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Globlization and Normative Dissonance
Samuel Barkin
Department of Political Science
University of Florida
P.O. Box 117325
Gainesville, FL 32611
barkin@polisci.ufl.edu
(352) 392-0262, ext. 222
Paper prepared for delivery at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting,
Philadelphia, PA, August 31, 2003
2Introduction
One of the most often talked about contemporary phenomena in international
organization is globalization. A key aspect of globalization is policy harmonization.
Harmonization, in particular, is a central part of the case made against globalization, both by
academics and by activists. At the same time, a generally accepted norm in contemporary
international organization is multilateralism. Students of IO generally look upon multilateralism
as a good thing after all, it means countries cooperating rather than conflicting in areas of
common concern. The irony here is that the overlap between the norm of multilateralism and the
observation of harmonization is really quite large harmonization of policy in areas of common
concern is the natural result of a multilateralist approach to international organization. Why is
the norm of multilateralism then so often viewed as benign, even by some of the people who
view the result, policy harmonization, as problematic?
The argument here is that this apparent contradiction is explained by a case of what I call
normative dissonance. By normative dissonance I mean a situation where actors (and observers)
of international politics hold in common two norms that are not fully mutually compatible. It is
related to the theory of cognitive dissonance, as taken from psychology and political psychology.
There are, however, two key difference. The first is that cognitive dissonance applies to
processes of individual cognition. Normative dissonance works as well through individual
processes of cognition, but describes only those situation where generally held ideas are
dissonant. The second difference is that cognitive dissonance can apply both to information
(data) and to ideas that inform decision-making. Normative dissonance applies only to norms,
not to cognitive inputs more generally.
3The two norms that are dissonant in the case of harmonization and multilateralism are the
idea that the social contract is central to legitimate governance, and the idea that nationalism and
national self-determination are the underpinnings of legitimate sovereignty. The social
contractarian norm, when applied at the international level, suggests that rule-making by
common consent, which is to say multilateralist harmonization, is the most legitimate form of
global governance. But the nationalist norm generates a negative reaction to the resultant
harmonization. The tensions between harmonization and multilateralism in the debate on
globalization can be traced back to tensions, mutual incompatibilities, between these two central
normative structures underlying contemporary governance.
This paper will first discuss these two normative structures specifically, and underline
their mutual incompatibilities. It will then discuss normative dissonance more generally, and
posit ways in which psychological and social theory in international relations might interact.
Finally, it will suggest some of the effects, both theoretical and practical, of this case of
conflicting norms.
Social Contracts and Nationalism
The two particular norms in question here are the social contract and nationalism, the
former underlying the appeal of multilateralism and the latter underlying the reaction against
harmonization. The nationalist norm is that each self-identified group has the right to rule itself
as it sees fit, without outside interference. The social contract norm is that government should be
by common consent, to the common good of the governed. Both of these norms have been
central to the development of popular sovereignty, and the two are in fact perfectly compatible,
4even mutually reinforcing, in the realm of the development of popular sovereignty.1 The very
idea of popular sovereignty, in fact, implies both: that the people (the nation) have the right to
decide for themselves (social contract).2 The two norms do not necessarily overlap. There can
be nationalist governance in the absence of norms of social contract, as is the case in the more
virulent cases of nationalism, particularly its national socialist variants. And there can be social
contract without nationalism. Lockes social contract was not inherently limited to national
groups, whereas Rousseaus social contract was in ways designed sub-nationally, being best
suited to politics of civic, rather than national, size.3
But there is clear potential for overlap between the two norms, particularly between what
Ernst Haas calls liberal nationalism4 and what might be called the liberal democracy approach to
social contracting, with its emphasis on property, the rule of law, and representative democracy.
It is these two variants of the respective ideas that provide much of the normative structure for
contemporary sovereignty. Statements of this normative structure can be found, among other
places, in the various human rights treaties that a large majority of the worlds states have
signed.5 These generally list both the right to self-determination and to the components of liberal
democracy listed above. As long as nationalist norms allow for the protection of the social
contract rights of minorities, as liberal nationalism does, and social contract norms allow for the
1 On the development of popular sovereignty, see Martin Wight, Systems of States
(Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1977).2 Lee Buchheit in fact sees these two norms as integral parts of the norm of self-
determination; he labels them external and internal self-determination respectively. Buchheit, Seccession: The Legitimacy of Self-Determination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 13-16.
