Approaches: realism, liberalism, constructivism
- Realism
o Classics: Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Weber, Carr (1946), Morgenthau (1948)
o Assumptions: Smith (1986)
o Neo-realism, balance of power: Waltz (1979)
o Critique – balance of threats: Walt (1985), Schweller (1994)
o Bi-polarity, relative power, and WMDs as peaceful: Grieco (1988), Mearsheimer (1990)
o Critique – bi-polarity as not most stable: Gilpin (1981)
o Critiques – need domestic politics: Ruggie (1983), Snyder (1991)
o But, realists shouldn’t care about domestic politics: Zakaria (1992), Legro and Moravcsik
(1999)
o Critiques – toward liberalism/cooperation, neo- v. classical realism: Glaser (1994),
Ashley (1984), Gilpin (1984), Brooks (1997)
- Liberalism (much more about regimes in IPE, institutions and trade outline)
o Basic logic: Deutsch and Singer (1964)
o Strands (collective security, critical theory, liberal institutionalism, liberal theory) and
comparison to realism: Mearsheimer (1994), Moravscik (1997)
o Neo-liberalism: Keohane and Nye (1977)
o Critiques of neo-liberalism: Grieco (1988), Mearsheimer (1990)
o Critique of both neo-realism and neo-liberalism – relative/absolute gains: Powell (1991)
- Constructivism
o Anarchy: Bull (1977), Wendt (1992)
o Overview: Katzenstein (1996), Jepperson, Wendt, and Katzenstein (1996), Adler (1997),
Finnemore and Sikkink (1998)
o Effects in international arena: Keck and Sikkink (1998), Price and Tannenwald (1996),
Risse-Kappen (1996), Price (1998)
o Effects in domestic arena: Checkel (1997), Kier (1996), Legro (1997), Acharya (2004)
Realism
- Classics: Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Weber, Carr (1946), Morgenthau (1948)
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Basic assumptions
o Smith (1986)
 Pessimistic view of human nature; struggle for power defines politics and is a
permanent feature of social life – this is especially prominent in the relations
between states; states are only major actors (autonomy of units) and no
structure of power or authority (including norms) stands above them to mediate
their conflicts; states act according to their power interests and these will
conflict violently sometimes; even if progress toward community and justice is
possible within states, the relations between them are doomed to a permanent
competition that often leads to war
 Thucydides’ contribution: primary importance of power; the logic of fear and
escalation always pushes out the logic of moderation and peaceful diplomacy
(“What made war inevitable was the growth of the Athenian power and the fear
which this caused in Sparta.”); radically limited role for morality in the
deliberations of states (Athens to Melos: only the weak resort to moral
argument)
 Hobbes’ contribution: need for states – individual’s life in the state of nature is
“solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”; constituted states can protect
individuals from domestic anarchy; international state of nature is a constant
state of war; no moral considerations
 Weber’s contribution: state as a unitary actor from his definitions – the state is
the “human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate
use of physical force” and politics is “striving to share power or striving to
influence the distribution of power either among states or among groups in a
state”
Neorealism – balance of power
o Waltz (1979)
 Anti-reductionist; must conceive of IR in systemic terms; critical systemic
property is anarchy, the absence of central rule; states are the constitutive units
of the system; units are functionally alike in the tasks they pursue; self-help, the
idea that no one can be counted on to take care of anyone else, so must put self
in a position to survive, is fundamental basis of international association; there
is no differentiation between states besides material capabilities (want to
reduce vulnerabilities due to self-help)
 System individualistic in origin – spontaneously generated as byproduct of
states’ actions in trying to fulfill their own interests; once formed, constrains
states’ behaviors; the system is defined by counting states according to their
capabilities
 Collaboration occurs only in ways strongly conditioned by structure of anarchy
 Balance of power politics: systemic stability – defined as the absence of
system-wide wars – is greatest when the number of powers is smallest,
with the most favorable being a bipolar system
o Balance – states ally in opposition to principal source of danger
to protect themselves; makes states more secure because
aggressors face combined opposition (traditional example =
Britain/Churchill)
o Bandwagon – states ally with the state that poses major threat;
security scarce (aggression rewarded)
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defensive reasons = desire for appeasement
(“Finlandization” after losing two major wars to USSR in
five years)
 offensive reasons = desire to share in spoils of war
(example = Italy – Mussolini’s declaration of war on
France)
 Economic interdependence marginal
 Solutions to global problems depend on national policies, which are
constrained by self-help, so depends on individual unit calculations of
the means (not the desired ends)
 Change within the system comes from shifts in the distribution of capabilities
Neo-realism critique: balance of threats
o Walt (1985)
 Power is not the only important factor – states will ally with or against the most
threatening power
 Depends on aggregate power, proximity, offensive capability, and
offensive intentions
 Implications: in a balancing world, credibility is less important and the fear of
defection decreases, so restraint is best policy; in a bandwagoning world, much
more competitive and great powers rewarded if they appear strong, so more
inclined to use force
 Balancing – more common
 Bandwagoning likelihood increases with especially weak states with
unavailable allies and ideological solidarity
o Examples: Finland – borders great power, was unlikely to add
much to either side, and had allied with Germany in WWII,
alienating allies; American opposition to leftist movements in
third world because saw them as naturally inclined toward
alignment with USSR
Critique of balance of threats
o Schweller (1994)
 Balance of threat theory defines bandwagoning incorrectly as capitulation
(giving in to threats, as one example) – it considers only cases in which goal of
alignment is security, so systematically excludes alliances driven by profit
 Balancing and bandwagoning have different motivations – aim of balancing is
self-preservation/protection of values already possessed (desire to avoid losses)
while aim of bandwagoning is usually self-extension to obtain values coveted
(opportunity for gains)
 Thus, the presence of a significant external threat is not necessary for
bandwagoning, though it is for balancing
 Types of bandwagoning: “jackal,” “piling-on,” “wave of the future,” “domino
effect”
 Effects on stability:
 “jackal bandwagoning” – decreases system stability because states
bandwagon with a rising expansionist state or coalition that seeks to
overthrow status quo; done by revisionist states that want to share in
spoils of victory
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“piling-on bandwagoning” – increases system stability by bandwagoning
with the stronger-status quo coalition; occurs when outcome of war
already determined/states want to claim unearned share of the spoils
Importance of relative power and bipolarity as peaceful
o Mearsheimer (1990)
 Fundamentally competitive world with fixed state preferences
 Relative, not absolute, power matters most to states (Grieco (1988))
 Why bipolar is more peaceful than multipolar (“Simplicity breeds certainty;
certainty bolsters peace.”):
 Number of conflict dyads is fewer; deterrence is easier since imbalances
of power are fewer(power imbalances make it hard to deter the strong
and balancing faces coordination problems); prospects for deterrence
are greater because miscalculations of relative power and opponents’
resolve are fewer
o Example: multipolar system before World Wars, deterrence
undermined by misperceptions, miscalculations, difficulties in
forming alliances, and the asymmetric distribution of power; no
nuclear weapons, so believed costs of war would be small and
that successful offense was feasible
 Why nuclear weapons favor peace:
 WMDs make the costs of war extremely high; MAD makes conquest
more difficult, increases equality in the system, and lessens the risk of
miscalculation of relative capability (once MAD achieved, adding more
has little strategic importance); nuclear weapons work to dampen
nationalism (or hyper-nationalism, because states don’t need mass
armies, which is an important domestic cause of war)
 Forecasting for end of Cold War: best option is to allow limited, managed
proliferation of WMDs that go to Germany but no further (umm…what?)
