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)

- Constructivismo 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)- 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 powero 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)

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 threatso 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

“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 peacefulo 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 peacefulo 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 easilyo Problems with Gilpin (1981): almost no empirics, not replicable,

not falsifiable, selection on dependent variable- Critiques: Need for domestic politics

o Ruggie (1983) 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

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 competitiono 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 realismo 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

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

o 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

o 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- 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

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 non-alliance 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 self-destroying)

- Liberal strands and comparison to realismo 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 self-interest 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

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, issue-linkage (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 self-interested actors)

o 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 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 cooperationo Keohane and Nye (1977)

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 areao 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 anarchyo 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 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 gainso 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 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 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 non-zero-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)

o 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 conflictualo 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

- Overviewo 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 self-reflection 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. 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

o 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 self-determination – 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)

o 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

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

o 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 arenao 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

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

o 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 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 USo 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 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-first-use 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.

o 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 decision-making 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 arenao 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

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

o 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

o Legro (1997) 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 the 1920s/30s that had varying effects during WWII (why some followed, some not?):

Submarine attacks against merchant shipso 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 adherenceo Organizational culture: Germans saw submarines as

valued combat tool, British and US did noto Outcome: ignored almost immediately

Bombing of nonmilitary targetso Norms: wanted distinction between civilians and

combatants; low concordance (no finalized agreement)o Prediction: most likely violationo Organizational culture: British favored strategic

bombing, Germans didn’to Outcome: respected for months, then violated

Use of chemical weaponso 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/violationo Organizational culture: all favored adherenceo 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

o Acharya (2004) 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