3 See, for example, the discussion of Rousseau in Lewis Mumford, The City in History:
Its Origins, Its Transformations, and its Prospects (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1961), p. 261.4 Ernst B. Haas, Nationalism, Liberalism, and Progress, Vol. 1: The Rise and Decline of
Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 19-21.5 See, for example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 6-11, 17, and 21.
5expression of group self-determination, as liberal democracy does, the two norms are not only
mutually compatible, they are mutually reinforcing.
This mutual compatibility, however, only works within individual states. There is likely
to be no problem with dissonance between these two norms, then, as long as it is generally
accepted that a different set of rules works internationally, that norms of state behavior to other
states are different from norms of behavior among individuals within the state.6 But part of the
process of globalization is the internationalization, the application to international organization,
of the two normative structures, and they are not as compatible internationally as they are
nationally.
This distinction between the realm of the domestic and the realm of the international is
easily maintained with respect to the norm of nationalism. After all, nationalism is all about
making distinctions between the us-group and the them-group. Even liberal nationalism, with its
protections for minorities from the national majority, is still premised on a distinction between
those within the national group and those without it.7
The distinction can be more problematic with respect to social contract theory. It is
somewhat sustainable with respect to some approaches to social contract theory, particularly
those of the modern continental theorists. Rousseaus social contract, for example, is viable only
insofar as the contractors have a common general will.8 This does not require an out-group, in
6 It has in fact been the historical pattern that these two normative realisms be separate,
that legitimate behavior with respect to the in-group be different from legitimate behavior with respect to the out-group.
7 See for example Haas discussion of nationalism in Nationalism, Liberalism, and
Progress, chapter 2.8 Jean Jacques Rousseau, Political Writings, trans. Frederick Watkins (Madison: The
University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), p. 25 (or, in other words, Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book II, chapter I).
6the way that nationalism does, but suggests a relatively small polity, and hence the need for
many separate polities.
The distinction is much less sustainable, however, with respect to the English, or
Lockean, tradition of social contract theory, the variant of social contract theory most compatible
with liberal nationalism.9 In this tradition, the barriers among countries are practical ones rather
than philosophical ones. This tradition assumes the centrality of the autonomous individual,
what C.B. Macpherson called the possessive individual,10 to political life, and sees the role of the
state as protecting that autonomy to the greatest extent possible that is compatible with the
autonomy of others. There is in this tradition no group, no national, no general will, that is
politically prior to the autonomous individual. As such, there are no inherent philosophical
barriers to the social contract operating at the level of the global polity. There are practical
barriers, both technological and social. But as these barriers are lowered, the limitation of social-
contract groups to national boundaries makes less and less sense.
In short, then, the compatibility between the two norms at the domestic level is clear, as
long as national rule is suitably liberal. But the idea of the social contract, at least in its English
variant, can also be applied to an international polity, whereas the idea of nationalism does not
make sense applied to an international polity (it would argue for breaking it up into national
polities). In other words, the one norm mitigates towards the creation of an international polity
as barriers to effective governance on a global scale are overcome. The other norm mitigates
towards the maintenance of separate and mutually exclusive political units, and is therefore a
barrier to the creation of an effective international polity.
9 See the discussion in Haas, Nationalism, Liberalism, and Progress, pp. 42-49.
10 C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke
(Oxford: Clarendon press, 1962).
7This distinction is becoming increasingly relevant, because the English tradition of social
contract theory provides the philosophical underpinning of neoliberal, or Washington
Consensus, globalization.11 By neoliberal globalization I mean the current pattern of what has
been called competitive liberalism,12 in which policies and regulations are harmonized across
countries to reduce as much as possible barriers to market exchange. This is in contrast to the
Bretton-Woods era pattern of embedded liberalism, in which international infrastructure was
provided multilaterally, but much more scope was allowed for state interference in markets for
the purpose of social welfare.13 The diffusion of neoliberalism norms, and neoliberal
globalization, since World War Two,, and especially since the demise of Bretton Woods, goes
hand in hand with the diffusion of English social contract norms (note that I am not making a
cause-and-effect argument here; rather, I am making a co-constitution argument). It also, not
coincidentally, mirrors the rise of the practice (lagged several years behind the norm) of
multilateralism.