Critique of bipolarity as peaceful
o Gilpin (1981)
 Critiques: (1) system changes from hegemonic war and (2) bipolar maybe not
most stable
 Changes to reflect new distribution of power through a direct contest between
the dominant power(s) and rising challenger(s)
 Dominant powers will experience a fiscal crisis if they try to maintain
dominance  hegemonic war is a cycle of growth, expansion, eventual
decline, and so on…
 Bipolar system maybe isn’t the most stable
 Both of the great powers may not be vigilant in keeping balance
 Powers can overreact to minor change
 Agreements may be easier in bipolar world, but may also breakdown
more easily
o Problems with Gilpin (1981): almost no empirics, not replicable,
not falsifiable, selection on dependent variable
Critiques: Need for domestic politics
o Ruggie (1983)
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Waltz (1979) misses a dimension of change – he drops the second analytical
component of political structure, differentiation of units, when discussing
international systems; if anarchy tells us that the political system is segmented,
differentiation tells us on what basis the segmentation is determined
 Waltz misses a determinant of change as well – neglects dynamic density
(quantity/diversity of transactions that go on within society); only structural
change can produce systemic change, but in any social system, structural
change itself ultimately has no source other than unit-level processes; by
banishing these from the domain of systemic theory, Waltz exogenizes the
ultimate source of systemic change
o Snyder (1991)
 If states know balancing is more common, why do we see overextension?
 When great powers “overexpand” they provoke an overwhelming balancing
coalition or the costs exceed benefits
 We must take domestic politics into consideration:
 A state overexpands because expansion always benefits a few people
greatly and costs many people only a little (some, like the military,
hijack organs of government for selfish goals)
 Do it by creating “myths of empire,” which include a belief in the riches
to be gained through conquest, the advantage of offensive strategies,
etc. – over time, elites also come to believe these myths
 Expansion goes beyond what any one group wants due to logrolling
between various factions (one group is willing to back another’s project
if its own ambitions are supported)  “multiple expansion” (hence,
overexpansion most acute in countries with many concentrated interest
groups)
o Unitary and democratic states less likely to face overexpansion
than “cartelized states”
Should “realists” even care about domestic politics?
o Zakaria (1992)
 Critique of Snyder (1991) and “defensive realism”
 Assumptions of defensive realism:
 A rational state expands only to achieve security (unlike traditional
assumption that states expand as a consequence of increasing power
resources)
 The international system pressures states toward moderate behavior
only because aggression always faces balancing, the costs of expansion
quickly exceed the benefits, and defenders usually have the advantage
(anything else must be explained at some other level of analysis –
typically, domestic – because it cannot be a rational response to the
international environment)
 Critiques:
 Defensive realism uses domestic politics to do all the work in the theory
(too much emphasis on domestic factors)
 Systemic imperatives do not work in this manner (there is socialization,
competition, and selection – the international system affects states
similarly – even though states behave in various manners, we must start
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with the theoretical assumption that the existence of an anarchic
environment causes states to attempt self-help continuously)
 Unlike Waltz’s realism, which is ahistorical, defensive realists talk about
states learning over time
o Legro and Moravcsik (1999)
 Scholars have simplified the theoretical core assumptions to only anarchy and
rationality, neither of which is distinctly realist (and, moreover, both are
constant over time, which tells us little about distinct realist variables for
explaining variation in state behavior) – this is “minimal realism”
 Scholars have invoked variation in exogenous influences on state behavior, like
preferences, beliefs, or international institutions, to trump the direct and
indirect effects of material power (power is not the most important thing in
some of these scholars’ work) [examples of the problems of “mid-range
theories”]
 Example is (ironically) Zakaria (1999): drops assumption of a unitary
state and instead distinguishes state (domestic state apparatus) from
nation (society); US government moved toward expansion in the late
nineteenth century more slowly and less thoroughly than shifts in
relative power predict because state power depends not only on
resources, but also on the ability of states to extract those resources
from society (including getting societal support for policies); the
tendency of states to expand is thus a function of the international and
domestic power of the state
With or without domestic politics, neorealist bias toward competition
o Glaser (1994)
 “contingent realism” – standard realism biased because it emphasizes benefits
of competition while overlooking its risks and implies self-help  competition
(ignores cooperation as a form of self-help); need to focus on military
capabilities in terms of the ability to perform military missions instead of on
power; countries should focus not only on capabilities, but also on motives
(states have the ability to signal)
 International institutions are capable of providing information to states that
helps them realize their common interests and joint gains (isn’t this
institutionalist or simply rationalist and not realist?)
