taking men as they are and laws as they might be” (Rousseau 50). Rousseau’s answer to this puzzle is the General Will, which in his own mind allows man the most freedom while still preserving some semblance of government.

Rousseau’s ‘General Will’ prima facie seems to be similar to Hobbes’ and Locke’s social contracts. In all three cases, humans give up their freedom and consent to be governed. Rousseau is less specific on the mechanism by which people leave the state of nature, only saying that “men reach a point” where they can no longer sustain themselves in the state of nature (Rousseau 59). But it differs fundamentally because of the role ‘participation’ and ‘community’ play in Rousseau’s ‘General will’. First, individuals give up their freedom, according to Rousseau, for the good of all, not just for the protection of individuals. It is the responsibility of each man to “give himself to all,” and by doing so, gives himself to no one (Rousseau 61). Second, the ‘General will’ involves a great deal of participation on behalf of the citizens. Laws are made in a general assembly of local residents who come to a popular consensus on how to move forward. Then laws are enforced by an “elected aristocracy” that do not make the laws, but execute them. For Rousseau, this protects against the abuses that would be prevalent in a system like Hobbes’. It also treats everyone equally, with no one person having more influence than another. Rousseau’s approach is a more of a ‘social democratic’ alternative to Locke’s liberal individualism that protects the interests of a propertied minority.

The connection between Marx and Rousseau is not obvious, but nonetheless apparent. For Rousseau, one of the major reasons that the ‘General will’ improves upon earlier conceptions of government is that it tries to mitigate the effects of wealth and private property. For Hobbes, war was partially the result of human nature and the pursuit of ‘felicity’. But Rousseau believes war — and much political tumult — result from “conflicts over things,” and “property relations” (Rousseau 55-56). Rousseau’s answer to the problem is a political response — direct democracy and increased political participation — but not nearly as radical as Marx’s alternative approach.

Marx’s Radical Alternative

Karl Marx’s contributions to political philosophy are enormous. Not only did Marx place materialism at the center of his theory but he also problematized the role of economic class and its relationship to democracy. Marx’s most well-known work, The Communist Manifesto, describes the relationship that exists between two economic classes — the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie, those that hold capital, and the proletariat, those that are the wage-laborers, will eventually struggle against one another until the proletariat overthrew the bourgeoisie in a violent revolution. The Communist Manifesto is in a way a blueprint for the revolution, but it also describes in detail Marx’s theory of historical change, and the lead-up to the revolution. For Marx, all of history is that of “class struggle” (Marx 473). Marx argues that from the earliest epochs of history, change has been marked by disputes between economic classes. There were Roman knights and slaves, Feudal lords and serfs, and for Marx, a new bourgeoisie society. While the bourgeoisie class was an improvement over their feudal lords, Marx still believed that the bourgeoisie brought “new conditions of oppression” (Marx 474).

Among these new forms, Marx argues that the bourgeoisie must chase the surface of the entire globe in order to find new markets. As Marx relates: “[The bourgeoisie] must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere” (Marx 476). In doing so, they lay the groundwork for the revolution to come. The bourgeoisie — via constant expansion — will “dig their own graves”. The more new markets are sought and cheap goods are bought, the bourgeoisie create a class of ready-made proletariat revolutionaries. The crescendo of the dispute between the opposing classes is the revolution.

Marx’s manifesto also describes the role that government — or the state — plays in economic affairs. The exploitation of the bourgeoisie is hidden, or “veiled” by the religious and political institutions that exist (Marx 475). Moreover, the free competition of capitalism is supported and accompanied by the social and political constitutions that adapt to it (Marx 478). In what Marx termed the superstructure, the economic means and modes of production held such a powerful sway that everything else was ‘determined” by it. This included religion, law, morals, ethics, and the state. The state was simply a reflection of the most powerful economic class. In On the Jewish Question, Marx highlights how the theological debates between Christians, Jews or atheists were superfluous. The real criticism was political — or economic —because the state always maintains some religious character (Marx 31). Hegel and Bauer missed the point by quibbling over religion. To destroy, or abolish religion, as some had advocated would only be half the battle. Only by proceeding to destroy private property could democratic society come into reality (Marx 36).

In the conclusion to the manifesto, Marx wrote that the “public power would lose its political character,” and the state would no longer have a prominent place in society (Marx 490). Marx is less vague in The German Ideology, writing that the state only existed to protect property, and the interests of the bourgeoisie (Marx 187). In response to Rousseau’s original puzzle, for Marx, the chains of the state would slowly disappear because the class character of the state would also disappear. Thus, the road to real democracy included destroying those economic classes. As Marx wrote: “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all” (Marx 491).

Conclusion

In Discourse of the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau states that the origin of inequality was law that gave “new powers to the rich,” and in turn, “destroyed natural liberty, [and] eternally fixed the law of property and inequality” (Rousseau 292). Marx viewed the problems of society as fundamentally economic as well. Moreover, Rousseau and Marx both lodged broadsides against the liberal individualist project that preceded them. Both studies focused on what would be best for the community, not the petty interests of certain wealthy individuals.[1] Yet, both theorists found differing ways to mitigate the effects of inequality. Rousseau’s answer is political. Through greater participation and an equal say for all, no economically advantageous group can gain control. Marx thought politics was, in part, the problem. Only by doing away with private property and the state could a truly democratic society be achieved.

Works Cited

Marx, Karl. “On the Jewish Question.” The Marx-Engels Reader. Ed. Robert Tucker.

New York: W.W. Norton Company, 1978.

Marx, Karl. “The German Ideology.” The Marx-Engels Reader. Ed. Robert Tucker.

New York: W.W. Norton Company, 1978.

Marx, Karl. “The Communist Manifesto.” The Marx-Engels Reader. Ed. Robert Tucker.

New York: W.W. Norton Company, 1978.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract. London: Penguin Books, 1968.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.” Political Philosophy:

The Essential Texts. Ed. Stephen Cahn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

[1] Rousseau’ and Marx’s argument is similar to Aristotle’s Politics, where the deviant regimes rule for the interests of a very few.

A Divide Between Ancient and Modern Philosophy?

2006-08-25T20:23:00.000-07:00

Bridging the Ancient and Modern: Thoughts on Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke

Introduction

Plato and Aristotle’s concerns in The Republic and Politics was understanding virtue and justice, and determining who was best fit to lead. In both cases, Plato and Aristotle were concerned about the political community at large, and about how morals and politics intersected. Nicolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke question this assumption to some extent, and relate their own concerns about good government, order, and human nature. This essay will contrast the works of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke with respect to their understanding of government. While many have argued that Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke make a clean break with the ancient philosophers, my contention is that some of the puzzles for Plato and Aristotle remained so for modern theorists. First, this paper will summarize succinctly the contributions of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke. Second, this essay will illuminate the differences between the three theorists. Lastly, the essay will explore the connections between ancient philosophy and modern philosophy.

Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke: the Foundations of Modern Philosophy

Machiavelli is generally seen as a transitional figure between the ancient and modern philosophers. Unlike Plato and Aristotle, however, Machiavelli was not concerned that government should be elevated to a “living moral force, capable of inspiring the people” (Machiavelli xvii). Machiavelli’s The Prince is more concerned with order than virtue, and thus morality is in some ways foreign. The Prince is an interesting work because it provides a blueprint for obtaining and maintaining power in a way that ancient works did not. Machiavelli’s writing is often characterized as “realistic” because it took the world for what it was – man as self-interested and calculating -- not for what it ought to be as many ancient philosophers tried to construct.[1] Machiavelli also gives prominence to the role of war and violence in his work. The Prince must not only be wise in governing, but also skilled in the art of war. To not be skilled in the latter renders a prince useless in the former.

Thomas Hobbes’ The Leviathan is similarly concerned with the state of war and the need to maintain order. Like Machiavelli, Hobbes understands humans as rational creatures who are self-interested and calculating. His understanding of the political community is not grounded in moral virtue. In fact, Hobbes passes no judgment on man’s virtue at all. “The desires, and other passions of man, are in themselves no sin,” Hobbes wrote, “…no more are the actions that proceed from those passions” (Hobbes 187). For Hobbes, men are made equal, and while some might be stronger or smarter, each live under the same constraints and fears (Hobbes 183). Hobbes’ famously understood the nature of mankind as “nasty, brutish and short” (Hobbes 186). This forced man to seek the Commonwealth for protection from war, harm and death. The Commonwealth, simply put, is effective so long as it protects mankind. Unlike Machiavelli’s work, Hobbes does not actually deal with the mechanisms which make for effective governing. Hobbes’ work deals more with the social contract between man and the sovereign. In social contract theory, individuals give up their liberty to the sovereign – or state – in return for protection. The sovereign is thus obligated to man to keep the peace.

John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government is frequently seen as a direct response to Hobbes’ Leviathan. Locke and Hobbes both deal with man in the state nature. Hobbes and Locke agree that the laws of nature obligate man to treat one another equally, at least in terms of their life and possessions (Locke 5). However, unlike Hobbes, Locke seemed less worried that man would be in a constant state of war without government, or a sovereign (Locke x-xi). Locke’s work also reads less pessimistically than Hobbes’ or Machiavelli’s work. While Locke agrees that men are born free, the agency he gives to man is more robust than Hobbes understanding of mankind (Locke 4). Reading Hobbes, one gets the impression that mankind must choose the sovereign or suffer. Man in Locke’s state of nature chooses the sovereign consensually, and does so not because he fears for his life. Locke stands in particular opposition to Machiavelli. While Machiavelli had no problems with hereditary rule, Locke insisted that there were “ten other men” that could do that same job with as much wisdom and skill. Although government’s main objective is to provide order, stability and thus protection, the Second Treatise relates that the need for government also exists to protect “life, liberty and property” (Locke 71). Locke’s lasting legacy was his direct influence on America’s founding fathers, who admired his devotion to a very limited, or small, government.

Are the Modern Philosophers So Modern?

Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke were said to be the “modern break” with the ancient philosophers of Plato and Aristotle. Indeed, there are several notable contributions of the modern philosophers. First, all three philosophers deal with man as he is – rational, self-interested and calculating – and not how men ought to be. Second, these modern philosophers are the first to investigate individualism and consent in political life. Although Machiavelli speaks less on this subject, Hobbes and Locke explore why individuals seek government in the first place. This has been called social contract theory, because citizens submit – or consent to be governed – out of their own free will. Lastly, the modern philosophers’ major impact and difference from the ancients was their insistence that men were born equal. This sets the stage for the rise of modern, individualist liberal theory.

On the other hand, the modern philosophers shared with the ancient philosophers more ideas than they are given credit for. Machiavelli, for example, bridges the divide between ancient and modern. Like Plato, Machiavelli agreed that some were more suited than others to lead. As Machiavelli argued, “a wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men” (Machiavelli 41). Moreover, Machiavelli noted that only wise princes – which were relatively rare historically – could redress the evils and grievances that arise when governing (Machiavelli 22). Machiavelli also believes that aspects of governing resemble what Plato called the “noble lie”. In The Republic, Plato suggested that the Guardians would defend the Gods and a class of tales which would serve as the basis for order. It was not important that these tales where true, so long as they were believed (Plato 62). Similarly, Machiavelli’s five qualities that made for a good prince – mercy, faithfulness, humanity, religiosity and uprightness – were not necessarily to always be followed. However, it is necessary for the Prince to “appear to have them” (Machiavelli 139). Lastly, like Aristotle, Machiavelli believed that good laws were critical to a well-functioning regime. “The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old…are good laws,” wrote Machiavelli.[2] (Machiavelli 93). Aristotle agrees that good laws can “educate” the citizenry and stabilize government (Aristotle 110).

Hobbes’ Leviathan seems to stand in direct opposition to Plato and Aristotle, particularly his insistence that man is fundamentally self-interested. As well he presents a bleak state of affairs. But a closer of reading of Hobbes relays a different picture. In particular, many of Hobbes’ Laws of Nature are concerned with aspects of right and wrong and even morality to some extent. Hobbes’ urges those in the state of nature to treat others as they would like to be treated (Hobbes 214). Hobbes’ makes clear that man should not hate one another, or hold contempt of one another (Hobbes 211). Moreover, Hobbes’ urges man not to focus on the evil of the past but to look forward to the “greatness of the good to follow” (Hobbes 210). Lastly, Hobbes’ concern with order and stability was also Plato’s concern in constructing the appropriate political community.

John Locke also shares with the ancient philosophers several similarities. First, like Plato, Locke was very conservative in his preference for stability and order over change (Locke xiii). Locke was against violence and war. As he noted: “People are not so easily got out of their old forms as some are apt to suggest” (Locke xii). Secondly, Locke’s suspicion of certain understandings of liberty is reminiscent of Plato’s concerns with democracy (Plato 193). For Locke, liberty is not the ability for one to do whatever they want, whenever they please, “but freedom of men under government… to have a standing rule to live by” (Locke 15). Lastly, Locke’s concern for having good laws to prevent unwanted tyranny is similar to Aristotle’s desire for good laws. “Wherever law ends, tyranny begins if the law be transgressed to another’s harm” (Locke 114).

Conclusion

Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke are frequently considered to be the beginning of modern philosophy, and each mark a shift from the ancient to more liberal notions of government. Machiavelli’s The Prince is a handbook of sorts for accruing and maintaining power. The Prince also is a straightforward account of man’s self-interested, individualist ways. Hobbes’ The Leviathan is less an account of how to govern as it is a discussion for the need of authority and the sovereign. Hobbes’ discussion of the state of nature describes a place that is dangerous and full of war. Man desires the sovereign to escape this world. Locke’s discussion of the state of nature is less grim, and for Locke, government arises to protect not only life, but “liberty and property.” Locke also argues against the lawlessness and lack of consent inherent in tyrannical regimes. Although Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke are considered modern philosophers, each share some similarities with ancient philosophers. Surprisingly, the same problems that contemporary theorists explore – order, stability, consent, human nature and morality – confronted modern and ancient theorists as well. This essay has tried to show that connection.

Works Cited

Aristotle. Politics. Ed. Peter L. Phillips Simpson. Chapel Hill: UNC Publishing, 1997.

Hobbes, Thomas. The Leviathan. London, UK: Penguin Books, 1987.

Locke, John. The Second Treatise on Government. New York, NY: Macmillan

Publishing Company, 1952.

Machiavelli, Nicolo. The Prince. London, UK: J.M Dent and Sons, 1948.

Plato. Republic. Ed. G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1974.

[1] In fact, the entire basis for classical realism in IR theory develops from many aspects of The Prince.

[2] Of course, Machiavelli believes that these good laws can only be backed up by a state with “strong arms”.

Plato vs. Aristotle

2006-08-25T20:15:00.000-07:00

The First Conservative: Contrasting Plato and Aristotle

Introduction

Plato and Aristotle are our oldest political thinkers. Surprisingly, the same debates that guided Plato and Aristotle’s work remain with us today. What is the good life? What is justice? What is the best regime? Moreover, the question of who should govern is a longstanding area of dispute among political thinkers, theorists, practitioners, and ordinary citizens. This essay will focus on two issues that Plato and Aristotle raise in their work. First, it will address Plato’s and Aristotle’s different notions of individuals and their role in the city. Second, this essay will address how Plato’s and Aristotle’s understanding of individual citizens influences their political beliefs. In retrospect, Plato’s understanding is much more conservative than Aristotle’s, although in no way could we consider Aristotle a radical egalitarian. While this idea is in no way novel, this essay will try to retrieve conservatism from its ancient roots, in contrast to more modern conceptions that privilege libertarianism or free-markets.

Plato v. Aristotle: What Purpose is the Individual?

Plato’s ideal city is based on the four virtues of wisdom, courage, moderation and justice. Wisdom makes the city wise, courage makes it brave, moderation is the understanding that everyone knows his or her role and justice means the “harmony that results when everyone is actively engaged in fulfilling his role and does not meddle with that of others” (Plato 85). The last point is an important one. His understanding of the city is that it evolves because it fulfills certain functional needs (Plato 39). The needs that are most obvious are food, which sustains nourishment, shelter, and lastly clothes. Only the city can provide all of these because each individual that makes up the city has a certain role of which he or she plays. “The association with each other,” offers Plato, “was the very purpose for which we establish the city” (Plato 41). The city would bring together the farmers, the craftsmen, the shepherds, the strong and the weak. Plato’s city functions like an organism, with each carrying out their daily routine to perfection. Drawn to its logical conclusion, this is why Plato believes that a special class of “guardians” is best fit to rule the city.

Plato’s view that every individual has a different, yet pertinent, role in the city influenced his understanding of who ought to rule. The first two books of Plato’s Republic are dedicated to understanding justice and virtue, and how this would relate to who would rule. Because most men are only concerned with ends and consequences and are generally unjust, only a few are virtuous enough to lead the city. But justice and virtue alone are not enough. The guardians – those who rule – must be physically strong, lovers of wisdom and knowledge and impervious to outside experience (Plato 46-51). The guardians also lived by a separate set of rules. They would own no private property, live in a camp to themselves and protect the city from intruders. Plato also extinguishes the divide between the public and the private. Plato argued for common wives and common children for the guardians, so as to build community among the city’s rulers. The women also share in the duties with the male guardians, including hunting food and fighting in war. Despite bringing disparate talents and roles together, the city plays a predominant role in unifying the community and preserving order, a key aspect of Platonic thought.

Aristotle does not disagree that the uniqueness in skill are determinants of a good city. Aristotle notes that “a city is made up not only of many human beings but also of human beings who differ in kind” (Aristotle 36). While Plato believes that by nature some are more fit than others for certain jobs, Aristotle disagrees. For Aristotle, any citizen has the ability to rule, so long as they follow the law and are properly educated. Moreover, though the citizens might be dissimilar from one another, each has a role in helping to define the community (Aristotle 81-83). In particular the purpose of being a citizen in a community is the ability to rule and be ruled. And the best regimes, so says Aristotle, are those where citizens have the ability and desire to make their own choices. This is accomplished by giving the majority the ability to rule.

Aristotle also believes that common wives and children would actually undermine the stability of the city. The notion of common possessions, what Aristotle calls communism, actually fractures the unity of the city. Rather than disintegrating the public and private realms, Aristotle argues that the separation is vital (Aristotle 41). As he asks: “What would happen if one reduced a many-voiced harmony to unison or rhythm to a single beat?” (Aristotle 42).

Plato v. Aristotle: Political Views

Plato and Aristotle’s disagreement over the nature of individuals and the city influences their view of politics and what is the “best” regime. For Plato, the guardians are the only individuals qualified to rule because of the unique skills and knowledge they possess. Only the guardians are capable of ruling because of their wisdom, courage, moderation and attachment to justice. Plato compares guardian to the physician. When one is sick you would knock on the door of the person that could heal you – a doctor. Similarly, when you needed to be governed you would let those that could govern do their job. Plato distinguishes between four forms of government. In timarchy, war and the army dominate and victory is the only thing prized. In oligarchies money and the acquisition of money drives the rulers. Democracy, the third type of regime, has no control at all and all desires are perceived to be equal. Lastly, in dictatorships the ruler acquires all power for himself and convinces the populace it is in their best interest to keep him in (Plato 193-194).

Plato’s disdain for democracy is the most notable conservative aspect of the Republic. G.M.A. Grube suggests that Plato’s discussion of democracy is filled with “broad irony.” Plato jokes that democracy is the result over the poor becoming victorious; “kill some of the other side, expel others, and to the rest they give an equal share of political power and offices” (Plato 206). Plato also describes the democratic regime as one in which people can do “anything they please” (Plato 206). Needless to say, Plato’s view of government is an elitist, conservative one, and only a few are capable of governing. The guardians have the natural aptitude for philosophy and governing that others do not (Plato 134). Plato’s conservatism is also revealed when he discusses his reverence for the Gods and the idea of the noble lie. For Plato, every city is built on some type of myth, and to unravel the myth would lead to chaos and disorder (Plato 62). A final point of conservatism in Plato is his resistance to change. He urges the guardians to resist the temptation to adopt new kinds of poetry and music.[1] It is the job of those that rule to be the “bulwarks” against change (Plato 90).

Aristotle would not be mistaken for a liberal, but he nevertheless questions some of the assumptions inherent in the Republic. Most importantly, Aristotle’s Politics is a more pluralist understanding of government, because Aristotle argues that citizens with proper education and obedience to the law are equipped to rule themselves and others. These citizens also come together to rule in the multitude – or majority – something than scares Plato and epitomizes mob rule. “…[M]any and not one should rule,” suggests Aristotle, “because anyone can rule well when educated by the laws and many ruling together and better than one ruling alone” (Aristotle 110). Aristotle’s opinion of virtue is similar, and stands in opposition to Plato. While Plato believes that the virtuous are small in number and that their virtue is inherent, Aristotle thinks that virtue and justice can be taught to citizens. The Aristotelian city is in some ways more inclusive that Plato’s. Lastly, Aristotle disagrees with Plato with regards to change. In both art and law, Aristotle argues laws sometimes must be changed, and that art is not always perfect to begin with, so why try and preserve it as such. While Aristotle notes that laws must be written in “universal” terms, when writing laws the rulers must also understand the “particulars” of a given situation (Aristotle 58).[2]

Conclusion

Today modern conservatism is noted by calls for limited government, free-markets and dedication to the family. But our first conservative, Plato, challenged those ideas. For Plato, a strong government (or state) was critical to preserve order and protect the city, wealth was frowned upon and the root of much ill, and the family unit – at least for guardians – was extinguished. But Plato ties back into modern conservatism on several points. Plato was worried about mob rule and suspicious of any idea that gave ruling power to common citizens. Plato also resisted change, and charged the guardians with being responsible for seeing that the laws and arts were protected. As well, Plato believed that “national’ myths, noble lies and religion were important, if but for no other reason than to provide order. Aristotle, Plato’s counterpart, disagrees on these issues. Aristotle is more willing to give citizens the ability to rule, is not as resistant to change, and ultimately thinks that with the proper laws and teaching the multitude would have the ability to govern themselves. Though Plato and Aristotle are our “ancient” writers their disputes and disagreements are still apropos in today’s political dialogue. They might be surprised to find, were they living today, that the things they argued about years ago still stir emotions in the present. Given that Plato believed the pursuit of justice and knowledge to be never-ending, he might not have been surprised in the least.

Works Cited

Aristotle. Politics. Ed. Peter L. Phillips Simpson. Chapel Hill: UNC Publishing, 1997.

Plato. Republic. Ed. G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1974.

[1] Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind argues similarly that Rock n’ Roll music and beat poetry worked to undermine society as a whole in the 1950s and 1960s.

[2] Aristotle’s retort to Plato almost sounds like the exchanges between the “original intent” proponents of the constitution, and those that stress a “living constitution.”

Do Individuals Matter?

2006-06-15T13:48:00.000-07:00

Do Individuals Matter?: Great Men, Individual Interaction and Ideas in IR Theory

Introduction

International Relations theory, in general, has ignored the role individual actors play in shaping the international system. Instead, scholars have tended to favor systemic theories that explain the behavior of actors –generally viewed as states -- as a product of anarchy in the international system (Waltz 1979; Keohane 1984). But what if Hitler had never been born or Lenin would have died in 1916? Would international politics have developed differently? Those that believe individual actors matter say yes, and that because of systems-level theory scholars have ignored the “great men” of history. Daniel Bynam’s and Kenneth Pollack’s article “Let us Now Praise Great Men”, and Henry Kissinger’s diplomatic history A World Restored tried to fill this analytical void in the literature. This essay will review the contributions of both pieces, and argue that recognizing the importance of individual actors is an appropriate step in the right direction for IR theory. However, the literature on “great men” could also be improved by analyzing how individuals interact with one another, and also understand to what extent ideologies and ideas shape individual decisions and preferences in international politics.

Individuals and International Politics

Daniel Bynam and Kenneth Pollack argue that international relations has devoted less attention to the role of individuals in politics for three reasons. One, scholars argue that individuals simply do not matter and that the impersonal forces of the international system are stronger that individual will. Two, to be truly “social scientific” is an expressed goal of political science, and thus individuals make it hard to generalize about world politics. In particular, treating each individual as unique, or special, is a difficulty if the aim of social science is to generate hypotheses and predict future events. Lastly, the field of international relations – particularly the main theoretical traditions of neorealism and neoliberalism – is hostile to relying too much on individuals to understand the international system (Bynam and Pollack 2001: 108). Two works in IR – one old and the other new -- have tried to bring individuals back to the forefront of the discipline, however.

Henry Kissinger’s A World Restored is a diplomatic history of Europe following the Napoleonic Wars. Kissinger argues that the post-war order was created and sustained by two important men: Viscount Castlereagh, the British foreign secretary, and Clemens von Metternich, the Austrian foreign minister (Kissinger 1957: 5). In particular the European order that existed after Napoleon would be a conservative one, restoring the old institutions destroyed by the revolutionary impulses of the French Revolution (Kissinger 1957: 11). Metternich, who plays the hero in Kissinger’s story, was the great diplomat who traveled throughout Europe negotiating and legitimating a restored order of peace that would last close to 100 years (Kissinger 1957: 20). Castlereagh was credited with negotiating the international settlement. As Kissinger related: “Castlereagh was at his best when the objectives were determinate, when there was a coalition to be maintained, a settlement to be negotiated, a dispute to be resolved” (Kissinger 1957: 36).

Bynam’s and Pollack’s article “Let Us Now Praise Great Men” is a more recent contribution to IR theory. Their article is designed to promote a new research agenda in international politics that looks at individual actors as important pieces to explain the international system. They provide five cases from which to spur the agenda – Hitler, Bismarck, Saddam Hussein, Napoleon, and Ayatollah Khomeini – and show that “regardless of political system, period of time, or region of the world,” individuals can reshape world politics (Byman and Pollack 2001: 115). They also develop a litany of hypotheses about when individuals “matter”. These hypotheses could be grouped categorically on four dimensions: 1) the “common sense” hypotheses; 2) the personality trait hypotheses; 3) the enabling factors hypotheses; and 4) the interacting images hypotheses (Bynam and Pollack 2001: 133-143). In short, Byman and Pollack believe that, with time, a research agenda aimed at including individual actors could answer all of the criticisms lodged from the main theoretical camps.

Kissinger, and Bynam and Pollack, offer up two works that relate the importance of individual actors in understanding the world. Kissinger’s contribution was written years before structural realism and neoliberal institutionalism were mainstays of the discipline. Indeed, Kissinger’s work is probably as important to historians as it is political scientists. Nevertheless, Kissinger reminds us that without Metternich and Castlereagh European history might have turned out very differently and probably from Kissinger’s viewpoint, much worse. Bynam and Pollack seek to turn the discipline on its head by favoring accuracy over parsimony (Bynam and Pollack 2001: 113). Their common sense approach asks us to imagine politics without individuals. Arguing that one cannot understand World War II without Hitler, or the German unification without Bismarck, Bynam and Pollack are right to exhume “great men” from the dustbins of history. Bynam and Pollack’s research is all the more refreshing because it argues that individuals do different things, at different times, and for different reasons. Unlike rational choice theory – the only other theory in political science to posit that actors possess agency – Bynam and Pollack do not infer that actor’s possess certain characteristics across time and space.[1]

Individuals, Interaction and Ideologies

Both works added a more thorough understanding of the way individuals could impact international politics. Two criticisms might be lodged at this nascent research project, however. First, projects that say “individuals matter” must not only argue about under what conditions they matter, but also why other actors do not matter. I call this the problem of “individual interaction.” Hitler’s success in capturing parts of France during World War II is not only attributable to Hitler’s individual features, but also dependent on the fact that other individuals did not – or could not – challenge him. Individuals do not live in a vacuum, but constantly bump up against one another. Kissinger’s work is at times excessively praiseworthy of Metternich’s and Castlereagh’s achievements, but tries to show that individuals confront one another with some resolution. Kissinger shows this when Metternich and Napoleon meet one another in 1813, with Napoleon realizing “the boundaries” of his power, and Metternich testing the “limits of his manipulation” (Kissinger 1957: 130). Bynam and Pollack deal less with this issue. They view individuals as almost completely autonomous with respect to their goals and achievements. Their discussion of Napoleon is completely one-sided. Napoleon’s continental victories – over Italy, Prussia, Austria and Spain – and his defeat in Russia were seen as a product of Napoleon’s ego and desire for European domination. But Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Trafalgar is conspicuously absent from their analysis (Bynam and Pollack 2001: 127). Is Napoleon’s defeat a result of egoism, or a result of Lord Nelson’s tremendous skill in directing the British navy? If one could add an additional hypothesis to Bynam and Pollack’s design, it should read: “Individuals are more likely to succeed when other individuals cannot challenge them.”

A second criticism of this work is the remarkable absence of ideas and ideologies in Bynam and Pollack’s research agenda. By ideology, I mean a framework for understanding the world that simultaneously prescribes and limits certain actions or behaviors. Kissinger better deals with this problem by suggesting that Metternich was a conservative who had a particular vision for post-Napoleon Europe (Kissinger 1957: 195).[2] Because Metternich succeeded, European order was restored in the form of conservative, monarchical regimes. Bynam and Pollack offer no observations about the extent to which ideologies might shape individual’s actions. Their hypotheses reflect particular personal or psychological traits of individuals, not deep-seated beliefs or understandings of the world. Hitler and Mussolini became allies rather than enemies because both shared a fascist interpretation of the world. Hitler, even if his personality type was geared to take over all of Europe, never bothered Italy along the way. Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy as has been widely discussed was a result of his liberal (or messianic) ideology about the goodness of democracy in the world. And Ayatollah Khomeini’s war with Saddam Hussein in the early 1980s was inspired in part by the ideas of fundamentalist Islam and Iran’s historical animosity with Shiite Iraq. By ignoring ideology Bynam and Pollack have constructed an incomplete individual that is somehow disconnected from the ideas and thinking of the world around them.

