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In Defence of Inelegance: IR Theory and Transatlantic Practice
Abstract
We should theorize about international relations (IR) exclusively on the basis of systemic variables because the whole cannot be known ‘through the study of its parts’. This injunction is familiar and pervasive across our discipline. Yet, IR theorists who seek to explain international outcomes by focusing exclusively on systemic variables are increasingly engaging in a sort of unilateral disarmament. Despite all its shortcomings, foreign policy analysis (FPA) gets us much further than systemic IR theory in understanding the real world of international politics. While much depends on precisely what ‘slice’ of international political life we are seeking to explain, FPA captures how international outcomes are increasingly determined by factors that are sourced at the level of domestic politics. The argument here draws on close empirical investigation of US-European relations, as well as contributions to this journal by Mearsheimer and Gilpin, and other recent works in the research literature.
... 138-139. 32 Peterson (2006), p. 7. 33 Howorth (2003-2004. 34 Dryburgh (2010), p. 258. ...
Prime Ministers Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and David Cameron all were supportive towards the European integration, but as they attempted to combine it with the powerful images of British otherness and island nation, British foreign and security policy doctrines have paid tribute to the British exceptionalism and the special relationship policy with the United States. The exceptionalist neo-conservative doctrine of the George W. Bush administration of the United States produced a gap between Atlanticist and community-oriented EU nations. In sum it forced the British government to develop more Atlanticist stand in its foreign and security policy and gave rise to the integration dilemma with the Franco-German alliance. Following the Global War on Terrorism, national security issues became more prevalent and pushed cooperative politics of the 1990s into the background. Later, the Euro-zone crisis and the migration crisis weakened the European unity and nationalist movements became stronger. In Britain, euroscepticist UKIP has met success in the European Parliament elections. As follows, the Conservative Party adopted more eurocritic positions on the European Union and David Cameron decided to lead the British nation to the secessionist referendum—Brexit.
... Both constructivism and domestic-source approaches provide insights about the domestic actors who are capable of exerting influence on the way states operate in international affairs. These two bodies of literature have different origins and interpreters but would mostly agree with Christopher Hill when he points out that foreign policymakers Bmust face the fact that policy outcomes are vulnerable to events which are primarily 'domestic'^ (Hill 2003: 219;Peterson 2006). This paper examines three categories of actors for the analysis of US opposition to the ICC. ...
... FPA, moreover, is also not a single theory of international relations, but this does not make it unique or less developed than other IR "theories" that are today better characterized as schools of thought or branches of theoretical traditions. An FPA perspective is, however, parsimonious in that other factors and contexts can be funneled through the subjective understanding of the decision maker (although most FPA researchers would sacrifice parsimony in favor of accuracy and validity; Peterson 2006). In addition, FPA has a history of investigating-with a track record of theoretical conceptualization, methodological development, and empirical examination-all of these domestic and decision-making orientations that currently separate dominant IR theories. ...
Over the last 25 years, there has been a noteworthy turn across major International Relations (IR) theories to include domestic politics and decision-making factors. Neoclassical realism and variants of liberalism and constructivism, for example, have incorporated state motives, perceptions, domestic political institutions, public opinion, and political culture. These theoretical developments, however, have largely ignored decades of research in foreign policy analysis (FPA) examining how domestic political and decision-making factors affect actors’ choices and policies. This continues the historical disconnect between FPA and “mainstream” IR, resulting in contemporary IR theories that are considerably underdeveloped. This article revisits the reasons for this separation and demonstrates the gaps between IR theory and FPA research. I argue that a distinct FPA perspective, one that is psychologically oriented and agent-based, can serve as a complement, a competitor, and an integrating crucible for the cross-theoretical turn toward domestic politics and decision making in IR theory.
The lack of an international authority capable of interpreting and enforcing international norms in a centralised way often leaves states, especially the most powerful, free to decide whether to recognise or reject the legitimacy of such norms. Therefore, in a decentralised system, the legitimacy and viability of norms crucially depend on whether states perceive them as consistent with their values and interests. Variations in state responses to international norms are often the results of debates that take place at the domestic level. By relying on a ‘unit-level’ constructivist approach, this article offers a qualitative analysis that traces back the genesis of a normative interpretation devised by the Clinton administration, which led the United States to invoke the legitimacy of the controversial and emergent norm of humanitarian intervention and to conduct an air strike campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This interpretation concerned the viability and legitimacy of the norm and found its origin in an exceptionalist view of the role of the United States in the post-Cold War international system.