Neo-realism v. classical realism
o Ashley (1984)
o Neorealism was a reaction against the subjectivity of realism; problems:
 Neorealism as statist – doesn’t allow for the falsification of states as
unitary actors (no global-collectivist concepts)
 Capabilities are distributed or possessed among states, but they exist
independently of the actor’s knowing or will and are collapsible into an
objective measure of systemic distribution; international order – there
are no rules or norms prior to or independent of actors
 Denies history as process – static and any movement is confined within
the already specified structure
 Denies the significance of practice – people are reduced to a conception
where they can only carry out the limited rational logic that the state
demands
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Denies the social basis and limits of power – the power of an actor
doesn’t depend on recognition within the community (it’s only about
capabilities)
 Denies politics – reduces them to whatever fits within a framework of
economic action under structural constraints (politics is just technique –
achieving the goals of the state)
 While classical realism fails in many ways, it at least dictates a commitment to
the necessary ambiguity of political reality
Gilpin (1984)
 Neorealism as statist? No, because they leave open the possibility that the state
may transform to some other type of grouping in the future through the same
types of political processes that have historically brought about political change
 Objectivist? No realist (classical or neo) argues that political structure
determines all behavior – they say that structure constrains and powerfully
influences behavior
Brooks (1997)
 Neorealism assumes states adopt a worst-case perspective (inconsistent with
expected utility framework); actors heavily discount future, favoring short-term
preparedness, military preparedness trumps economic
 “postclassical realism” – states make decisions based on the probability
of aggression; the probability of conflict varies systematically according
to factors other than the distribution of capabilities (like geography or
technology, as two examples); this indicates that the international
system can often have lower security pressures than neorealists
assume; long-term objectives matter; power, not security, is ultimate
goal of states, so economics can matter
 Examples: neorealism would expect Germany and Japan to have
balanced against US, but German defense expenditures have
declined in absolute terms in every year since 1990; November
1995, Japanese Cabinet approved new defense plan outlining
significant military spending cuts (postclassical would predict
this, saying balancing would occur only if there was high
probability of US acting coercively)
Liberalism
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Basic logic
o Deutsch and Singer (1964)
 Multipolar systems are more stable
 In any given bilateral relationship, a limited range of possible
interactions obtains, each if the relationship is highly symbiotic; as
additional actors are brought into the system, the range of possible
interactions open to each – and hence the total system – increases (ex:
economic system going from barter to market; ex: bipolar system
produces one dyad, a tripolar produces three, four actors produce six
pairs, etc. – increasing the number of actors dramatically increases the
number of interaction opportunities)
 Every nation’s needs and supplies differ, so the more nations there are,
the greater will be the number and diversity of trade-offs available to
the total system  increases possibility for stabilizing
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interactions/decreases possibility for conflict (even assuming the system
is characterized by conflict-generating scarcities)
 Alliances: membership in alliance decreases a nation’s interaction
opportunities and may increase the intensity of conflicts with nonalliance actors
 So, the greatest threat to the stability of any impersonal social
system is the shortage of alternative partners
 As the number of independent actors in the system increases, the share
of its attention that any nation can devote to any other must of
necessity diminish
 This matters because, let’s say, a state needs to give 10 percent
of its attention to escalate to conflict, but the likelihood of
conflict will thus decline with the decline of the average
attention any one government has available for any one of the
remaining actors in the international system
o Multipolar world is often more stable in the short run
than a bipolar one, but has problems of long-run
political stability (operating under the rules of balance
of power politics, even multipolar system will be selfdestroying)
Liberal strands and comparison to realism
o Mearsheimer (1994)
 Institutions are a set of rules that stipulate the ways in which states
should cooperate and compete with each other; not a form of world
government because states must choose to obey the rules
 Unlike realists, liberals believe institutions markedly affect the prospects
for international stability; believe institutions can alter state preferences
and therefore change state behavior
 Realists maintain that institutions are basically a reflection of the
distribution of power in the world and are based on the self-interested
calculations of the great powers, and they have no independent effect
on state behavior (example: NATO – essentially a manifestation of the
bipolar distribution of power in Europe during the Cold War)
 Types of liberalism:
 Collective security (Woodrow Wilson/League of Nations) – like
realism, assumes force will continue to matter and states will
have to guard against potential aggressors; unlike realism,
doesn’t like balance-of-power logic or traditional alliances and
proposes three anti-realist norms; says states should reject idea
of using force to change status quo, states should be
“responsible” and not act on basis of their own narrow selfinterest to deal with states that threaten/start war (instead
should join together against aggressor – attack on any state is
considered an attack on every state), and states should trust
each other to renounce aggression (and mean it); institutions
are key to managing power successfully
o Critique: how do states overcome their fears and learn
to trust one another? Can they determine the aggressor
o
versus victim? Is all aggression wrong? Would states
follow through? Does this make all local conflict
international? What about “friendly” countries
(neighbors) – will they go against an aggressive friend?
 Critical theory – unlike realism, doesn’t think state’s behavior is
self-interested; ideas and discourse are the driving forces
behind state behavior; hope to create “pluralistic security
communities” where states behave according to the same
norms of institutions that underpin collective security; want to
create a world in which all states consider war an unacceptable
practice; want international system characterized by community
instead of anarchy
o Critique: state behavior changes when discourse
changes, but what determines why some discourses
become dominant and others don’t? What direction will
change take other than replacing realism?
 Liberal institutionalism – like realism, states are in anarchical
environment and self-interested actors; doesn’t directly address
how to prevent war; institutions provide the key to overcoming
the main inhibitor of international cooperation, cheating
(Prisoner’s Dilemma); rules need to constrain states and
institutions can change a state’s calculations about how to
maximize gains (short-term sacrifices to get long-term gains);
rules can do this through institutionalized iteration, issuelinkage (create greater interdependence between states),
increased information (for close monitoring), and reduced
transaction costs of individual agreements
o Critique: ignores security issues; ignores relative-gains
concerns (which it can’t do if it assumes states are selfinterested actors)
Moravscik (1997)
 Liberalism: state-society relations – the relationship of states to the
domestic and transnational social context in which they are embedded
– have a fundamental impact on state behavior
 Societal ideas, interests, and institutions influence state behavior by
shaping state preferences and the configuration of state preferences
matters most in world politics [unlike realists, who argue that state
capabilities matter most; unlike neoliberal institutionalists, who think
the configuration of information and institutions is most important]
 Core assumptions:
 Fundamental actors are individuals and private groups, who are
on the average rational and risk-averse and who organize
exchange and collective action to promote differentiated
interests under constraints imposed by material scarcity,
conflicting values, and variations in societal influence
 States or other political institutions represent some subset of
domestic society, on the basis of whose interests state officials
define state preferences and act purposively in world politics
o
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State = representative institution that social actors
construct/reconstruct
o Nature of state institutions is a key determinant of what
states do internationally
o Societal preferences can alter state preferences 
preferences are prior to interstate political interactions
 States can act in either a unitary or disaggregated way (by
disaggregated, mean central banks and ruling parties, for
example, can make semiautonomous foreign policies because
they represent different societal interests)
 States are “functionally differentiated” (there are trade-offs
among various goals and cross-national differentiation in their
definition)
 The configuration of interdependent state preferences
determines state behavior
o Each state seeks to realize its distinctive preferences
under varying constraints imposed by the preferences
of other states
 Implications:
 If preferences naturally compatible, strong incentives for
coexistence with low conflict
 If preferences zero-sum or deadlocked, governments face a
bargaining game with few mutual gains and a high potential for
conflict
 If preferences mixed so that coordination can improve welfare
of both parties relative to unilateral policy adjustment, states
have incentive to negotiate [unlike realism, precondition for
conflict is not configuration of power; unlike neoliberal
institutionalism, precondition for conflict is not uncertainty]
 Variations in ends, not means, matters most
 Conception of power: willingness of states to expend resources or make
concessions is itself primarily a function of preferences, not capabilities
 Variations: ideational, commercial, republican
 Better than realism: can provide plausible theoretical
explanations for variation in substantive content of foreign
policy and for historical change
 How different from neoliberalism: neoliberal institutionalism
takes state preferences as fixed or exogenous, seeks to explain
state policy as a function of variation in the geographical
environment – albeit for institutionalists information and
institutions and for realists material capabilities – and focuses
on the ways in which anarchy leads to suboptimal outcomes
(liberal theory shares none of these assumption and focuses on
social embeddedness)
Neoliberalism – the politics of cooperation
o Keohane and Nye (1977)
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Use of force had become increasingly costly for major states , so
multidimensional economic, social, and ecological interdependence is
important
 Not an argument that the state was being eclipsed by non-territorial
actors like MNCs, transnational social movements, or international
organizations
 Bargaining is key (politics of economic interdependence)
 Asymmetries in interdependence is seen as power resource
 Interdependence implies that the actions of states and
significant non-state actors will impose costs on other members
in the system (problem of political strategy)
 For individual states, the foreign policy problem is how to
benefit from international exchange while maintaining as much
autonomy as possible
 For the international system, the problem is how to generate
and maintain a mutually beneficial pattern of cooperation in the
face of competing efforts by governments (and
nongovernmental actors) to manipulate the system for their
own benefit
 Interdependence does not necessarily lead to cooperation
 “Complex interdependence” = ideal type of international system (so
states fall on continuum between this and realism)
 Situation among a number of countries in which multiple
channels of contact connect societies (that is, states do not
monopolize these contacts); there is no hierarchy of issues; and
military force is not used by governments against one another
 Affects agenda change and international organizations:
o Agenda change results from poor operation of a regime
in a coherent and functionally linked issue area
o International organizations seen as facilitators, not
lawmakers, in that they are entities of institutionalized
policy networks within which transgovernmental policy
building and coalition-building could take place
 international regimes = governing arrangements that affect
relationships of interdependence
 Critiques: Where is issue linkage? (see IPE, institutions and trade outline)
How can you understand complex interdependence without domestic
politics?