Conclusion

Both works reviewed here make important contributions to the literature in IR theory and international security. I am sympathetic to their view that individuals matter, and that, yes, accuracy is sometimes a more desirable outcome of research than parsimony. One could not understand the 100 year peace that occurred after the Napoleonic Wars without some reference to Metternich and Castlereagh. Similarly, without Napoleon, Hitler or Bismarck history would have looked very different. I have offered two criticisms though of this nascent research design. One, scholars should examine individual interaction when arguing that individuals matter; and two, ideas and ideologies also fundamentally shape the preferences and choices individuals make. Although systemic theories are still the norm in IR theory, these new challengers will hopefully build on this research agenda to further understand how individuals matter in international politics.

Works Cited

Bynam, Daniel and Kenneth Pollack. “Let Us Now Praise Great Men.” International

Security. 25:4, 2001.

Keohane, Robert. After Hegemony. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Kissinger, Henry. A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace.

London, UK: Phoenix Press, 1957.

[1] For a review of rational choice theory consult Downs 1957; Shepsle 1993.

[2] This is, of course, some debate about whether or not conservatism is an ideology at all, or just a disposition or preference for sameness, stability and order. (See Huntington 1957) Conservatism in this sense is derisively referred as anti-intellectual, or lacking vision.

Book Review: G. John Ikenberry's "After Victory"

2006-04-04T22:24:00.000-07:00

G. John Ikenberry’s After Victory: Order and Power in International Politics

Introduction

The extent to which international institutions ‘matter’ in world politics has been a considerable debate in international relations theory. The debate has generally pitted realists and neorealists – those most skeptical about the role institutions play in the world – against their more optimistic counterparts the liberal and neoliberal institutionalists. G. John Ikenberry’s, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars is a rejoinder to this debate but in a unique and, as I will argue, better developed understanding of the role that institutions play in world politics. Although Ikenberry is described as a “neoliberal” by scholars such as Henry Nau and Randall Schweller, Ikenberry’s book does not fit neatly into the prescribed theoretical traditions of realism and liberalism. Moreover, Ikenberry’s book is a success in large part because he grapples with “order” in the international system, a concept that is frequently mentioned but rarely discussed anymore in the discipline. This paper will review the main contributions of Ikenberry’s book, as well as provide some partial answers to Schweller’s realist critiques of After Victory.

Ikenberry’s ‘After Victory’: A Review and Comment

Robert Keohane’s, After Hegemony is the classic text cited that articulates the views of neoliberal institutionalism and cooperation in a world “after hegemony” (Keohane 1984). In a play on Keohane’s words, Ikenberry seeks to understand a world “after victory”. In particular, Ikenberry’s book examines the period in history after the Allied powers victorious triumph over Nazi Germany in 1945. What would the world order be after victory? Ikenberry’s answer is straightforward, but surprising. Ikenberry argues that once a state wins a war, they are met with three choices: to dominate their enemies, abandon the losers, or transform the international system. In the case of the United States, they transformed the international system by employing institutions as a way to establish political control and order (Ikenberry 2001: 5-6). For example, the end of World War II saw the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions, the United Nations and NATO. Furthermore, once institutionalized, states – particularly the industrial democracies -- commit and link to one another to create a post-war order that is durable and stable (Ikenberry 2001: 6). As Ikenberry suggested: “…[I]nstitutions are…critical at the beginning of hegemony – or ‘after victory’ – in establishing order and securing cooperation between unequal states” (Ikenberry 2001: 17).

This ‘world order’ is even more surprising considering the huge asymmetries of power that existed following the war. Contrary to conventional realist assumptions, the United States neither dominated nor abandoned Europe after the war. Instead, there were great incentives to “locking in” an institutional order. For strong states, institutionalization had the long-term gain of preserving international order and stability. For weaker states, joining institutions reduced the likelihood that powerful states would dominate or abandon them. Although a common refrain from realists is that institutionalists do not treat power seriously, Ikenberry places power at the center of his argument. Institutions develop because of the asymmetries of power between weak and strong states in the international system. While neoliberal insitutionalism usually speaks of institutions as resolving ‘collective action’ or ‘information’ problems, Ikenberry sees institutions as crucial for resolving these power “asymmetries”.

A second major contribution of Ikenberry’s After Victory is the attention paid to world order – how it is created and how it is sustained. Most of the scholars prior to Ikenberry that studied order had come from the neorealist tradition. Kenneth Waltz’s balance-of-power theory suggests that order is sustained by states balancing off one another. Because of the constant competition to ‘match’ one’s opponent, international politics remains stable and balanced. For Waltz, balances-of-power work especially well in a bipolar world (Waltz 1979: 163). Robert Gilpin’s ‘hegemonic state’ theory argues that the international system is most stable and orderly when a hegemon exists. In the absence of hegemony, the international system lacks order and war is a probable outcome (Gilpin 1981).[1] Additionally, Samuel Huntington’s Political Order in Changing Societies is a classic concerning political order in world politics. Huntington’s book reminds scholars and practitioners that order is critical to create any sort of desirable outcome – whether that outcome is peace or democracy (Huntington 1968). Although Huntington’s work is more recognized in comparative politics than IR, Huntington probably shares Waltz’s and Gilpin’s normative commitment that stability and order are pertinent features of the international system.

Ikenberry sees the international order as one shaped constitutionally – through institutions – rather that just “creatures of the international distribution of power” (Ikenberry 2001: 28). For Ikenberry, institutions create a “constitutional order”; a political order that exists because of agreed upon rules, that allocate rights and restrain power (Ikenberry 2001: 29). Institutions create order in three ways. One, institutions have shared, or mutual agreements, over the rules of the game. Two, these rules set limits on the ability to exercise power. Lastly, once these rules are in place, they are not easily changed (Ikenberry 2001: 31). The ability of these institutions and a constitutional order to become a stabilizing presence in the international system is due in large part to an expansion of democratic regimes throughout the world. It is no accident, Ikenberry claims, that as democracy becomes the norm in the world, “deeper linkages” will lead to more intergovernmental commitment (Ikenberry 2001: 5).

Ikenberry’s approach to understanding order is a novel one considering that realism has been the major theoretical tradition devoted to understanding the concept. In some ways I think this reflects the conservative bias inherent in realism. For example, although neoliberal institutionalism is devoted to seeing the world “as it is,” one cannot help but think that some institutionalists view institutions primarily as a good that can help remake the world in a more cooperative fashion.[2] Ikenberry, however, does not see institutions as inherently good in this manner. Instead, After Victory is an interesting book in the sense that it is a conservative appreciation of institutions. Whether or not institutions “make the world a better place,” is largely irrelevant in this work. However, they do provide order and stability, which is something that both realists and liberals should appreciate.

Schweller’s Critiques: A Response to ‘After Victory’

Although Randall Schweller praises Ikenberry as an “enormously gifted grand theorist,” Schweller has little praise for After Victory in his book review “The Problem of International Order Revisited.” Schweller contends that Ikenberry’s book is deficient in a number of ways. First, he argues that Ikenberry’s conception of international order is fundamentally flawed. Schweller contends that Ikenberry views order as the conscious result of political actors hoping to preserve, or create, a certain order. But order – in the ways neorealism thinks about it – is the seeming spontaneous consequence of anarchy not something created or nurtured (Schweller 2001: 170). Second, Schweller argues that there is no reason to believe that the hegemon following a postwar juncture will want to resist short-term gains in favor of the long-term gains of institutions. One, political leaders have no incentive to favor multilateralism over unilateralism, and two, there is no reason to think democratic leaders will pursue institutional policies anymore than any other types of leaders (Schweller 2001: 174). Lastly, Schweller argues, the empirical record proves that these institutions did little in the way of preserving any type of multilateral, institutional order. “…History shows,” Schweller puts forward, “that the United States consistently violated the spirit of multilateral cooperation within its own alliance system” (Schweller 2001: 178). For example, the Bretton Woods institutions were discarded at will when they did not stand to represent American interests (Schweller 2001: 179).

While Schweller is onto something, his critiques ultimately misread many of Ikenberry’s arguments. One, Ikenberry never suggests that order arises only constitutionally via agreed upon principles or rules. Indeed, a constitutional order is but one type of order, but Ikenberry gives leeway for order to be maintained in any number of ways. Even in his discussion of balance-of-power and hegemonic state theories, Ikenberry does not completely reject that anarchy and power could potentially have powerful effects in shaping the international order. In a post-1945 world, however, the constitutional order is the most appropriate explanation. Schweller’s second criticism – that it would seem unwise for a hegemon to pursue a multilateral institution – is confusing, considering one of Ikenberry’s critical points is to show that states seek out institutions in part to preserve their power. As Ikenberry asserts: “The most enduringly powerful states are those that work with and through institutions” (Ikenberry 2001: 20). Schweller’s third criticism is a common one from realists: that the empirical record and the reality of the world does not fit well with institutionalists’ optimism of a peaceful society. It is true that despite international institutions the 20^th century witnessed a number of violent wars, economic tumult, and ethnic and cultural conflict. But Schweller never actually confronts whether or not these disputes actually undermined the constitutional order which Ikenberry claims existed. In short, the institutionalization of international politics remains, despite these skirmishes along the way.

Conclusion

G. John Ikenberry’s After Victory is an important contribution to the field of international relations and international security for two reasons. One, unlike some institutionalists, Ikenberry treats power seriously in his work, arguing that institutions are created in part because of the asymmetries of power that existed following World War II. This alleviates the general anxiety of realists toward institutionalists, who commonly argue that these scholars ignore power in their work. Two, Ikenberry’s attention to order in world politics is refreshing because so few scholars examine order and the consequences of order in their work. In particular, Ikenberry sees institutions as more than just ‘collection action’ solvers. They also are order sustainers. Randall Schweller’s critiques of After Victory are interesting but not overly persuasive. Like many realists, Schweller rejects anything that resembles neoliberal institutionalism without giving due concern for the nuance of Ikenberry’s argument, particularly his understanding of order and power. Because of this, Ikenberry gets beyond the realist versus liberal debate in IR to develop a well-rounded look at institutions, power, democracy and order in world politics.

[1] Charles Kindleberger’s “hegemonic stability theory” suggests that something similar occurs in the economic realm. Without a single, global economic power the entire world economy would be worse off.

[2] This idea was discussed in the International Security seminar on March 28, 2006. I cannot take credit for this opinion as an original one.

More Notes on International Political Economy

2006-03-30T12:04:00.000-08:00

Ruggie, John G. “Reconstituting the Global Public Domain – Issues, Actors and Practices” 2004.

“My aim in this article is to provide a more comprehensive set of lenses, drawing attention to the beginnings of a fundamental reconstitution of the global public domain—away from one that equated the ‘public’ in international politics with states and the interstate realm to one in which the very system of states is becoming embedded in a broader, albeit still thin and institutionalized arena…” (500).

“Not surprisingly, interest in the political significance of TNCs stayed alive and more recently has enjoyed a minor renaissance in the international relations literature inspired by the so-called critical theory” (502).

“Thus, Wapner’s notion of a ‘world civic politics’ associated with civil society organizations and Cutler’s concept of ‘private governance’ associated with transnational corporations are two of the building blocks of what I call the new global public domain…” (504).

“Although the new global public domain is hardly unchallenged, its emergence, like globalization, to which it is closely linked, is part of a broadening and deepening sociality at the global level” (504).

“States constituted the international ‘public’ – as in public international law and public international unions, the name given to 19th century international organizations” (505).

“The spatial map characteristic of the traditional international political world has undergone a major transformation over the past generation. Above all there has been a shift in the locus of issues on the global governance agenda along a set of axes depicting ‘external’, ‘internal’ and ‘universal’ dimensions of policy spaces” (507).

“A similar blurring of the two spheres has occurred as a result of the trade regime expanding horizontally to encompass entirely new dimensions that previously has not been associated with trade at all” (508).

“In short the spatial configuration of the global governance agenda has become far more open, fluid and tightly coupled across states than the baseline picture represented by figure 1” (509).

“[Non-state actors] include transnational corporations and financial institutions; civil society organizations; faith-based movements; private military contractors that in some respects resemble the mercenaries of yore; and such illicit entities as transnational terrorist and criminal networks’ (509-510).

“The rights of transnational corporations have expanded manifold over the past quarter century as a result of multilateral trade agreements, bilateral investment pacts, and domestic liberalization – often pushed by external actors, including states and the international financial institutions” (510).

“But the iconic case of civil society actions to redress imbalances in global rulemaking remains its role in defeating the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, strongly supported by TNCs and international business associations” (511).

“CSOs, in turn, have pushed for companies and industries to adopt verifiable measures to reduce the incidences of such behavior” (512).

“A third and very different rationale for targeting the transnational corporate sector has emerged in the past few years – the sheer fact that it has global reach and capacity, and that it is capable of making and implementing decisions at a pace that neither governments nor international agencies can match” (514).

“There is a certain moral and intellectual obtuseness to a position that considers people’s welfare to be an uninteresting concern for international relations theorizing, particularly at a time when the individual enjoys more extensive recognition in international politics and law than ever before” (519).

“Political leaders and international relations theorists alike ignore the emergence of the new global public domain at their peril. Without it, one cannot fully understand recent developments in human rights, environmental policy, global public health, changing social expectations regarding the role of corporations, and the normative context for considerations of the use of force – indeed, according to some scholars, even the fate of the Soviet Union and its empire” (521).

“But the resulting picture would show the progressive arrival on the global stage of a distinctive public domain – thinner, more partial, and more fragile than its domestic counterpart, to be sure, but existing and taking root apart from the sphere of interstate relations.

Rodrik, Dani. “Governance of Economic Globalization.” 2000.

“If it was the nineteenth century that unleashed capitalism in its full force, it was the twentieth century that tamed it and boosted its productivity by supplying the institutional underpinnings of market-based economics” (347).

“These institutional innovations greatly enhanced the efficiency and legitimacy of markets and in turn drew strength from the material advancement unleashed by market forces” (347).

“But globalization also undercuts the ability of nation-states to erect regulatory and redistributive institutions and does so at the same time that it increases the premium on solid national institutions” (348).

“The dilemma that we face as we enter the twenty-first century is that markets are striving to become global while the institutions needed to support them remain by and large national” (348).

“National borders seem to have a significantly depressing effect on commerce, even in the absence of formal tariff or nontariff barriers, linguistic or cultural differences, uncertainty about the exchange rate, and other economic obstacles” (349).

“The most obvious way we can attain such a world is by institutin federalism on a global scale. Global federalism would align jurisdictions with the market, and remove the “border” effects” (353).

“National governments would not necessarily disappear, but their powers would be severely circumscribed by supranational legislative, executive, and judicial authorities” (353).

“The price of maintaining national jurisdictional sovereignty while markets become international restricting politics to a narrow domain” (354).

“Hence for cooperation to be sustainable, the short-term benefits of defection must be small, the discount rate low, and the future benefits from cooperation high” (357).

“As long as nation-states remain at the core of the international system, considerations of sustainability and diversity require that the rule allow selective disengagement from multilateral disciplines” ( 361).

“Global federalism would not mean that the United Nations turns itself into a world government. What we would be likely to get is a combination of traditional forms of governance (an elected global legislative body)with regulatory institutions spanning multiple jurisdictions and accountable to perhaps multiple types of representative bodies’ (363).

Kahler, Miles and David A. Lake. “Globalization and Changing Patterns of Political Authority.” 2001.

“In contrast, we find the effects of globalization on governance to be more heterogeneous and contingent than the most vocal proponents and opponents claim” (412).

“Our evidence of evolutionary rather than revolutionary change does not mean that the state has been the locus of political activity within the international system, as realists expect” (414).

“In contrast to this emphasis on globalization as a competitive and unforgiving environment, the authors in the present volume emphasize the significant strategic choices that remain with political actors” (415).

“Although migration of governance may occur in any of these three directions, all point away from national governments” (416).

“Globalization may produce more heterogeneous preferences over policy and public goods in contrast to the conventional view that it induces homogeneity” (420).

“Globalization constrains the array of policy instruments available to states” (425).

“With the exception of the European Union, intergovernmental cooperation has produced little supranational regulation of international corporations” (425).

“Globalization produces better information about economic and political practices in other countries, lower transaction costs for organizing groups within and across borders, and a fledgling global civil society” (426).

“We challenge this view of convergence on two grounds. First, rather than inducing only conformity, the logic of globalization may also promote specialization and differentiation” (428).

“Second, the process of convergence or divergence is the product of highly strategic and political choices by national governments” (428).

“The relationship between sites of governance and accountability is subtle and deserves greater analysis. For example, throughout the debate over democratic deficits and accountability, one assumption is pervasive: governance is more accountable when it is closer to its principals, particularly electorates” (434).

Two conclusions: “Globalization defined as economic integration is not global. Integration remains uneven and spatially differentiated” (435).

“Second, globalization has affected national political authority, but its influence has seldom matched simple claims of diminished governance and the hollowing out of the state” (435).

Keohane, Robert and Joseph Nye. “Redefining Accountability for Global Governance” 2001.

“In the absence of a global political community (which is not imminent), it makes little sense to hold global institutions to domestic democratic standards” (388).

“The key to our analysis is the assertion that accountability can take multiple forms. Direct electoral representation is not the only relevant form for contemporary international governance…Accountability can be accomplished: by rules and regulations, markets and publicity” (388-389).

Five sets of processes that create accountability:

electoral accountability
hierarchical accountability
legal accountability
reputational accountability
market accountability

“Accountability is sometimes treated as a good, per se, but it is an instrumental value, subject to being traded off against other values” (391).

“But we have seen that, even within democratic countries, accountability is more varied than this description would imply” (393).

“It is better to devise pluralist forms of accountability than to bewail the democratic deficit” (393).

Governance can occur in a variety of ways:

statist governance
international-organization model of governance
transnational-actors model of governance
policy-networks model of governance

“Reality under conditions of complex interdependence blends all four abstract models that we have discussed above. The models we have sketched are useful for highlighting the features of actual regimes that are likely to generate certain types of accountability” (403).

“IO-based clubs were very convenient for officials negotiating agreements within issue-areas since they kept outsiders out” (404). IO-based clubs good for governance

“The key element that is missing from both the IO-based clubs and from expanded issue-networks is the presence of intermediating politicians, communicating both with each other and with their publics” (408).

“If we think clearly about the forms of accountability than traditional electoral accountability, we may be able to design international institutions that meet our needs for effective cooperation without handing our fates over to unelected technocrats” (409).

“Global governance today lacks a sufficient role for politicians, intermediating between policy and publics” (410).

Richards, John. “Toward a Positive Theory of International Insitutions: Regulating International Aviation Markets.” 1999.

“The rapid growth in global trade in recent decades poses major analytic issues for our understanding of the international institutions and agreements underlying this expansion” (1).

“International aviation markets provide a rich example for making sense of these questions. In the aftermath of World War II, states created a complicated set of multilateral and bilateral rules that successfully restricted supply” (1).

“We need to understand why states created a cartel after World War II and why it began to crumble in the late 1970s, the nature of the forces that are currently driving efforts at restructuring international aviation markets, and the reasons for successful reform efforts in some markets and failure in others” (2).

His argument: “Put simply, national politicians create and maintain international institutions to maximize domestic political support” (2).

“This is particularly true since national politicians can use international institutions to assign property rights in international markets, increase the efficiency of these markets, and thereby increase the amount of wealth available for domestic redistribution” (2).

“In summary, the potential for domestic political gains from international institution building, not increased economic efficiency through the provision of public goods, leads reelection-seeking national governments to create and maintain international institutions” (2).

Two important conclusions: a) the model shows that even economically inefficient international institutions can be winning political solutions for national politicians; b) the model shows how states with market power define the status quo ex post (the reversion point) can use international institutions to transfer wealth from foreign states to their own domestic constituents (3).

“To summarize, both collective goods and distributional approaches highlight important aspects of international institutions, but are ultimately incomplete. Collective goods approaches are correct to note that international institutions often generate efficiency gains in international markets. But these analyses focus solely on the demand for institutions and have been rightly criticized for their failure to pay attention to the distributional effects of international institutions” (8).

“The starting point of my argument is that international institutions are fundamentally regulatory institutions that define property rights in international markets and thereby set the rules governing international markets and thereby set the rules governing international economic exchange” (9).

“The market for international regulation functions just like its domestic counterpart: constituents demand regulation up to the point at which the marginal cost of their efforts equals the expected marginal benefits of regulation, and politicians supply regulation up to the point at which the votes gained due to regulation equal the votes lost” (9).

Two assumptions: politicians maximize their political support defined in terms of votes; b) constituents seek regulation through two avenues: votes and campaign contribution (10).

“The first way national politicians can use international regulations to increase the amount of resources available for domestic redistribution stems from the role of international institutions in assigning property rights in international markets and thereby increasing the resources available for domestic redistribution” (11).

“The second way national politicians can use international institutions to increase resources for domestic redistribution revolves around the transfer of wealth from foreign partners to domestic interests” (12).

“To summarize, national governments use international institutions to increase the amount of wealth available for domestic redistribution” (13).

“With its airlines left unscathed by the war and controlling 72 percent of world air traffic, the United States wanted competitive international markets and extensive rights to take advantage of clear market superiority” (16).

“With international liberalization promising to increase the wealth available for domestic redistribution, U.S. national politicians sought to export domestic deregulation in the late 1970s” (22).

“Like other aspects of the Thatcher revolution, aviation liberalization promised to provide more services at lower prices to consumer and businesses in the United Kingdom” (28).

“The deregulation of postwar international aviation markets suggests that existing approaches to international institutions fail to capture important elements of international institution building” (31).

Fioretos, Orfeo. “The Domestic Sources of Multilateral Preferences: Varieties of Capitalism in the European Community” 2001.

“Explaining why – rather than how – individual member-states agreed to the TEU, particularly their preferences over the shape of the first pillar concerning economic cooperation, takes us away from the traditional emphasis on intergovernmental bargaining in studies of European integration and leads us to consider more seriously the domestic bases for a member’s decisions” (214).

“In such an organization, the nature of states’ national preferences thus becomes a key determinant in defining the shape of common multilateral institutions” (214).

“The central proposition advanced in this chapter may be stated simply: the shape of multilateralism on the ability of that country to sustain the comparative institutional advantages provided by its specific variety of capitalism” (215).

“Realism explains states’ support for European integration as a function of their efforts to improve security and to enhance their relative positions vis-a-vis competitors in other economic regions such as East Asia and North America” (216).

“The focus on the process that leads states to adopt specific preferences is both appropriate and important since it “is analytically prior to both realism and institutionalism because it defines the conditions under which their assumptions hold” (217).

“The varieties of capitalism approach that informs this volume starts from the premises that countries exhibit distinct, historically determined, national institutional equilibria that tie together a number of building blocks in a coherent fashion that defines particular and differentiated market economies” (219).

“As such, and in contrast to the theoretical traditions reviewed earlier, the varieties approach endogenizes agents’ preferences” (220).

Britain: uncoordinated, deregulated market model
Germany: coordinated market economy

“Because of the structural disparities in the two countries, producers are provided with different institutional advantages that bias them toward adopting distinct product market strategies” (221).

“The following pages suggest that attention to how common European regulatory frameworks affect the institutional equilibrium of national market economies allows us to uncover why interest groups and governments prefer particular forms of European multilateralism” (223).

“In brief, the EC should not only be seen as an institutional constraint on member-states, but also as an organization that presents opportunities for institutional reforms that may be difficult to achieve on a purely national scale” (224).

“The dependence of British manufacturers on a low-cost and deregulated business environment gave the British government a strong incentive to ensure that EC-level agreements did not impose high social regulations that would undermine the rationale of its ‘Enterprise Centre of Europe’ strategy” (230).

“However, if the view of Britian as always reluctant to increased European integration is an exaggeration, then the claim that Germany is always a champion of integration is no less an overstatement” (233).

“On the issue of a European industrial policy, the outcome at Maastricht and the language in Article 130 corresponded closely to the German national preference – roughly between the British minimalist and the French maximalist positions” (237).

“One of the strengths of the varieties of capitalism approach is that unlike many theories in IR, it endogenizes actors’ preferences and does not assume that actors have static preferences over time or issue areas” (240).

“…existing national institutions shape the institutional preferences of economic agents in distinct ways, and European institutions provide opportunities to solidify desired outcomes: (243).

Milner, Helen. “Interests, Institutions and Information.” 1997.

“This book argues that domestic politics and international relations are inextricably interrelated” (3).

“Both scholars and policy makers will overlook key elements explaining a country’s behavior if they fail to consider its domestic situation” (3).

“The new metaphor prompts a change in the designation of the actors. No longer are states the actors; rather, central decision makers, legislatures and domestic groups become the agents” (4).

“The method chosen to do so is rational choice theory” (5).

“Obviously if one rejects the basic assumption that agents are, at times and to some extent as least, rational – that is, they pursue goals and try to achieve them in the most efficient manner – then even these attempts to deal with the potential problems of the rational choice approach will be of little avail” (5).

“Questions about international cooperation are salient, and their answers are not obvious because of the dominant theoretical baseline used to explain international politics” (6).

“The central empirical issue is to explain the likelihood and terms of cooperation among nations” (7).

“My central argument is that cooperation among nations is affected less by fears of other countries relative gains or cheating that it is by the domestic distributional consequences of cooperative endeavors. Cooperative agreements create winners and losers domestically; therefore they generate supporters and opponents” (9).

Polyarchy for Milner: “No single group sits at the top; power or authority over decision making is shared, often unequally. Relations among groups in polyarchy entail reciprocal influence and or the parceling out of distinct powers among groups” (11).

Polyarchy continuum entails:

preferences
institutions
information

“Domestic politics is rarely a pure hierarchy with a unitary decision maker, even in nondemocratic systems” (12).

“Domestic politics matters because the state is not a unitary actor. Groups within it have different policy preferences because they are differentially affected by government policies” (16).

Preference argument is different because:

treats societal and political preferences as both influential
preferences do not translate directly into policy

“The political institutions in which I am interested are those that determine how policy is chosen; they refer broadly to the legislative process” (18).

Information treated as:

a variable
solution depends on informed interest groups
distribution depends on the structure of preferences (23).

Frieden, Jeffrey. “Invested Interests: the Politics of National Economic Policies in a World of Global Finance.” 1991.

“A striking characteristic of the contemporary international economy is the great mobility of capital across national borders” (425).

“This article proposes a framework for analyzing politics of international capital mobility. It focuses of the distributional implications of cross-border capital movements and on the distributional implications of various economic policies in light of the high degree of international capital mobility” (426).

“In this context, foreseeable levels of international capital mobility restrict but do not eliminate the possibility for national economic policies. Sectoral policies remain feasible, as do policies whose goals directly or indirectly involve the exchange rate” (426).

“…International capital mobility tends to remake political coalitions by way of its impact on the effect of national policies” (426).

“The relationship between international capital mobility and national policies is a prominent example of the much-discussed impact of external conditions on domestic politics” (427).

“The initial question therefore concerns the degree to which national economic policy autonomy is compromised by existing levels of international capital mobility” (427).

“Economic studies have consistently shown that borders and currencies are still substantial barriers to investment flows” (428).

Why international investment is not a seamless web”

a) Investors must take into account the possibility that assets in one country may be riskier than those in another country and that movements in exchange rates may affect the return on their investments.
b) Most assertions of full international capital mobility refer to international transfers of financial assets, especially bonds and bank claims.

“All in all however, increased financial capital mobility probably has little effect on most sector-specific policies. Supporters of such policies can generally design them to avoid their frustration by financial flows, domestic or international” (430).

“On the other hand, integration of financial markets has significant effects on the effectiveness and the differential distributional impact of national macroeconomic policies” (430).

Mundell-Flemming approach: at most, a country can have two of the three following conditions; a fixed exchange rate, monetary policy autonomy, and capital mobility (431).

“…if capital moves freely across borders, bonds floated to finance increased governmental spending are bought by international investors, and there is no effect on interest rates, which are set globally” (432).

“The general point is that in a world of fully mobile capital, national policy cannot affect the national interest rate; it can, however, affect the exchange rate” (432).

“It can hardly be bad for capitalists to have more investment options than before, which is what capital mobility gives them. By the same token, increasing the options of capital presumably reduces those of labor by making it less costly for capital to move rather than accede to labor demands” (434).

Heckscher-Ohlin model: “the effects of goods movements on returns to factors will vary according to whether the factors are locally scarce of abundant” (435).

“We can also introduce another important set of economic actors: internationally diversified (multinational) corporations. In the specific-factors view of the world, a crucial dimension of variation is the mobility or specificity of an asset, be it an investment, skill, or plot of land” (439).

“The openings of global financial markets to the less developed countries (LDCs) was good for industries in the Third World, which were suddenly able to borrow at reduced rates of interest” (440).

“In the United States, support for financial deregulation, including deregulation of international financial relations, has come primarily from the country’s financial centers and its internationally oriented nonfinancial corporations: domestic manufacturing and farm groups have been ambivalent or hostile” (441).

“While the political divisions likely to emerge over the desired degree of international financial integration are important, the general increase in international capital mobility is also likely to change interest group activity on a wide range of other economic policy problems” (442).

“If indeed international financial integration does reduce barriers to entry and exit of investors to a from specific activities, it could reduce the sectoral orientation of lobbying by investors” (443).

“Recall that, with capital mobility, a country faces something of a tradeoff between exchange rate stability and monetary policy autonomy…” (444).

Look at two-by-two graph on page 445.

“These varying exchange rate preferences in turn affect preferences toward different macroeconomic policies. With capital mobility, an expansionary monetary policy leads to depreciation of the currency, while an expansionary fiscal policy leads to appreciation” (448).

“Hampered as national governments may be or appear to be in the face of an internationally integrated financial system, they continue to have weapons in their policy arsenal” (451).