The norm of multilateralism is basically the English version of social contract theory in
which it is states, rather than individuals, who are the participants in the contract. Neoliberal
globalization is the process of regulating international interchange through an analogue to the
social contract in which it is corporate actors that are the primary participants in the political
process. In some instances of harmonization these corporate actors are non-governmental, either
11 For the argument that what we refer to as globalization is in fact a particularly
neoliberal form of globalization, see Kathleen McNamara, Globalization is What We Make of It? The Political Construction of Market Imperatives, paper presented at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, 1997.
12 The phrase competitive liberalism is taken from Kathleen McNamara, The Currency
of Ideas: Monetary Politics in the European Union (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).
13 John Gerard Ruggie, International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded
Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order, in International Organization vol. 36 (1982), pp. 379-415.
8firms or NGOs.14 But the most celebrated instances of harmonization the actors are states.15 In a
way, social contract theory fits better at the interstate than domestic level, because it is a system
of actual, rather than implied, contracts. Social contract theorists generally accept that
individuals cannot for practical reasons all participate in the continued negotiation and
renegotiation of the social contract. It is thus an implied contract, one that citizens agree to
implicitly rather than explicitly. But, with some exceptions,16 states actually can opt out of
individual bits of the multilateral contract; they can choose which aspects of the social contract
to accept and which to reject, and still remain within the system.
The GATT provides a useful illustration of multilateralism as social contract. It began as
an agreement not to discriminate among trading partners, driven by a largely defensive logic
(defensive both against the beggar-thy-neighbor trade policies of the Great Depression and
against the security effects of the exclusive economic blocs that preceded World War Two).17 It
was multilateral, but it was a fairly basic multilateralism, more at the level of principle associated
with embedded liberalism than at the level of regulatory detail associated with neoliberal
globalization. It was not until the tail end of the Bretton Woods period, with the Tokyo Round
agreement, that the GATT began to be an exercise in neoliberal globalization. Since then, both
the regulatory scope of the GATT (and more recently the WTO) and the degree of specific
14 For example, see Dale Murphy, Bringing the Firm Back in and Elizabeth DeSombre,
NGOs and IGOs, Cooperation and Convergence on the High Seas, respectively, both papers presented at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Boston, August 2002.
15 See for example Daniel Drezner, Who Rules: State Power and the Structure of Global
Regulation, paper presented at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Boston, August 2002.
16 These exceptions being primarily customary international law and those issues of
international security that fall under the purview of authoritative collective security organizations.
17 Samuel Barkin, Social Construction and the Logic of Money: Financial Predominance
and International Economic Leadership (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003), chapter 6.
9regulatory harmonization called for by its rules have consistently expanded. But they have
expanded in ways explicitly agreed to by member countries in multilateral negotiations, and
member countries retain the right to withdraw from all of, or in some contexts from specific
instances of, the rules.
The GATT, a set of rules for international trade, is a good illustrative case because social
contract theory, at least in its English variant, is designed to create a market society. Individuals
within the society are thus committed to participate in a market society; social contract theory
presupposes that they want to participate, as an assumption about human nature.18 Social
contract theory at the international level similarly involves states in, and presupposes that they
want to participate in, a global market. In other words, it presupposes collective decision-
making about a collective (global) economy rather than individual decision-making about
distinct national economies. This allows for the benefits at the international level that social
contract theorists ascribe to government. But it undermines nationalism.
The nationalist norm allows national governments to make political/executive decisions
about national policy. The social contract norm allows the national government to participate in
the international legislative process, but not, within those areas governed by the international
social contract, to take political action that is dissonant with the legislative result (this applies to
those governments that choose to participate in the contract. Some choose to not participate, but
very few). In other words, the social contract norm applied internationally leads to state
participation in global rules that states must then obey, while the nationalist norm suggests a state
not bound by common regulation, not bound in its internal behavior by international law. Hence
18 This can be traced back to Lockes definition of a state of perfect freedom as the ability
to dispose of their Possessions, and Persons as they think fit. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1960), p. 309 (Second Treatise, Chap. II, 4).