Critique: problems with cooperation as a way to work within anarchy
o Grieco (1988)
 New liberal institutionalism argues that even if the realists are correct in
believing that anarchy constrains the willingness of states to cooperate,
states nevertheless can work together and can do so especially with the
assistance of international institutions
 Critiques:
 This pays attention exclusively to the realist claim that cheating
is a major barrier to international cooperation and ignores state
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concerns about relative achievement of gains as an additional
barrier; neoliberals fail to consider the threat of war that results
from anarchy, which allows them to assume states care only
about absolute gains
 The definition of anarchy is different for neoliberal
institutionalists and realists
 For neoliberals, anarchy means that states may wish to
cooperate, but aware that cheating is both possible and
profitable, lack a central agency to enforce promises
o For realists, anarchy means that there is no overarching
authority to prevent others from using violence, or the
threat of violence, to destroy or enslave them
o Mearsheimer (1990)
 Economic liberalism – prospects for peace are not tightly linked to
calculations about military power, but stability is a function of
international economic considerations; states are motivated by desire
to achieve prosperity and material welfare of their publics is above all
other considerations, including security; the key to achieving peace is
establishment of an international economic system that fosters
prosperity for all states through free economic exchange between
states (economically satisfied states are more peaceful, this prosperity
will promote international institutions and foster even greater
liberalism – through organizations like the EC or IMF to ensure partners
stick to cooperative commitments and provide governments with
resources if facing short-term problems arising from their exposure to
international markets); liberal economic order fosters a situation in
which two states are mutually vulnerable in the economic realm; when
interdependence is high, there is less temptation to cheat or behavior
aggressively towards other states because all states could retaliate;
considers absolute gains more important than relative gains
 Critique: assumption that states have the motive of prosperity is
wrong; the system is anarchic, so states have no higher goal
than survival, meaning political considerations trump economic
ones; states care about relative gains; interdependence is as
likely to lead to conflict as cooperation; if this is true, why did
WWI break out (1890-1914 was probability the time of greatest
economic interdependence in Europe’s history)?
Critique of both neo-realism and neo-liberalism – relative/absolute gains
o Powell (1991)
 Changes in states’ behaviors, the feasibility of cooperation, and states’
concerns for relative versus absolute gains are explicitly linked not to
different assumptions about the states’ preferences (like neorealism
and neoliberalism posit), but to changes in the constraints facing the
states
 States as rational unitary actors do not exist. They are a theoretical
construct. Thus, the question of whether states maximize absolute gains
or are concerned about relative gains is empirically meaningless. The
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real question is which assumption about state preferences is more
useful.
There is nothing theoretically special about the possible use of force.
Key points:
 (1) cooperation may be even more difficult to achieve than
previously thought; some agreements offering equal abs. gains
cannot be sustained in equilibrium because cheating would
bring large rel. gains
 (2) variations in what Waltz (1979) takes to be the structure of
the political system cannot explain the variation in the feasibility
of cooperation (explaining range of cooperative behavior
requires more detailed examination of system’s constraints)
 (3) anarchy – ability/inability to enforce rules of behavior is
relevant only if the physical environment defined by the
system’s constraints is such that one of the possible behaviors is
to use one’s relative gain to one’s advantage and to the
disadvantage of others; anarchy does not logically imply a lack
of cooperation
Constructivism
- Anarchy
o Bull (1977)
 States have both internal sovereignty (supremacy over all other
authorities within that territory and population) and external
sovereignty (independence of outside authorities)
 International system – formed when two or more states have sufficient
contact and have sufficient impact on one another’s decisions to cause
them to behave – at least in some measure – as parts of a whole
 International society – exists when a group of states, conscious of
certain common interests and common values, form a society in the
sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of
rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of
common institutions
 Such common interests/values from common civilization make
for easier communication and closer awareness and
understanding between one state and another and thus
facilitate the definition of common rules and the evolution of
common institutions. They may also reinforce the sense of
common interests that impels states to accept common
rules/institutions with a sense of common values.