Peterson, Alcaro and Tocci focus on the emergence of multipolarity, the future of multilateralism and scope for transatlantic leadership within global governance. Their central argument is that multiple polarities exist in different issue-areas of world politics. It thus becomes implausible to theorise based on a generalized balance of power. Second, the fragile domestic positions of the leaders of major powers place strict limits on multilateral cooperation. Third, these contextual factors pose profound challenges to the transatlantic alliance. Fourth, if international relations theories are all systemic theories, they are likely to fail to generate explanations for the emerging international order. International relations increasingly have become the sum of its parts: individual policies in specific issue-areas. What is needed, in these circumstances, is the scientific study of foreign policy.
In 2002–2003, the US pressed for and then used coercive force against Iraq and was ultimately supported by 16 of the 26 NATO member states, though not by NATO itself. While the US and Europe shared similar strategic threat perceptions — weapons of mass destruction proliferation, failed states and terrorism — but difference were apparent on the conceptual level. Here diverging political outlooks, differing comparative advantages, and capability bottlenecks all help account for different policy responses and priorities, particularly with regards to Iraq. The consequences and implications for European security and transatlantic relations of the Iraq war were more palpable than its causes: the rift fractured pre-existing transatlantic fault lines and consolidated realignments around concepts of ‘Atlantic Europe’, ‘Core Europe’, ‘New Europe’ and ‘Non-aligned Europe’. The dynamic events before and after the US-led Iraq war of 2003 and the policy and identity, ideational, institutional and power shifts that underpinned them appear to lack the constructive potential to generate a push for ‘strategic renewal’ or the destructive power to enforce a total ‘strategic divorce’. Strategic dissonance and continued turbulence has become the default transatlantic condition. The dynamics that generate its power still have the potential to resurface and further fragment and paralyse the unity of purpose and action of the transatlantic security community, as well as a constructive potential that can be harnessed.International Politics (2008) 45, 364–381. doi:10.1057/ip.2008.8
This thesis investigates the influence of personal bias in the political leaders in the U.S.-German dispute in 2002-2003 over the Iraq campaign and the nature of the Atlantic Alliance in the 21st century in the face of a new international security environment. The focus is on the life experiences and the crucial influence of the two national-level decisionmakers, President George W. Bush and Chancellor Gerhard Schr der. The thesis examines the course of events and the shifts in foreign policy, after the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, in the two countries, in order to analyze the origins of the dispute. The study finds that the personalities and personal biases of the two protagonists at times outweighed and at times reflected political, strategic, and cultural factors during the escalation of the dispute between the traditionally close transatlantic allies. Examples of relationships between German and U.S. national leaders from the 1970s to the 1990s show that personality had always been a decisive factor in the bi-lateral relationship, but that statecraft and diplomacy prevented the escalation of policy disagreements and avoided the immoderate personalization of politics.
Realists and liberals dispute the post-war record of the transatlantic alliance. Yet, the crisis over Iraq has prompted consensus on the notion that transatlantic relations will 'never be the same'. This article offers two central arguments. First, the US-European alliance was transformed, long before the Iraq crisis, by the end of the Cold War. Second, convergence on ends for the international order remain obscured by transatlantic disputes over means.
Scholars have long debated the relative influence of domestic and international factors on the presidential use of force. On one matter, however, consensus reigns: the U.S. Congress is presumed irrelevant. This presumption, we demonstrate, does not hold up to empirical scrutiny. Using a variety of measures and models, we show a clear connection between the partisan composition of Congress and the quarterly frequency of major uses of force between 1945 and 2000; we do not find any congressional influence, however, on minor uses of force. We recommend that the quantitative use-of-force literature in international relations begin to take seriously theories of domestic political institutions, partisanship, and interbranch relations that have been developed within American politics.We thank the Center for American Political Studies, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation for financial support; and Doug Kriner, Matthew Scherbarth, and Kevin Warnke for research assistance. David Canon, Matt Dickinson, Ben Fordham, David Lewis, and Alastair Smith provided helpful feedback. We also benefited from seminars at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, Harvard University, Ohio State University, and Emory University. Two anonymous reviewers provided excellent feedback. Standard disclaimers apply.
