Constructivist Security: Norms, Identities & Narratives Week 6 - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Constructivist Security: Norms, Identities & Narratives

PSI 330 International Security

Week 6 - 01 November 2017

The Critique of Positivist Approaches

• Structural Realism
• Balance of Power
• Balance of Threats
• Neoliberalism
• Democratic Peace
• Institutions

Constructivist Approach

• In essence, the constructivist “critique of neorealists and neoliberals

concerns not what these scholars do and say but what they ignore: the content and source of state interests and social fabric of world politics.”

Constructivism (I) Culturalism Constructivism (II) Conventional Critical

Constructivism (I) vs Culturalism

Constructivism (I) Culturalism

Focus on the International level. Focus on the domestic level. States do what they think most appropriate. Strategic culture and organizational culture determines state behavior. The normative bases of interstate conflict and state use of violence. How strategic and organizational culture shapes military actors and action. See international norms shaping similarity in state form and action, regardless of the material circumstances of states The impact of domestic norms on state form and action, they invariably find norms producing difference in what states do. Constructivism and culturalism locate actors in a social structure that both constitutes those actors and is constituted by their interaction.

• Difference in the Level of Analysis causes contradictory predictions between

Constructivist and Culturalist

• For example: Force postures of nuclear states
• Constructing a unified research agenda:
• Constructivist -> Looking inside
• Culturalist -> Looking outside

Constructivism (I) vs Culturalism

Conventional vs Critical

Conventional Critical

Analytically neutral between conflict and cooperation. Social theory is a weapon for waging war on inequality and injustice in world politics Ignore actor-observer connection, focus on interpretation The actor and observer can never be separated Both conventional and critical aim to “denaturalize” the social world

• Ideas:
• Not merely rules or “road maps” but operate “all the way down”
• Norms:
• Intersubjective beliefs about the social and natural world
• Identity:
• Relatively stable, role-specific understandings and expectations about

self.

• Culture:
• Both to a set of evaluative standards and to cognitive standards

Core Concepts

• Proving the Existence of Norms
• Constructivists recognize norms as having objective existence
• Beliefs must be expressed, if not codified and recorded, to be shared
• For example:

Methodological Problems

• Showing the Impact of Norms on Behavioral Outcomes
• “Because multiple norms can influence actors—with competing or even

contradictory prescriptions for behavior and for identity—it is difficult to predict which norms will be most influential.” (Kowert and Legro)

• Solutions:
• 1. Process-tracing method
• 2. Historical observation

Methodological Problems

• 1. Effects of Norms (1): Cultural or institutional elements of states’

environments shape the national security interests or (directly) the security policies of states

• 2. Effects of Norms (2): Cultural or institutional elements of states’ global or

domestic environments shape state identity

• 3. Effects of Identity (1): Variation in state identity, or changes in state identity,

affect the national security interests or policies of states

• 4. Effects of Identity (2): Configurations of state identity affect interstate

normative structures, such as regimes or security communities

• 5. Recursivity: State policies both reproduce and reconstruct cultural and

institutional structure.

Casual Pathways to Explain National Security Agenda

Casual Pathways to Explain National Security Agenda

Environmental Structure Identity Interests Policy

5 1 1 3 3 3 4 2

Anarchy

Anarchy is what states make of it

Anarchy Self-help & Power Politics Continuum of security Competitive Security System Individualist Security System Cooperative Security System

• Negative Identification
• Relative gains
• Indifferent to others

security

• Absolute gains
• Positive Identification
• National interests are

International interests

Anarchy

Intersubjective understandings and expectations possessed by and constitutive of A & B State B with identities and interests State A with identities and interests

INSTITUTIONS PROCESS

(1) Stimulus requiring action (2) State A’s definition of the situation (3) State A’s action (4) State B’s interpretation of A’s action and B’s own definition of the situation (5) State B’s action

Anarchy

Security Dilemma

“the security dilemma is an important dynamic in conflictual interstate relationships, it is irrelevant for many pairs and groups of states that enjoy nonconflictual relations.” (Hopf) State A increases military capabilities The Dilemma of Interpretation The Dilemma of Response Defensive or self- protection Offensive React in kind Signal Reassurance State B

Democratic Peace

• Two Problems:
• 1. Liberal democracies are just as war-prone as other types of states

when it comes to fighting non-liberal democracies

• 2. Liberal democracies occasionally appear to have gone to war with each
• ther
• the liberal-democratic peace is the absence of war between states that

perceive themselves and each other to be liberal democracies

• Also: “Authoritarian Peace” in Africa and Latin America

International Institutions

How states understand their interests within a particular issue area?

Distribution of Identity and Interests Possibility of Cooperation

Military Organizations

Why do developing states emulate great power’s military organizations? Why do states procure sophisticated weapon systems? Occur at times

• f great need -

in particular after defeat Occurs during peace-time because, familiarity They need it These are what constitutes a modern military

Conclusion

• Fundamental Questions of Security:
• 1. What is Security?
• 2. Whose Security?
• 3. What are the Primary threats?
• 4. How can security be achieved?