 Goals for order in international life: (1) preservation of the system and
society of states itself, (2) goal of maintaining the independence or
external sovereignty of individual states, and (3) peace (sense of
absence of war among member states as the normal condition of their
relationship, to be breached only in special circumstances and according
to principles that are generally accepted)
 There has always been present an idea of international society



o
Hobbesian tradition (realist) – international politics is state of
war (zero-sum game); no moral or legal restrictions on states in
pursuing their goals
Kantian tradition (universalist) – work in international politics is
a potential community of mankind; there are transnational
social bonds linking individual human beings who are the
subjects or citizens of states; interests of men are one and the
same – international politics is thus a purely cooperative or nonzero-sum game; there are moral imperatives limiting the actions
of states and these imperatives enjoin overthrow of the system
to be replaced by cosmopolitan society
Grotian (internationalist) – international politics take place
within international society; states key, but not engaged in
simple struggle – limited by common rules and institutions;
international politics is a game that is partly distributive but also
partly productive; most common activity is trade (economic and
social intercourse between one country and another); states
also bound by imperatives of morality and law, but these simply
require acceptance of coexistence and cooperation in the
society of states
o This idea is reflected in international reality: the idea of
international society has a basis in reality that is
sometimes precarious but has at no stage disappeared
– example: Cold War – US and USSR spoke of each other
as heretics rather than as members of the same
international society, but they did not break off
diplomatic relations, withdraw recognition of one
another’s sovereignty, repudiate the idea of a common
international law, or cause the breakup of the UN into
rival organizations; example: the fact that states even
try to create a “just cause” for war (the rules
circumscribe the range of choice of states which seek to
give pretexts in terms of them)
Wendt (1992)
 Neorealists and neoliberals share a commitment to rationalism and see
the self-interested state as the starting point for theory, but neorealists
believe state action is causally influenced by “structure” (anarchy and
the distribution of process) while neoliberals focus on “process”
(interaction and learning) and institutions
 Constructivists – cognitive, intersubjective conception of process in
which identities and interests are endogenous to interaction, rather
than a rationalist-behavioral one in which they are exogenous; principle
is that people act toward objects, including other actors, on the basis of
the meanings that the objects have for them; the meanings in terms of
which action is organized arise out of interaction
 Argues against neorealist claim that self-help is given by anarchic
structure exogenously to process; self-help and power politics do not
follow either logically or causally from anarchy and if we are in a self-
help world, this is due to process, not structure; self-help and power
politics are institutions, not essential features of anarchy: anarchy is
what states make of it
 Distribution of power may affect states’ calculations, but how it
does so depends on the intersubjective understandings and
expectations, on the “distribution of knowledge,” that
constitute their conceptions of self and other (example: if US
and USSR decide they are no longer enemies, Cold War is over)
 Identities are inherently relational and socially-constructed
 Identities are the basis of interests; actors define their interests
in the process of defining situations
 Institutions are fundamentally cognitive entities that do not
exist apart from actors’ ideas about how the world works (come
from what actors collectively know)
o Thus, institutions can be cooperative or conflictual
o Self-help is one institution that may exist under
anarchy, but it isn’t the only one
 Example: would we assume, a priori, that we
were about to be attacked if we are ever
contacted by aliens? We would be highly alert,
of course, but whether we placed our military
forces on alert or launched an attack would
depend on how we interpreted the import of
their first gesture for our security (action
depends on probabilities we assign, which
depends on what aliens do; prior to their
gesture, we have no systemic basis for assigning
probabilities)
 For a “social act,” there is a process of
signaling, interpreting, and responding
-
Overview
o Katzenstein (1996)
 Interests are constructed through a process of social interaction;
security interests are defined by actors who respond to cultural factors
 Norms = collective expectations for the proper behavior of actors with a
given identity (constitutive or regulative)
 Critique of neoliberal institutionalism – misses the fact that
international regimes don’t simply mirror power relationships – they
acquire their own dynamic over time; they reduce transaction costs and
enhance the potential for coordination
 This process of social change engenders a process of selfreflection and political actions that are shaped by collectively
held norms. State interests and strategies are shaped by a
never-ending political process that generates publicly
understood standards for action (communication key)
 Rationalist account of regimes factors out the actor identities
that often are consequential for the definition of actor interests.
o
o
International and domestic environments shape state identities.
The state is a social actor, embedded in social rules and
conventions that constitute its identity and the reasons for the
interests that motivate actors. History is an influential process
of change.
o Examples: nationalism – Gellner (1983) stresses the
importance of the instrumental logic of nationalism;
Anderson (1983) emphasizes that national identities are
socially constructed
Jepperson, Wendt, and Katzenstein (1996)
 External cultural environments may affect states’ prospects for survival
as entities; recognition of juridical sovereignty by the society of states
has enabled weak states to survive when they otherwise might not
 Material power and coercion often derive their causal power from
culture
 Agency and environment are mutually constitutive
 Institution of sovereignty defines political identities and regulates state
behavior through mutual recognition, nonintervention, and selfdetermination – these, in turn, help reproduce state identities
 Norms are collective expectations about proper behavior for a given
identity, but the presence of norms does not dictate compliance. Any
new or emergent norm must compete with existing, perhaps
countervailing, ones. But, norms make new types of action possible,
while neither guaranteeing action nor determining its results.
 Identity functions as a crucial link between environmental structures
and interests. Identity references mutually constructed and evolving
images of self and other (ex: ideas of more/less legitimate state
identities develop in world society – with the Third Wave, even
authoritarian regimes now use the rhetorical and constitutional
trappings of democracy)
Adler (1997)
 Constructivism occupies the middle ground between rationalist
approaches (whether realist or liberal) and interpretive approaches
(mainly postmodernist, poststructuralist, and critical)
 Constructivism is the view that the manner in which the material world
shapes and is shaped by human action and interaction depends on
dynamic normative and epistemic interpretations of the material world
 Even our most enduring institutions are based on collective
understandings
 IR consist primarily of social facts, which are facts only by
human agreement (social emergence)
 Believe identities, interests, and behavior of political agents are
socially constructed by collective meanings, interpretations, and
assumptions about the world
 Ideas have structural characteristics – they are the propellant of
social action and they define the limits of what is cognitively
possible and impossible for individuals

o
Intersubjective meanings are not simply the aggregation of
beliefs of individuals who jointly experience and interpret the
world; they exist as collective knowledge, embedded in social
routines and practices as they are reproduced by interpreters
who participate in their production and workings
o Example: Anderson (1991) – “imagined communities”
are not merely the sum of the beliefs of some national
group; regardless of the physical existence of the
individuals, they exist in symbols, practices, institutions,
and discourses – from the perspective of their
consequences for the subjective world of the members
of the community, as well as for the physical world,
they are real
 Neoliberalism: unlike realism or neorealism, ideas do matter; acting in
the background of the fixed essences of material interests, ideas affect
the choices that states make and sometimes help overcome collective
goods problems and lead to international cooperation (Keohane 1984)
 But, these ideas work within structural constraints – interests
are exogenous to interaction, so it misses out on the
constitution of actors’ identities and interests by collective
cognitive structures
 Progress in constructivism: based on what political actors do, occurs
through redefinition of identities and interests in the actors themselves
 “Cognitive evolution” – process of innovation, domestic and
international diffusion, political selection, and effective
institutionalization that creates the intersubjective
understanding on which the interests, practices, and behavior
of governments are based
Finnemore and Sikkink (1998)
 Like other theoretical frameworks, much of the macro-theoretical
equipment of constructivism is better at explaining stability than change
(static approach – ex: claims that actors conform to “logics of
appropriateness” say little about how these might change over time)
 Neorealists/neoliberals might more appropriately be called
“econorealists” and “econoliberals” since what was new in both cases
was an injection of microeconomic insights (the move to rational
choice)
 “Norms” are different from “institutions” because of aggregation: the
norm definition isolates single standards of behavior, whereas
institutions emphasize the way in which behavioral rules are structured
together and interrelate
 Types of norms: regulative (order and constrain behavior), constitutive
(create new actors, interests, or categories of action), and
evaluative/prescriptive
 Big question: how do we know a norm when we see one? How many
actors must share the assessment before we call it a norm?
