Social Construction of International Politics and Security

Peking University – University of Chicago Summer Institute on International Relations Theory and Method

August 18-22, 2014

Keven Ruby Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism

University of Chicago kruby@uchicago.edu

Overview of Main Arguments

• Social structures and processes explain important phenomena in international politics

• Existential threats are socially constructed

• The state itself is a social construction in which fear of existential threats play a key role

• Application in a case: US response to 9/11

Realism

• The international system is anarchic (no global government)

• States like actors, unitary, seek survival

• System is defined by distribution of material power (polarity)

• Behavioral rule: self-interest and self-help – balancing (Waltz)

– power-maximization (Mearsheimer)

• World is conflictual, cooperation is hard

• System change means change in distribution of power

Some Real(ism) Puzzles

• Why does the US fear Soviet and North Korean nuclear weapons but not those of Britain or France?

• Why is state death become increasingly rare after 1648?

• Why does NATO persist after the Cold War? • Why do states no longer use chemical or nuclear

weapons in war? • Why does Germany not pursue an assertive and

independent foreign policy?

Social Theory of Int’l Politics (Wendt)

• Systemic theory, direct challenge to Waltz • States unitary actors in anarchy, but no single “logic of

anarchy” • Anarchy is not empty: it is a culture constructed from

the social interaction of states • Three Cultures of Anarchy

– Hobbesian culture: states as enemies, self-help, war of all against all (pre-Westphalia)

– Lockian culture: states as rivals, competition and limited war (current Westphalian system)

– Kantian culture: states as friends, security communities (e.g., the EU)

IR Constructivism

• Ideas, norms, culture give meaning to material world and action – Norms: Shared expectations about appropriate behavior that

regulate behavior and constitute actor identities – Culture: Systems of norms, rules, and models defining actors in

a system and how they relate to each other – Identity: image of self formed in relation with others, what it

means to be a specific actor

• Meaning is intersubjective, a structure created, sustained, changed through interaction

• Key Questions: How do norms, ideas, culture shape political actors and behavior? What explains changes in the meaning of “objects” and behavior? What makes “objects” possible?

Constructivisms Plural

• Multiple epistemological foundations captured by label – Mainstream Constructivism (e.g., Wendt, Finnemore,

Tannenwald) – Post-structuralists (e.g. Campbell, Doty, Ashley) – Feminist theorists (e.g., C. Weber, Tickner) – Practice theorists (e.g., Adler & Poulliot)

• Key axis of debate is social nature all reality, esp. the state, whether state “body” is given or itself the effect of social processes/practices

• Inter-constructivist debates often more acrimonious than fights with non-constructivists, heart of science debate

Methods

• Focus is on language, discourse, but also practices through which norms, identities and culture are produced

• For mainstream constructivists, commitment to empirical science

– Study causation and constitution

• Analytic lens, NOT A THEORY OF IR

– Can be used to explain cooperation or conflict

• Methodological pluralism

– Case studies

– Process tracing

– Genealogy

– Discourse analysis

Substantive Contributions Across Levels of Analysis

• International Institutions and Law – E.g., sovereignty and human rights intervention (Barkin),

Legitimacy and Authority in IR (Hurd)

• International Political Economy – E.g., cultures of capitalism that shape normative commitment to

ideal in the face of contradictory evidence (Blythe)

• Security – E.g., NATO as a security community (e.g., Adler), nuclear and

chemical weapons taboos (Tannenwald, Price), construction of WMD as category (Bentely)

• Foreign Policy – E.g., identity and response to 9/11 in Germany and Japan

(Katzenstein), cultures of national security (Jepperson et al.), Securitization (Buzan, Waever et al)

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF EXISTENTIAL THREATS

“[D]efining national security merely (or even

primarily) in military terms conveys a profoundly

false image of reality.”

--Richard Ullman, Redefining Security, p. 129.

“[S]ecurity studies may be defined as the study of the threat, use, and control of military force.”