Rogowski, Ronald. “Political Cleavages and Changing Exposure to Trade” 1987

“I want to suggest the relevance of a factor that has, until now, been widely neglected: externally induced changes – in countries with different factor endowments – in exposure to international trade” (1121).

“I shall try to show that basic results of the theory of international trade – including, in particular, the well-known Stolper-Samuelson theorem – imply that increases or decreases in the costs and difficulty of international trade should powerfully affect domestic political cleavages and should do so differently, but predictably, in countries with different factor endowments” (1122).

“I shall suggest that these implications conform surprisingly well with what has been observed about patterns of cleavage and about changes in those patterns in a great variety of countries during four periods of global change…” (1122).

Stolper-Samuelson: “showed that in any society protection benefits – and liberalization of trade harms – owners of factors, in which that society is poorly endowed, relative to the rest of the world, as well as producers who use the scarce factors intensively. Conversely, protection harms – and liberalization benefits – owners of factors the given society holds abundantly relative to the rest of the world, and producers who use the abundant factors intensively” (1122).

Rogowski’s assumptions:

a) the beneficiaries of a change will try to continue and accelerate it, while the victims of the same change will endeavor to retard of to halt it
b) those whole enjoy a sudden increase in (actual or potential) wealth and income will thereby be enabled to expand their political influence as well

“…Increasing exposure to trade must result in urban-rural conflict in two kinds of economies and in class conflict in the two others” (1123).

Review two-by two box on page 1124

“Germany and the United States were both still relatively backward, that is, capital-poor, societies: both, in fact, imported considerable amounts of capital in this period” (1124).

“Power and policy, we expect, will shift in each case toward the owners and intensive users of scarce factors” (1126).

Gerschenkron: “Where land is abundant, and labor scarce – as has generally been true of the Americas – ‘late’ economic modernization radicalizes owners of land rather than owners of labor” (1130).

“Simply out, socialism develops most readily where labor is favored by rising exposure to trade and capital is not; labor is then progressive and capital is reactionary” (1130).

Three possible objections:

it may be argued that the effects sketched out here will not obtain in countries that depend only slightly on trade
one can ask why the cleavages are likely to persist
His answer: trade fluctuates so rapidly as to frustrate rational expectations;
it may be objected that I have said nothing about the outcome of these conflicts
“What I have advanced here is a speculation about cleavages, not about outcomes.”

Gourevitch, Peter

“First, in using domestic structure as a variable in explaining foreign policy, we must explore the extent to which that structure itself derives from the exigencies of the international system” (882).

“Second, in using domestic structure as variable for explaining foreign policy, much of the literature is ‘apolitical’” (882).

“Finally, in exploring the links between domestic and international politics much of the literature argues that a break with the past has occurred such that the present character of the interaction represents a discontinuity which requires new categories of analysis” (882).

“Two aspects of the international system have powerful effects upon the character of domestic regimes: the distribution of power among states, or the international state system; and the distribution of economic activity and wealth, or the international economy” (883).

“The role of ideas requires careful consideration, but for reasons of space and mental economy, I shall limit my discussion to the international state system and the international economy” (883).

Outcomes: a) regime type; b) coalition pattern

“Regime type and coalition pattern are the properties of a political system most often used as a variable for the explanation of foreign policy” (883).

“In all these countries, what we now call transnational actors were certainly present (at least in some sense of that term): British investors, German steel manufacturers, French engineers, American missionaries.” (884).

Four perspectives on international-domestic relations:

a) Gerschenkron’s view of the “late industrializers,” or the late development school
b) Dependency school
c) Liberal development school…”The presence of new technology and competition is an advantage, as it allows the latecomers to benefit from the skills and surplus of their predecessors” (891-892).
d) TNAs…”The roots of this outlook in the criticism of the ‘realist’ paradigm are well known. In the mid-sixties the critique of realism centered on its view of the state as a unitary actor” (892).

“Complex interdependence alters domestic structures because it entails shifts in power away from certain governmental institutions toward other ones, or even shifts outside the government to private actors, or to international actors , or other foreign actors” (893).

Neo-merchantilists and state-centered Marxists

a) Robert Gilpin’s neo-merchatalist view
b) Marxist approach

“The anarchy of the international environment poses a threat to states within it: the threat of being conquered , occupied, annihilated or made subservient” (896).

“The line of argument to which I refer is that which uses as a major explanatory variable state strength (strong states vs. weak states; or state-centered policy networks) (901).

“In societies with weak states (or society-centered policy networks) policy-formation corresponds to a model of pluralistic government: social forces are well-organized and robust” (902).

“Structure affects the extent to which a governing coalition must make side-payments to build up its strength, the extent to which it can impose its views. It affects the possibility of realizing certain policies” (904).

“In other respects, the present is not so different from the past. Despite interdependence, the state retains its ability to control transnational actors, if it is able to muster the political support for doing so” (909).

Interdependence school: “the central concern appears to be with the dangers of anarchy: one might say that they reject the relevance of anarchy because they fear it” (910).

Dependency school: “the central concern appears to be the dangers of interdependence in its capitalist embodiment. They reject it because it is seen as incompatible with socialism” (910).

“The international system is not only a consequence of domestic politics and structures but a cause of them” (911).

Frieden, Jeffrey. “Actors and Preferences in International Relations” 1999.

“Preferences must be kept separate from other things – most important, from characteristic of the strategic setting” (39).

“Second, scholars need to be explicit about how they determine the preferences of relevant social actors. Whether preferences are variables of interest or control variables, it is essential that they be derived clearly and unambiguously” (39).

“The issue is especially important because although preferences are part of all explanation, they are not directly observable” (40).

“The essential point is that in any given setting, an actor prefers some outcomes to others and pursues a strategy to achieve its most preferred possibly outcome” (41).

“An actor’s preferences are the way it orders the possible outcomes of an interaction. If, as in most instances of interest to us here, the environment is one of strategic interaction, this involves ranking the terminal nodes of a game tree” (42).

“Within a particular box, political scientists are not usually interested in the preferences themselves but rather in how these preferences affect choices” (44).

“States, groups, or individuals require ways to obtain their goals, paths to their preferences” (45).

“The direct unobservability of preferences has its parallel with regard to strategies. It is never inherently obvious whether action is the result of preferences or strategies, underlying interests, or the environment in which they play themselves out” (46).

Sins of confusion: mixes preferences and the strategic setting in ways that do not allow their independent effects to be examined (49).

“…Power maximization is not a preference but a strategy. This means that state preferences are not defined by realists, which makes their analysis inherently incomplete” (50).

Sins of omission: is to assert that variation in outcomes is solely owing to variation in preferences; arise when analysts observe an outcome and draw a direct line form it back to the preferences of actors (51).

“A common variant of this lapse is to explain changes in interstate reactions simply by asserting that national preferences changed” (52).

“Scholars typically specify preferences in one of three ways: by assumption, by observation, and by deduction” (53).

Hiscox, Michael. “Class Versus Industry Cleavages” 2001.

“The results indicate that broad class-based conflict is more likely when levels of factor mobility are relatively high, and narrow industry-based conflict is more likely when levels of factor mobility are relatively high, and narrow industry-based conflict is more likely when levels of mobility are relatively low” (3).

“They suggest that the types of political coalitions that take shape in society and organize to influence economic policymaking largely depend on one basic feature of the economic environment that may vary over time and across nations: the extent to which factors of production are mobile between industries” (34).

“But the evidence presented here suggests that cleavages are powerfully shaped by economic forces” (35-36).

Becker, Gary S. “The Economic Way of Looking At Life” 1992

“My research uses the economic approach to analyze social issues that range beyond those usually considered by economists” (38).

“Unlike Marxian analysis, the economic approach I refer to does not assume that individuals are motivated solely by selfishness or gain. It is a method of analysis, not an assumption about particular motivations” (38).

“This analysis assumes that individuals maximize welfare as they conceive it, whether they be selfish, altruistic, loyal, spiteful or masochistic” (38).

“Employees may refuse to work under a woman or a black even when they are well paid to do so, or a customer may prefer not to deal with a black care salesman” (39). Opposite of Milton Friedman

“I spent several years working out a theory of how actual discrimination in earnings and employment is determined by tastes for discrimination, along with degree of competition in labor and product markets, the distribution of discrimination coefficients among members of the majority group, the access of minorities to education and training, etc…” (39-40).

“Indeed, in a world with constant returns to scale in production, two segregated economies with the same distribution of skills would completely bypass discrimination and would have equal wages and equal returns to other resources…” (40).

“Of greater significance empirically is the long run discrimination by employees and customers, who are far more important sources of market discrimination than employers” (40).

“The frequency of their inspection of parked vehicles and the size of the penalty imposed on violators should depend on their estimates of the type of calculations potential violators like me would make” (41).

“I was not sympathetic to the assumption that criminals had radically different motivations from everyone else” (41).

“…Risk-preferring individuals are more deterred from crime by a higher probability of conviction that by severe punishments” (42).

“Human capital analysis starts with the assumption that individuals decide on their education, training, medical care and other additions to knowledge and health by weighing the benefits and costs” (43).

“By definition, firm-specific knowledge is useful on in the firms providing it, whereas general knowledge is useful also in other firms” (44).
“The point of departure of my work on the family is the assumption that when men and women decide to marry or have children or divorce, they attempt to maximize their utility by comparing benefits and costs” (46).

“For example, contrary to popular belief about divorce among the rich, the economic analysis of family decisions shows that wealthier couples are less likely to divorce than poorer couples. According to this theory, richer couples tend to gain a lot from remaining married, whereas many poorer couples do not” (46).

“Since the return from investing in a skill is greater when more time is spent utilizing the skill, a married couple could gain a lot from a sharp division of labor because the husband could specialize in some types of human capital and the wife in others” (48).

“Both the children and the parents would be better off if the parents agreed to invest more in the children in return for a commitment by the children to care for them when they need help” (49).

“Again, I am trying to model a common sense idea; namely, that the attitudes and values of adults are enormously influences by their childhood experiences” (49).

In terms of rationality: “It does not return the analysis to a narrow focus on self-interest, for it partially replaces altruism by feelings of guilt, obligation, anger and other attitudes usually neglected by models of rational behavior” (50).

A critique of some welfare-state policies: “ Parents help determine the values of children – including their feelings of obligation, duty and love – but what parents try to do can be greatly affected by public policies and changes in economic and social conditions” (51).

“Other changes in the modern world which have altered family values include increased geographical mobility, the greater wealth that comes with economic growth, better capital and insurance markets, higher divorce rates, smaller families, and publicly funded health care” (51).

“Among other things, critics deny that individuals act consistently over time, and question whether behavior is forward-looking, particularly in situations that differ significantly from those usually considered by economists – such as those involving criminal, addictive, family or political behavior” (52).

Milner, Helen “Rationalizing Politics: the Emerging Synthesis of International, American and Comparative Politics” 1998.

“The central paradigms of the field of international relations – realism and neoliberal institutionalism – have ignored a key aspect of international relations: domestic politics”
(759).

“…The spread of democratization – both its actual practice and claims for it – also seems to make an understanding of domestic politics a sine que non for IR if it is to have either predictive ability or policy relevance” (760).

“Integrating IR with comparative and American politics holds out the possibility that the field will acquire a better understanding of both the domestic and international institutions that affect world politics” (760).

“The rationalist institutionalist research agenda challenges two of the main assumptions in IR theory. A central assumption has been that states are unitary actors. Relaxing this assumption means bringing domestic politics back in” (761).

Second: “…Changing this assumption (that state are the most important) means focusing on a broader set of actors in international relations, including international institutions” (761).

“I argue that the spread of rationalist institutionalism is occurring along three dimensions: a) the nature of actors; b) the importance of institutions in situations of strategic interaction, and c) the methodology of noncooperative game theory” (761).

Alternative to state approach:

emphasizes the strategic interaction among parties within the state as well as between state and societal actors; and it enables the systematic analysis of policy outcomes among strategic agents as their institutional contexts and preferences change
the impact of the rules and norms that structure the environment of actors and shape how collective outcomes are reached has become a central focus of attention throughout political science…
within and across states, actors are now increasingly seen as playing strategic games in which they cannot make binding commitments

Reasons for autonomy of IR as distinct discipline:

the field is broader that mere political science. IR, it is claimed, is truly interdisciplinary
many scholars have felt that IR’s unique subject matter makes it best approachable as an autonomous field, a position that has had less beneficial effects (763).

“Despite many challenges, realism has remained the dominant paradigm in IR” (764).

IR in 1977 textbooks: “The key trends noted about these texts were the tendency to portray the world as centered around nation-states, the lack of attention to domestic politics, the relative neglect of international organizations, and the emphasis on conflict and force (as opposed to cooperation and bargaining)” (765).
“The major assumptions of realism then have cut off IR from important cross-currents in political science” (767).

“The issue posed then is not about the appropriate level of analysis, but about the appropriate designation of the actors or units” (768).

“But, as I argue in more detail later, the assumptions either that one group controls foreign policy or that all (important) domestic actors have the same preferences seem quite problematic” (769).

“In contrast to Moravcsik, who advocates a ‘liberal’ theory of IR based on preferences, the claim here is for a theoretical approach that includes both preferences and institutions” (772, in footnote 52).

“Domestic politics, and I would argue international politics as well, varies along a continuum from hierarchy to anarchy, with most politics resembling polyarchy, which lies in between these extremes” (774).

“Several factors are important in defining a state’s placement in the continuum: the policy preferences of domestic actors and the institutions for power sharing among them” (774).

“If a single actor controls all decision making, one is back to the unitary actor model where hierarchy prevails” (774).

“Even in nondemocratic systems domestic politics is rarely a pure hierarchy with a unitary decision maker” (775).

“In addition to strategic interaction domestically, rational institutionalism can be useful at the international level to make it strategic too” (778).

“Once on leaves the world of states as unitary actors, one can us the concepts and theories from American and comparative politics, some of which provide powerful, parsimonious tools for understanding strategic interaction in different institutional environments” (779).

“My claim is that ignoring international institutions is likely to limit our understanding of IR: furthermore, using a systematic rationalist approach may help in understanding the role they play” (780).

“Two steps need to be considered: more comparative analysis of institutions and greater concern with the democratization of international institutions” (780).

“If such institutions are to thrive, it seems likely that they will have to become more democratic. As the EU makes clear, one strong source of resistance to the growing role of international institutions is their lack of democracy” (782).
“Game theory is ideal for analyzing (strategic interaction) since it provides a “theory of interdependent decisions – when the decisions of two of more individuals jointly determine the outcome of a situation” (783).

“Institutions are not viewed as neutral arenas for cooperation, rather they are political means to realize one’s preferences” (784).

Friedan, Jeffrey and Lisa Martin. “International Political Economy: Global and Domestic Interactions.”

IPE: “We take the field to include all work for which international economic factors are an important cause or consequence” (118).

“This essay presents what we believe to be the consensus among political scientists with regard to the analysis of the politics of international economic relations” (118).

“The most challenging questions in IPE have to do with the interaction of domestic and international factors as they affect economic policies and outcomes” (119).

“Like all of IPE, the interaction of domestic and international conditions can be analyzed in terms of three factors: interests, institutions and information” (120).

“In addition to affecting domestic interests, the international economy might also affect domestic institutions, as by making a previously feasible policy difficult to sustain” (121).

“In all these approaches international factors affect national policy by way of their direct effect on the domestic political economy. This effect may take place by restricting the set of feasible policies, by constraining domestic institutions, by altering domestic information, or by changing the preferred policies…” (123).

Domestic informational models: “assumes that the legislature may not know precisely the content of a negotiated agreement, perhaps because legislators may not know just how any agreement will influence economic outcomes in their districts” (124).

Schelling conjecture: “pairs of democracies have more success in lowering barriers to trade than pairs that match a democracy with an autocracy” (125).

Stolper-Samuelson theorem: “predicts that factors of production that are scarce in a county will benefit from trade protection, so that labor in capital-rich countries and capital in labor-rich countries should be protectionist” (127).

“The basic determinant of preference intensities is the size of the stakes” (129).

“The interests, preference, intensity and organization of socioeconomic actors is only a starting point for the analysis of domestic constraints on foreign economic policy. These interests are mediated through domestic political institutions in ways that can fundamentally affect outcomes” (131).

“Institutions perform two general functions: aggregation and delegation” (132).

Types of institutions:

electoral institutions matter to the making of foreign economic policy because they affect the transmission of societal interests to politicians
legislative organization…affect foreign economic policymaking…the importance of agenda control, veto points and other interactions among policymaking institutions
bureaucratic institutions, especially patterns of delegation to bureaucratic and other agencies

“The analysis of international interaction centrally involves three elements: the indentification of state interests; the specification of the strategic setting; and the attention to the role of uncertainty, beliefs and ideals in explaining policy choice” (137).

“Greater attention to strategic interaction could inform empirical studies of the choice between trade competition and cooperation, including the choice to join and abide by trade agreements…” (141).

Kindleberger, Charles. “Dominance and Leadership in the International Economy.”

“Dominance was a concept introduced into economic discussion, especially French economic discussion, by Francois Peroux, professor of economics at the Colleg de France…” (243).

“One country, firm, or person dominated another when the other had to take account of what the first entity did, but the first could equally ignore the second” (243).

“For present purposes, however, it is enough to note that within a single country, many public goods are provided by the government through a budget, most private goods by the market” (243).

“Thus, vested interests whose benefits are sufficient to warrant exertion get a disproportionate share of the public goods they are interested in” (244).

“Leaders work for something called ‘leadership surplus.’ They compete with other potential leaders for ascendancy, and once in office maximize their surplus or profit by providing collective goods against taxes, donations or purchases promised in the election process” (245).

Each scholar, says Kindleberger, enlarged the scope to which government provided public goods. It thus led to an expanded role for government.

“I argue that for the world economy to be stable, it needs a stabilizer, some country that would undertake to provide a market for distress goods, a steady if not countercyclical flow of capital, and a rediscount mechanism for providing liquidity when the monetary system is frozen in panic” (247).

“There is a legitimate debate, perhaps, between French and American positions, whether the United States sought domination or was trying to provide the public good of world stability in the period after World War II” (247-248).

“Part of the world’s economic problem today is that the United States has resigned (or been discharged) as leader of the world economy, and there is no candidate willing and acceptable to take its place” (248).

“But my concern is with those instances where the abundance of free riders means that the public good is underproduced, and that there is neither domination nor self-abnegation in the interest of responsibility” (249).

“I do not believe in the notion that the extreme left, the extreme right, the power elite, the establishment, oil companies, professoriat, military-industrial complex and so on, can be regarded as single-decision-making units with detailed programs” (249).

“For as far ahead as today’s social scientists can see, I think it is necessary to organize the international community – both related to policy and economy alike – on the basis of leadership” (252).

“I conclude that the danger we face is not too much power in the international economy, but too little, not an excess of domination, but a superfluity of would-be free riders, unwilling to mind the store, and waiting for a storekeeper to appear” (253).

Conybeare, John. “Public Goods, Prisoner’s Dilemmas and the International Political Economy.”

“As a corollary, it may be shown that large powers should not necessarily prefer and open system, particularly in the context of the pure theory of trade which is often used to justify the hegemonic openness thesis” (6).

“This is the crux of the problem in applying public good theory to the idea of an open world trading system: free trade may be a prisoner’s dilemma, but is not typically a public good problem. The reason for this is that free trade exhibits excludability and rivalry, and is fundamentally a problem of predatory income transfers, whereas the public good situation centers on the problem of inducing free riders to contribute to the supply of the public good” (8).

“In conclusion, all large number public good games are likely to create prisoners’ dilemma outcome, but prisoners’ dilemma games need not involve public good characteristics, at least insofar as one is concerned with the primary goal desired by the parties to the game” (8).

“Public goods may be present in the free trade problem, but not in the way that the hegemonic stability model suggests” (9).

“First, a public good problem may occur where collective action is required for say retaliation on the part of a number of small powers against a larger power” (9).

“Second, there may be publicness in free trade as a multilateral system. Countries peripheral to the system might, by virtue of their small size or low levels of participation in the system, enjoy a free ride in the sense of being able to enjoy both the benefits of free trade while still imposing their own trade restrictions” (9).

“Third, international trade may involve goods which are themselves public” (9).

“Fourth, public goods may occur as side effects of free trade” (9).

“While free international capital flows are globally optimal, it may be in the interest of individual countries to impose restrictions where the private and social rate of returns on capital flows are not equal” (10).

“Since international trade is more likely to exhibit there prisoners’ dilemmas rather than public good characteristics, there is little rational economic incentive for large powers to perform the stabilizing function suggested by Kindleberger and others in the hegemonic stability thesis” (11).

“To the extent that hegemons have in some cases pushed for open systems, this may be because powerful states, though aware that their interests would be best served by monopolistic predation, also need to keep the rest of the world open, a task made very difficult when they keep their own tariffs high” (12).

“In summary it is not clear that hegemonic powers should choose free trade as a first best strategy” (13).

“There are at least three contextual and institutional factors which may prevent the development of a genuine prisoner’s dilemma outcome: pecuniary incentives for joint optimization, the absence of structural forces necessary for the prisoners’ dilemma outcome, and asymmetries of size among the players” (13).

“In summary, though we are more likely to see prisoners’ dilemma than public good games as a source of primary conflict in international trade, the probability of prisoners’ dilemma type conflicts may be reduced by the existence of gains from bribery, dynamic game structures and asymmetries of size” (19).

“Because free trade is not essentially a public good, we have theoretical problems in rationalizing the proposition that hegemonic powers will seek to enforce free trade as the first best policy” (20).

Krasner, Stephen. “State Power and the Structure of International Trade”

International economic structure: “These can be explained, albeit imperfectly, by a state-power theory: an approach that begins with the assumption that the structure of international trade is determined by the interests and power of states acting to maximize national goals” (317).

“The two major organizers of the structure of trade since the beginning of the nineteenth century, Great Britain and the United States, have both been prevented from making policy amendments in line with state interests by particular societal groups whose power had been enhanced by earlier state policies” (318).

“At least four major state interests affected by the structure of international trade can be identified. They are: political power, aggregate national income, economic growth, and social stability” (319).

“Only by maintaining its technological lead and continually developing new industries can even a very large state escape the undesired consequences of an entirely open economic system” (320).
“All that can confidently be said is that openness furthers the economic growth of small state and of large ones so long as they maintain their technological edge” (321).

“The hegemonic state will have a preference for an open structure, Such a structure increases its aggregate national income” (322).

“The size and economic robustness of the hegemonic state also enable it to provide the confidence necessary for a stable international monetary system, and its currency can offer the liquidity needed for an increasingly open system” (323).

“The degree of openness can be described both by the flow of goods and the policies that followed by states with respect to trade barriers and international payments” (323).

“Openness in the global economic system has in effect meant greater trade among the leading industrial states” (324).

“Since 1945, there have been seven rounds of multilateral tariff reductions” (326).

“There is a natural affinity for some states to trade with others because of geographical propinquity or comparative advantage” (329).

Periods of tariff levels, trade proportions and trade patterns:

Period 1: (1820-1879) increasing openness
Period 2: (1879-1900) modest closure
Period 3: (1900-1913) greater openness
Period 4: (1918-1939) closure
Period 5: (1945-1970) great openness

“The contention that hegemony leads to a more open trading structure is fairly well, but not perfectly, confirmed by the empirical evidence presented in the preceding sections” (335).

“As a state-power argument suggests, openness was only established within the geographical area where the rising economic hegemony was able to exercise its influence” (337).

“Systems are intiated and ended, not as a state-power theory would predict, by close assessments of the interests of the state at a every given moment, but by external events – usually cataclysmic ones” (341).

“Once policies have been adopted, they are pursued until a new crisis demonstrates that they are no longer feasible. States become locked in by the impact of prior choices on their domestic political structures” (341). Key point!

“…Earlier policies in the United States begat social structures and institutional arrangements that trammeled state policy. After protecting import-competing industries for a century, the United States was unable in the 1920s to opt for more open policies , even though state interests would have been furthered thereby” (342).

“Having taken the critical decisions that created an open system after 1945, the American Government is unlikely to change its policy until it confronts some external event that it cannot control, such as world-wide deflation, drought in the great plains, or the malicious use of petrodollars” (343).

Barnett, Michael and Martha Finnemore. “Rules for the World.” 2004.

“Our goal in writing this book is to understand why IOs behave as they do” (2).

“This functionalism is only an assumption of these theories, though, and tends to focus scholars’ attention on why states create IOs to fulfill certain functions rather than on whether, in fact subsequent IO behavior is a functional as assumed” (2).

“IOs often produce inefficient, self-defeating outcomes and turn their backs on those whom they are supposed to serve. We want to know why” (2).

“Organizations adapt to changing circumstances in unanticipated ways and adopt new routines and functions without getting approval from their ‘stakeholders’”(2).

“In this book we develop a constructivist approach to understanding IO behavior that provides a theoretical basis for treating IOs as autonomous acpropensity toward dysfunctional, even pathological, behavior, and the way they change over time” (2-3).

“…IOs are bureaucracies. Bureaucracy is a distinctive social form of authority with its own internal logic and behavioral proclivities. It is because of their authority that bureaucracies have autonomy and the ability to change the world around them” (3).

“They then use the rules not only to regulate but also to constitute and construct the social world” (3).

“We need to understand how and why IO preferences diverge from state preferences, not just empirically but also theoretically” (4).

“IOs can have authority both because of the missions they pursue and because of the ways they pursue them” (5).

“Their means, like their missions, give IOs authority to act where individual states may not” (5).

“IOs exercise power as they use their knowledge and authority not only to regulate what currently exists but also to constitute the world, crating new interests, actors and social activities” (7).

“IOs are often the actors to whome we defer when it comes to defining meanings, norms of good behavior, the nature of social actors, and categories of legitimate social action in the world” (7).

“We call ‘pathologies’ those dysfunctions that are attributable to bureaucratic culture and internal bureaucratic processes and that lead the IO to act in a manner that subverts its self-professed goals” (8).

IOs: “They define problems and appropriate solutions in ways that favor more technocratic impartial action, which, of course they are uniquely able to supply” (9).

“…by contrast, we understand autonomy to exist when IOs are able to act in ways not dictated by states, we capture the range of activity not well explained by statist arguments and can provide a fuller argument” (10).

“IOs are not simply passive servants of states. They are political actors in their own right, having their own particular resources for shaping political action, and both shaping and being shaped by others” (12).

Parsons, Craig. “Showing Ideas as Causes: the Origins of the European Union” 2002.

“Within vague structural and institutional pressures, only certain ideas led Europeans to the EEC rather than to less extensive cooperation in much weaker international institutions” (47).

Two major obstacles: 1) showing ideas as causes; 2) historical arguments require extensive, detailed research (48).

“I argue that certain conditions allow for more concrete and specific claims about ideas. Where ideas strongly cross-cut lines of shared material interests in a polity, we can isolate individuals beliefs most clearly from objective pressures” (48).

“Ideas are subjective claims about descriptions of the world, causal relationships, or the normative legitimacy of certain actions. The basic reasons to suspect that ideas influence behavior have been well elaborated by the overlapping ‘constructivist’ and ‘sociological institutionalist’ schools in international relations and by comparative political scientists” (48-49).

“What was the range of possibilities without these ideas? Cross-case comparisons help in this respect, suggesting alternatives in similar situations” (50).

“Settings where ideas cross-cut prevailing lines of organization can clearly display their causal impact” (50).

“Cross-cutting ideas have particularly clear effects because they offer the sharpest possible contrast to the expectations of objective-interest theorists” (50).

“If, in addition, we have the kind of interpretive evidence typically offered by ideational accounts – actors consistently say and write that they believe certain things, and that their peers think differently – we have strong evidence that ideas alone are causing individual variation across that range” (51).

“Unlike in most ideational arguments, it is the actors, not the observer, who define the range across which ideas matter” (51).

“Experts agree that French choices were particularly important to the EEC’s birth” (54).

“In sum, no one contests that without French insistence on institutionally strong, geographically limited institution building in the 1950s no such framework would have resulted” (54).

“First, I do not claim that ideas ‘mattered more’ than other causes. Causality cannot be allocated meaningfully in percentage terms. Instead my answer to the ‘how much’ question specifies the range of historical outcomes dictated by each cause” (56).

“Second, French choices were necessary but not sufficient causes of European outcomes” (56).

“Third, my evidence is largely qualitative” (56).

Three French perspectives: realist; confederal, supranational (57-58).

“For Raymond Aron, France’s pursuit and then rejection of the EDC animated ‘the greatest ideological and political debate France has known since the Dreyfus affair” (62).

“All three strategies were viable internationally. The community option led to the EDC treaty in May 1953. It was ratified by the other ECSC members and supported by the United States…” (63).

“Massive interpretive evidence corroborates the pattern of cross-cutting mobilization: the actors uniformly described their debates as ideological” (65).

“In sum the EEC survived traditional French leadership in the 1960s not because of structural trends but despite them” (75).

“In France, actors who shared objective positions in parties, bureaucracies and sectors consistently espoused different ideas about how those interests connected to European institutional building” (76).

Weaver, Catherine. “The Social Construction of Good Governance.” 2005.

“Good governance is the key to holding corrupt and inefficient governments accountable for their actions” (1).

“Given the bank’s position as intellectual and financial leader in the development community, this apparent paradigm shift matters in understanding broader trends in the international development regime” (1)

“I argue that an explanation of why and how the World Bank adopted the good governance agenda requires a constructivist approach” (2).

“However, the real impetus for the paradigm shift appears to stem from internal learning and advocacy by a small group of Bank staff members” (3).

“In essence, I argue that the evolution of good governance in the Bank is best characterized as a ‘battle of ideas’ within the organization” (3).