 We need to separate norm existence or strength from actual
behavioral change in our operationalization (needs to be
-
distinct from the state/nonstate behavior the norm is designed
to explain)
 Argument: “life cycle” of norms – agreement among a critical mass of
actors on some emergent norm can create a tipping point after which
agreement becomes widespread; domestic influences are strongest at
the early stage of a norm’s life cycle
 Three stages: norm emergence (persuasion by norm
entrepreneurs), broad norm acceptance (a “norm cascade”),
and internalization
o Norm tipping rarely occurs before 1/3 of the total states
in the system adopt the norm; it matters which states
adopt the norm (some are “critical states”)
o Socialization is the dominant mechanism of a norm
cascade – states comply with norms for reasons that
relate to their identities as members of an international
society
o Internalization = “taken-for-granted” quality that makes
conformance with the norm almost automatic
 Which norms matter when?
 Need for legitimation  states may endorse international
norms during periods of domestic turmoil; prominence; intrinsic
characteristics of norm
 “Adjacency” = linkages between existing norms (ex: Price –
association of chemical weapons with poison, which had
already been prohibited, was important for sustaining the
prohibition on chemical weapons)
o But, these linkages are often not obvious and must be
actively constructed by proponents of new norms
(framing is key – example: from female circumcision 
female genital mutilation)
 Norms and rationality?
 They aren’t opposed – actors engage in “strategic social
construction,” making means-ends calculations to maximize
their utilities, but the utilities they want to maximize involve
changing the other players’ utility function in ways that reflect
the normative commitments of the norm entrepreneurs
Effects of norms in international arena
o Keck and Sikkink (1998)
 Introduces concept of transnational advocacy networks and explores
their impact in the human rights and environmental spheres (in two
countries: Brazil and Malaysia)
 Human rights and women’s rights advocacy networks are some of the
largest and most active; by blurring the boundaries between a state’s
relation with its own nationals and the recourse both citizens and states
have to the international system, advocacy networks transform national
sovereignty through the practice of norms
 “Network”: forms of organization characterized by voluntary, reciprocal,
and horizontal patterns of communication and exchange

o
Advocacy captures what is unique about these transnational networks:
they are organized to promote causes, principled ideas and norms, and
they often involve individuals advocating policy changes that cannot be
easily linked to rationalist understanding of their ‘interest’
 “Boomerang effect” when domestic groups in a repressive state seek
out international allies, which provide support in order to squeeze the
government for normative change from both within and without
 Success depends on network density, capacity, legitimacy, and
resources of the TNA; characteristics of target state or agency; and
communication processes such as shaming, arguing, or learning
Price (1998)
 Role of transnational non-state actors working through issue networks
to affect how states prepare for and wage war
 Case: campaign to generate an international norm prohibiting
antipersonnel (AP) land mines
 Neorealists: Argument that a ban occurred due to state interests cannot
account for the existence of variation in states’ receptivity to
transnational efforts to ban mines; many states have decided not that
mines are not useful, but that their military utility is outweighed by their
humanitarian costs; even relatively insecure states – like Angola,
Cambodia, and the Taliban in Afghanistan – have committed to banning
mines (support for comprehensive ban treaty by 122 nations, signed in
1997)
 Neoliberals: ill-suited to account for developments like the unilateral
renunciation of mines by dozens of states even before a widely
accepted international treaty seemed likely; treats interests as
exogenous and privileges the state as the key site of agency, but here
the key impetus for normative change lies in processes engendered by
transnational and nonstate sources of agency that generate interests
 Transnational civil society = set of interactions among an imagined
community to shape collective life that are not confined to the
territorial and institutional spaces of states
 For AP land mines, role of moral persuasion and the social pressure
arising from identity politics and emulation have been particularly
crucial
 Steps: (1) generating issues by disseminating information
(terrible statistics on land mines – in Cambodia one in every 236
Cambodians an amputee v. one in 22,000 in US – publicity,
including worldwide media campaign, generated by activists
made it a high-profile agenda item)
o Perception of a crisis or shock was crucial factor in
precipitating normative change, but it was not states
but civil society and international organizations that
were the primary catalysts
 (2) establishing networks for proselytizing to generate broad
support for normative change within, across, and outside
government channels
o
o
NGOs/civil society connected to the UN –
representatives were invited to attend meetings;
networking in an issue campaign generates access to
the policymaking process by transforming decisions
about weapons doctrine from an insulated internal
military matter into a political decision (technology
clearly facilitates networking – erodes information
barrier by creating communities of experts who are
outside of government and able to monitor states’
compliance with or violation of desired norms; allows
for “virtual communities” of transnational political
action without territorial boundaries  lower
transactions costs)
 (3) grafting a new norm onto existing norms (so new norm
resonates with already established norms)
o Discrimination (noncombatant immunity) – civilians are
not to be the intentional objects of attack during
conflict (just war doctrine); land mines are especially
indiscriminate (another person doesn’t even have to be
there to inflict the wound and they continue to injure
long after fighting stops)
o Built on chemical weapons taboo – compared to this to
stigmatize
 Gave it “issue resonance,” “salience,” “nesting”
 (4) civil society’s demands on states to publicly justify their
positions reverse the burden of proof involved in contesting
norms, thereby legitimizing political space for change
o Different state agency’s studies questioned the military
utility of mines  made mine proponents publicly
defend what had previously required no justification
o As more states agreed, the techniques used by the
campaign increasingly facilitated norm adoption
through emulation (“norm cascade”)
 Ottawa Treaty signed by a large number of states, though not the US
Price and Tannenwald (1996)
 Rational deterrence theory = use of retaliatory threats of force to deter
attack; deterrence is the ability to dissuade an adversary from doing
something it otherwise would want to do (and which is perceived as
threatening) through threats of unacceptable costs
 Three basic requirements for deterring an adversary (Kaufman 1956):
credible capabilities, a clearly communicated threat, and a credible
willingness to carry out the threat)
 Used to explain the non-use of nuclear and chemical weapons
(fear of retaliation in kind)
 Critique: cannot account for significant cases of the non-use of
either weapon when there was no threat of retaliation in kind
(ex: Spanish Civil War, Korean War, Vietnam War); doesn’t take
into account normative factors; why, in WWII, would the fear of
o
retaliatory CW attacks be any more robust than the fear of
other things that seem just as terrible, say incendiary bombing
raids? The deterrence explanation glosses over many reasons
for nuclear non-use, like concerns about lack of military
effectiveness of bombs or morality; the problem with
deterrence theory is not that its logic has never operated, but
that it does not address the question of how a particular
weapon comes to be defined in deterrent terms whereas other
weapons do not or that of how actor “interests” with respect to
use or non-use come to be defined; neglects identity – what
goes into leaders’ calculations of “unacceptable costs”
 Discourses produce and legitimate certain behaviors and conditions of
life as “normal” and construct categories that themselves make a cluster
of practices and understandings seem inconceivable or illegitimate
 Chemical weapons: prohibited through Geneva Protocol of 1925; since
then, the core of the norm is humanitarian – there are no direct
challenges to the humanitarian definition of CW as a particularly terrible
means of warfare, showing the taboos has strengthened over time;
seen as “weapons of the weak” and connected to standards of civilized
conduct; framed as WMDs
 Two major violations: use by Italy against Ethiopia in 1935-6 and
Iran-Iraq war of 1980s (in both cases, justifications that they
were not being used in “civilized” contexts)
 Nuclear weapons: only gradually during the postwar period that they
acquired status as unacceptable weapons and development of no-firstuse taboo and the distinction between nuclear and conventional
weapons; development not linear or inevitable  combined workings
of contingency, iterated practice of non-use, efforts of some to foster
normative stigma
 Over time, seen as disproportionately lethal, which clashed with
US perceptions of itself as a moral country that took seriously
the traditional laws of armed conflict
 These examples show differences in institutionalization (early or late,
from different sources) and that they can arise in a national context and
be diffused more broadly or at the international level; show historical
contingency
 Norms structure realms of possibilities; they do not determine
outcomes.