10
the normative dissonance. The norm of government by social contract, applied, as it logically
should be, at the international level, is one of consensual multilateralism. The norm of national
self-government is one of national autonomy.
Normative Dissonance
What happens when two sets of norms, two sets of commonly held intersubjective
understandings about the legitimate basis of governance, are incompatible? Intersubjective
beliefs differ from subjective beliefs only in that they are held in common by a group of people
interacting within a system, in this case the international political system. As such, one way of
getting at the effects of norm incompatibility in international politics is through the cumulative
effects of this incompatibility on subjective, which is to say individual, perception. The place to
look for discussions of individual perception is in the literature on political psychology, and the
central theories presented in this literature on incompatible perceptual inputs include the theories
of cognitive dissonance and cognitive consistency.19
The theory of cognitive dissonance suggests that people are made psychologically
uncomfortable by dissonant, or mutually incompatible, information.20 This is particularly the
case once people have committed themselves to a particular course of action. The theory
suggests that once people have committed themselves, they will attempt to justify their decision
by re-evaluating the information in a way that minimizes the dissonance. Two ways of doing
19 See, for example, Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976).20
Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957), p. 13.
11
this are by maximizing the difference between the dissonant pieces of information, and by
distinguishing dissonant information from underlying beliefs.21 Maximizing the difference
between the dissonant pieces of information involves re-evaluating the information after the
decision has been made, to increase post facto the perceived benefits of the choice made and
decrease the benefits of the choice not made. Distinguishing dissonant information from
underlying beliefs means that if you believe both A and B, and have to choose between behavior
based on either A or B, you are likely to distance the behavior you did not choose from the
underlying belief. This allows you to simultaneously hold both beliefs and minimize dissonance.
Theories of cognitive consistency, meanwhile, suggest a strong tendency for people to see what
they expect to see and to assimilate incoming information to pre-existing images.22
The concept of normative dissonance draws on these theories, to suggest that people deal
with incompatible norm sets, or more precisely with dissonant aspects of commonly held norm
sets, by using similar cognitive strategies. The concept of normative dissonance differs from the
theory of cognitive dissonance in a number of ways. It applies only to dissonant norms (beliefs
about how things should be done), not to dissonant informational input more broadly. And it
applies only when these norms are intersubjective, are held in common by various actors within a
system. Normative dissonance thus refers to ways in which people tend, when faced with
incompatible norms, to react, to deal with the incompatibility. Once they have made a decision
favoring one norm over the other, they should tend to redefine the norm not chosen to make it
less appealing, to distance the behavior or opinion not chosen from the underlying norm, and to
assimilate new information in ways that support both the redefinition and the distancing.
21 Jervis, Perception and Misperception, pp. 382-406.
22 Ibid., p. 117.
12
A number of limitations on the concept of normative dissonance should be noted at this
point. The first is that the theory of cognitive dissonance from which it is drawn, like all
psychological theories, it is somewhat indeterminate and imprecise. It yields statistically
significant results in laboratory settings, but it can be difficult to tell how strong the predicted
effects will be in real-world settings, and to predict how any given individual will react.
Normative dissonance averages out individual effects, because it looks at cognitive tendencies
across the political system in question, but other general problems faced by political psychology
approaches remain. The second limitation is that cognitive dissonance is a post-decision theory,
and it is unclear what counts as a decision. In other words, it is unclear whether deciding on an
opinion on an issue counts as the sort of decision that might trigger the behavior associated with
cognitive dissonance, or whether some form of action is required.23 Finally, the concept of
normative dissonance, as suggested above, aggregates from patterns of individual cognition. It
does not capture any interactive, social, or systemic effects. In particular, it is not clear a priori
whether these effects will reinforce the cognitive effects of normative dissonance (through such
phenomena as groupthink)24 or moderate them (through such phenomena as communicative
reasoning).25
Norms and Globalization
23 Jervis, Perception and Misperception, p. 385.
24 Groupthink would reinforce these effects by creating separate groups around each
norm, that lose the ability to communicate successfully with each other. On groupthink, see Irving Janis, Groupthink: Psychological Studies of policy Decisions and Fiascoes, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982).