“Governance advocates eventually had to strategically frame governance issues in a language, methodology and theoretical framework that did not directly challenge or delegitimize prevailing ideologies and practices” (4).

“Later, in 1996, the Bank published its hallmark World Development Report on the theme of the transition from plan to market, emphasizing the need for clear property rights, a ‘market-friendly’ legal system and deeper institutional reforms in the banking and financial sectors” (8).

“This view of the state playing a benign governance role in the market coincided with the Bank’s observations on the tremendous economic growth of East Asia form the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s” (9).

“In a greater departure from Bank ideology and practice, the report advocated political pluralism, the rule of law, and the protection of human rights to be key to the effective use of aid and socioeconomic development” (15).

“In 1997, governance appeared to be fully institutionalized in the Bank’s internal hierarchy. As part of another massive reorganization of the Bank’s management structure, a thematic group on poverty reduction and economic management was created and endowed with a number of staff keenly interested in governance issues” (21).

“Indeed, until quite recently, the number of social scientists within the bank has been extremely low in comparison to economists, engineers and business and finance specialists” (26).

“In the past dew years, World Bank publications have openly admitted that governance reform projects have seriously challenged the organization’s conventional way of conducting aid business” (30).

“The constructivist account of the evolution of the Bank’s good governance agenda provides strong reason to remain skeptical about the extent to which governance ideas have truly transformed the way the bank think about and pursues development” (32).

Macnamara, Kathleen. “The Currency of Ideas.”

“The key to solving the puzzle of European monetary cooperation lies in the historic economic policy convergence that occurred across the majority of the European governments beginning in the mid-1970s and solidifying in the 1980s” (3).

“Ideas are defined here as shared causal beliefs. Political actors use these ideas to evaluate the costs and benefits of monetary cooperation and chart a policy strategy” (5).

“In brief, European governments’ experience with macroeconomic policy failure in the aftermath of the first oil crisis spurred a search for alternatives to traditional Keynesian policies” (5).

“In arguing that the structure of the international economy shapes the terrain within which politics unfold but that the interpretation of that structure, or ideational processes, dictate the crucial choice of policy content and form…” (6).

“My findings on European monetary integration indicate that uncertainty creates highly fluid conceptions of interest, both national and societal” (7-8).

“In sum, my goal in this book is thus not to separate ideas and interests as competing causal factors but to show the inherent connections between the two” (8).

“I reject a deterministic view of the forces of international capital in favor of the argument that the process of interest redefinition has historically been dependent of policymakers shared beliefs” (8).

“At its heart, this new norm of competitive liberalism is rooted in the view that improvement in the international economic position of the nation state warrants taking harsh steps to adjust to changing international market conditions” (10).

“The Holy Trinity holds that policy makers can choose only two out of three policy options at any one time: free capital flows, a fixed exchange rate, and monetary policy autonomy” (44).

“Finally, capital controls may be opposed because they run directly counter to the ideology of neoliberalism” (52).

“Ideas are critical in the monetary realm because of continuing uncertainty over the basic workings of the macroeconomy, the difficulties of collecting and interpreting signals for macroeconomic date about the effects of policy, and the lack of agreement over what constitutes ‘correct’ macroeconomic policy” (57).

“The neoliberal policy consensus at the core of this shift was critically important to the maintenance of the EMS, given the increasingly high level of capital mobility, it also formed an important basis for the subsequent revival of the EMU project” (62).

“It is important to note, however, that the governments of Europe followed a pragmatic, not ideologically purist, type of monetarism” (67).

Book Review: Randall Stone's "Lending Credibility"

2006-03-30T11:55:00.000-08:00

Randall Stone’s Lending Credibility: A Review and Critique

Introduction
The extent to which the IMF is a benefit or a detriment to countries trying to develop is one of the defining debates in international political economy. Randall Stone’s Lending Credibility: the International Monetary Fund and the Post-Communist Transition is yet another attempt to explore this issue. For Stone, while the IMF makes mistakes along the way, the lending institution is ultimately beneficial to countries trying to escape the trap of underdevelopment (Stone 2002: 2). In particular, the IMF’s inflationary advice – that controlling inflation is the most critical determinant for long-term growth – showed positive results in places like Poland and Bulgaria. This essay will review the main aspects of Stone’s Lending Credibility, before situating his work in other relevant IMF literature and highlighting some possible objections to his work. In short I argue that Stone’s book is an important contribution to the field by exploring the nexus between international and domestic politics, as well studying more closely inflationary policy. However, his book is not without its share of flaws. The latter section will address these concerns.
Lending Credibility: A Short Review
Stone set out to prove that international institutions do influence – in many ways positively influence – actors that choose to pursue the strategies advocated by such bodies as the IMF. For Stone, the literature on the IMF was overly negative, overly positive or generally ambiguous about the role these institutions play in spurring growth and development (Stone 2002: 39). Moreover, much of the literature had either neglected or misinterpreted the function that inflationary policies played with IMF. For example, many scholars on the left argued that the IMF was too concerned with controlling inflation, rather than looking out for the needs of the poor (Stone 2002: 6). But Stone claims that the poor are the people most ravaged by high inflation. “It was the poor,” Stone posited, “rather than the wealthy who suffered most from inflation” (Stone 2002: 7). Moreover, controlling inflation was critical for laying the groundwork for a successful economy: it increased incentives for investment, promoted confidence among foreign investors and led to better wealth distribution (Stone 2002: 8-9).
Stone set out several hypotheses before engaging in a game-theoretic analysis to understand the relationship between the IMF and post-Communist transitions.[1] First, the IMF’s enforcement mechanism is more likely to punish smaller countries than larger countries for violating fund conditionalities. When larger countries are punished they are subjected to short punishments, “because the threat of longer punishments is not credible” (Stone 2002: 59). Second, IMF intervention does influence the economic choices of the states involved. The IMF has effect depending on the credibility of the threat that they will withhold financing from countries that do not comply with fund rules. Lastly, capital markets are aware of IMF signals. When the IMF is involved capital markets assume that conditionalities will be enforced, and the IMF will make responsible economic decisions concerning exchange rates and foreign currency (Stone 2002: 26-27). In testing these specific hypotheses, Stone not only hoped to show that the IMF did influence economic choices but he also sought to explain why variation existed among states that took on IMF conditions (Stone 2002: 81). Why did Poland do better economically than, say, Russia?
The conclusions Stone garnered generally agreed with his initial hypotheses. State size and influence does matter when it comes to who gets punished and for how long. Therefore, Poland’s response to IMF conditionalities varied in comparison to Russia or Ukraine. When Poland missed its targets in 1991 and 1992 the IMF responded immediately by suspending programs and funding to Poland (Stone 2002: 115). Stone suggested this was to Poland’s benefit. With respect to the Russian case, on the other hand, the IMF had trouble credibly forcing Russia to comply with its targets. As a result, Russia had a tremendously difficult time accomplishing anything economically (Stone 2002: 166-167). Stone’s argument goes as follows: Because Russia and Ukraine were “influential” countries – receiving direct aid -- the United States was more likely to soften the demands on Russian leaders in meeting the targets of the IMF (Stone 2002: 119). Both Bush and Clinton administrations asked the IMF the forgo some of the conditions on Russia and chose to rally other Western governments to their aid (Stone 2002: 124). With respect to Ukraine, Stone argued that as Ukraine moved closer to the United States their commitment to the IMF programs waned. Poland and Bulgaria, what we might call the success stories, had a limited relationship with American political elites.
Secondly, the role of IMF influence, generally speaking, does positively impact rates of inflation and better adjusts post-Communist countries to withstand financial markets. As Stone argued, “the over all thrust of the IMF advice was sound: prioritize the fight against inflation” (Stone 2002: 233). Lastly, capital markets are also affected by the IMF and there is some relationship – although the relationship is not as statistically significant – between the success of the IMF and movement of capital goods.
In short, Stone’s book is an important contribution to the growing literature that argues whether or not the IMF matters, and if it does how it matters. Stone tries to keep some distance from the variable he studied, however, trying not to become a cheerleader for the IMF. Instead, he finds that depending on the size and influence of the state and the extent to which the state controls inflation will be the ultimate determinant of whether or not a country becomes an IMF showcase. In general he believes that if countries follow IMF advice then those countries will benefit economically. In the case of Poland, Stone’s success story, this occurred. Russia, meanwhile, had a more difficult time developing their economy following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Lending Credibility is an important contribution to the literature on two other fronts as well. First, Stone does a good job of showing the connection between external actors and domestic politics.[2] The effectiveness of the IMF depends both on the responsiveness and credibility of the IMF but also on how domestic actors interact and take seriously the calls for reform from the fund. For years, IR Scholars have called for a further exploration of the connection between domestic politics and the international system but in some cases to no avail (See Putnam 1988). Rawi Abdelal’s National Purpose tries to explain the economic development of Eastern Europe as a product of nationalism, but Abdelal largely ignores the international system (See Abdelal 2001). Other scholars, like Jeffery Sachs, tend to ignore the domestic realm altogether and instead focus solely on the IMF and World Bank (See Sachs 2005). Stone corrects this. Second, Stone focuses his lens on one aspect of the IMF program – the policies relating to inflation. Too often political scientists treat institutions as wholes without examining some of their working parts. Stone isolates his work to examine inflationary policy in particular and found that one recommendation from the IMF must be heeded: control inflation.
Reassessing Stone: Some Critiques
Devesh Kapur, a general critic of IMF programs, has argued that if the IMF had a dollar “for every criticism of its purpose,” that they would never have to go to their shareholders for more money (Kapur 1998: 54). Kapur’s arguments are the standard response from critics of the IMF: that IMF programs inevitably hurt the poor; that the fund places blame for the failure of the programs on debtor countries; and that debtor countries do not set the terms at which they are held to (Kapur 1998: 55-57). James Vreeland, in his important book The IMF and Economic Development, argued that there was a negative statistical relationship between the IMF and economic growth (Vreeland 2003: 8). The IMF also disproportionately hurt the poor and shifted income away from them (Vreeland 2003: 152). Stone tries to counter some of these criticisms in his book. He, of course, argues that the poor suffered because of the lack of IMF programs and the country’s failure to institute sound inflationary policy. However, like Vreeland, Stone only analyzes a few cases – Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Bulgaria to prove his hypotheses. Vreeland and Stone’s results might just be a result of case selection rather than anything the fund did or did not do. As Vreeland criticizes in his book, only Professor Stone has found that the IMF does a good job at curtailing inflation (Vreeland 2003: 159). Perhaps it could be argued that there was something peculiar about the post-Communist situation rather than something innately effective in the IMF.
A second criticism of Stone’s book is his treatment of how the external environment operates within domestic politics. While I argued that exploring the nexus between the international system and domestic politics was an appropriate step, part of Stone’s research project was underdeveloped. When it comes to the IMF, Stone is precise in how the fund functions and works. However, Stone’s understanding of the domestic arena is limited. For example. Stone’s reasoning for why Russia failed is because Russia did not implement the IMF’s programs properly and because sectors of Russia’s economy were corrupt and ineffective (Stone 2002: 164). Ukraine was a hard task for the IMF because political and business elites were slow to break away from Russia and implement their own reforms. Thus Ukraine did nothing with respect to their economy in the early 1990s. (Stone 2002: 207-208). Bulgaria and Poland, on the other hand, had fractious political divides but IMF edicts were more consistently enforced and those countries saw the positive impact of IMF. This discussion about the domestic intricacies is puzzling though because Stone’s initial hypotheses – that it is easier to consistently enforce IMF edicts on small size states than large ones – would seem to make this detailed discussion of domestic politics moot. Whether Russian or Polish elites were corrupt (and some were), would seem to have little bearing on whether or not the IMF was successful per his argument. The argument was one about size and influence, and the IMF’s ability to punish, not about the extent to which political players were particularly adept or corrupt. If Stone’s argument is that size, influence, enforcement credibility, domestic actors and external actors all matter, we are left with little more than a kitchen sink model of development: everything matters just a little bit.
Third, Stone’s argument about state size and influence struck me as interesting given Stone’s affinities for the influence of international institutions in world politics. The emphasis on states as actors is generally attributable to the influence of realism and neorealism on international relations. As most realists related, states were the major actors in world politics and because of this, they believed that liberal institutionalists were overly optimistic about the importance of institutions (Grieco 2000: 12). Stone argues that although institutions like the IMF can influence states power does “constrain what the IMF can achieve” (Stone 2002: 2). Stone seems to largely sidestep one of the defining debates in IR by simply suggesting power and institutions both matter. This ultimately works against him because one of the central hypotheses of his work – that variation can be attributed to the size or influence of IMF countries – remains underdeveloped. Moreover, a hard-nosed realist might take Stone’s work as a classic example of how international institutions do not work because states with “size and influence” disregard them altogether.
Conclusions and Future Research Implications
Randall Stone’s work on post-Communist transitions in Eastern Europe is an important contribution not only to the field of IPE but also to the more narrow field of Slavic studies in general. His two most important contributions were showing how international institutions like the IMF intersect into domestic politics, as well as showing how focusing on just one aspect of the IMF program – inflationary policies – can benefit states that adopt those policies. But Stone is not without his flaws. One, Stone’s cases might be exceptions rather than the rule, as James Vreeland and others have tried to point out. Therefore Stone’s work is not very generalizable. Second, although Stone attempts to connect the domestic to the international, he does not quite pull it off. Instead, it seems as though he adopts a bit a of a kitchen-sink approach by casting in all variables, minor or not. This reduces the clarity and precision of his work. Lastly, Stone underdevelops this idea of “influence,” “size” and “power” in his work. It is admirable that he did not get mired down in the same old debates about realism and neoliberal institutionalism; however, there was some contradictions about what mattered most: power or institutions. He seemed to want to have it both ways.
A future book might apply Stone’s framework to more cases. Does the IMF do a good job in small states where the IMF stays committed to seeing that targets are met and programs are accomplished? Also, a future book might avoid post-Communist transitions, which in many ways were blank slates for IMF bureaucrats. In more established regimes would the results be different? A final suggestion for a future research agenda would be to do away with the macroeconomic indicators for growth and instead analyze the informal sector and the rise of business entrepreneurship in each country. The tendency in IPE is to focus on economic growth indices alone and then determine success or failure. The IMF is also certainly party to this. With a more microlevel analysis we might escape some of the same old arguments – whether the IMF is good or bad for example – and instead focus more on domestic actors in the world economy. This could open up future avenues for research as well.

[1] Stone lays out over nine different hypotheses that are tested by his formal model. I have narrowed these hypotheses to only three, which gives the reader a general overview of Stone’s work without laboring over every detail of every hypothesis. To analyze every hypothesis would take up more time and space than this paper would allow.
[2] As I reveal later in the essay I think he unfortunately underdevelops the connections between the two. It is a nice start but ultimately limited in some ways.

Does Globalization Undermine the State?

2006-03-19T11:36:00.000-08:00

Have Europeanization and globalization eroded the autonomy of the state as a political unit?

Introduction

The political unit known as the state has received increased attention in political
science by scholars such as Skocpol, Tilly, Ertman and Pierson. This “statist” movement sought to correct the atomistic and agent-centered methodology of rational-choice that had come to dominate the discipline, and instead explored the structural influence of the state on politics. Thus when faced with the question of whether or not the process of Europeanization erodes the autonomy of the state, it is instructive to understand the state – institutionally and functionally. I will situate the literature on states (Weber, Tilly and Ertman) into the ongoing debate about Europeanization and globalization in comparative politics. Although Europeanization and globalization are two analytically distinct ideas, both are linked to the rise of capitalist markets, capital mobility, the fight against Communism, and changes that affect national policies and practices (Schmidt 2002: 41). This essay will address how state autonomy might be eroded in light of these pressures, but it also highlights how states retain their autonomy when the pressures to integrate seem overwhelming.

Weber, Tilly, Ertman and State Autonomy

Max Weber’s definition of the state has generally been the basis for which all scholars have explored the issue. For Weber, the state “is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” (Weber 1983: 111). Weber’s definition describes several institutional features of the state: differentiation of personnel, centrality of political relations, territorial demarcation and authoritative rule-making supported by violence (Mann 1986: 112). Although nation-states in Europe have retained most of these aspects, two in particular come into question with respect to Europeanization and globalization processes.

While the state retains its differentiation, the rise of Europeanization does put into question the centrality of political relations. For example, the neo-functionalist school has argued that integration involves processes that go beyond the state and occur between trade unions, political parties and interest groups (Verdun 2000: 28). As well, political decisions potentially reside in Brussels, undercutting the authority of member-states in the EU, NATO, or the monetary union. On the other hand, intergovernmentalists like Andrew Moravscik have claimed that the state still has “national preferences” and these state preferences precede European integration (Moravscik 1998: 242). National governments do not have to “swallow policies” they dislike and generally can integrate on their own terms (Hooghe and Marks 1998: 284). Secondly, Weber’s claim that state rule-making is backed up a monopoly on the use of violence comes into question. Although Western Europe for sometime has relied on a collaborative institution (NATO) for security, the inability of European states to cope with their territorial holdings could place state autonomy in the balance. Moreover, situations concerning migration, immigration, and a common defense program could potentially erode state autonomy.

Charles Tilly accepts Weber’s “contestable definition” of the state in light of the European state-making experience (Tilly 1990: 70). Tilly is less concerned, however, with describing the aspects of the state and more interested in how states in modern Europe formed. For Tilly, states were formed by making war against outside rivals, protecting the domestic population from those rivals and extracting resources from that population in order to finance wars and statemaking (Tilly 1990: 97). Each process reinforced the next, in some ways resembling what Tilly would call a mafia-like outfit – coercing someone to pay for their own protection.

Tilly’s piece is informative because it highlights how one political unit came to replace another. In this case, how states replaced empires, religious communities and city-states to become the exclusive political unit. A peculiarly European invention, the nation-state has been accepted by almost the entire world (Tilly 1990: 181). But it is not inconceivable that states could one day be replaced, and at the least, be undermined by large, amorphous international regimes like the European Union. The processes of Europeanization and globalization that potentially erode state autonomy have been anti-Tilly in some respects. Europeanization and globalization transform previous notions of territory by emphasizing monetary unions and free flow of capital goods rather than protecting boundaries by making war. In the case of the EU, Europeanization originated as a way to prevent war and encourage cooperation between the states (Story and Walter 1997: 4-5). But in other respects, the EU has used tactics similar to Tilly’s account to achieve consolidation. Prior to the Maastrict signing, there was a high degree of coercion and a specified set of rules to abide by among member-states in order to jibe with EU edicts (Schmidt 2002: 87). By allowing the coercion of Europeanization states could take a back seat to other political units.

Lastly, Thomas Ertman also examines state building in Europe but introduces a different perspective from Tilly that examines variation among different states. For Ertman, the role of representative institutions and local government play a large role in the statemaking process. Moreover, previous scholars sloppily mislabeled regime types, linking all absolutist regimes to bureaucracies and all constitutional regimes to parliamentary systems (Ertman 1997: 4-5). In fact, as Britain showed, there are bureaucratic constitutional regimes and in the case of Poland and Hungary, patrimonial constitutional regime types (Ertman 1997: 34).

Ertman’s argument is fascinating because it asks “statist” scholars to take seriously how states are different from one another in their domestic policies. Thus, the presence of Europeanization and globalization could very well reduce the autonomy of some states but have no effect on others. Vivien Schmidt notes the “varieties of capitalism” with a comparative glance at Britain, France and Germany. She argues that although there have been tremendous pressures on the countries by the processes of Europeanization and globalization this has not led to “convergence” into one type of capitalist system (Schmidt 2002: 5). Britain’s liberal market capitalism, France’s state capitalism and Germany’s corporatist capitalism produced different responses to the pressures of Europeanization. Britain adopted a policy of intertia, France a policy of transformation and Germany a policy of absorption (Schmidt 2002: 89). States retained the ability to decide themselves not to “swallow” pressures they deemed unsuitable.

Conclusion

This essay has tried to express the potential that Europeanization and globalization could have on eroding state autonomy. In doing so, I examined several works regarding the state and state formation. In some cases, the rise of Europeanization and globalization threaten the autonomy of states by undermining territorial boundaries, placing authority in the hands of non-state actors, and using coercion to keep states under the rubric of the European Union. But although erosion is possible, scholars like Moravscik and Schmidt cast some caution on this perspective by showing the influence of national governments. Each case proves the powerful impact Europeanization and globalization have on states

Notes on International Political Economy

2006-03-17T14:12:00.000-08:00

Gilpin, Robert “Global Political Economy.” 2001

“Since the end of the Cold War, globalization has been the most outstanding characteristic of international economic affairs and, to a considerable extent, of political affairs as well” (3).

“This is still a world where national policies and domestic economies are the principal determinants of economic affairs” (3).

“…In the 1980s, the overseas expansion of multinational firms integrated national economies more and more completely” (4).

“…This book takes a consciously realist or state-centric approach to analysis of the international economy. Differing from many contemporary writing on the global economy, I believe that the nation-state remains the dominant actor in both domestic and international economic affairs” (4).

Reasons for expansion of global trade:

a) decline of trade barriers after trade negotiations

b) deregulation and privatization opened up national economies

c) significance of increased investment (mutual funds up)

d) increasing importance of MNCs

Some argue: “The collapse of the Soviet command economy, the failure of the Third World’s import-substitution strategy, and the outstanding success of the American economy in the 1990s have encouraged acceptance of unrestricted markets as the solution to the economic ills of modern society” (8).

Critics argue: “The high costs of economic globalization including growing income inequality both among and within nations, high chronic levels of unemployment in western Europe and elsewhere, and most of all environmental degradation…” (9).

Gilpin argues: “The idea that globalization is responsible for most of the world’s economic, political, and other problems is either patently false or greatly exaggerated” (9).

“Regionalization is not an alternative to the nation-state, as some believe, but rather embodies the efforts of individual states to collectively promote their vital national interests and ambitions” (11).

“Historical experience indicates that the purpose of economic activities is ultimately determined not only by markets and the prescriptions of technical economics, but also by the norms, values and interests of the social and political systems in which economic activities are embedded” (12).

“My own normative commitment is to economic liberalism; that is, to free trade and minimal barriers to the flow of goods, services and capital across national boundaries, although, under certain restricted circumstances, nationalist policies such as trade protection and industrial policy may be justified’ (14).

“The point, however…is that realism and nationalism are not identical. Nationalists may be realists, but realists are not necessarily nationalists” (15).

Global political economy: “the interaction of the market and such powerful actors as states, multinational firms and international organizations” (17).

“It is certainly true that economics and technological forces are profoundly reshaping international affairs and influencing the behavior of states. However, in a highly integrated global economy, states continue to use their power to implement policies to channel economic forces in ways favorable to their own national interests and the interests of their citizenry” (21).

Polanyi, Karl. “The Great Transformation.” 1944.

“Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness” (3).

“The Nineteenth century produced a phenomenon unheard of in the annals of Western civilization, namely a hundred years peace – from 1814-1914” (5).

“The mere growth of wealth and population, or their decrease, is bound to set political forces in motion; and the external balance will invariably reflect the internal. Yet even an organized balance of power system can insure peace without the permanent threat of war only if it is able to act upon these internal factors directly and prevent imbalance in statu nascendi” (9).

“Yet the secret of the successful maintenance of general peace lay undoubtedly in the position, organization and techniques of international finance” (10).

The Rothschilds (wealthy capitalists): “They were anything but pacifists; they had made their fortune in the financing of wars; they were impervious to moral consideration; they had no objection to any number of minor, short or localized wars. But their businesses would be impaired if a general war between the great Powers should interfere with the monetary foundations of the system” (11).

“Haute finance, an institution sui generis, peculiar to the last third of the nineteenth and the first third of the twentieth century functioned as the main link between the political and the economic organization of the world” (10).

Haute finance: no boundaries, not at all territorial

“Yet to the degree to which …it was actually independent of any single government, it was bale to serve a new interest , that had no specific organ of its own, for the service of which no other institution happened to be available, and which was nevertheless of vital importance to the community, namely peace’ (12).

“The chief danger, however, which stalked the capitalists of Europe was not technological or financial failure, but war – not a war between small countries (which could be easily isolated) nor war upon a small country by a Great Power (a frequent and often convenient occurrence), but a general war between the Great Powers themselves” (15).

“Trade was now dependent upon an international monetary system which could not function in general war. It demanded peace…” (16).

“The breakdown of the international gold standard was the invisible link between the disintegration of world economy which started at the turn of the century and the transformation of a whole civilization in the thirties” (21).

“The dissolution of the system of world economy which had been in progress since 1900 was responsible for the political tension that exploded in 1914; the outcome of the war and the treaties had eased the tension superficially by eliminating German competition while aggravating the causes of tension and thereby vastly increasing the political and economic impediments to peace” (22).

“The only viable solution of the burning problem of peace – balance of power – was completely out of reach” (22). All losers were disarmed, by the way.

“First among the statesmen of the time, Woodrow Wilson appears to have realized the interdependence of peace and trade” (23). JE – If you remember, EH Carr was very harsh towards Wilson in his The Twenty Year’s Crisis.

Tenets of breakdown:

currency collapses is Russia, Germany and Austria
final fall of the gold standard
liberal state transformed into totalitarian dictatorships

“But whatever the scenery and the temperature of the final episodes, the long-run factors which wrecked that civilization should be studied in the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, England” (32).

Economic liberalism misread the history of the Industrial Revolution because it insisted on judging social events from the economic viewpoint” (35).

Smith, Adam “Wealth of Nations” 1776.

“The greatest improvements in the productive powers of labor, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labor” (161).

On pinmaking and the division of labor: “But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades” (161).

“The most opulent nations, indeed, generally excel all their neighbors in agriculture as well as in manufactures; but they are commonly more distinguished by their superiority in the latter than in the former” (163).

The advantage is due to three circumstances: a) improved dexterity; b) saving of time; and c) application of machinery invented by workmen, or by machine-makers and philosophers (164).

“It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labor, which occasions, in a well-grounded society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people” (166).

“The division of labor arises from a propensity in human nature to exchange. This propensity is found in man alone” (168).

“It is encouraged by self-interest and leads to division of labor, thus giving rise to differences of talent more important than the natural differences, and rendering those differences useful” (169).

“Division of labor is limited by the extent of the power of exchanging. Various trades cannot be carried on except in towns” (171).

“The great commerce is that between town and country, which is obviously advantageous to both” (248).

“The cultivation of the country must be prior to the increase of the town, though the town may sometimes be distant from the country from which it derives substances” (249).

“This order of things is favored by the natural preference of man for agriculture” (249).

Ruggie, John G. “Reconstituting the Global Public Domain – Issues, Actors and Practices” 2004.

“My aim in this article is to provide a more comprehensive set of lenses, drawing attention to the beginnings of a fundamental reconstitution of the global public domain—away from one that equated the ‘public’ in international politics with states and the interstate realm to one in which the very system of states is becoming embedded in a broader, albeit still thin and institutionalized arena…” (500).

“Not surprisingly, interest in the political significance of TNCs stayed alive and more recently has enjoyed a minor renaissance in the international relations literature inspired by the so-called critical theory” (502).

“Thus, Wapner’s notion of a ‘world civic politics’ associated with civil society organizations and Cutler’s concept of ‘private governance’ associated with transnational corporations are two of the building blocks of what I call the new global public domain…” (504).

“Although the new global public domain is hardly unchallenged, its emergence, like globalization, to which it is closely linked, is part of a broadening and deepening sociality at the global level” (504).

“States constituted the international ‘public’ – as in public international law and public international unions, the name given to 19^th century international organizations” (505).

“The spatial map characteristic of the traditional international political world has undergone a major transformation over the past generation. Above all there has been a shift in the locus of issues on the global governance agenda along a set of axes depicting ‘external’, ‘internal’ and ‘universal’ dimensions of policy spaces” (507).

“A similar blurring of the two spheres has occurred as a result of the trade regime expanding horizontally to encompass entirely new dimensions that previously has not been associated with trade at all” (508).

“In short the spatial configuration of the global governance agenda has become far more open, fluid and tightly coupled across states than the baseline picture represented by figure 1” (509).

“[Non-state actors] include transnational corporations and financial institutions; civil society organizations; faith-based movements; private military contractors that in some respects resemble the mercenaries of yore; and such illicit entities as transnational terrorist and criminal networks’ (509-510).

“The rights of transnational corporations have expanded manifold over the past quarter century as a result of multilateral trade agreements, bilateral investment pacts, and domestic liberalization – often pushed by external actors, including states and the international financial institutions” (510).

“But the iconic case of civil society actions to redress imbalances in global rulemaking remains its role in defeating the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, strongly supported by TNCs and international business associations” (511).

“CSOs, in turn, have pushed for companies and industries to adopt verifiable measures to reduce the incidences of such behavior” (512).

“A third and very different rationale for targeting the transnational corporate sector has emerged in the past few years – the sheer fact that it has global reach and capacity, and that it is capable of making and implementing decisions at a pace that neither governments nor international agencies can match” (514).

“There is a certain moral and intellectual obtuseness to a position that considers people’s welfare to be an uninteresting concern for international relations theorizing, particularly at a time when the individual enjoys more extensive recognition in international politics and law than ever before” (519).

“Political leaders and international relations theorists alike ignore the emergence of the new global public domain at their peril. Without it, one cannot fully understand recent developments in human rights, environmental policy, global public health, changing social expectations regarding the role of corporations, and the normative context for considerations of the use of force – indeed, according to some scholars, even the fate of the Soviet Union and its empire” (521).

“But the resulting picture would show the progressive arrival on the global stage of a distinctive public domain – thinner, more partial, and more fragile than its domestic counterpart, to be sure, but existing and taking root apart from the sphere of interstate relations.

Rodrik, Dani. “Governance of Economic Globalization.” 2000.