Risse-Kappen (1996)
 Need to unpack the “Soviet threat” (claim of realist alliance theory) to
understand why NATO emerged and endured (emerged four years after
WWII)
 Argument: can better understand through “republican liberalism”
linking domestic politics systematically to the foreign policy of states;
liberal democracies are likely to form “pacific federations” (Kant) or
“pluralistic security communities” (Deutsch)
 If democracies are likely to overcome obstacles against international
cooperation and to enter institutional arrangements for specific
-
purposes, we expect the regulative norms of these institutions to reflect
the constitutive norms that shape the collective identity of the security
community
 That is, democracies should be likely to form democratic
international institutions; the norms governing domestic
decision-making processes are expected to regulate their
interactions in international institutions
 NATO – institutionalization of the security community to respond to the
Soviet threat, something that threatened the US/Western Europe’s
fundamental values (concerned about the Sovietization of Eastern
Europe); multilateral institution enhanced the legitimacy of American
leadership by giving the Western Europeans a say in the decisionmaking process; it was not controversial that the alliance had to be
based on democratic principles, norms, and decision-making rules
 Breakdown of NATO cooperation: 1956 Suez Crisis
 Confrontation developed between US and allies because each
side felt betrayed by the other in fundamental ways; US
decision makers perceived allied deception as a violation of
basic rules, norms, and procedures constituting the transatlantic
community, so then it was no longer bound by the norms of
appropriate behavior
 NATO after the Cold War: while before the Soviet domestic structure
and values of communism were regarded as alien and threatening to
the community, the democratization altered the “otherness” of the
Soviet system, so threat perception decreased, so NATO community
extended into Eastern Europe (note, though, that liberal peace extends
to stable democracies only, not necessarily to democratizing states)
Effects of norms in domestic arena
o Checkel (1997)
 Neoliberals  regime theorists (study compliance) – norms affect
incentives facing societal actors and politicians; they constrain behavior
 Constructivists – norms are shared understandings that actually
constitute actor identities and interests
 Argument: norms do both of these things – sometimes
constrain, sometimes constitute, as a function of domestic
structure (liberal, corporatist, statist, and state-above-society)
 “Empowerment” – how norms get on the domestic agenda in the first
place)
 Rational choice explanation: non-state actors and policy
networks are united in their support for a particular
international norm; they mobilize and coerce decision-makers,
who then instrumentally adopt the prescriptions embodied in
the norm as their own (norm as constraint on behavior)
 Constructivist explanation: process of learning leads agents –
often elite decision-makers – to adopt prescriptions embodied
in international norms; norms are internalized and constitute a
set of shared intersubjective understandings, not instrumental

o
o
Domestic mechanisms empowering international norms (two diffusion
mechanisms – societal pressure and elite learning):
 Liberal – societal pressure on elites (Britain)
 Corporatist – societal pressure on elites (primary) and elite
learning (secondary) (Germany)
 Statist – elite learning (primary) and societal pressure on elites
(secondary) (Russia)
 State-above-society – elite learning (Ukraine)
o Sees domestic institutions as structuring the game of
politics and privileging some domestic agents over
others in the process of norm empowerment
 Example: European human rights framework (particularly citizenship
and minorities, adopted in the 1990s) centered on the Council of Europe
Kier (1996)
 Typical argument: marked by the bloody experiences of WWI, the
French army had prepared for a rematch of the previous war, so they
took on a defensive doctrine (trench warfare reminiscent of WWI)
 However, many alternatives were considered – namely, there was a
decade-long debate on whether fortifications were offensive or
defensive and about the potential of mechanized warfare (point is
simply that French army did not leave WWI convinced that only a
defensive doctrine was possible)
 The military plays a pivotal role in state-building process, and this
experience informs policy makers’ views of military policy – civilian
choices in military policy often reflect fears about the distribution of
power within the state, not the structure of the international system
 “political military subcultures” – civilian policy makers’ beliefs
about the role of the armed forces in the domestic arena
 If only one exists, set of ideas constrains behavior by
establishing what is “natural”; if more than one exists, however,
they compete and approximate ideologies by providing explicit,
self-conscious guidelines for action (and typically represent
domestic considerations)
 Military doctrine is a product of domestic politics (sets constraints) and
the military’s organizational culture: domestic politics  org culture 
military doctrine
 France: decisions made by domestic political actors severely limited the
organization’s perception of available options; example: French policy
makers responded to domestic, not international factors, in deciding on
organizational structure of the army in interwar period; they feared
domestic threats, not German capabilities, and so reduced conscription
length to one year  constraints  high command felt it had no choice
but to adopt defensive doctrine because short-term conscripts
represented only quantity and could not be entrusted with offensive
operations
Legro (1997)
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Norms do matter, but not necessarily in ways or often to the extent that
their proponents have argued; by concentrating on showing that norms
“matter,” analysts have given short shrift to the critical issues of which
norms matter, the ways they matter, and how much they matter
relative to other factors; recent analyses have overemphasized
international prescriptions while neglecting norms that are rooted in
regional, national, and subnational groups
International norms were consequential for use of force during WWII,
but they can’t account for the variation that occurred in the use of
force; instead, this depended on organizational culture – the dominant
beliefs in military organizations about the appropriate ways to fight
wars shaped how soldiers thought about and prepared for war, which in
turn shaped the varying impact of norms on state aims
Problems in the norm literature:
 How do you know if a norm is robust? How do you know if some
norms are more influential than others?