--Stephen Walt, The Renaissance of Security Studies, p. 212

Non Traditional Threats

• Migration

• Global Warming

• Resource scarcity

• Terrorism

• Social fragmentation

• Are these threats?

• Should they be treated as threats?

• What are implications of treating them as existential threats?

Existential Threats

• Objective – There are dangers “out there” that threaten the survival of a

given referent object and that demand a free hand in response

• Subjective – Existential threats are “in the head,” individually experienced,

and if enough individuals are “frightened,” a response will be required whether or not the danger actually threatens survival (of particular individuals or the political community as a whole)

• Intersubjective – Threats are socially constructed through discourse,

argumentation and persuasion such that a political community comes to understand a threat as existential, freeing the relevant actor from the established rules in the interest of survival

Securitization

• Core argument: Existential threats are socially constructed through language (speech acts)

• Securitization: claim results in intersubjective understanding of threat that allows the state to break free of the rules of normal politics

• Goal is to explain empirical observation that many kinds of threats are treated as existential, including non-military ones

• Sectors : military, political, societal, economic, environmental

Spectrum of Politics

Nonpoliticized Politicized Securitized

(private sphere) (public sphere) (the political)

Securitization

De-Securitization

Explaining War in Iraq

• Securitizing Actor: Bush administration • Securitizing Move: Claim that Iraq WMD pose an

existential threat • Referent Object: The homeland of the United States • Audience: American public • Facilitating Conditions: president is making claim, 9/11

attacks create urgency • Result: Bush authorized to invade Iraq

• Framework compatible with, but broader in

applicability, than literature on threat inflation

Source: Althouse, Scott L., and Devon M. Largio. 2004. "When Osama Became Saddam: Origins and Consequences of the Change in America's Public Enemy #1." PS (October):795-9.

Rhetorical Coercion (Krebs, Jackson)

• Language can coerce compliance, “twisting arms by twisting tongues”

• Challenges liberal constructivist emphasis on persuasion as mechanism

• Rhetorical coercion causes or prevents behavior independent of target’s desired outcome

• Language and normative structures infused with power, also opportunities for weaker actors

Critiques of Securitization

• Distracts from “real threats out there”

• Limited applicability outside of democratic states

• Framework, not a theory: can’t tell us when something will be securitized

• Focus on language ignores other modes by which security/threats become salient (e.g., images)

• Reifies referent objects, including the state: assumes state is object that can be threatened rather than itself the effect of securitization

Problematizing the State

• Campbell argues the state is the effect of practices, a performance that produces the state as actor

• State identity constituted by discourses of danger – Insecurity (fear) binds society to the state – stabilize boundaries between state and international system,

and between state and society – Problematizes the boundary between internal and external

security

• Exogenous shocks expose contingent nature of the state – Loss of threats cause state to securitize new threats – In US, End of Cold War led to drugs as new threat to the state

• Insecurity (fear) is the condition of possibility for the state • Normative goal is emancipation

Application

• How can we apply the concepts of constructivist security studies to understand a real-world phenomenon?

• US response to 9/11

The Terrorism Puzzle

• State responds to terrorism “as if” it were existential

– Global war on terrorism

– Department of Homeland Security

– USA PATRIOT Act

– Warrantless Wiretapping

– War

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The Relative Cost of Terrorism

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Terrorism Murder Traffic

"I think it was Lenin who said that the purpose of terrorism is to terrorize. It is to alter behavior by putting enough fear in people that they will not do what they normally do…. To the extent the terrorist is able to terrorize, there's no question but they win.”

--Sec. Def. D. Rumsfeld Inter-service Town Hall Meeting, Scott Air Force

Base, Illinois April 18, 2002

“Terror, unanswered, cannot only bring down

buildings, it can threaten the stability of legitimate

governments.…I know many citizens have fears

tonight, and I ask you to be calm and resolute, even

in the face of a continuing threat.”