Why do countries comply with international agreements? While scholars have done rigorous work to address compliance and enforcement in an international game, less analytical attention has been paid to domestic mechanisms of compliance. However, because international agreements have domestic distributional consequences, there exist domestic sources of enforcement. In this article, I develop an analytical framework of domestic accountability, where I identify specific channels of influence through which domestic constituencies can influence national compliance. Using a game theoretic model, I show that a government s compliance decision reflects the electoral leverage and the informational status of domestic constituencies. This framework further provides a theoretical rationale for why and how international institutions may influence states compliance through domestic mechanisms. The European acid rain regime offers an empirical illustration of the domestic constituency argument.I have benefited from the generous help of many colleagues and friends in the course of this research. I would particularly like to thank the editor-in-chief of IO, anonymous reviewers of this article, as well as William Bernhard, Paul Diehl, Daniel Drezner, James Fearon, Robert Keohane, Charles Lipson, Ronald Mitchell, Robert Pahre, Duncan Snidal, Detlef Sprinz, Milan Svolik, and Pieter van Houten. Nazl Avdan provided valuable research assistance. MacArthur Foundation, the U.S. Institute of Peace, Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, and the Research Board at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign sponsored various phases of this research.
By stressing unilateralism over cooperation, preemption over prevention, and firepower over staying power, the Bush administration has alienated the United States' natural allies and disengaged from many of the world's most pressing problems. To restore U.S. global standing--which is essential in checking the spread of lethal weapons and winning the war on terrorism--the next Democratic president must recognize the obvious: that means are as important as ends.
The events of September 11 at first seemed to change the Bush administration's attitude towards multilateralism. But this now appears to have been a temporary shift of emphasis and once again the administration is pursuing an essentially unilateralist foreign policy. This article looks at the impact of September 11 on US foreign policy, focusing specifically on the implications the events have for US power and for the structure of world politics. The article contextualizes US foreign policy by discussing the debates over unipolarity that followed the end of the cold war. It then looks at the interpretations offered by Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington and Benjamin Barber. It then discusses the implications of September 11, before looking at the nature of current US foreign policy, the relative power, both `soft' and `hard', of the US and the prospects for future world order. The article concludes that world orders are always in the interests of some and that current unilateralist US policies are unlikely to create a more humane world order and might even be against US long-term interests.
The 2003 American attack against Iraq was engineered by two powerful groups within the Bush Administration, the ultra-nationalists and the neo-conservatives. The ultranationalists’ motive was to gain control of the oil reserves in the Middle East and elsewhere in the region in order to gain and sustain American global primacy. While the neo-conservatives shared this objective, they also wanted a radical restructuring of geopolitical relations in the area in order to promote the long-term security of Israel. Supporting the Administration were powerful domestic constituencies, especially evangelical Christians. Opposition to the war was expressed by leaders of three professional services responsible for American security: the American army and marines, the Foreign Service, and Middle East experts in the CIA. Opponents of the war believed that there was no threat posed to the US by Iraq; they also believed that the civilian leadership of the Pentagon was not competent and that planning for securing and pacifying postwar Iraq was inadequate. The opponents of the Iraq War have proved correct.
In the most comprehensive study of the media and foreign policy, twenty distinguished scholars and analysts explain the role played by the mass media and public opinion in the development of United States foreign policy in the Gulf War. Tracing the flow of news, public opinion, and policy decisions from Sadam Hussein's rise to power in 1979, to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, through the outbreak and conclusion of the war, the contributors look at how the media have become key players in the foreign policy process. They examine the pre-war media debate, news coverage during and after the war, how the news-gathering process shaped the content of the coverage, and the media's effect on public opinion and decision makers. We see what goes on behind the scenes in the high tech world of political communication, and are confronted by troubling questions about the ways the government managed coverage of the war and captured journalists at their own news game. Taken by Storm also examines more general patterns in post-Cold war journalism and foreign policy, particularly how contemporary journalistic practices determine whose voices and what views are heard in foreign policy coverage. At stake are the reactions of a vast media audience and the decision of government officials who see both the press and the public and key elements of the policy game. The first book to fully integrate our understanding of the news business, public opinion, and government action, Taken by Storm transcends the limits of the Gulf War to illuminate the complex relationship between the media, the public, and U.S. foreign policy in the late twentieth century.