“If it was the nineteenth century that unleashed capitalism in its full force, it was the twentieth century that tamed it and boosted its productivity by supplying the institutional underpinnings of market-based economics” (347).

“These institutional innovations greatly enhanced the efficiency and legitimacy of markets and in turn drew strength from the material advancement unleashed by market forces” (347).

“But globalization also undercuts the ability of nation-states to erect regulatory and redistributive institutions and does so at the same time that it increases the premium on solid national institutions” (348).

“The dilemma that we face as we enter the twenty-first century is that markets are striving to become global while the institutions needed to support them remain by and large national” (348).

“National borders seem to have a significantly depressing effect on commerce, even in the absence of formal tariff or nontariff barriers, linguistic or cultural differences, uncertainty about the exchange rate, and other economic obstacles” (349).

“The most obvious way we can attain such a world is by institutin federalism on a global scale. Global federalism would align jurisdictions with the market, and remove the “border” effects” (353).

“National governments would not necessarily disappear, but their powers would be severely circumscribed by supranational legislative, executive, and judicial authorities” (353).

“The price of maintaining national jurisdictional sovereignty while markets become international restricting politics to a narrow domain” (354).

“Hence for cooperation to be sustainable, the short-term benefits of defection must be small, the discount rate low, and the future benefits from cooperation high” (357).

“As long as nation-states remain at the core of the international system, considerations of sustainability and diversity require that the rule allow selective disengagement from multilateral disciplines” ( 361).

“Global federalism would not mean that the United Nations turns itself into a world government. What we would be likely to get is a combination of traditional forms of governance (an elected global legislative body)with regulatory institutions spanning multiple jurisdictions and accountable to perhaps multiple types of representative bodies’ (363).

What Should We Expect IR theory to do?

2006-03-17T13:27:00.000-08:00

What Should We Expect?: Theorizing Towards a Normative IR Theory

Introduction

I might be what E.H. Carr would have called a “utopian”. Not because I think Wilsonian democracy should be spread through all the land, but because I do believe there should be normative content to international politics and international relations theory. For Carr, the utopians suffered from “one-sided intellectualism,” and ignored the role of power in international affairs (Carr 2001: 29). Since, the study of international politics has dealt with power in a number ways through realist, neorealist and neoliberal critiques. Moreover, most IR theory has dealt with the role of states in international politics, all the while wondering “what to do” about such and such state rather than “what should we know” about this state (Hoffman 1977: 240). This set-up the discipline as seemingly positivistic – describing what the world is like – and not normative, or suggesting what the world should look like. In this essay I argue that IR theory is lacking in theories and models that are normative, and that by theorizing more on the “ought” questions the discipline would be helped greatly. Until IR does this, we cannot expect the academy to influence in a positive way both practitioners and citizens.

Positivism, Science and International Relations Theory

Much of IR theory – and political science in general -- sought more scientific approaches to understanding politics and hoped to break with commonsensical and subjectivist understandings of political phenomena (Ashley 1986: 257). Carr started this tradition in IR with his Twenty Year’s Crisis and the first renderings of what is known today as realist theory. Utopianism was based on subjectivism and ethical standards that were bound to change, whereas realism grew out of Marx’s structural, determinist, and scientific influence (Carr 2001: 65). Hans Morgenthau reaffirmed Carr’s assessment of realism by arguing that politics was governed by undisputable “objective laws,” that were “supported by evidence and illuminated by reason” (Morgenthau 1993: 4). These objective laws forced realists to argue that states or systems always operated in this way or that. Carr thought that all states sought to maximize their power. Morgenthau’s contribution – interest defined as power – analyzed how all state decisions involve the possible affects to state power. Kenneth Waltz also proffered up a seeming objective law: that states acted in accord with their security interests in an anarchic world order (Waltz 1979).

Realists and neorealists are not the only ones who base their theorizing on scientific positivism and sought to explain what states would do in a given situation. Neoliberal institutionalists like Robert Keohane believe that states not only seek to protect their power and own interests, but do so through cooperation “after hegemony.” Because all states are rational-egoists and seek to promote their self-interest, cooperation works because states can simultaneously help one another and maintain their own interests (Keohane 1984: 50). Andrew Moravscik’s “liberal theory” explained how domestic and societal pressures influenced the policies of states within an international community, noting that state preferences matter (Moravscik 1997: 516-518). And while Moravscik’s liberal theory broke away from the tidal wave of IR theory that simply examined states apart from domestic politics, he nevertheless makes clear to distinguish himself from the often ridiculed “idealists” and “moralists” (Moravscik 1997: 514).

IR theory’s attempts to be positivistic and scientific might be tolerable if these same scholars did not engage in the same activities they ridiculed about the utopians. Carr was deemed the “Red professor,” by a columnist at the London Times for proposing an alliance between Russia, the United States and Great Britain following the war. (Cox 2001: lxxii). His own predisposition to critical theory and Marx influenced his notions of power and highlighted his belief that economics and politics were inextricably intertwined (Carr 2001: 109). Morgenthau, while hoping to study the objective laws of politics, avowed his normative complaints about the “mistaken attitudes” in American foreign policy (Morgenthau 1993: 7). And a host of IR theorists (Keohane and Waltz included) joined forces to form Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy, a nonpartisan foreign affairs group that spoke out against the Iraq war.[1] Although the text of their letter indicated concerns over security and costs – typical of the dominating camps of IR thought – their normative concern about what the Bush administration ought to do superseded their desire to be scientific and objective in this situation. Social scientists have every right to be political and normative as anyone else in society, but why do they refuse to pursue this objective in academic writings, settling for what is and rather than what ought to be?

Movements like postmodernism, historical sociology and social constructivism have fought somewhat to break away from the dominance of the positivists. Poststructuralists like Richard Ashley questioned the preeminence of the state in international relations and tried to show the problematic nature of issues like sovereignty within the modernist framework (Ashley 1986: 269). Historical institutionalists like Anthony Giddens beg IR theorists to understand the origins (or history) of the nation-state with respect to capitalism and industrialism and its connection to the West (Giddens 1987: 34). Lastly, the social constructivist movement identified most prominently with Alexander Wendt questioned the causation and materialism and asserted what he called the “constitutive relationships” in international politics (Wendt 2003: 25). While these movements have been good at questioning the assumptions of the dominant schools of thought, in many ways they have done little in replacing these theories with normative ones. As Wendt said about Social Theory of International Politics: “It is not a normative view of how the world ought to be, but a scientific view of how the world is” (Wendt 2003: 24).

Reason For Hope?

There might be some reason for hope that normative IR theory is making perhaps a comeback, albeit in a very different way than before. Those known as critical constructivists have suggested that scholarly work always has normative implications. Any good scholar that knows the intricacies of international politics, so argue critical constructivists, also have the knowledge to change or alter the system for the better (Katzenstein, Keohane and Krasner 1998: 677). Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink have paid particular attention to transnational advocacy networks and how they affect international politics in terms of human rights, civil society and environmental issues. They admit that scholarship on such topics as human rights has been under-theorized and rarely discussed because IR has ignored issues of normative importance (Keck and Sikkink 1998: 5). Harkening back to Stanley Hoffman’s concerns about what “we should we know” rather than what are “we to do,” Keck and Sikking stress the importance of understanding the international community and the norms that govern it. By doing so, one can more easily accomplish whatever goals an advocacy network chooses to adopt.

Conclusion

Despite the influence of the critical constructivists and scholars like Keck and Sikking, IR theory still woefully lacks a grand normative theory. This is particularly troubling to students and practitioners who might look to the academy for a fresh perspective on politics. And citizens, who generally orient their lives around a number of normative issues, could be helped greatly by theories with normative content. Instead, what they get is a description of what states do and why states will always do this. As I have demonstrated, it is not that IR lacks scholars with a normative backbone. It is quite the contrary. On the other hand, very few scholarly works deal explicitly with ought questions, which I maintain are the most important to know about. While realism, neorealism, and neoliberalism all have their place in IR there is no reason to exclude debate among the disparaged “idealists,” “moralists,” or “utopians”. Scholars must take seriously these claims and not discount them as “political window dressing” that deserves no place in IR theory. That is what IR theory should do for us.

[1] You can find this group at www.sensibleforeignpolicy.net

Short Review of Neoliberal Institutionalism

2006-03-17T13:23:00.000-08:00

Neoliberal Institutionalism: A Summary and Critique

Introduction

In the study of international relations, the concept of power has been given preeminence. E.H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Waltz argued that power was center stage in any discussion of state interaction. The authors I discuss — Robert Keohane, Stephen Krasner, and John Ruggie — are no different. However, these authors situate their discussion of power within the rubric of neoliberal institutionalism. In particular, they explore the idea of cooperation “after hegemony,” whereas powerful states seek cooperation as a means to attain and restore power. Notwithstanding nuance, each author also argues that states and regimes follow rational-egoist logic, and are not guided by some moral compass. This paper fleshes out in more detail the institutional (or regime) framework, and demonstrates how this approach was an improvement over previous “ideal-types,” and Realist notions. A second concern of this paper, however, is to analyze the shortfalls of the rational-egoist logic Keohane, Krasner and Ruggie employ. Although Keohane and Krasner discussed the concept of empathetic interdependence and the problem of lags at length, I suggest that these issues might undermine the rational-egoist logic as a whole.

Cooperation and Regimes: Keohane, Krasner and Ruggie

Most of the arguments about neoliberal institutions are centered on Robert Keohane’s seminal work, After Hegemony. For Keohane, he wondered about a world of cooperation “after hegemony,” where there were no hegemonic superpowers, and the international environment consisted of many regimes and institutions (Keohane 1984: 49). He surmised that although cooperation was hard, and could easily lead to situations of discord,[1] regimes and institutions could benefit states by incorporating cooperative strategies. They also had their own conception of what cooperation and regimes were. By cooperation, they meant a process whereby states, “adjust their behavior to the actual or anticipated preferences of others, through a process of policy coordination” (Keohane 1984: 51). By regimes, they meant “a set of mutual expectations, rules and regulations, plans, organizational energies and financial commitments, which have been accepted by a group of states” (Ruggie as cited in Keohane 1984: 57). At first glance, this might appear to be what E.H. Carr would call “utopian” thinking, but neoliberal institutionalists are not utopian in the slightest. Rather, they argue that states pursue such policies because it is usually in the best interest of all involved to do so.[2]

For Keohane, Krasner and Ruggie, they all are attracted to rational-egoist logic, or what some might call rational choice institutionalism. Rational choice institutionalists accept that actors, in this case states, seek to do what is in their best interest. But unlike overly atomistic conceptions of rational choice logic, rational choice institutionalists argue that actors’ choices are limited by a number of factors: partial information, bounded rationality, partial knowledge and institutional constraints being just four (Shepsle 1989: 138-139). In their discussion of rational-egoism, the authors made clear their distrust of these “atomistic” notions. As Keohane acknowledged, one cannot observe state behavior as “a set of discrete, isolated acts,” but that they must be understood in a larger “pattern of cooperation” (Keohane 1984: 56). And as Ruggie pointed out, this pattern of cooperation cannot be understood in some “generic sense” but in a sense where institutions are taken seriously (Ruggie 1992: 597).[3] Moreover, rational-egoism is not based on short-term calculations or temporary arrangements. Regimes are seen as enduring creatures, not based on one-shot ventures among states (Krasner 1982: 186-167). The rational-egoist logic they employ also lodges a critique of the behavioral malady that plagued political science in the 1960s and 1970s. Whereas some international relations theorists wished to measure power based on quality of weapons, or wealth, these authors thought this was a behaviorist mistake (Keohane 1984: 20).[4] Put simply, observing individual action tells one nothing of the system at large.

Although the neoliberal institutional framework suggests that power is important, and that states do things in their self-interest, one should not necessarily confuse the Realist and neorealist camp with neoliberalism. For E.H. Carr, the process of cooperation was doomed to failure, and his pessimism about the League of Nations was prevalent in his, Twenty Years’ Crisis (Carr 1939: 52). In Kenneth Waltz’s, Theory of International Politics, Waltz argued that in an anarchic world order, bipolarity stabilizes, or balances power, and that cooperation was equally difficult (Waltz 1979: 171). In fact, multiple states can threaten stability. Waltz also makes the faulty distinction that wealth and power can be separated, a claim neoliberals think is bunk. But the main point of contention between neoliberals and realists is the concept of power with respect to an institutional set-up. “What distinguishes my argument from structural realism,” Keohane writes, “is my emphasis on the effects of international institutions and practices of state behavior.” Like political theorist Jeffrey Isaak suggested, Waltz might have made a “first face” of power mistake, observing what states did, and not necessarily how power existed within a systemic, international environment.[5] For Keohane and others, their point-of-departure was at the systemic level (Keohane 1984: 26).

A Critique of Rational-Egoism: Some Methodological Issues

Thus far, the paper has been kind to the neoliberal institutional model in both its methodology and substance. However, two issues in particular seem to question the logic of rational-egoism with regard to regimes and institutions. First, is Keohane’s example of empathetic interdependence in international politics. Second, is Krasner’s discussion of lags within regimes. By empathetic interdependence, Keohane calls attention to situations where states do things that seemingly contradict the notion of self-interest and rational-egoist thinking. For example, although some instances of governmental aid can account for self-interest, some aid and programs given to others defies self-interest (Keohane 1984: 123). With the example of lags, Krasner notes that often times power and interest might change, but regimes do not (Krasner 1982: 501). In this case, previous customs and rules prevail, because that’s the “way the did it in the past” (Krasner 1982: 502).

Empathy and the problem of lags would seem to spell trouble for the rational-egoist methodology, but Keohane and Krasner brush away these critiques. With regards to empathy, Keohane has asserted that reputation plays a role in state response. Although some rules would have no seeming validity, to violate them could result in severe reputational repercussions. Lastly, as Keohane is quick to point out, what appears to be empathy might actually be rational, self-interest (Keohane 1984: 132). Krasner, although troubled at how lags could destabilize regimes, believes that lags ultimately occur infrequently, and rarely occur at such duration to render regimes meaningless (Krasner 1982: 501). Of course, if regimes act empathetically too often, and lags occur too much, Keohane and Krasner have serious problems with their methodology. Take for instance the example provided by John Meyer and Brian Rowan.

While Meyer and Rowan are best known for their work in organizational theory, their theory about “institutionalized myths” might apply in the cases of empathy and lags. Meyer and Rowan argue that institutions or regimes have formal rules, customs and norms, but rarely are these rules what they appear to be. Instead, although an organization might have some sort of formal blueprint for what ought to happen, rarely does this blueprint match onto the inner-workings of the organization. This mismatch creates “gaps” in the reality of institutional goings-on. The ultimate lesson one can learn from Meyer and Rowan is this — the institution and what it does becomes mythological (Meyer and Rowan 1982: 60). For example, one perceives that hospitals or schools are good things without ever investigating what it is hospitals or schools really do (Meyer and Rowan 1982: 54). Moreover, one might support giving aid to these institutions based on these perceptions.

Meyer and Rowan present Keohane and Krasner with an interesting dilemma. If rational-egoists make decisions based on institutionalized myths, how rational are their decisions? Keohane, as he did throughout After Hegemony, might at some level of abstraction, be able to make a rational-egoist claim based on institutionalized myth. But I do not think it is that simple. For example, regimes giving international aid might appear to have self-interested goals at hand — advancing capitalism or protecting natural resources — but under closer investigation, it is not always clear why regimes might give aid, especially when giving aid could have disastrous results.[6] As Norman Angell explained some eighty years ago, attempts at global economic power fail more than work (Angell 1933: 74). Second, in a world of bounded rationality, the myths could become “shortcuts” on how one should act. For Krasner, institutional myths might create a different type of problem. Krasner argued that lags had the potential to hurt regimes and their durability for cooperation. But for Meyer and Rowan, myths actually reinforce regimes and institutions. The more we perceive certain actions to be good, like giving aid, and others to be bad, like not giving aid, institutions endure. These conflicts between rules and norms that Krasner was so worried about thus mean very little in the end.

The extent to which regimes act on myths would be hard to detect. For one, no regime would admit they acted so irrationally. But secondly, it would be hard to imagine programs of cooperation enduring without respect to shared norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and organizational plans at some point in the mutually beneficial relationship. While I am not naïve enough to think that morality is run amok in the affairs of regimes, events happen that defy rational-egoist logic. Institutionalized myths might fill these gaps.

Conclusion

The neoliberal institutional model gave IR theorists another lens through which to examine politics. While it agrees with some tenants of the realist and neorealist camp — that power is important and actors do things in their own interest — they raise a larger question about how, although infrequent, cooperation happens in the world. As well, these IR theorists argue that actor’s choices are also constrained by a larger international system. Through partial information, partial knowledge, bounded rationality, and other institutional constraints, the policy of cooperation is difficult, but possible. From their rational-egoist logic, however, flowed two concerns: the situation of empathetic interdependence and the problem of lags. I suggest that these two concerns might undermine the rational-egoist method that regimes employ to achieve cooperation. Taking a page from Meyer and Rowan, I argue that regimes might actually engage in a process of “institutionalized myths,” whereby they make decisions based on their perceptions of the international world. Rarely do these assumptions match on to the blueprint of reality. Nonetheless, neoliberal institutionalism gives students and scholars a more qualified analysis of age-old international relations problems. For this they should be complemented.

[1] Discord comes about when actors do not “adjust their policies to…other’s objectives (Keohane 52).

[2] Keohane and Krasner are quick to point out that this is not Adam Smith’s laissez-faire logic at work, where actors pursue self-interest for the sake of the common good. As Keohane notes: “The argument here for the importance of international regimes does not depend on smuggling in assumptions about altruism and irrationality” (29).

[3] Ruggie was especially concerned with the rise of multilateralism after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

[4] Behaviorism, as Shepsle noted, used “precise observation, counting and measuring where possible,” to solve political questions (See Shepsle, 1989).

[5] By “first face” argument, I am referring to Robert Dahl’s conception of power put forth in (1961) Who Governs? Isaak sought to correct this “behaviorist” tendency by looking at the “structure” of power relationships.

[6] This is possibly the case in Rwanda, where the IMF and the world ignored the ethnic tensions between Hutu and Tutsi in the 1990s.

Some Thoughts on Poststructuralism in IR Theory

2006-03-17T13:17:00.000-08:00

Poststructuralism in IR: an Assessment and Critique

Introduction

Much of international relations theory is centered on debates of realism and liberalism and its many variants. These theories explained in a parsimonious way what appeared to be the recurring patterns of international politics; for example, power, security or cooperation. But some IR theorists thought these scholars were trapped in modernist and structuralist logic that “treat[ed] the given order as the natural order” (Ashley 1986: 259). Scholars that lodged these critiques were known by a number of titles: poststructuralists, postmodernists, or postpositivists. Although the poststructural movement did not replace the realist or liberal logic with a theory of its own, poststructuralists did hope to question many of the assumptions of both schools. In this paper, I will flesh out several of the poststructural concerns offered by Richard Ashley, James Der Derian and Daniel Campbell. Secondly, while the poststructural movement has some interesting insights into the discipline of IR, I argue that the movement does little more than just that. In particular Campbell’s conception of “us” and the “other” as a way to reaffirm domestic politics is particularly flawed — both methodologically and empirically. Lastly, I suggest that Andrew Moravcsik’s “liberal theory” better explains how domestic politics influences international relations.

A Summary of Poststructuralism

Poststructural logic arose as a response to the structural, or modernist, vein in various academic disciplines. The structural approach argued that various structures were paramount in the organization of society. By analyzing these structures one could develop a rather scientific approach to studying things – like politics, economics, sociology or psychology for instance – that generally appeared outside the scope of the scientific method. Coupled with modernism, a product of the Enlightenment and a belief in reasoned man over God, structuralists hoped to produce “objective, theoretical rendering[s], [that broke] radically with its predecessors’ allegedly commonsensical, subjectivist, atomistic, and empiricist understandings” (Ashley 1986: 257). This structuralism, so poststructuralists argue, has influenced in a detrimental way the critical debates in IR theory such as realism, neorealism, and liberalism. Poststructuralists hope to break out of this structural malady, and question its “statist, utilitarian, positivist and structuralist commitments” (Ashley 1986: 258).

Poststructural thought, like structuralism, has its roots in various academic disciplines. Sociologists Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault are two men that informed the poststructural debate during its inception. Derrida developed the notion of logocentrism. By logocentrism, Derrida meant a “practical orientation and a procedure that at once presupposes, invokes, and effects a normalizing practical expectation” (Ashley 1989: 261). Put simply, these logocentric views were previously accepted arrangements and rarely were these arrangements questioned or viewed as problematic. Moreover, logocentrism focuses of “logos” that create some sort of insider/outsider, or us vs. them, paradigm. Ashley utilizes Derrida’s logocentric formula on a number of dimensions. First, Ashley is concerned with the language of IR discourse and how some “logos” are privileged over others. In critiquing Kenneth Waltz’s Man, the State and War, Ashley suggests that Waltz privileges “rational man” or “irrational war” thus reaffirming the modern, structural obsession with an insider/outsider paradigm (Ashley 1989: 286). Secondly, Ashley is concerned with how concepts like the state, sovereignty, and war are rarely questioned as problematic in international politics (Ashley 1989: 302). If the state is the central unit of analysis in IR and yet it is rarely thoroughly examined, how accurate are the assumptions that realism and liberalism rest on?

Foucault’s discussion of “panopticism” also contributed to the growing literature in poststructural thought. Panopticism derives its origins from Jeremy Bentham’s discussion of the panopticon, “an annular structure with a tower in the center which contains — or may not contain — a guard to observe and through this observation indirectly, nonviolently control… [people’s] behavior” (Der Derian 1990: 304). Foucault was fascinated by this concept that he thought reaffirmed the differentiation of man as abnormal or normal, the civil or the uncivil. Der Derian asserted that panopticism occurred in international politics. While there was no “central watchtower,” there were great powers that normalized relations of law and conduct and railed against conduct or societies that disrupted these relations (Der Derian 1990: 304).[1]

This notion of “otherness” is central to Der Derian’s argument about the technological advances of international politics: simulation, surveillance and speed. He suggests that new technological advances reinforce ideas about “us” and “them,” and displace the “reality” that realists and liberals purport to know about (Der Derian 1990: 298). For example, computer military simulations create an alternative “reality” and “new space” where events of international politics happen (Der Derian 1990:301). The growth of surveillance techniques, Der Derian argues, shows the paranoia inherent in international politics of the “other” or of those “we” do not know (Der Derian 1990: 306). These technological advances also make time, rather than space, a factor international politics. Speed in international politics demonstrates that “space is no longer in geography — it’s in electronics” (Der Derian 1990:307). The electronic capabilities bring states closer to one another, and minimize the distance between territories.

Der Derian’s and Ashley’s discussion of “otherness” is critical to poststructural logic. But their conceptualization of “other” was utilized in large part by states as an international strategy. Campbell, on the other hand, thinks the us vs. them paradigm also works as a domestic strategy. States engage in international politics as a way to cultivate state identity and legitimize its role. As Campbell argues: “The constant articulation of danger through foreign policy is thus not a threat to a state’s identity of existence: it is its condition of possibility” (Campbell 1992: 13). Campbell pieces together a provocative narrative about the United States and their articulation of state identity. From cultural Puritanism, through battles with Native Americans, struggles with communism, and numerous foreign wars, the United States has continuously delineated the “insiders” and “outsiders” of the system and created a “well-established discursive economy of identity/difference” (Campbell 1992: 145). Although written before the September 11^th tragedy, Campbell argued that terrorism might be the new battle between “us” and “them” (Campbell 1992: 2).

The Limits of Poststructuralism

The most common criticism raised about the poststructuralist movement is: So what? The poststructural movement, while questioning many of the realist and liberal assumptions, does very little in the way of proposing a theory of their own. I think this critique is important but not the most salient. To reveal the cracks in IR theory is not necessarily a case of “armchair” quarterbacking on the part of the poststructuralists. These “cracks” in the logic reveal problems or lapses with the mainstream IR theories that IR scholars should take seriously. Der Derian does raise interesting insights about the “new” spaces in politics, and Ashley is right that notions of statehood and sovereignty might be problematic. Ultimately, however, poststructuralists do little in the way of providing solutions to the problems they raise. This does not mean creating some parsimonious theory like realism. What it does mean, however, is suggesting ways to break away from the problems they raise, or articulating in a more normative fashion how international politics ought to operate.

Campbell is an extreme version of what plagues the poststructural movement. In an almost polemical fashion, Campbell mocks every American attempt at national security as an instance of creating an insider/outsider paradigm. In doing so he provides virtually no theory for what should make up national security, and what exactly practitioners of international politics ought to do. Methodologically, Campbell assumes that citizens are seemingly “duped” into believing the scare tactics of foreign policy. In a top-down way, Campbell asserts that governments create dangerous threats, and the citizens believe them on almost all accounts. This “social construction” of danger is accomplished on a number of dimensions: loyalty oaths, the Pledge of Allegiance, or committees dedicated to “Americanism” (Campbell 1992: 144). This assertion of socially constructed danger obscures the fact that people are scared for very real reasons. Put simply: this is a dangerous world.[2]

The empirical evidence is also suspect. Although he correctly predicted terrorism as the new “threat,” he felt as though terrorism was once again something created by the state to reaffirm its identity. “…Terrorism is often cited as a major threat to national security,” Campbell wrote, “even though its occurrence within the United States in minimal” (Campbell 1992: 2). Given domestic and global events, the United States’ concern with terrorism seemed certainly legitimate, and not just a social construction. With respect to communism, Campbell similarly oversimplifies. While Campbell is right that the “Red Scare” and McCarthyism were scars on the American political tradition, citizens had every right to be concerned with communism. The Khrushchev Report (1956), which detailed the atrocities of the Stalin era, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's (1973) Gulag Archipelago, an exploration of Soviet labor camps, are just two examples that gave some a reason to be worried. Moreover, as David Horowitz has suggested, if communists were interested in overthrowing the state via nondemocratic means, the government should take action against them.[3]

Moravcsik, Domestic Politics, and IR theory

Although I disagree with most of Campbell’s assessment of international politics, I do agree that domestic politics is important in discussions of foreign policy. Take Moravscik’s “liberal” theory of international politics. Moravscik argues that realism and institutionalism has suffered theoretically because liberal theory “defines the conditions under which their assumptions hold” (Moravscik 1997: 516). These “conditions” are the impact of societal actors, representation of domestic interests by states, and how these states then operate in an international system (Moravscik 1997: 516-520). Unlike Campbell, Moravscik’s liberal theory is “bottom-up,” because “the demands of individuals and societal groups are treated as analytically prior to politics” (Moravscik 1997: 517). The state thus becomes a representative body of these societal actors, and these actors use the state to achieve their goals.

This is an improvement on Campbell, who thinks that the state determines the course of events prior to foreign policy. By denying the agency of the actors, Campbell can conveniently argue that the state does whatever it wants with the implicit consent of the populace. Moravscik’s model, on the other hand, gives actors a voice. The state’s response to terrorism, thus, was informed in part by the public’s desire for security. A major criticism of the Bush administration following September 11^th was their desire for people to buy goods as a way to “help out,” a poor growing economy. It was the citizens, not the state, that wanted to contribute to combat a threat they knew was real.[4]

Conclusion

In this paper I have tried to treat poststructural thought fairly, taking their arguments seriously, and trying to situate their concerns within the current debates in IR. Ashley recommends that we be more aware of “logocentric’ thought, and Der Derian argues that IR scholars should have some answer for the new “spaces” in international politics. Campbell suggests that IR should be aware of the identity/difference paradigm and the role of domestic politics in foreign policy. While the poststructural movement has some interesting things to add to the discipline, ultimately they provide no evidence on how to correct these seemingly glaring problems. Scholars like Campbell, moreover, are threatened by their own methodological and empirical problems. Drawing on the work of Moravscik, I argue that the liberal theory better describes the role of domestic society in IR. In time, poststructuralists might have more impact on the discipline. But until they address some of the questions raised in this essay – and those raised across the discipline -- poststructuralists for better or worse will continue to be a marginal segment in IR theory.

[1] Der Derian argued that the “anti-Christ Turk, the colonial native, the Soviet threat, and the international terrorist” were just a couple of examples.

[2] Although not scholarly in origin, President George W. Bush has been heavily criticized for “scaring” people about the dangers and threats of the world.

[3] See Horowitz’s Radical Son (1997)

[4] Certainly much has been made about Bush remarks like the “Axis of Evil,” and “You’re with us or against us,” which would seem to jibe with Campbell’s argument of identity/difference. But these remarks followed the public’s outcry against terrorism. Once terrorism does not resonate in the domestic realm, actors will then put pressures on the state to change its policies.

Comparative Politics: Essay on Ukrainian Nationalism

2006-03-17T13:13:00.000-08:00

Introduction

Nationalist sentiment in the past decade became prominent in the Yugoslavian wars, Rwandan genocide, Quebec separatism, and Chechnya rebellion. Trouble in these regions proved the profound impact nationalism has, and renewed emphasis on its study in political science. The meaning of the term nationalism and whether nations are primordial, imagined, constructed, or deconstructed has been at the forefront of scholarship for sometime. Other scholars of nationalism have debated the normative aspects of nationalism: whether clinging to national claims is good or bad for societies and states.[1] The purpose of this paper is to think more about the former concern – how nationalism arises and nations are sustained -- than the latter. Particularly I am concerned about how nationalism developed in modern-day Ukraine. The concepts of primodialism, instrumentalism, and social construction figure prominently in this discussion. Although some theorists have argued increasingly for post-modern, social-contructivist views and cynical instrumentalist conceptions, I suggest that primordialism – or the belief that nations are age-old – have merit in the Ukrainian case.