--G. W. Bush

Address to a joint session of Congress and the American People

September 20, 2001

State as Manager of Fear

• Model of the state based on Hobbes: fear of state of nature both produces and threatens the state

• When discourses of danger put pressure on the state to prioritize (securitize) threats the state believes are not threatening, or against which no response is possible, public fear becomes an objective threat.

• State can respond to societal fear in three ways: – Eliminate the threat, most costly option not always feasible – Appeasement, concessions to enemy to reduce intentions – Target public fear

• States manage the twin threats of complacency and panic, a core aspect of statecraft

Securitizing from Below

• Event interpreted as signaling vulnerability creates widely shared fear of a threat (intersubjective)

• Bottom-up demand to mobilize to reduce or eliminate vulnerability

• Object of fear dominates political agenda, crowding out alternatives

• Discourse of danger political impact (objective)

Discourse of Reassurance

• War on terrorism – threat can be eliminated abroad – Identifies and fixes enemies as

“axis of evil” – World divided into friend vs. foe

• Expansion of state powers of surveillance – The threat will be uncovered – We know where the danger lies

• Homeland Security – Centralization of security, promise

that terrorists will be uncovered – Terror Alert: threat can be known – Reinvigoration of individual

preparedness/civil defense

• The response to 9/11 to restore feeling of security – No necessary relationship to actual

security – May make public objectively less

secure – Reassurance makes aggressive

policies possible

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CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Value Added of Constructivism

• Norms, culture and identity matter for explaining outcomes and actors in international politics

• Invites scholars to be critical, to question taken-for-granted concepts and explanations

• Identifies political dimension of security, role of power in defining national security priorities and policies

• Constructivism is an analytic lens: value depends on substantive question

Your Questions?

EXTRA SLIDES

References

• Buzan, Barry, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde. Security: A New Framework for Analysis. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998.

• Campbell, David. Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.

• Katzenstein, Peter J., ed. The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

• Krause, Keith, and Michael Williams. Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

• Wendt, Alexander. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

• Dated, but starting point for understanding debates

Nuclear Taboo (Tannenwald)

• Nuclear Taboo: “de facto prohibition against the use of nuclear weapons” (not behavior, but normative belief) -- not deterrence or public consequences

• Normative Effects: – Regulative: refers to how norms constrain behavior, prevent actions

(punished for violation constrains) – Constitutive: refers to how rules and norms, through actor practices,

create or define forms of behavior, roles, identities (“civilized” states don’t do this)

– Permissive: shadow constitutive effects (non-nuclear but highly destructive weapons ok)

• Taboo evolves over time: causal mechanisms are domestic and world opinion, personal convictions of decision-makers

• No taboo in 1945, but non-use taken for granted by 1991 Gulf War

Identity, Insecurity & Great Power Politics (Murray)

• What explains irrational power maximization? • States require stable identity, self-understanding of

what it is, to be actors in international politics • Identities are social, depend on being recognized by

other states • When state’s own conception not recognized by

international community, triggers struggle for recognition

• Material power allows state to force others to recognize it, sometimes at expense of security

• Case: Pre-WWI German naval ambition

The Role of the Security Analyst

Theoretical Tradition

Position Principles Observers or

Advocates Critique

Traditional Security

Studies

1. Objectivity of threats

2. Objectivity of referent objects

3. Commitment to state centrism

4. Analytical commitment to security as military threat

“Observe; Let Others

Advocate!’

1. Ignores political/normative implications

2. Theory is not neutral

Copenhagen School

1. Threats socially constructed

2. Objectivity of referent objects

3. Sectors/widening

4. Goal is desecuritization

“Observe How Others

Advocate!”

1. Miss role of security in constructing referent objects

2. Widening/sectors legitimates securitization

Critical

Security

Studies

1. Threats socially constructed

2. Referent “Objects” socially constructed

3. Commitment to uncovering hegemonic discourses and stressing ethics

4. Goal is emancipation

“To Observe Is to Advocate!”

1. No positive theory of power

2. Emancipation from what?

Eriksson (1999) Observers or Advocates