 There is a bias toward the norm that “worked” – studies don’t
allow for variation
 Neglect of alternative explanations, particularly ideational ones,
for the effects attributed to norms
Existing explanations for chemical weapons taboo:
 Schelling (1960): chemical weapons norm obtained because it
was different – it was simple and unambiguous (all or nothing),
represented a more distinct coordination point, and therefore
was prone to succeed
o Critique: nations often made explicit decisions regarding
restraint or escalation in the face of understood limits
and actions
 Price: all or nothing aspect of chemical weapons, but in the
sense that the discourse generated by this prohibition
stigmatized any use of the weapon whatever, which then raised
the threshold of use; compelled leaders to consider more
carefully the violation of this norm because they assumed that
any use inevitably would lead to unlimited catastrophic attacks
on civilians
o Critique: overstates all-or-nothing quality
Approach one: “norm approach” – conceptualization based on
specificity, durability, and concordance
 Hypothesis: the clearer the specifics, the more durable, and
more widely endorsed a prescription, the greater its impact
Approach two: organizational culture; shapes organizations identity,
priorities, perception, and capabilities  WWII: state will favor
adherence to norms proscribing a particular form of combat if that form
is antithetical to the war-fighting culture of its military bureaucracy
Uses “least likely” cases – those where conventional wisdom expects
little impact from international prescriptions: prohibitory norms from
o
the 1920s/30s that had varying effects during WWII (why some
followed, some not?):
 Submarine attacks against merchant ships
o Norms: idea that it was illegitimate to destroy merchant
and passenger ships without attention to the safety of
those on board (unrestricted submarine warfare); 1936
– London Protocol on Submarine Warfare; when
violated by Italy in 1937, countries took action to punish
further violations and these attacks stopped; some lack
of specificity (what exactly is a merchant ship?);
widespread support before WWII
o Prediction: most likely adherence
o Organizational culture: Germans saw submarines as
valued combat tool, British and US did not
o Outcome: ignored almost immediately
 Bombing of nonmilitary targets
o Norms: wanted distinction between civilians and
combatants; low concordance (no finalized agreement)
o Prediction: most likely violation
o Organizational culture: British favored strategic
bombing, Germans didn’t
o Outcome: respected for months, then violated
 Use of chemical weapons
o Norms: agreed to Geneva Protocol, which was fairly
precise; but, Italy violated the agreement in war with
Ethiopia and League of Nations responded weakly with
limited economic sanctions; concordance moderate
o Prediction: mixed adherence/violation
o Organizational culture: all favored adherence
o Outcome: upheld
 So, predictions from organizational culture perspective matched
outcome more consistently than predictions from norm perspective
 When culture favored violation, prohibitions against use
generally were disregarded; when culture was inclined toward
adherence, states preferred adherence to norms
 The implication is that we shouldn’t focus only on global norms
– principles and beliefs that characterize other subsystemic
communities may be found to be as or more important than
those in international society
 However, norms did have some effects:
 The most fundamental effect of norms was to define which
means of warfare would even be considered for restraint
 International principles affected the expectations of states
regarding the reactions of other parties; rules of warfare set
guidelines for what was considered acceptable behavior
Acharya (2004)
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Norm diffusion: local agents reconstruct foreign norms to ensure the
norms fit with the agents’ cognitive priors and identities; congruence
building is the key to acceptance; localization, not wholesale acceptance
or rejection, settles most cases of normative contestation
Existing literature:
 “moral cosmopolitanism perspective” – assigns causal primacy
to international prescriptions, but ignores the expansive appeal
of norms that are deeply rooted in other types of social entities,
like regional, national, and subnational groups; sets up implicit
dichotomy between good global norms and bad regional/local
norms; views norm diffusion as teaching by transnational
agents, thus downplaying the agency role of local actors
 “congruence” – role of domestic political, organizational, and
cultural variables in conditioning reception of new global norms;
congruence of international and domestic norms (example:
Legro’s (1997) organizational culture); but these can be unduly
static rather than a dynamic process of matchmaking
 “framing” and “grafting” – more dynamic; can make global
norm appear local, but these are largely acts of reinterpretation
or representation rather than reconstruction and neither is a
local act (outsiders usually perform them)
“Localization” – complex process and outcome by which norm-takers
build congruence between transnational norms (including norms
previously institutionalized in a region) and local beliefs and practices
 In this process, foreign norms, which may not initially cohere,
are incorporated into local norms; success of norm diffusion
thus depends on the extent to which the strategies/processes
provide opportunities for localization; local actors more
important than outside actors
Why localize?
 Rationally, assuming there isn’t a moral argument against a
norm, localization is simply easier, especially when prior norms
are embedded in strong local institutions (localization >
displacement)
 Localization likely if norm-takers come to believe that new
outside norms could be used to enhance the legitimacy and
authority of their extant institutions and practices, but without
fundamentally altering their existing social identity
 Stronger the prior local norm, the greater the likelihood that
new foreign norms will be localized rather than accepted
wholesale
 If there are credible local actors available to outperform outside
norm entrepreneurs, prospects for localization increase
Cases: ASEAN (founded 1967)
 Creation of a multilateral security institution for the Asia Pacific
on the basis of the “common security” norm


Reframed as “cooperative security” – retained principle of
“inclusiveness” and the rejection of deterrence-based security
systems, but rejected the legalistic measures of security
cooperation found in the European CSCE process, as well as the
link established by the CSCE between domestic politics and
regional security (why? “unlike in the European situation, there
has been no commonly perceived, single security threat in the
Asia Pacific region, but rather a multiplicity of security
concerns” – former Indonesian Foreign Minister)
o Recognized important common ground between this
norm and existing ASEAN principles – for example,
rejection of deterrence fitted well into ASEAN’s existing
policy of not organizing into a regional collective
defense system
  successful
After economic crisis that began in mid-1997, attempted to
develop role in addressing transnational problems (domestic
problems that could affect the region) that would require
ASEAN to go beyond its traditional adherence to the norm of
noninterference in the internal affairs of its members
o Modified as “constructive intervention” and “flexible
engagement,” but had no prior regional tradition;
excludes human rights and democratic assistance tasks
  failure