While hard primordialists are virtually non-existent, scholars like Anthony Smith and Robin Cohen have been staunch supporters of soft primordial positions and historian Timothy Snyder has been critical of the constructivist literature. Other social scientists such as Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson, John Anderson, Yuri Slezkine and Keith Darden have critiqued the primordial case, and championed other, more “modern” and “postmodern” views. Although these views often conflict with one another, they do posit an interesting parallel to the Smith, Cohen and Snyder positions. If this paper is a success, I hope to do two things. First, I explore various positions about nation-formation and nationalism held by the different authors and claim that soft primordial positions still have relevancy in the discipline. Secondly, I introduce several positions on Ukrainian nationalism, point out the limitations of modern and postmodern theories in explaining Ukraine, and support finally conclude that Snyder’s historical narrative best explains Ukraine.

Nationalism and the Nation Defined: The Dilemma

Imminent nationalism scholar Benedict Anderson noted that nations, nationalism, and nationalities “proved notoriously difficult to define, let alone analyse [sic]” (Anderson 1991: 3). Conflating the two terms to mean the same thing has confused many a discussion about nationalism and the nation. Of course, the nation and nationalism are two distinct, yet also interrelated, concepts. Put simply, nationalism is the act of promoting a particular nation. A nation, therefore, is the entity, real or imagined, that nationalists seek to promote. Nationalism is best summed-up by Anthony Smith, who argued that certain human populations forged an “ideological movement for the attainment and maintenance of autonomy, unity and identity,” of their actual or potential nation (Smith 1999: 37). Unfortunately, nationalism has also been characterized as feelings or emotions towards the state, a misnomer that suggests “nations” and “states” to be one in the same (Connor 1994: 40).[2] This is not a major concern of this paper, but something that scholars must contend with.

To define “nation” has been more contentious and ultimately the key source of disagreement among scholars. First, social scientists have debated the extent to which nations are real or invented. While Smith contends that nations are “real and powerful sociological phenomena,” Anderson and Hobsbawm, among others, have suggested that nations are “imagined” and “constructed.” (Anderson 1991, Gellner 1999, Smith 1999, Hobsbawm 1993). Secondly, the issue of time is of great concern. Gellner and other self-described modernists argue that the nation is a rather recent event, coming about in the 17^th and 18^th centuries (Gellner 1999: 32). Smith and Cohen suggest that the nation is much older, and not that modern. I will explore these critiques of the primordialist stance before proceeding to offer a defense of primordial interpretation.

Imagined or Real? The Trouble With the Nation

Contemporary scholarship has found many problems with primordial interpretation. Although many of these theorists disagree with one another, one thing is certain: the nation is an invention, a construction, or an imagined community.[3] Whichever the case, the nations are not “real” in the sense primordialists think, and certainly not old. One camp has taken the side of Anderson, who acknowledges that nations are “imagined communities,” created by print-capitalism and newspaper readership (Anderson 1991: 62). Newspapers printed “local” stories, and advertised goods in the “local” market. Through the process of communicating via the press, readers developed an imagined sense of their community.

Another view depicting the invented quality of nations is instrumentalism. Instrumentalists’ suggest that people create nations and promote nationalism to further their own ends. According to Darden, instrumentalists are often ordinary citizens that adopt certain national viewpoints to achieve their goals (Darden 2002: 6). Others have argued that it is elites – or those at the top – which seeks to manipulate and energize nationalist sentiment. Slobodan Milosevic is a prime example of instrumentalist logic. By rallying seemingly peaceful Serbs and Croats around national rhetoric, his goal of ethnic cleansing is easier accomplished.

Another version of the constructed view is that of Ernest Gellner. Gellner believed that the nation was a product of state-formation in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Unlike Anderson, Gellner does not believe that nations are simply “imagined communities.” He believes that nations are very real, but very recent (Gellner 1999: 32). Nations “as natural and God-given” is the imagined myth and to think about the nation as a “sleeping beauty” upon need of awakening is great folly (Gellner 1987: 49). For Gellner, the development of the state and the advancement of industrialization destroyed previous cultural, religious and ethnic ties. With this seeming anonymity of person, citizens sought recognition, protection and kinship within the boundaries of the state. “This is what automatically makes people into nationalists,” Gellner noted, “because if there is no congruence between the culture in which they are operating and the culture of the surrounding economic, political and educational bureaucracies, then they are in trouble” (Gellner 1999: 33). Thus, the simple lesson we can learn from Gellner’s story is that statehood invented the nation and nationalists.[4]

As acknowledged earlier, primordial notions of nationality have come under great attack. Most of these critiques were advanced against the “primordial ooze” position. Many nationalists themselves argued that nationality existed through bloodlines, and either one was “born into” the nation or not. Science and anthropology alone have discredited this often times racist and ethnocentric viewpoint about nationality. Soft primordial positions, however, still carry some currency in the debate. Soft primordialists agree that national bloodlines seem spurious and that at some level a degree of construction exists, but these primordialists also grant that ethnic and national bonds are very “real” and also very old. Smith argues that most nations, and their constructors, have a very hard time building nations and states without first a preexisting “ethnic core” (Smith 1987: 262). As he remarks: “The history-less are destiny-less, and this becomes the central dilemma of state-making and nation-building today” (Smith 1987: 244). Cohen, moreover, suggests that primordial identity have such grave practical concerns – life or death potentially – that to deconstruct and dismiss such identity is problematic (Cohen 1999: 10).

My own concern with the “imagined” and “social construction” literature is twofold. One, many of these theories view common citizens as gullible and naive. As the road to nationalism and nation-building marches merrily along, citizens are duped into imagining something they are not. By downplaying the fact that people may choose to reject or accept certain arrangements, social constructivists and instrumentalists assume too hastily an overly determined nation. Two, these theorists have a very narrow view of history, that as Smith has argued, only tells “half the story.” As noted earlier, time matters, and social contructivists and instrumentalists ignore critical historical junctures for more favorable points of departure that (usually) makes their imagined nation a tidy conception. The Ukrainian case will show that both the agency of common citizens, and the history of these citizens, matters.

Ukraine’s Nation and Nationalism: Imagined or Real?

Because of the diverging viewpoints among historians and social scientists about the age of the nation, the way it was created, if it was created, who the nationalists were and where the nationalists were, Ukraine provided an interesting case study for nationalist scholars. Ukraine has also been popular for those interested in proving how new and constructed nationalist sentiment is. Rather matter-of-factly, John Anderson claims that it is the “late emergence of Ukrainian nationalism” that made new studies on the topic enticing to scholars (Anderson 1990: 1). Paralleling the growth of Marxism in Moscow, Ukraine’s nation and nationalist sentiments seemed to be a reaction against Soviet communism (Anderson 7). For J. Anderson, the idea of Ukraine was a product of intellectuals promoting independence from Russia.

Yuri Slezkine also believed that Ukraine developed about the time of Lenin’s revolution in the early 20^th century. Suggesting that the Soviet Union was analogous to a communal apartment, large but with distinctly different inhabitants, Slezkine believed Ukraine was a creation of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. By “inventing” Ukraine and “fostering national cultures… creating national autonomies, national schools… and national languages,” this enabled Lenin to solidify and stabilize his regime (Slezkine 1994: 420). Lenin understood that nationality was a matter of cultural ‘form’ but not political ‘content’ (Slezkine 1994: 434). Therefore, nationalism became the form from which to promote the doctrine. For example, coupled with Ukrainian national myths taught in schools, was the socialism of Marx and Lenin.

Slezkine and J. Anderson both argue for the “invented” and relatively recent existence of Ukrainian nationalism. They also believed that nationalism was a means to an end, or instrumental in purpose. J. Anderson might be right that intellectuals pushed nationalist myths along. Without a doubt, intellectuals can stoke the coals of nationalism. It is also possible that Slezkine is onto something by suggesting that Lenin had profound influence on nations and nationalism in certain Soviet republics. Lenin’s influence cannot be denied. But both arguments were limited with respect to history. What was Ukraine and other regions like before the Soviet Union? Keith Darden has tried to answer that question, and his research suggests that Ukrainian nationalism – while still relatively new – was a pre-Soviet phenomenon.

Darden, like Benedict Anderson, believes that the forms that make mass communication possible enable myths about the nation and nationalism. For Darden, the way nationalist myths spread are through mass schooling and literacy (Darden 2002: 3). However, this mass schooling occurred not in the 20^th century, but the late 1700s and early 1800s, and far removed from the communism of the Soviet Union. He contends that Austria, who fought for control of parts of Western Ukraine and Galicia, created the Ukrainian identity as a way of fighting off rival claims to the territory (Darden 2002: 30). Vienna did this through educating and promoting literacy that created Ukrainian myths but also painted Austria in a favorable light over Polish or Russian aggressors. “Schooling provided an institutional vehicle for legitimizing mass ideas,” Darden asserted, “of which nationalism was one manifestation” (Darden 2002: 10).[5] Darden acknowledges that regions like Galicia where mass literacy was prominent were also the most active in undermining the Soviet Union.[6] This fact alone would seem to give great credibility to this claim.

I think that Darden falls into the same trap that Slezkine and J. Anderson do. Darden’s interpretation is that Galicians were a surly bunch because of one event alone: mass literacy and education provided by Austria. This ignores, however, the tremendous fighting over the region that extended back to the 16^th century. Moreover, Ukrainian nationalism was not isolated to western Ukraine, nor were all those in Galicia sympathetic to Austria and the Hapsburg dynasty. He makes a second mistake, like many social constructivists; by assuming that Galicians were tricked and duped into thinking they were “Ukrainian” or “Austrian.” Increasing literacy rates is certainly an achievable goal and a measurable one. But promoting nationalism is overly ambitious, and I suspect, much more difficult than just teaching kids to read.

Oversimplification by the constructivists and instrumentalists has been less noticed by social scientists, and perhaps that is why constructivism has had such great appeal in the discipline. The cases made are tidy and neat, with clear causation from one event to another. Of course, politics and history are much messier. As historian Timothy Snyder has noted, relevant omissions of key historical detail and vast generalizations cannot piece together the story of nations and nationalism. Although Snyder does not self-identify as a primordialist, or any type of theorist for that matter, he does believe that the social construction literature has a lot to learn from history, and that it is folly to believe nationality comes about from imagination or accident (Snyder 2003: 11). Snyder traces the rise of four “modern” nations – Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine and Belarus – from the 16^th century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth, composed of nobility, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant origins, became one of the largest nations in modern Europe. By the time the Commonwealth disintegrated in the 18^th century, four distinct nations existed, and four states later arose (Snyder 2003: 1-2). Snyder’s account is one of great detail, and he proves that many nations, including Ukraine, are indeed very old and very real.

Snyder provides several interesting observations about the beginnings of the state we now know as Ukraine. One, he notes that many of the Ukrainian intellectuals and elites who supposedly “created” Ukrainian nationalism were rejected by many citizens. Snyder posits: “The political idea of ethnic nationalism was conceived by elites before it was accepted by peasants: and…the elites often failed to meet ‘ethnic’ definitions of nationhood themselves” (Snyder 2003: 130).[7] Two, the Slezkine view that Ukraine was a Soviet, Leninist creation is also challenged. In fact, imperial Russia recognized Ukraine and Ukrainian nationalism some sixty years before, when the 1878 Ems Decree banned the publication and import of Ukrainian works into Russian borders (Snyder 2003: 123). Three, Darden’s claim that Austria’s mass literacy program made Galician and western Ukrainian nationalism stronger than other regions does not appear to be the case. In fact, the prominence of Lemkos[8] in Galicia weakened the “national movement” for Ukrainian independence and proved the strength of nationalism might be in other parts of Ukraine. Furthermore, it was not until the 1930s that Galicia became the “unrivaled center” of the Ukrainian independence movement (Snyder 2003: 139-141).

Conclusion

After reflecting on the downfall of the Soviet Union, Mark Beissinger argued that nationalism seemed to be the key contributor in its demise (Beissinger 2002: 8-9). If we accept this to be the case, then understanding the nation and nationalist sentiment in Ukraine and beyond is of great importance. As I have explained, nations and nationalism are very real and also very old. Instead of viewing the nation as a modern construction, scholars need to turn to history and its details, not isolated political incidents, in order to understand the perilous events of the present. It is also of importance that ordinary citizens are not as easily duped as we might think. Instead, nationalists have a clear, and certainly real, understanding of who they are and who they are not. Echoing Smith, who claims that the “history-less and destiny-less,” Snyder argues that Ukrainians are guided by the past. In some cases, it is a past that dates back to the 16^th century. Hopefully, social scientists will think more critically about the past and reality in future conceptualizations of nations and nationalism.

[1] See Peter Uvin’s Aiding Violence (2001) and Chris Hedges’ War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (2002)

[2] By state, I understand it to be what Max Weber suggests as a “monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force with a given territory” (Weber 1983: 111).

[3] These interpretations have been attractive to many associated with the postmodern movement that has questioned various realities and perceptions about the world, but also attractive to those dissatisfied with primordial conceptions.

[4] Or as Eric Hobsbawm has said: “Nations do not make states and nationalism, but the other way around.”

[5] This use of education was similar, but also very different from Lenin’s. The ‘content’ of Lenin’s story was ideological Marxism, and nationalism was in some ways a byproduct of this goal. For Austria, the ‘content’ was nationalism itself, and this nationalism was the tool used to push out other interests.

[6] Of course, Darden was not the first scholar, nor the last, to understand the importance of Galicia in discussing Ukrainian nationalism.

[7] Indeed, some of the Ukrainian intellectuals were actually of German origin.

[8] Snyder describes the Lemkos as: “East Slavic inhabitants of the hills and mountains… on the Polish-Czech border” (139).

Essay on Legitimacy in Social Science

2006-03-17T13:06:00.000-08:00

Bringing Legitimacy Back In: An Analysis of Institutionalized Myth

Introduction

Political science as a discipline has been critiqued for its seeming inability to produce clear conclusions on the most basic of concepts. Allan Bloom went so far to remark that most citizens were “frustrated by political science,” for its lack of “clarification about the ends of politics” (Bloom as cited in Ricci 20). While these critiques are not fair entirely, there might be some case considering the treatment towards legitimacy theory in political science. Defining legitimacy, even to an undergraduate student, proved more problematic than conclusive. Moreover, in studying states and institutions, statements about legitimacy become even more muddled. It is the hope of this paper to bring legitimacy theory back to the forefront of political science, especially in its study of institutions.

John Meyer and Brian Rowan, in particular, have done much to bring legitimacy back on the radar in their analysis of organizational and institutional myths. Meyer and Rowan argue that institutions are legitimate not because they are efficient or provide in actuality what they say they do. Rather, institutions and organizations often do not map onto their blueprint, but become legitimized by reinforced practices, customs and rituals that have little to do with efficiency (Meyer and Rowan 23). Meyer and Rowan also look at legitimacy in an “external” light. By external legitimacy, I mean legitimacy that is determined or perceived by those outside of organizations, institutions, states, or international systems. This departs from Weberian ‘belief’ theories or Stinchcombe’s ‘power’ theory that has said plenty about internal legitimacy, or legitimacy that is decided or recognized by those inside the organization, institution, etc. The paper will explore in detail this debate. First, the paper will study various theorists on legitimacy, in particular Max Weber, Charles Tilly and Arthur Stinchcombe. Second, the paper will discuss Meyer and Rowan’s influential theory on the “institutionalized myths” of legitimization. Third, the paper will discuss future implications of Meyer and Rowan’s study with respect to the current political landscape, particularly in developing nation-states. In short, although Weber and others add much to the debate, Meyer and Rowan’s theory of legitimization explains externally the nature of legitimacy as well as providing an important thesis for exploring “new” types of legitimacy throughout the world.

A (Short) History of Legitimacy

Theories of legitimacy prior to Meyer and Rowan have generally focused on belief theory and power theory. As J.F. Merquior has explained, belief theory merely states that the citizenry believes in the ruler’s claims to power (Merquior 6). The belief theory of legitimacy has in some ways been the most common and standard definition in civics textbooks. In other words, states and institutions are legitimate because people believe in them. Although belief theorists divide themselves into two competing camps — subjectivist and objectivist — the assumptions about belief are the same.[1] Power theory asserts a point opposite to belief theorists. Instead of believing in actual authority, power theorists note that citizens obey because “it would be quite foolish… to resist” (Merquior 7). As Jean-Jaques Rousseau argued in his famous Social Contract, “if force compels obedience, there is no need to invoke a duty to obey” (Rousseau 53). Power theorists other claim, and in some ways the most important, is that legitimacy exists when power holders recognize one another (Stinchcombe as cited in Tilly 171). As Tilly said: “Legitimacy is the probability that other authorities will act to confirm the decisions of a given authority” (Tilly 171).

The most prominent belief theorist was Weber. Political scientist Irving Louis Horowitz noted that “in the study of legitimacy we are the children of…Weber” (Horowitz 23). Although questions of legitimacy were explored as far back as Plato, no modern scholar formulated as precise a definition of legitimacy as Weber. In his famous categorical approach, Weber argued that legitimacy existed when people believed power to be just. There were three types of legitimate regimes: traditional, charismatic, or legal in nature (Weber 113). Traditional states were valid because they were always that way, or a product of “ancient recognition” whereas the populace believed in the old ways (Weber 112). Charismatic states were legitimate based on the rule of charismatic leaders who by a “gift of grace” possessed authority. Lastly, legal legitimacy existed based on “the belief in the validity of legal statute and functional ‘competence’ based on rationally created rules” (Weber 112).

Power based theorists have included such notables as Tilly and Stinchcombe. Drawing inspiration from the philosophy of Rousseau, both scholars have questioned legitimacy based on the belief and “conformity to an abstract principle” (Tilly 171). The citizenry of the state in fact has little choice in the matter of legitimating government. For example, as Merquior has shown, when we believe in the police officer it is not because we actually believe in him. But we do know of the power those above him have and the consequences of crossing him (Merquior 7). Or in Tilly’s example in “War Making and State-Making as Organized Crime,” the legitimate state is one that makes war, extracts resources and provides protection before any other. Therefore, legitimacy does not arise from believing, or choosing, anything (Tilly 181). Some have argued that Rousseau’s and Tilly’s notion of legitimacy downplays the conceptualization of the term itself. If legitimacy is simply about the monopoly on force and the power to coerce, is it just a case of “legitimacy by default,” or is it legitimate at all? This is an argument that is too complex to examine fully here, but the power theory is illustrative and important for this discussion because it examines legitimacy from the inside – how and why citizens obey.

Belief theory and power theory provide important contributions to the study of legitimacy with respect to states and institutions. In sum, it gives an internal look about how states and institutions accrue and preserve legitimacy. However, these legitimacy theories are deficient in at least three ways. One, the theories do not explore the externality of legitimacy, especially how legitimacy operates in the international community. A clear example is the mess in parts of the former Soviet Union. Although some outside observers would suggest that, for example, Georgia was not a legitimate state because of the apparent political instability, Georgian citizens might believe that the current president is more legitimate than a Soviet holdover and thus, the state is legitimate. As Jan Pakulski wrote: “The same rulers may be accepted as legitimate by some and rejected as usurpers by others” (Pakulski 37). Weber was either not concerned, or not sure, how to treat cases such as this, where those outside a state might disagree with those inside a state about that state’s legitimate nature. Peter Lassman sought to clarify this point by suggesting that Weber viewed legitimacy as a “precarious political achievement,” trumping force alone (Lassman 88). The second deficiency with previous legitimacy theory is that it suggested legitimacy arose and persisted based on certain causal forces. For belief theorists, legitimacy rested on whether or not certain beliefs about the state existed. For power theorists, levels of authority that forced the citizenry to obey or else caused legitimacy. Often times, organizations, institutions, states, or international systems do things for which they think will garner legitimacy. But as Meyer and Rowan will show, there seems to be no clear path to achieving legitimacy in the ways Weber or the power theorists think. Thus, searching for causal linkages, or creating categorical paths to forming legitimate institutions, might lead the scholar astray.

The Myths of Institutional Legitimacy

Meyer and Rowan’s argument is simple:

…Organizations are driven to incorporate the practices and procedures defined by

prevailing rationalized concepts of organizational work and institutionalized in

society. Organizations that do so increase their legitimacy and their survival

prospects, independent of the immediate efficacy of the acquired practices and

procedures (Meyer and Rowan 21).

Meyer and Rowan do not tackle big questions of state and regime legitimacy like Weber, Tilly and Stinchcombe. The implications of their thesis in bureaucratic and organizational theory made scholars reassess why certain organizations survived despite being inefficient or not mapping on to the preconceived “blueprint” (Meyer and Rowan 20). As they suggest, hospitals are given funding or new technology not because hospitals are efficient but because of the perceived institutionalized legitimacy of hospitals.[2] Therefore, no matter how inefficient hospitals are, hospitals will be supported.[3] Although perception is a type of belief, Meyer and Rowan seek to turn Weber on his head by suggesting that these perceptions (or beliefs) that deem things legitimate occur from the outside, and not within. While their research is grounded more in organizational theory, their thesis is important in terms of how political science can view certain institutions and states with respect to legitimacy. Moreover, Meyer and Rowan address, albeit not always explicitly, deficiencies with earlier theories of legitimacy.

First, the thesis corrects a misconception that legitimacy is always an internal matter, or, that states and institutions are legitimate because those on the “inside” accept or obey claims to be legitimate. Although internal legitimacy is certainly important and should not be altogether discarded, external legitimizing is clearly important. As Meyer and Richard Scott noted: “Surveys of individual happiness or unhappiness with an organization may be of little importance” (Meyer and Scott 201). Instead, institutional legitimacy, “incorporate[s] elements which are legitimated externally rather than in terms of efficiency” (Meyer and Rowan 31). A perfect example of this is the hospital case. Further proof of external legitimacy is the ritual of creating new policies in an attempt to prove the validity of a certain institution, like for instance education. One might argue, per chance, that George W. Bush pushes “No Child Left Behind” not because he cares a great deal about what the program will do, but because education is ritualistically deemed legitimate, and all presidents must have a policy towards it. Here, Washington “insiders” might realize the plan is flawed in many ways, but because constituents, or “outsiders” believe that money should be given to education regardless of what the blueprint looks like, it forces them to act. Those on the outside of the education debate perceive education policy to be good.[4] Legitimacy and externality, as well, have particular importance when one discusses the international community. This point will be explored more fully in the latter section.

Second, the thesis is clear on how legitimacy operates within states and institutions. Because previous legitimacy theorists were worried with how well the state matched to the beliefs of the populace, or how state authorities possessed authoritative power, notions of state, regime and government were conflated to try and explain the inner-workings of legitimacy. Whereas Weber included various caveats for different ways that legitimacy arose and persisted, and then confused these theories by applying them sloppily to concepts of state, regime and government, Meyer and Rowan’s organizational theory is consistent in explaining states and institutions. For Meyer and Rowan, they were not nearly as concerned with the descriptive notions of what legitimacy was, but instead how legitimacy was used and replicated.[5] In each example, whether education or health care, questions of legitimacy was viewed in a structural, top-down formula. If institutions were perceived to be legitimate, by other states or institutions for instance, then they were.

Third, the thesis departs from previous theories in that it is concerned less with causal linkages between certain actors and institutions. Both belief theory and power theory asserted that certain actions produced legitimate states; other actions produced illegitimacy. But causal theories of legitimization rest on an underlying supposition that there are certain criteria for accomplishing either end.[6] Meyer and Rowan are both pessimistic and unsure about how causal action leads to legitimacy. Legitimacy’s myth is “highly institutionalized and thus in some measure beyond the discretion of any individual participant or organization” (Meyer and Rowan 25). More importantly, the myth of legitimacy is so deeply embedded within the institution and state, it is hard to decipher the original cause for any legitimate body.

Future Research Implications: An International Focus

Questions of legitimacy observed through an international lens often times produces conflicting, if not outright spurious conclusions. The earlier example of Georgia raises an important question about whether or not external legitimacy really counts for anything. If Georgian citizens believe in the charisma of Saakshvili, or obey the authority of the police force, then is Georgia not legitimate? Moreover, two states might disagree on the legitimacy of Georgia – for example Russia and the United States – and one might be left with the conclusion that legitimacy is best decided amongst the citizens of the state. But even this argument had its doubters. Many political scientists – arguing out of a Weberian tradition no less – noted that certain totalitarian regimes lacked legitimacy because power was obtained in non-legitimate ways. The United States certainly held this view by refusing to recognize Cuba or China as “legitimate” states.

The above discussion involves enough concepts and ideas to write a lengthy dissertation, but the point of the debate is clear: legitimacy judged from outside observers matters. Meyer and Rowan fit into this debate nicely. Although their research has been influential in organizational theory, their importance to comparativists and internationalists should not go unnoticed. In particular, conceptions of “institutionalized myth” and “ceremonial legitimacy” have great applicability when studying the developing world. This is certainly the case when some studies that discuss legitimacy have tossed out Weberian notions altogether. Like Meyer and Rowan, legitimacy is conceptualized externally, with judgments made by states or institutions outside of the system. Barry Schutz and Robert Slater have argued that in many developing nations state legitimacy has been defined in the international community rather than in the domestic community (Schutz and Slater 8). The reason for this change in legitimacy theory is unclear. But the implications of the change could have numerous effects.

Over the last sixty years alone, hundreds of international organizations were born onto the political map. Some of the more important include the United Nations, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), the WTO (World Trade Organization), OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) and the IMF (International Monetary Fund). Although each organization has specific tasks, duties and rules, the institutionalized myth about the organization itself has given new meaning to the original blueprint. Instead of merely providing loans to developing countries, as the IMF does, these organizations in turn give the countries validity and legitimacy. Hence, if the IMF trusts Rwanda enough to give Rwanda money, the country must be on the right track. This is particularly interesting considering the relative youth of many of these organizations.

This “new” type of legitimacy – one rooted in myth and ceremony – is particularly dominant in developing nations. OSCE members pack up their bags in Austria, travel to Albania to monitor an election, and give it thumbs up or thumbs down. Although the election itself is important, international observers are more concerned with the grade OSCE gives, not with what is really going on in Albania. If the elections seem free and fair, an American investor might be more likely to bring business to the country. If OSCE gives a bad grade, foreigners of all sorts might be scared off. Either way, the organization itself is symbolically legitimate, even though its only job is to monitor an election. Think back to the Rwanda case. Rwanda was an IMF showcase country, with growth rates that exceeded almost all other African states. But the perceived legitimacy of the IMF had terrible consequences. By highlighting the successes of Rwanda, international observers ignored the bad, particularly the strained relationship between Hutus and Tutsis. The result was a civil war that left more that 1.3 million dead (See Uvin, 1998).[7]

This “new” legitimacy is not all bad, however. Organizations like the WTO have been influential in making “bad” states behave. China and Russia are cases in point. China’s arduous road to WTO membership included fights, among other things, about human rights violations and their treatment of the Falun Gong. Joining the WTO had certain benefits, economic mainly, but also the organization itself was chock full of legitimizing elements. This acceptance went a long way in securing, for example, the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. While Russia is a non-member observer, the thoughts of joining the WTO loom large in Vladimir Putin’s mind. Once again, the WTO provides certain material gains for members, but, as it seems, Putin’s mainly concerned with putting a legitimate face on both his rule and Russia.

Conclusion

I began this paper frustrated by political science’s inability to define concretely legitimacy, but I end the paper in no better situation to define it than before. However, this may not be as terrible a thing as I once thought. While Weber tirelessly categorized belief theories of legitimacy and Tilly and Stinchcombe argued from a power perspective, Meyer and Rowan argued that legitimacy was wrapped up in institutionalized myths, with no discretionary way to sort through the mess. Their external analysis produced more concise conceptions of institutions and eliminated causation from the framework. In doing so, Meyer and Rowan hit on a more contemporary debate about the legitimizing effects of international organizations concerned more with ceremony and ritual than efficiency. The implications of what I have called “new” legitimacy will be important for future research as well, especially in developing nation-states. Hopefully, Meyer and Rowan’s influence will extend outside of organizational theory and influence new scholars concerned with legitimacy in a global setting.

[1] Subjectivist scholars, interested in normative concerns, argue that legitimacy is based on whether those that are ruled believe in their ruler. Objectivists, concerned more with empirical political science, have argued that legitimacy is based on how well governmental output matches with the wants and needs of the ruled.

[2] This might suggest that Meyer and Rowan steal a page from Weber’s play book in his discussion about “traditional” forms of legitimacy. That is, states are legitimate because they always have been. But Weber’s legitimacy is much more concerned with how the populace interacts with the state. In Meyer and Rowan’s “alternative Weberian” model, it seems that legitimacy is more “perceived” than real and interactive.

[3] This is not to say that hospitals are not shut down or that one hospital is supported more than another. Rather, hospitals in general, have institutionalized perceived legitimacy.

[4] This is no way resembles the very contentious debate that NCLB created, or that Bush was in fact ritualistic in his support. But, it does accept that education itself is perceived as institutionally legitimate.

[5] In this question of how, Meyer and Rowan are more similar than different from Tilly and Stinchcombe. But even Tilly and Stinchcombe’s analysis relies heavily on the “view from below,” and the inner-workings between the state and populace.

[6] This led to a problem – as well as a dilemma for political scientists – about how to lay hard and fast rules for what legitimate states were or why they persisted. There is still no procedural minimum definition of legitimacy like there is for an equally fuzzy concept – democracy.

[7] This is indeed a severe case and numerous elements caused the civil war.