25 On communicative reasoning, see Thomas Risse, Lets Argue! Communicative
Action in World Politics, in International Organization vol. 54 (2000), pp. 1-40.
13
What would the concept of normative dissonance suggest about the incompatibilities of
nationalism and social contract theory when these norms are applied at the level of global
governance? It would suggest that we should expect proponents of multilateralism to distance
themselves from nationalist norms, to argumentatively weaken the connection between
harmonization and the undermining of legitimate nationalism, and to interpret information about
globalization in ways compatible with social contract theory. Similarly, we should expect
opponents of harmonization to distance themselves from social contract norms, to
argumentatively weaken the connection between multilateralism and social contract, and to
interpret information about globalization in ways compatible with liberal nationalism. And in
fact we see exactly this happening.
Proponents of multilateralism tend to take one of two approaches to dealing with the
contradiction between nationalist and social contract norms. The first is to distance themselves
from nationalist norms, by focusing on the problems of nationalism, and by associating
nationalism generally with its more virulent forms. In one of the seminal academic discussions
of the norm of multilateralism, for example, John Ruggie repeatedly presents as the antithesis to
multilateralism the economic system that Nazi Germany created with several Eastern European
countries in the 1930s.26 To the extent that the Nazi movement is commonly seen as the ultimate
in virulent, unacceptable nationalism, this juxtaposition serves to cognitively reinforce
multilateralist norms by radicalizing the dissonant nationalist norms.
The second approach weakens the link between multilateralism and the undermining of
legitimate nationalism in a way that allows harmonization to be interpreted in a way that is not
dissonant with national self-interest and autonomy. This is the rational structuralist approach to
26 John Gerard Ruggie, Multilateralism: The Anatomy of an Institution, in
International Organization vol. 46 (1992), pp. 561-598.
14
multilateralism, often referred to as neoliberal institutionalism, or simply institutionalism.27 This
approach assumes a national interest that is most efficiently furthered by multilateral
cooperation. If liberal nationalism is assumed to favor multilateral cooperation, or at least the
sorts of economic goals best furthered by multilateral cooperation, then any state that does not
favor these goals is by definition illiberally nationalist.28 Harmonization and liberal nationalism
thereby become compatible by definition, and normative dissonance is averted. We see the same
effect in practice in the EU, with integrationists (and the European Commission) dedicated to
neoliberal functionalism within Europe, leaving little room for any nationalism that does not
conform with neoliberal norms (although at the same time being much more accepting of
nationalist norms as they might apply at the European level).
Those who, conversely, oppose neoliberal globalization, are, in effect, arguing for a
renationalization (or relocalization) of international politics and international political
economy.29 They tend to rely on one of two approaches to dealing with the dissonance of
nationalist and social contractarian norms. The first is to distance processes of harmonization
from social contract norms by focusing on the more communitarian aspects of social contract
theory, at the expense of the autonomous individuality of the English variant. Thus the behavior
being criticized, harmonization, remains dissonant with social contract theory, but the theory
itself is marginalized by emphasizing what is seen to be its most problematic aspect.
27 The seminal work of this approach is Robert Keohanes After Hegemony: Cooperation
and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). The defining assumptions of this approach include rationality, state-centrism, and collective action problems.
28 James Fearon, beginning with institutionalist assumptions, argues that states that do not
favor cooperation over conflict are pathological. Fearon, Rationalist Explanations for War, in International Organization vol. 49 (1995), pp. 379-414.
29 E.g. Jerry Mander and Edward Glodsmith, eds., The Case Against the Global
Economy, and For a Turn Toward the Local (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996). The title speaks of the local, but in practice this often means the national.
15
Harmonization itself, in this view, is not what is causing dissonance, but rather the neoliberalism
that has come into international relations under the guise of harmonization.30
The second approach to dealing with this dissonance is by separating the behavior being
criticized, harmonization, from the norm, social contract. One of the most common ways of
doing this is by focusing on democratic process. Democracy as currently practiced to a large
degree comes to us through social contract theory; they are part of the same general norm set.