Book Review: Richard Fenno's "Home Style"

2006-03-17T12:56:00.000-08:00

Introduction

Although many political scientists wear their methodological badge on their sleeve, others are less obvious and more eclectic in their approach. While the former might be said of scholars like Anthony Downs or Kenneth Shepsle, the latter could be said of Richard F. Fenno. Fenno’s, Home Style: House Members in Their Districts, combines elements of thick description, behavioralism and rational choice to present a compelling account of how elected congressmen perceive their constituencies. By practicing a method he calls “soaking and poking,” Fenno influenced methodologists of all persuasions, and the book became a classic in congressional studies.[1] John R. Hibbing remarked that while he, “would not want all social scientists to adopt Richard Fenno’s [non-scientific] techniques,” he also encouraged social scientists to occasionally “dip their toe” in the pool of qualitative observation (Hibbing as cited in Fenno xii). The purpose of this paper is to examine how Fenno’s study of Congress would have been different had he not “dip[ed] his toe” in his study of congressional perception. I suggest that while Fenno’s study is not without methodological concerns, Home Style is a phenomenal example of good political science, and the rich details garnered by the “soak and poke” method would be lost by taking a methodologically purist stance.

Fenno’s Technique: Thick Descriptive, Behavioralist, or Rational Choice?

Fenno’s goal in writing Home Style, was to determine how congressmen perceived the political nature of their constituencies (Fenno 8). To try and understand these perceptions, Fenno accompanied congressional members up for reelection in their home districts, not Washington, and observed how members cultivated what he dubbed as their “home style” (Fenno 31-33). Members proceed, so says Fenno, to allocate resources, present themselves and explain their actions in Washington, to constituents. Moreover, Fenno suggested that there were four different constituencies congressmen perceived and had to contend with: a) geographic, or the territorial boundaries of the constituency; b) reelection, or those constituents perceived to vote for the congressmen; c) primary, or the core or “nucleus” voting block; and d) personal, or those constituents personally close to the congressmen (Fenno 1-18). Perceiving the differing constituencies as such enabled members to act accordingly in order to gain their vote. For example, relations with a personal constituent may be entirely apolitical because the vote is guaranteed, whereas relations with a reelection constituent whose vote is possibly up in the air, take on a different tone.

On the surface, Fenno’s research seems nothing more than what political scientists call “thick description.” Often criticized for its lack of theoretical rigor and merely journalistic accounts, thick description posits that it is the “details” in politics that are most decisive. Certainly Fenno’s method of “participant observation,” is rich in detail. As he noted, political scientists cannot know all the facts by reading election statistics and they must exhaust other forms of analysis — namely qualitative, perceptual types — to really understand the nitty-gritty of politics (Fenno 18). But Fenno’s Home Style is not just a collection of facts and details about congressmen. Although it does provide a more qualitatively-savvy approach to studying Congress, it also seeks to find “perceptual and behavioral patterns,” about politicians in their districts (Fenno 282). This is certainly more than just a journalistic account of life on the campaign trail.

Fenno’s search for “behavioral patterns” is akin to much of the behavioral focus in political science. Seeking to find “the empirical aspects of political life,” in the methods of “modern empirical science,” behavioralists dominated the debate for much of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s (Dahl 767). Furthermore, the behavioral mood shifted the unit of analysis off large institutions and onto the individual (Dahl 766). These discoveries alone weighed greatly on Fenno’s study. The insights Fenno provides regarding how individual congressmen viewed their districts were invaluable. He also used scientific techniques to prove or disprove common assumptions political scientists’ had about congressional elections. One such hunch, those members who were in office for longer periods of time visited less often, proved true. But as he quickly pointed out, the correlation was “not as strong or consistent” as once imagined (Fenno 36-37). Still yet, to argue that Fenno was a behavioralist would be great folly. Ever critical of research that preferred “analytical range,” to “analytical depth,” Fenno stood at odds with some behavioral tendencies. He also knew that Home Style bucked the behavioral bias towards research “…amenable to statistical analysis” (Fenno 255).

The logical conclusion most political scientists have conceded about Fenno’s Home Style, and perhaps Fenno himself, is that the book situates itself inside the rational choice debate. Although a Harvard graduate, Fenno’s prominence at Rochester, the birthplace of rational choice, has been second only to William Riker. In some ways linking Fenno to rational choice is easy. His most general claim — that politicians singular goal is reelection — is the basic rational choice assumption (See Downs, 1961). John Aldrich and Kenneth Shepsle have argued that while Fenno suggests politicians might have other objectives, like actually shaping good policy or seeking power on Captiol Hill.[2] To quote Aldrich and Shepsle: “Fenno [suggests] legislators…really care about policy issues quite apart from their value from reelection” (Aldrich and Shepsle 9-10). Neverthless, Aldrich and Shepsle have acknowledged that Fenno’s underlying assumptions about reelection and perception ring overwhelmingly rational choice. Some students of political science have had other problems pinning Fenno down as a rational choice, namely his minimal use of models. If rational choice is about building theoretical models per Downs and Riker, how does Fenno fit-in? This is an important claim, but rational choice scholar Morris Fiorina notes that not all rational choice is about building mathematical models. Rather, rational choice methodology constructs “self-consciously theoretical” research programs of all types (Fiorina 4).

Different Methods: How Fenno Would Have Changed

Discerning how Fenno fits into the methodological order is a question of certain disagreement. What cannot be argued, however, is the profound impact Fenno’s little book had on a generation of political scientists. How would the book have been different if multiple-methods of description, observation, individualism and rationality were not imported? Simply put: the book would not have been nearly as profound. What I find intellectually satisfying about the “soak and poke” method is that it exhausted and tested many suppositions and claims political scientists had — more specifically congressional scholars — that could not be expressed in opinion polls or roll-call votes. By the time Fenno wrote Home Style, hundreds of polls asked how constituents viewed their respective legislator, but no poll could truly assess how legislators perceived their constituents. Secondly, Downs’ assertion that members’ ultimate goal was reelection proved generally true. But the degree to which congressmen, even those with safe seats, frantically concerned themselves with this end was an important observation. This type of research could only be done by “peeking over the shoulder” of members in their districts.

But Fenno’s “soak and poke” had its drawbacks. Fenno’s own admission, that the work was costly and hard to research, not to mention tiring, does not bode well for the assistant professor trying to balance teaching and earn tenure (Fenno 255, 283). There were other pertinent methodological issues, though. First, participant observation is hard to replicate. Only Fenno knows what he saw and observed, and any attempt to arrive at an interpretation of events different from his own would be difficult. A more statistically driven research agenda would produce conclusions amenable to interpretation. Second, participant observation is helpful in studying Congress, but this technique would be limited, if not impossible, in studies of other branches or institutions. I am pretty certain it would be impossible to “soak and poke” around with Supreme Court justices or CIA operatives. For this, political scientists will have to utilize other deductive techniques to find answers. Third, and perhaps the most damning critique, it is not clear that participant observation helped Fenno answer his question about constituency perception any better than giving members surveys to fill out about how they view the electorate. Moreover, why does that question really matter? As some have pointed out, Fenno merely reinforces Downsian assumptions about reelection and adds nothing more.

[1] The Richard F. Fenno Prize is given annually to the best book written about Congress.

[2] More on this point is found in Fenno’s (1973) Congressmen in Committees.

A picture of me and my wife Joanna

2006-03-16T20:13:00.000-08:00

Me and my wife Joanna in New York

The Power Debate by Joseph M. Ellis

2006-03-16T20:00:00.000-08:00

Against Empiricism: The ‘Enduring Nature’ of the Power Relationship

Introduction

The power debate dominated political science for much of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Coinciding with this debate was the influence of more positivistic political science, particularly the behavioral revolution and economic models of political rationality that were at the forefront of the discipline. These new models shaped the nature of the debate. Those that supported positive political science —Robert Dahl, Peter Bachrach, Morton Baratz, and Steven Lukes— painted the power argument with their own methodological brush.[1] Others – Jeffrey Isaac in particular — reacted against these more “scientific” arguments from a structuralist perspective. In this paper, I seek to flesh this debate out and describe in detail the various conceptions of power put forth by Dahl, Bachrach and Baratz, Lukes and Isaac, as well as analyzing their different methodological approaches. Although, as David Ricci critiqued, “nothing definitive emerged from the field of community power,” the discussion proved to be a powerful teaching tool about the competing methodologies of the discipline (Ricci 1984: 273). More importantly, I argue that Isaac’s structural approach best explains power, especially his conception of the “enduring nature” of it. I suggest that the first three faces of power were chock full of relaying various details on how power was exercised, but did little in the way of providing a comprehensive understanding of how power was possessed or how it endured.

The Faces of Power: From Dahl to Lukes

Some of the initial views of power stemmed from the early ruling-elite models of power. Advanced most notably by C. Wright Mills, the elite theory highlighted the undemocratic nature of power, whereas prominent citizens in the community shaped governmental influence: bankers, party machines, businessmen and those in City Hall. One of the main problems with the ruling-elite model, as Dahl explained, was its emphasis on overt and covert spheres of influence, making it almost impossible to prove (Dahl 1958: 463). On the one hand, some forms of power were observable. On the other hand, if power was covert and unobservable, this posed a problem for a maturing discipline interested in observation and positivism. Moreover, this elite model countered pluralist ideas that viewed government as an interactive process among various groups. The elitist model was undemocratic. Dahl hoped to prove the democratic aspects of the system.

In Dahl’s, Who Governs? a classic tome on New Haven, Connecticut’s pluralist politics, he observed that power is not dominated by one group. Instead, when asking rhetorically, “Who governs?” Dahl answers that it is a multitude of groups. While some groups have certain ‘direct’ influence, politicians for example, others have a degree of ‘indirect’ influence, such as constituents. Since, “only a small number of persons have much ‘direct’ influence,” and even this influence was constrained by the electorate, to suggest that power existed in some conspiratorial, covert manner seemed odd (Dahl 1961: 91). The bourgeoning behavioral movement also weighed on Dahl’s mind. Concerned as he was with observation and positivist political science, the elite model proved an unfruitful way to analyze variables, much less power. Dahl’s formula for power, how A makes decisions that effect B, or how one group makes decisions that affect another, became known as a first face view of power.

This first face — how overt decisions were observed — seemed to be a great improvement on the elitist model, especially for those interested in empiricism in the discipline. However as Bachrach and Baratz argued, this ‘first face’ argument had its limitations. Because behavioral methodologists were interested in what could be observed, Dahl’s notion left little room for the types of power that were unobservable. Although “specific and visible” power was important and better than the “pure speculation” of other models, Bachrach and Baratz asserted that there was a ‘second face’ of power (Bachrach and Baratz 169). To discard immeasurable elements in the power discussion was great folly and missed one key component. What E.E. Schattschneider called “limiting the scope of conflict,” Bachrach and Baratz noted that power was not only A making decisions that affected B, but also A making decisions which reinforced preconceived social and political values and institutional practices that limited or narrowed the scope of the debate. As they note: “To the extent that A succeeds in doing this, B is prevented, for all practical purposes, from bringing to the fore any issues that might in their resolution be seriously detrimental to A’s set of preferences” (Bachrach and Baratz 170).

The two face nature of Bachrach and Baratz stemmed from the idea that power involved both decision-making and nondecision-making. Although some decisions were potentially suppressed and certain others deemed unobservable, conflict itself could be observed, and this, for Bachrach and Baratz, made observation important. While this second face of power seemed to be an improvement on its pluralist predecessor, Bachrach and Baratz did not discard the empiricist approach altogether. Rather, they broadened their methodological lens to include those “immeasurable” events related to power. This could include power struggles that are not apparent to the human eye, or, potential conflict and interaction that limited one agent or another.

Lukes, however, argued that this ‘second face’ suffered from similar problems as the ‘first face.’ In a more thoroughgoing critique of behavioralism, Lukes noted that decision-making and nondecision-making still relied on a supposition that power, at least the aspects of it related to conflict, could be observed. In his three-dimensional view, he casts off the empirical notion that power was observable. For Lukes, A exercised power over B when A effected B in such a way that negated B’s preferences (Lukes 34). This conception of power also became what Lukes described as a‘radical’ notion. A self-described Marxist, Lukes was convinced that power was conceptualized in value-laden ways. The liberal and reformist, for instance, witnessed power differently than the radical, who saw man’s wants and interests constrained systemically.

While it probably goes without saying, Lukes is right to argue that each conception of power was “value-laden” in some way. This was, as it appears to be, a more underhanded critique of the positivist, “value-neutral” literature than anything else. If political science is about constructing scientific models, not about seeking normative ends, then the positivists failed. What should be clear at least is that methodology greatly affects a political scientist’s description of something as seemingly simple as the term power. Rebelling against the hunches of elite-theorists, Dahl promoted a pluralist, empiricist view of power. In what Lukes described as a “qualified critique” of the earlier method, Bachrach and Baratz asserted that there was in fact a second face of power, arguing that Dahl was too concerned with observation and not aware of the potential conflict outside of the scope (Lukes 25). Lastly, Lukes discarded the behavioral methodology and applied his own ‘radical’ conception of power.[2]

Isaac’s Critique and Power’s ‘Enduring Nature’

Although it appeared that the discipline fleshed out the power debate in all conceivable directions, Isaac proved that the debate had been cursed by a “misconception that the purpose of social science [was] to document empirical regularities” (Isaac 4). In other words, empiricist political science missed the boat. Because observation details the exercise of power, and not how it is possessed or how it endures, the empiricist approach did nothing more than collect instances of “A affecting B” in some way. But what did this tell us about power? Dahl’s first face argument merely examined what one agent did to another. His case study of New Haven was rich in describing how Mayor Lee’s power was constrained “indirectly” by the constituency or other pressure groups, but said little about the “srtuctural determinants” inherent in these decisions (Isaac 15). Bachrach and Baratz improved on Dahl’s model with their insights on the scope of conflict and mobilization biases, but still behavioral in the sense that observing conflict was crucial to understanding power (Isaac 10). Lukes ‘radical’ theory argued that power existed in the absence of empirical conflict, hoping to trump the behavioral obsession with observation. Nevertheless, Lukes still relied on “behavioral regularities” to explain power (Isaac 13).

Isaac was not only interested in reexamining the ramifications of empiricism, however. Seeking to advance a new structural, realist argument of power, Isaac’s model definitively explains and clears up previous misconceptions empiricists had. To do so, he argued from a realist perspective. Realist theorists question observation because of its interpretive nature. For realists, causation and empirical regularities were certainly open to debate and to declare such analysis “scientific” seemed almost fraudulent. Isaac suggests that power is not just causation between agents A and B. Rather, causation is a red herring, leading the social scientist onto the wrong trail. What was more important to the realist was the “causal mechanisms” that operated in unpredictable and undetermined ways (Isaac 17). To clarify somewhat, realists do not just take at face value what is observed but understand that certain laws, customs and structures produce varied results. For example, the power of Mayor Lee in New Haven could be very different if he was in, say, Atlanta.[3]

Moreover, as Isaac noted, “the primary object of theoretical analysis [should] not be behavioral regularities, but the enduring social relationship that structures them” (Isaac 20). Although Isaac was not interested in methodological battles,[4] bringing structure back into the argument was an improvement on his behavioral counterparts. The structure of which Isaac speaks, however, is very different from overly deterministic Marxism or crude institutionalists. He is more interested in preconceived relational structures, like for instance, the teacher-student relationship or husband-wife relationship. Indeed, the essence of power for Isaac is how social agents maintain power based solely on the relations in which they participate (Isaac 22). In some respects, power is based on ritual and myth rather than causation in the sense Dahl or Bachrach and Baratz presume. Power survives when these relationships endure.[5]

John Meyer and Brian Rowan propose a good example of this in their argument about the perceived legitimacy of organizations and institutions. Rejecting the causation and empiricism of prior conceptualizations of legitimacy, Meyer and Rowan argue that legitimacy is merely socially structured (Meyer and Rowan 21). Although certain institutions, schools for example, could be terribly inefficient and costly, taxpayers continue to support them because laws, customs, and rituals reinforce their importance. As long as this legitimacy is perceived, the relationship between taxpayer and institution endures.

One of the earliest models of power used a similar methodology. Not concerned with empiricism or even advancing a definition of power itself, Floyd Hunter asked prominent citizens in Atlanta to rank the forty most powerful people in the city (Hunter as cited in Ricci 266). Consistently the same people were proposed by each respondent, indicating that reputation alone might be a good indicator of power. If you think someone has power, they must! Of course, the survey was blasted as “worthless” by quantitatively-savvy scholars and a crop of young behaviorists entering the field. But Hunter as well as Meyer and Rowan share something in common with Isaac. One, that reputation and ritual alone can explain aspects of a concept. Observing power and perceiving power might be two different things, but both can have similar and lasting effects. Two, getting bogged down in defining something may not be as important as understanding the structure in which the concept exists. Meyer and Rowan offered no procedural definition for what a legitimate organization was, other than to indicate that legitimate organizations endured and illegitimate organizations failed. Hunter was not interested in defining power as much as he was interested in the hierarchical structure the respondents created. Similarly, Isaac’s definition was modest and very broad at best. On the one hand, the agents involved were important, but the structure of the relationship is what mattered most.

Isaac’s conception of power embodied more than just how the relationship endured, however. Like any good Marxist, Isaac was concerned with aspects of domination (power to) and subordination (power over). Exploring both ‘power to’ and ‘power over’ relations was a critique of behavioral methodology that failed to recognize the relations of the social agents, but this was also a reflection of Isaac’s own methodological bias in favor of Marxist structuralism.[6] Isaac’s power definition was normative in way that Dahl’s, Bachrach and Baratz’s, and Lukes’ was not. One gets the impression that power is, even in seemingly harmless cases like a teacher-student relationship, somewhat oppressive. Like the structure of the capitalist state with its bourgeoisie and proletariat, power indeed endures and replicates itself, but often times in the most dominating fashion.

Conclusion

The power debate is a good example how methodology effects the lens through which research is done. Dahl’s response to the undemocratic elite model was to advance a more democratic, pluralist conception helped out by the new positivist techniques of the behavioral revolution. Bachrach and Baratz in their “qualified critique” of behavioralism and pluralist politics argued that all power was not observable. By mobilizing some groups into the conflict and others out, not all instances of power were so overt. Lukes tried to discard the behavioral approach all-together with his ‘radical’ view that power existed anytime one agent’s interests were subverted by another, a Marxist-type argument. In any case, as Isaac would show, all of the conceptions were influenced by “behavioral regularities” and the empiricism of the day. One does not have to be a Marxist to agree with Isaac’s conclusions that power exists in the social fabric of society. To explain power, therefore, one may not have to agree that it is about ‘subordination’ and ‘domination’ as much as it is about laws, customs, and rituals that reinforce the structure of the relationships and cause them to endure. Isaac’s critique of the “empiricism” in the discipline is both important and on the mark. Rather than just noting instances and examples of power in action, Isaac created a useful model to understand its ever important ‘enduring nature’.

Works Cited

Bachrach, Peter and Morton Baratz. “The Two Faces of Power.” The Search for

Community Power. pg 167-177.

Dahl, Robert. “Selections from ‘Who Governs?’” The Search for Community Power.

Eds. Hawley and Writ. pg 87-107

Dahl, Robert. “A Critique of the Ruling-Elite Model.” American Political Science

Review. 52: 463-469, 1958.

Hunter, Floyd. Community Power Structure. New York: Doubleday, 1953.

Isaac, Jeffrey C. “Beyond the Three Faces of Power: A Realist Critique.” Polity. V. 10

N. 1. Fall 1997.

Lukes, Stephen. Power: A Radical View. London: Macmillan, 1974.

Meyer, John W. and Brian Rowan. Organization Environments: Ritual and

Rationality. Ed. Meyer and Scott. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1992.

Ricci, David. The Tragedy of Political Science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,

1984.

[1] Certainly saying they supported “positive” political science is making a sweeping generalization. However, each author, as will be shown, was interested in various “behavioral regularities.”

[2] Lukes admits that his use of the term “behavioral” is very narrow. Of course, even his three-dimensional view has a behavioral component to it in the fact that behavior produces evidence.

[3] This, of course, seems obvious, but the behaviorists paid little attention to this detail.

[4] As he suggests: “This approach need not result in a form of hyper-determinism which reifies social structure” (Isaac 19).

[5] Isaac notes, however, that the relationship itself has the potential to break down when one of the social agents loses their authority. For example, this could happen if it was shown that the teacher lost control of the classroom.

[6] In Isaac’s defense, he seems to be a soft on Marxism, more content with criticizing empiricism than trumpeting determinism.

American Politics: Essay on Michigan Model

2006-03-16T17:55:00.000-08:00

As the Discipline Turns: A Comparison of the Michigan and Downs’ Models

Introduction

Two methodologies in political science altered the landscape of the discipline. The “behavioral revolution” — a movement with roots dating back to the 1940s and an influence still prominent — was a fundamental departure from earlier political science that focused on “thick-description” and fact collecting. Instead, behaviorists were concerned with quantifying politics and putting the “science” into a maturing discipline. The Downsian model of political science, more commonly known as a rational choice model, further pushed political science in a more “scientific” direction, analyzing American politics from a positivist perspective rather than political science based on normative implications. Among others, two important concepts were highlighted by these new approaches to the discipline: voting and ideology. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on these concepts and analyze in detail the diverging approaches of both schools of thought. While both pushed the discipline to a more positivist and less normative approach, the models nevertheless illuminate different aspects of voting and ideology.

Behavioralism and Downs: Putting the Science in Political Science

Behavioralism, simply put, seeks to explain politics through methods and theories accepted by the standards and assumptions of modern political science (Dahl 1961: 767). Although Robert Dahl grew critical of behavioralism after being an early proponent, he nevertheless recognized that one of the lasting impressions of the behavioral movement was in its study of voting behavior. As he noted: “Each study has profited from the last; and as broadly trained political scientists… our understanding …[has] greatly increased” (Dahl 769). National political surveys were one way that political science tried to move more “scientific” in increasing this understanding. In particular, The American Voter and the Michigan model became staples of the behaviorial diet. While earlier models, the Columbia model for example, put forth a sociological view of voter behavior, the Michigan school integrated both camps, creating a socio-psychological model. On the one hand, the sociological model was still important (education, income, class, religion, and residence), however the Michigan team believed that attitudinal concepts (party attachment, issue orientation, and candidate orientation) provided a richer understanding of politics (Niemi and Weisberg 8). The American Voter, a report detailing presidential elections in the 1950s and arguing that party identification was the most crucial element in analysis, grew out of the early Michigan work. This report is often credited with creating a “funnel of causality,” arguing that voting was the endpoint on a series of causal linkages and events (Neimi and Weisberg 8).

The Downs model, penned in Anthony Downs’ influential An Economic Theory of Democracy, argued that the goal of all governments is to get reelected (Downs 11). Therefore, government hopes to maximize political support and actors seek to achieve preconceived economic and political goals (Downs 20). Politics -- for all groups and individuals involved – is instrumental in purpose. The Downs research further elaborated a positivist model of politics, whereas political scientists “try to describe what will happen under certain conditions, not what should happen” [italics added] (Downs 14). Although both the behavioral approach and the Downsian model lent themselves to predicative analysis, one of the chief differences was rational choice’s issue-emphasis. Issues, so critiqued Neimi and Weisberg, were buried and submerged in the Michigan model (Neimi and Weisberg 9). Concerned as behavioralists were with certain attitudinal and sociological components of the individual, Downs downplayed this aspect by noting that issues, and the way parties grapple with them to win elections, drive politics.

Voting and Ideology

For Robert Putnam, voting was the “fundamental democratic principle of equality,” and to not vote was akin to withdrawing from the political community (Putnam 35). Putnam’s notion that civic communities engaged in voting were critical to democratic government was in some ways a response to earlier behavioral and rational-choice models of voting. Although Neimi and Weisberg agree that voting is the foundation of democracy, they conclude that often nonvoting can be an acceptable way of doing business (Neimi and Weisberg 20). Democracy of the kind Putnam spoke rested on rather “lofty principles,” that few citizens knew what to do with. However, behavioral analysis still tried to explain voting through survey data, seeking answers about identification, orientation and party attachment. Because the electorate makes important decisions, it is pertinent to know the composition of attitudes and knowledge individuals have about politics (Campbell, et. al 541). One question those of the Michigan school were interested in was that of electoral realignment. Walter Dean Burnham suggested that the critical election of 1896 spurred a continual disassociation from politics, with even “core” voters rejecting the ballot box (Burnham 298).[1]

Downs’ model of voting runs in contrast to these models. Downs is less concerned that voters know anything about politics or how they identify with certain politicians. Rather, Downs is concerned with whether or not individuals and parties realize their goals, whatever that might be. Therefore, non-voters for Downs are not lacking in civic virtue or missing certain knowledge and attributes. The act of voting disappears when the costs of voting outweigh the benefits, or when the goals desired cannot be accomplished through electoral means.[2] . Nie and Verba concluded that nonvoting was acceptable because citizens participated in other ways that were fruitful to their goals. For example, this is what they refer to as citizen-initiated contact (Nie and Verba 27).

In terms of studying ideology, the Downs’ model and Michigan school differed as well. More importantly, the Michigan school had its own divisions. In a seminal study on the “unsophisticated electorate,” Converse related that voter opinions tended to be ideologically inconsistent, voters had few views on important issues,[3] and participants logged random responses to questions (Converse 43). However, Nie and Anderson disagreed. In their own study on attitudes and ideology, they reported that numerous issues – social welfare, race, foreign relations, and the Cold War for instance – were very interrelated and consistent (Nie and Anderson 63). While those of the Michigan school might have disagreed with each other’s results, the ideas were the same. Ideologies and identification were important for prediction, and knowing where the voter stood – or did not stand as the case might have been, proved crucial.

Downs’ model of ideology still rests on the rational choice paradigm. As he notes: “…Uncertainty allows parties to develop ideologies as weapons in the struggle for office. In this role, ideologies are assigned specific functions that shape their nature and development” (Downs 96). For Downs, ideology is merely a construct of the parties in an attempt to get the most votes and get (or stay) elected. Whereas the behavioral model tried to explain ideology in terms of consistency from the perspective of an outside observer, Downs regarded this as superfluous. Because of the uncertainty of getting elected, ideologies are both watered down and instrumental in nature. This creates what Downs notes as “converging” to the center. Pushing ideology to the center of the political spectrum increases the likelihood of capturing as many members of the electorate as possible.

Conclusion

The purpose of this paper was to explore; all too briefly, voting and ideology with respect to the Michigan and Downsian models in political science. While both pushed political science into a more “scientific” realm, the models diverged in methods. The Michigan school created a socio-psychological model of political science and was interested in certain attitudinal views of the American voter. This required more quantitative scholarship that looked at and aggregated, most significantly, public opinion data. Downs was more struck by the rational and calculated ways voters and parties acted. For this reason, Downs hoped to create a predicative model to answer all questions of politics. In short, the models, although subject to much criticism, illuminated new ways to look at voting and ideology.

[1] David Mayhew has been critical of this notion, especially Burnham’s acknowledgment that the “realigning” election was the reason for the downturn. (See Mayhew 2002, 11).

[2] This might seem similar to Nie and Verba’s model. While both argue that voters sometimes act on a rational calculus, Nie and Verba were more interested in group-related participation. Downs’ model is somewhat individualistic.

[3] It is not clear for Converse what “important” views exactly are. In other words, the importance seems determined by the authors.

Comparative Politics: Essay on Antonio Gramsci

2006-03-16T17:52:00.000-08:00

Through Gramsci’s Eyes: Civil Society and the Creation of the Marxist State

Introduction

One of the dominant political questions of the early 20^th century for political scientists was determining why Marxist revolutions had not taken place in any parts of Western Europe, particularly those countries which exemplified greatly the “class struggle” Marx so blatantly saw throughout history. When Lenin and the Bolsheviks triumphed with their own communist revolution in 1917, more head-scratching persisted. “Why not us?,” many asked. The experience of the Soviet Union in particular, where practically no industrialized bourgeoisie existed in 1917, was even more perplexing. The Soviet Union case seemed like an anomaly to many Marxist observers. But for Italy’s Antonio Gramsci, an up-and-coming Marxist in 1917, the reasons for the revolution in Russia seemed obvious:

In Russia the State was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous;

in the West, there was a proper relation between state and civil society, and when

the State trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed. The State was only an outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks… (Gramsci 1971: 238).

For Gramsci, civil society was part of a large cultural and ideological hegemony of the State that prohibited the existence of revolution, Marxist or otherwise, from getting a foothold in many Western European countries, particularly in fascist Italy where he resided. While in Russia, it was only a ruling elite that was overthrown, in Italy, the “dominance and subordination” manifested itself in the form of culture and ideology (Williams 1977: 595).

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, I seek to define civil society. I will explore the term civil society as it used in most political science texts. I conclude that Gramsci viewed civil society as much more than just, as Schmitter and Karl say, the right to “autonomous group activity” (Schmitter and Karl 1991: 79). Most civil society, Gramsci believes, is not autonomous or independent of the state at all. Second, I seek to answer why Gramsci might see civil society as a hindrance to revolution. This question is answered best by a historical look at Gramsci’s life, most specifically his upbringing in southern Italy and the rise of Mussolini’s fascism, coupled with the divisions and disunity of the Italian Marxists.

Civil Society

One of the best and more recent definitions of civil society was formulated by Schmitter and Karl in their influential essay, “What Democracy Is…and Is Not.” For Scmitter and Karl, civil society exists because of “autonomous group activity” whereas citizens, “by remaining independent of the state, not only can restrain the arbitrary actions of rulers, but can also contribute to forming better citizens” These “autonomous groups” can be anything from the Sierra Club to elderly women meeting in a church discussing politics. For the optimistic Schmitter and Karl, civil societies could be the mediators between the State and its citizenry that is “capable of resolving conflicts… without public coercion” (Schmitter and Karl 1991: 79-80). Weigle and Butterfield clarify this common definition by breaking down civil society two ways: legal and orientational. In “legal” civil society, the State allows social self- organization and defines the relationship between the state and society. In other words, the actual freedom autonomous groups has varies based on the legal codes of different countries. By “orientational” civil society, Weigle and Butterfield, denote the “identity of the social actors,” to chose and fight for the outcomes they seek. This can also vary depending of the values of the autonomous groups involved in the particular struggle (Weigle and Buttefield 1992: 3).

Gramsci did not know Schmitter and Karl’s definition of civil society, but it is certain he would have disagreed with them in part. Gramsci knew all too well that “autonomous groups” were most often not “independent of the state,” especially those groups which have an institutional or traditional base like the churches, schools, or press (Cox 2002: 359). Although Marx did not explicitly articulate Gramsci’s theory of civil society, he illustrated this same point when he bemoaned the influence of the Catholic church, an institution he thought was less than independent of the state. Gramsci had a similar notion of the role of the Masonic lodge in Italy (Cox 2002: 359). Norberto Bobbio shared Gramsci’s opinion in Democracy and Dictatorship, noting that “parties have one foot in civil society and the other in institutions.” For Bobbio, Gramsci further understood what Marx could not – that civil society created an ideological hegemony, not just a material, economist one (Bobbio 1989: 25-29). If this was so the case, “civil society could be used by the working class to slowly create its own hegemony of interests” (Weigle and Butterfield 1992: 4).

The Southern Question

The unification of south and north Italy, or the Risorgimento, in the 1800s, left significant political tensions in Italy for many years. Specifically, south and north Italy were quite different in many respects. In the north, the Italian territories were developing at a rapid pace with urbanization of the masses and a growth in education. In the south, where Gramsci lived and was raised, underdevelopment was prevalent and many lacked proper education. Those prosperous few that inhabited southern Italy were large landowners, ruling over an often times weak and “politically impotent” rural class (Adamson 81). As well, outsiders from the central and northern regions occupied southern Italy politically, much like the south after the Civil War (Urbinati 1998: 372). Richard Bellamy argued that divisions were exacerbated by what he called “legal Italy” and “real Italy.” On the one hand, “legal Italy” was the notion of a single, unified Italian state. But “real Italy”, was the realization of an Italy with “divergent religious traditions, economic attainment and polarized classes: a tension epitomized for contemporaries in the southern question” (Bellamy 2002: 127).

Without delving much more into the history of Italian unification, or lack thereof, it is obvious the divisive politics of Italy held a great effect over Gramsci. Nadia Urbinati illuminates this same historical fact. Although Gramsci’s most influential writings have less to do with the particulars of Italy, Urbinati argues that much of Gramsci’s writing and theory deals from his direct experience in the “subordinated” southern Italy. “The South,” adds Urbinati, “was the link between his existential experience and his public and intellectual life. Southern Italy epitomized Gramsci’s condition and theory of subordination…” (Urbinati 1998: 370). Very true, and also his theory of civil society. For Gramsci, southern Italy represented the most “gelatinous” of regions, yet controlled – politically, culturally, ideologically, economically – by the northern hegemony.

Personally, Gramsci was torn on how to help the south. The presence of the “gelatinous” society offered great prospects to Gramsci, and Lenin provided a model for revolution. But Gramsci was not Lenin. While Lenin’s “road to socialism was short but sheer,” Gramsci’s notion was of a much more prolonged, thought out process (Anderson 1966: 224). A speedy revolution could lead, Gramsci thought, to dictatorship. But assembling a group of class conscious workers was the key. Unfortunately, the modes for worker mobilization in southern Italy where nonexistent. As Gramsci wrote: “…a class which has to work fixed hours every day cannot have permanent and specialized assault organizations – as can a class which has ample financial resources and all of whose members are not tied down by fixed work” (Gramsci 1971: 232).

Rise of Fascism

It is not for certain whether Gramsci is speaking of fascism directly when he discusses the “proper relation between State and civil society” that exist in Western Europe. Fascism did have tremendous impact on Italy, and that never was exemplified more than in the ideology’s relationship with society and use of nationalist rhetoric. Because of the overall disunity of Italy after supposed unification, Mussolini’s appeals to nationalism in the state created hegemony of the interests: cultural, ideological and economical. Nationalism, to sum up Italian historian Alastair Davidson, cooled the differences between the developed north and the dilapidated south (Davidson 1982: 4). Moreover, fascist nationalism thwarted efforts of “legal” civil society by punishing certain speech, thus creating their own “orientational” civil society by shifting the focus of the debate off minority opinions, particularly those of commmunists. While Italian fascism was not necessarily brainwashing the citizenry, “some forms of experience [were] readily available to consciousness,” while others were suppressed or not taken seriously (Lears 2002: 334).

While socialists had thought fascism would be an isolated incident, history proved otherwise. As Davidson eloquently wrote: “Italian socialism needed to be dipped in reality to see the country for what it was instead of through the blinkers of a rigidly determinist Marxism” (Davidson 1982: 248). Indeed, despite a substantial working class or proletariat in southern Italy, no revolution existed. Any chance at “class consciousness,” something Gramsci had hoped for, faded with the rise of fascism and the influence of nationalism. The fascist example demonstrated beautifully Gramsci’s point about subordination, hegemony, and his belief in the base-superstructure, whereas Gramsci “narrowed the economic base [of Marxism]… and broadened the superstructure to include political society, civil society and the state” (Lears 2002: 327).

But the rise of fascism precipitated in other ways. It is important to note – and possibly mind boggling to Gramsci -- that fascists received a great deal of indirect support from those that were simply “anti-socialist.” While this support would seem to stem from rich capitalists and industrialists, it was small farmers that proved to be loyal allies for Northern fascists (Adamson 1980: 79). Moreover, the divisive history of the two predominant Marxist political parties – the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and the Italian Communist Party (PCI) – did not help Gramsci’s revolution in the slightest. Gramsci, while formally a PCI member, knew that the longer conflicts existed between both parties, the greater the chance Italy would be lost to the fascists. The idea of joining the parties together was at first repulsive to Gramsci, if “not insane” as Walter Adamson wrote in Hegemony and Revolution. But Gramsci at last resigned himself to the idea of a “united front,” only to get rejected by the PSI at the Milan Congress in 1923 (Adamson 1980: 76). A united front could have certainly watered down the ideological impact that PCI and Gramsci hoped to have, but on a more positive note, it also would have strengthened the proletarian cause, if only numerically, against a dominating fascist influence.

The division of the parties could not have been good for a revolutionary cause and often Gramsci wondered if he did the right thing by supporting the PCI so fervently. In the meantime, fascism grew in Italy. The division of the PSI and PCI (and later the peasant PPI) teach another important lesson about civil society to Gramsci, one he could not have learned by looking at the Russian example alone. If the economic and political disunity of “legal” Italy did anything good for “real” Italy it was this: In the southern region, a gelatinous, albeit often times subordinated, civil society did exist. It seems the trappings for a revolution were possible before the rise of fascism. But there simply was no “united front.” Gramsci must have learned from his mistake then when in 1921 he wrote that “emancipation” of the proletariat was only possible through “alliance[s]” (Gramsci 1977: 376).

Conclusion

Richard Cox noted that to understand Antonio Gramsci, one has to understand his history. He wrote: “Gramsci’s concepts were all derived from history – both from his own reflections upon history…and from his personal experience of political and social struggle” (Cox 2002: 357). This statement would seem to hold true for anyone. In other words, history and our own “personal experience” shape us all. But for Gramsci, this proved especially true. Each page is a manifestation of the life he lived and the world around him. From the “southern question” and the rise of fascism alone, Gramsci learned bit by bit the obstacles a cultural and ideological hegemony posed to revolution. His theory that civil society was part of a large cultural and ideological hegemony changed the way many, including Marxists, viewed revolution. But without those key historical events in his own life, his theoretical conclusions might have been different.

Many scholars have written that Gramsci was the most “functional” and “workable” of all the Marxists of his day. Whether one agrees with this assessment is open for debate. But this in turn implies that Gramsci really knew, first hand, about the proletarian struggle and therefore applied his own theories to practice. Or, as the case was with civil society, he took his “personal experience” and inked it to paper. Gramsci was right in his assessment of civil society. Most forms are inevitably linked to the state in some way, and yes, this does pose a threat to revolution. The sobering reality is that Gramsci – with all the right knowledge -- could never mount the proletariat revolution against the hegemon he knew so much about.

International Institutions: An Essay on Interest-based Regimes

2006-03-16T17:40:00.000-08:00

Interest-based Regime Theory in International Relations

Introduction

Over the last twenty-five years, IR has studied more closely issues of regime formation and regime change in international politics. This debate — like many in IR — has split along the various methodological fault lines: realism (and neorealism), neoliberal institutionalism, and constructivism (or cognitivism). Hasenclaver, Mayer and Rittberger have regarded this debate as one between power-based theorists (realism), interest-based theorists (neoliberalism) and knowledge-based theorists (constructivism).[1] Of course, one theory has explained better than the others regime formation in international politics. Following Krasner’s classic definition of regimes as “sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations,” I set out to argue in favor of interest-based theories of regimes (Krasner 1982: 2). Basing this essay on the classic works of Robert Keohane, Arthur Stein and Oran Young, I suggest that these authors’ best describe regimes in international politics. Most interest-based theories are rooted in rationalism, state-centric in orientation and hesitant to conclude that “power” explains all in IR theory. For these reasons interest-based theories are particularly attractive. On the other hand, I am also sympathetic to the so-called “constructivist-turn” in IR and the “blind spots” of a rationalist ontology. While interest-based theorists have the most explanatory power, cognitivist approaches are worthwhile as critiques of the prevailing rationalist accounts.

Interest-based Regime Theory

Much of interest-based regime theory is centered on many of the assumptions developed in Robert Keohane’s seminal work, After Hegemony. Keohane’s work is grounded in a rationalist state-centric framework, in which actors are rational-egoists. In other words, actors’ behavior (generally states) is not altruistic or good-natured; rather, all states seek their self-interest with the mutual assurance that the regime maximizes the interest of all parties involved (Keohane 1984: 29, 53). For Keohane, he wondered about a world of cooperation “after hegemony,” where hegemony had eroded among superpowers, and the international environment consisted of many regimes and institutions (Keohane 1984: 49). While Keohane surmised that cooperation was hard, and could easily lead to situations of discord,[2] regimes and institutions could benefit states by incorporating cooperative strategies. By cooperation, he meant a process whereby states, “adjust their behavior to the actual or anticipated preferences of others, through a process of policy coordination” (Keohane 1984: 51). Some have referred to Keohane’s approach to regimes as contractual. In order for states interest to be realized, they must cooperate and share common interests in the issue-area with which the regime is concerned (Hasencalver, Mayer and Rittberger 2002: 30).

Keohane’s work was a response and critique of what he described as the “basic-force” models dominating IR. In short, basic-force models perceive that regimes are formed with the interests of the most powerful states involved (Bessette and Haufler 2001: 72). Looked at another way, Keohane seemed to be engaging Kenneth Waltz directly in a debate about the role of regimes in the world. Waltz was skeptical of the impact of institutions and regimes in an anarchic world order, and thought that the rise of multilateral institutions could threaten stability in the world (Waltz 1979: 171). Realist Joseph Grieco had similar suspicions. He believed international cooperation was hindered in two ways: states were concerned about cheating and states were also concerned about relative gains (Grieco 1988: 487). Grieco suggested that the optimism of neoliberals was unwarranted. Despite realist’s and neorealist’s critical analyses, neoliberal institutionalists shared many of the same assumptions about rationality, the self-interested behavior of states, and the overall systemic nature of international politics (Hasenclaver, Mayer and Rittberger 2002: 28). However, playing on the terms generated by the neorealist camp greatly strengthened Keohane’s and other interest-based theorists work.

One of the more interesting innovations of the new neoliberal institutionalism that was not shared by neorealists was the utilization of the Prisoner’s dilemma. Borrowed from the models of economic theory, the Prisoner’s dilemma illuminates the ultimate problem with cooperation in a world of misinformation and bounded rationality. Summarized succinctly, two prisoners are given the option to accuse the other of a particular crime. By ratting the other out, or “defecting”, one prisoner would receive a lighter sentence than if he cooperated and risked defection by his counterpart. Thus, as Hasenclaver, Mayer and Rittberger have pointed out, “defection is the dominant strategy,” because the prisoner will never get the worse sentence by doing so (Hasenclaver, Mayer and Rittberger 2002: 45).

Scholars associated with interest-based regime theory have elaborated more on Prisoner’s dilemma since. Arthur Stein agreed with Keohane that cooperation could be harnessed in an anarchic international system and that the “distribution of power” does not explain regime formation (Stein 1982: 140). Moreover, Stein’s rationalism mimicked Keohane: self-interested, joint decision-making leads to the most optimal outcomes for all states involved (Stein 1982: 120). But Stein, generally identified with the situational-structure school, argued that Keohane and the contractual school applied the Prisoner’s dilemma in a general sense about regime formation. For situational-structuralists, the Prisoner’s dilemma can manifest itself in a variety of “situations.” Hence, different PDs give way to different kinds of regimes. Situtation-structuralists identified two such types, collaboration regimes and coordination regimes. Situations where PD-like outcomes are prominent require collaboration regimes, which are highly institutionalized and involve mechanisms which deter and, sometimes, penalize cheaters. Coordination regimes, on the other hand, are less-formal and generally are centered around one “coordination-point.” When regimes no longer agree on this coordination-point, there is no reason for the regime to exist. Cheating is minimal, if not non-existent (Hasenclaver, Mayer and Rittberger 2002: 48-49).

Lastly, Oran Young offers further exploration of interest-based regime analysis. Young was one of the first social scientists to explore the growth of regimes in international politics. Differing from the situational-structural school however, Young suspected that leadership mattered greatly in regime formation. In a more behavioral analysis of regimes, Young speculates that “focusing on the actions of individuals [and] differentiating…among several forms of leadership,” best explained variation among regimes (Young 2001: 15). Described sometimes as the “institutional bargaining,” model, Young argues that situational-structuralists and Keohane’s contractual school ignore the tremendous amount of “behind the scenes” bargaining that states enter into in order to form a regime (Hasenclaver, Mayer and Rittberger 2001: 69). In more recent work, Young has explored regime effectiveness and concluded that the best way to understand ineffective regimes is to “focus on the behavior of actors,” and advocated that “behavioral changes serve to alleviate the problems under consideration” (Young 1999: 278). Stein has critiqued Young for generalizing regimes as little more than agreements among actors, which Stein equates to the normal workings of international politics, not of regimes (Stein 1982: 117).

Young’s account of “institutional bargaining” is intriguing because the theory is avowedly not a rationalist account of regime formation.[3] This might seem surprising since Keohane’s rationalist, neoliberal institutional model has had such import on debates about regimes. Young argues that rationalists are too optimistic about the ability to cooperate in an anarchic world order. Whereas Keohane believes that reducing uncertainty is what motivates the formation of regimes, Young suggests that the uncertainty enables actors to form regimes (Hasenclaver, Mayer and Rittberger 2001: 70, 73). Although Young has been considered an outlier among interest-based regime theorists, Keohane, Stein and Young all agree that actors are essentially self-interested and regimes can achieve joint gains for all by coordinating behavior.

A Constructivist Turn?: Weaknesses of Interest-based Regimes

The constructivist turn in IR has questioned the set of assumptions that neoliberals and neorealists departure from. One of the more important distinctions cognitivists and constructivists have stressed is their independence from rationalism. The rationalist account is utilitarian in nature and treats state identities and preferences as exogenous. This has frustrated cognitivists who believe in the power of ideas and knowledge as shaping preferences in a way that rationalists have ignored (Hasenclaver, Mayer and Rittberger 2001: 136).[4] Another distinction between constructivists and rationalists that has been particularly heated is the extent to which the international system can be rigorously tested by empirical observation. Rationalists have generally critiqued constructivists for a failure to test hypotheses, and constructivists have been unwillingly (and in some cases unable) to subject their work to empirical scrutiny. But as we have seen with the interest-based theorists, variation exists among cognitivists too. Prominent social constructionist Alexander Wendt is not “post-positivist” in the slightest, and thinks that science and constructivism are not opposites at all (Wendt 1999: 39). Moreover, responding to a pressure from Andrew Moravcsik and other rationalists, constructivist Jeffrey Checkel has outlined five testable hypotheses that even a rationalist could understand (Checkel 2001: 222).[5]

On the other hand, constructivists have something to offer interest-based regime theorists as well. Two points of concern are particularly prescient. First, interest-based theorists would be served well by thinking more thoroughly about the most basic assumption their hypotheses are grounded in: that actors are rational-egoists that seek cooperation to enhance their own ends. Empirically, there are possibilities where actors might not act in strictly rational-egoist terms. Robert Keohane has remarked that states sometimes might relax their “egoist” concerns which would open the way for what he calls “empathetic interdependence” (Keohane 1984: 174). As Keohane has remarked: “Much governmental aid can be explained on narrowly self-interested grounds, but this explanation may not be convincing in accounting for [some] programs” (Keohane 1984: 173). More theoretically, the strong cognitivist critique of rational-egoism argues that knowledge, which shapes beliefs and normative ideas, ultimately influences state interests (Hasencalver, Mayer and Rittberger 2001: 138). Thus to presume that self-interest is merely a “given” is problematic for the cognitive IR theorist.

Secondly, another weakness of interest-based regime theory has been the general unwillingness to accept criticism from the cognitivist camp. Interest-based theorists have demanded that constructivists should “play by their terms” or not be taken seriously. This is a serious flaw not only because it hinders open dialogue between social scientists, but also limits the possibilities of scholars learning from one another. Surprisingly, neoliberals and interest-based theorists suffered the same fate from their realist colleagues, who openly mocked their insistence that institutions mattered in global politics (See Mearshiemer 1993, and Strange 1983). International regimes, as Krasner has defined, also converge around particular principles and norms that are a regime’s “defining characteristics” (Krasner 1983: 16). Cognitivists and constructivists have examined norms at length, and potentially have a lot to offer interest-based theorists.

Conclusion and A Future Agenda

Interest-based regime theories, thus far, have best explained the goings-on of regimes in international politics. Despite disagreements between Keohane, Stein and Young about rationalism, variation of regime formation, and the extent to which PD can explain different types of regimes, ultimately these authors weave together, a build-off one another, a powerful explanation for the existence of regimes. As I have pointed out, however, the constructivist turn in IR has some merit. Although neoliberals might be unwilling to overturn their most basic assumption – that actors are rational-egoists using cooperation to achieve joint gains – there is nevertheless room to explore further this assumption. In an ideal situation, interest-based theorists might be able to subsume their constructivist counterpart. In other words, agree with cognitivists that knowledge and learning shape preferences, then go on to show why these preferences are still rational-egoist in nature. Lastly, interest-based agendas in the future could delve further into constructivist territory. By this I do not mean that interest-based theorists adopt constructivism as a starting point. Rather, interest-based theories could take into account the role of norms and ideas in politics more seriously in their work.

[1] Bessette and Haufler have tried to explicate a fourth notion of regime analysis that “emphasizes the role of the private sector in constructing regimes.” One might describe this as market, or economic-based (Bessette and Haufler 2001: 72).

[2] Discord comes about when actors do not “adjust their policies to…other’s objectives (Keohane 52).

[3] Stephen Krasner has separated Young’s work from Keohane and Steain altogether, arguing instead that he reflects more a Groatian tradition. This tradition, for Krasner, is in conflict with the modified structural orientation of Keohane and Stein (See Krasner 1983). I am comfortable linking all three authors under the same “interest-based” grouping.

[4] Constructivists disenchantment with rationalism is far different from Young’s. Young did not discount altogether rationalism as an ontological framework as some constructivists have. As I argued earlier, he was simply skeptical of the rationalist account with respect to regime formation.

[5] Of course, Moravcsik still was not satisfied with Checkel’s contribution (See Moravcsik 2001).

Book Review: Thomas Franck's "Legitimacy Among Nations"

2006-03-16T17:36:00.000-08:00

Compliance and Legitimacy: Looking Back at Thomas Franck’s The Power of Legitimacy Among Nations

Introduction

The concept of legitimacy has been understudied in international relations theory, and moreover, in the discipline of political science in general. In an interesting book, The Power of Legitimacy Among Nations, Thomas Franck tried to fill this analytical gap by investigating the significance of legitimacy in international relations, in particular in issues concerning compliance. For Franck, legitimacy is the missing link to solve the international legalist’s puzzle: Why are rules obeyed or not? (Franck 1990: 7). But Franck approached the study by turning rationalist and legalist arguments on their heads, critiquing “an ontology that [gave] actors priority over rules” (Hasenclaver, Mayer and Rittberger 157). Franck might be described as a strong cognitivist or a social contructivist instead, approaching the study of IR by examining the influence of principles and norms in international society. This paper will examine in detail the concept of legitimacy and furthermore situate his book in light of other works on compliance. In doing so I argue that although Franck’s book is an important reminder of how legitimacy operates in the international environment, recent studies have raised questions about compliance that Franck’s book fails to answer

Legitimacy and Compliance Pull in IR

In a review of Franck’s book, Martti Koskenniemi remarked that legitimacy is inherently difficult to study because “we do not know whether is exists as a property of rules, psychology or behavior” (Koskenniemi 1992: 175). Realists, Franck observed, would have little use for the concept because obedience based on legitimacy would be a sign of weakness (Franck 1990: 4). The positivist school of thought, identified with John Austin, defined law as the enforcement of a sovereign to a subject (Franck 1990: 10). Without the sovereign, rules would not be obeyed (Franck 1990: 185). Franck sympathizes with this critique and spends much of the book developing a defensible definition of legitimacy since rationalists and legalists have argued that the legitimacy factor’s existence is “unprovable” [sic] (Franck 1990: 19).[1] Nevertheless, Franck believes international “law” in the sense many have previously conceived it to be also unprovable.[2] International “law,” unlike domestic law, has less legal ramifications and is guided more by the “house rules of the club” than the sovereign (Joiner 1992: 283).

Franck drew insights from Weber, Marx and the procedural-substantive school with respect to legitimacy. Weber’s contribution is the aspect of “belief” to legitimacy. Drawing on his categorization of regimes as traditional, charismatic and legal-rational, Weber argued that what tied all of these regimes together was the extent to which the subject population “believed” their leaders had the right to rule over them (Weber 1978: 113). Marxists and neo-Marxist theories spurred the Weberian notion and instead suggested that legitimate regimes brought about “just” outcomes and must be defended on the grounds of equality, fairness and freedom (Franck 1990: 18). The procedural-substantive school, generally associated with Habermas, argued that legitimation occurred through a discursive validation whereas the “procedures and presuppositions of justification are themselves…the legitimating grounds” (Habermas as cited in Franck 1990: 17).

Ultimately Franck thought each definition was too arbitrary and lacked the nuance it required. Also these definitions focused exclusively on domestic, or national, political systems. He hoped to explain legitimacy at the international level. Thus, for Franck, legitimacy was “ a property of a rule or rule-making institution which itself exerts a pull toward compliance on those addressed normatively because those addressed believe that the rule or institution has come into being and operates in accordance with generally accepted principles of right process” (Franck 1990: 24). Although Franck pays some homage to Weber in this definition, he more reflects the cognitivist orientation, relying less on process and procedure, and more on notions of societal principals and norms to explain legitimacy. Franck’s understanding of international politics closely resembles Hedley Bull’s in this sense. Despite Bull’s “philosophical realism,” his contribution to IR, the society of states argument, resonates. The society of states are a group of states cognizant of certain common values that form a society based on these values and a common set of rules (Bull 2002: 13).[3]

Franck’s definition of legitimacy, prima facie, makes little more sense than other definitions. It is with an examination of four properties of rule-legitimacy —determinacy, symbolic validation, coherence and adherence — that highlight the differences between the previous definitions and Franck’s international one. First, determinacy refers to the literary property of a rule, or “that which makes its message clear” (Franck 1990: 52). Second, symbolic validation takes place when a rule-making process or institution uses cues in order to gain compliance with a command. For example, a symbolic cue could be a song or act, like the national anthem (Franck 1990: 92). Symbolic validation also dealt with ritual and pedigree. Ritual is marked by ceremony, like the swearing in of the U.S. President, or other annual or semi-annual events that reflect a validation of compliance to rules. Pedigree acknowledged an aspect of tradition “emphasizing the deep rootedness [sic] of the rule or the rule-making authority” (Franck 1990: 94). In other words, the compliance pull depended on the historic origins of a rule or rule-making institution. Third, the legitimacy of a rule or rule-making institution depends on the rule’s coherence. Coherence, put simply, is the degree to which a rule was applied coherently and consistently (Franck 1990: 142). Coherence, as well, provides a connection between a rule and the principles used to resolve compliance problems (Franck 1990: 148). Lastly, adherence refers to the degree to which secondary rules — the ways rules are made or interpreted — adhere to a primary rule of obligation (Franck 1990: 184).

Franck spends most of the book fleshing out legitimacy in hopes of answering the question he posed in the first chapter: Why do nations obey rules? Clearly, Franck does not think the realist or Austinian schools can answer such a question. Both schools of thought believe that disobedience to international “law” is the norm (Franck 1990: 7). But Franck, drawing on the work of Louis Henkin, argued that states generally observe and obey the principles of international law almost all the time (Henkin as cited in Chayes and Chayes 2001: 249). This is what was so intriguing for Franck. Given that international politics is so unique from domestic politics, the occurrence of habitual state behavior and obligation, in the absence of a sovereign, seemed to open the way for an answer to this puzzle: legitimacy. For example, the refusal of the United States to enforce a naval blockade on a shipment of Chinese missiles en route to Iran placed the principals of the international system ahead of the strategy of U.S. policy (Franck 1990: 3-4).

Critiques of Franck’s Case

Franck’s book elicited a number of positive responses from reviewers when it appeared in 1990. Koskenniemi suggested that Franck’s book pointed out that the international system was far from the “positivist-ideal types of rule application and violation” (Koskenniemi 1992: 176). And reviewer Christopher Joiner remarked that Franck’s book was a “lucid, and profound study” that deserved the attention of scholars and students alike (Joiner 1992: 284). Of course, Franck’s work is not without flaws. First, although meant to address a question dealing with issues of rule compliance, Franck spends much of the book creating a theoretical framework from which to explore legitimacy at the international system. The compliance issue is discussed at only a cursory level. Several essays on compliance written after Franck’s book appeared draw different conclusions on why states obey.

For example, in an influential article by Victor and Raustiala, they argue that high compliance is not a sign that commitments are influential (or symbolic or legitimate), but instead reflect that states join agreements they already know they can comply (Victor and Raustiala 2001: 662). Chayes and Chayes suggest that compliance can be greatly improved by creating better treaties that have less ambiguous language and allow parties to better carry out their responsibilities (Chayes and Chayes 2001: 250, 260).[4] (In other words, tweaking the legal document increases compliance). And Downs, Rocke and Barsoom critique many in the managerial school, and other compliance scholars, for ignoring the notion that enforcement is often a necessary measure to combat noncompliance (Downs, Rocke and Barsoom 2001: 298). Put simply: states disobey more than prior scholarly works presumed. When they do, what enforcement measures ought to be taken?

Two, although Franck’s analysis of legitimacy is thorough and interesting, I am not certain engaging legitimacy — creating a rich definition with several “properties” — actually is needed to explain why nations obey. Sociologists John Meyer, Richard Scott and Brian Rowan in their work on organizational theory believe that legitimacy exists, but they are less certain that the legitimation process is as complicated or necessarily profound as Franck suggests. In their discussion of isomorphism, they have shown that states seem to adopt similar patterns of institutional development despite varying histories, cultures and political and social climates (Keck and Sikkink 1998:33). Often times institutions and organizations are recreated or sustained despite glaring inefficiencies in the institutional pattern (Meyer and Rowan 1992: 20). Whereas Franck takes members of the international society as serious actors – examining the rule’s normative and legitimate content – Meyer and Rowan suggest that participants think very little before they act, instead following the aforementioned, traditional approach simply because that’s the way it has always been.[5] In such a case, legitimacy is little more than Weber’s “traditional” claim some one-hundred years before.

Conclusion

Thomas Franck’s The Power of Legitimacy Among Nations, illuminated various insights into why states (or nations as he calls them) obey, or are obligated to, rules. For Franck, the compliance pull was the legitimacy of those rules – its determinacy, symbolic validation, coherence and adherence. Franck spends much of the book explicating his notion of legitimacy. On the one hand, by the time one is done with the book Franck has convinced the reader what legitimacy is and that it probably matters. On the other hand, Franck’s attention to the question, “what is legitimacy,” fails to answer his initial question, “why are rules obeyed?” Instead, Franck’s book becomes a descriptive text about legitimacy, not a text that explains compliance in the world of international relations. More recent critiques by Victor and Raustiala, Chayes and Chayes, and Downs, Rocke, and Barsoom raise questions that Franck’s book does not explicitly tackle. Meyer, Scott and Rowan, although perhaps agreeing with Franck’s premise, approach the story from a different angle. States, institutions and organizations do things because they see others doing it, not because one has examined the “normative content” of the rules they must obey. In short, Franck’s book deserves attention, but it is not without reproach.

[1] Of course, Franck realizes that he cannot “prove” legitimacy exists by basing his work on the assumptions of rationalists or legalists.

[2] Throughout the book, Franck always quotes “law,” emphasizing that domestic law is very different for international “law”.

[3] Oddly enough, Franck never cites Bull at all, although there are definitely similarities between Bull’s The Anarchical Society and Franck’s work.

[4] Franck does address Chayes and Chayes concern somewhat by arguing that increasing a rule’s clarity does not guarantee compliance. States do not obey the specific terms of rules, but read into the rule’s “normative” content: why and to whom their obedience should matter (Franck 1990: 68, 85).

[5] Meyer and Rowan are not necessarily different in their approach to studying institutions than Franck would be. They are both congnitivists interested in how social norms affect political or social outcomes. But Meyer and Rowan think the outcome – isomorphism – is more telling than the “cause” – legitimacy or legitimation.