Yet opponents of globalization often focus exclusively on democracy, minimizing other aspects
of the social contract (such as due process and the rule of law) in ways that are generally not
done in domestic political discourse. For example, many criticisms of international judicial and
monetary institutions, such as the WTOs Dispute Settlement Mechanism and the IMF, focus on
their lack of democratic process.31 Yet the equivalent domestic processes, courts and central
banks, are intentionally undemocratic, and are accepted as justifiably so.
Similarly, international organizations are often criticized for not having directly elected
executives, and not having legislators elected by the population at large.32 But the former is true
of Parliamentary systems generally, and of a wide variety of administrative and executive
organizations within most governments. The latter is true in any direct-election (as opposed to
proportional representation) system. The legislative functions of international organizations are
fulfilled, by and large, by representatives of governments, which in turn are supposed to
represent their populations, much like the legislative functions in most democratic legislatures.
30 For an example of this line of argument with respect to international environmental
governance, see Lee-Anne Broadhead, International Environmental Politics: The Limits of Green Diplomacy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 2002).
31 See, for example, David Korten, When Corporations Rule the World, 2nd ed.
(Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2001), pp. 169-169.32
A good example of this is the discussion of the democratic deficit in the European Union. This is not suggest that such a deficit is not there, rather that it probably exists in many of the EUs constituent countries to a similar degree.
16
There is a problem of representatives of countries where the government is not democratic, but
this problem is rarely at the core of critiques of harmonization. In other words, with respect both
to the executive and judicial functions of international organizations, and with respect to their
legislative functions, normative dissonance is addressed by holding international society to
standards that are not applied to national society.
Conclusions
The normative dissonance between nationalism and the neoliberal social contract points
to a real problem with the debate about globalization. It suggests that many of the disputes about
the course and development of contemporary international organization, particularly with respect
to policy and regulatory harmonization, and simply not resolvable, because the norms really are
to an extent mutually incompatible. It reminds those supportive of international organizations as
engines of harmonization that nationalism is not an atavistic idea that is going away. Liberal
nationalism is a key component of the normative structure of contemporary sovereignty, and is in
fact undergoing a rehabilitation in places like Germany and Japan, where for a generation
nationalism of any kind was considered problematic. It points out to those who consider
harmonization to be problematic that processes of international harmonization are not as far
removed from accepted patterns of domestic governance in liberal democracies as they are often
portrayed. More generally, it suggests to both sides of the debate that successfully engaging the
other side of the debate requires overcoming the psychological tendencies associated with
dissonance and tackling the question of norm incompatibility directly and communicatively. At
the same time, as long as both nationalism and the neoliberal variant of the social construct
remain core elements of the normative structure of global politics, the conflict between these
17
norms will likely continue to play itself out as a profound dissatisfaction about the nature and
course of globalization.
On a theoretical level, two conclusions are worth pointing out. The first is that, quite
simply, norms need not be mutually compatible. Conflicting intersubjective ideas about
legitimate governance can be held by the same groups of people at the same time. No-one in the
constructivist community (to my knowledge) has denied this, but at the same time few have
discussed the problem explicitly. The study of how norms work in international relations
requires looking not only at the effects of individual norms and norm sets, but also at the
processes of interaction among norm sets, whether or not they are mutually compatible. This
paper suggests one way of doing so, but other ways are necessary as well, to get at the effects of
norm interaction that cannot be aggregated from the individual level.
Finally, the second theoretical conclusion is that there is scope for successful cross-
fertilization between the constructivist and political psychology research communities. Norms
may be intersubjective phenomena, social constructs that cannot be reduced to processes of
individual cognition. But it remains the case that in order to be intersubjective, they must also be
subjective, be held, accepted, and internalized by individuals. To the extent that political
psychology can show the ways in which individuals tend to deal with cognitive inputs, it can
illuminate the patterns of subjectivization that underlie the creation and acceptance of
intersubjective norms. Theories of cognitive dissonance and congnitive consistency are but two
of many such theories that might prove fruitful in this process.
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