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How Ideas Shape Conflict Conceptual and Theoretical Issues

Mark Raymond, Centre for International Governance Innovation

David A. Welch, Balsillie School of International Affairs Waterloo, ON

Paper presented to the 2013 Annual Meeting of the European Consortium for Political Research

Bordeaux, France 6 September 2013

Robert McNamara: From the end of ’65 to March of ’68, Vietnam was suffering casualties at the

rate of roughly a million a year. Were you not influenced by the loss of lives? Why didn’t it

move you toward negotiations?

Nguyen Co Thach: Why would Vietnam not want peace? We wanted the war to end early—as

soon as possible—the earlier the better, the less our people would have to suffer. I can assure

you, we wanted peace very badly. But not at any price, not if we had to give up what we were

fighting for.1

This paper seeks to contribute to knowledge about why human conflicts so often prove

intractable. We suggest that intractability is often a function of the role of ideas in shaping conflict

properties and dynamics. In many cases, intractability is theoretically surprising. The predominance of

rationalist theories has encouraged the view that managing and resolving conflict is primarily a matter of

manipulating incentives in various ways. While such strategies are sometimes appropriate and effective,

the existence of many long-standing conflicts resistant to concerted conflict management and resolution

efforts suggests that rationalist theories may presume too much about what people care about and

what it takes to satisfy them.

Briefly, we suggest that ideas shape conflict in three ways:

1 Robert S. McNamara, James G. Blight, and Robert Brigham, Argument without End: In Search of Answers to the

Vietnam Tragedy (New York: PublicAffairs, 1999), 254-256 (ellipses omitted).

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1. Ideas can function as stakes. As we are using the term, the defining feature of an ideational

stake, in contrast to a material stake, is that it cannot be quantified. This renders the concept of

marginal utility meaningless for ideational stakes, and it implies that, while preferences-over-

outcomes for material stakes can be ranked cardinally, preferences-over-outcomes for

ideational stakes can only be ranked ordinally.

2. Ideas shape motives. They furnish reasons for engaging in conflict, and they condition

satisfaction. The key distinction between motives, we will argue, is between advantage-seeking

and right-seeking. At the risk of some simplification, the former is calculating and prudential;

the latter is emotional and categorical. They engage different parts of the brain, and different

patterns of reasoning.

3. Ideas play a crucial role in affecting conflict processes by constituting and governing social

practices for the conduct of conflict. All other things being equal, conflicts will be more

amenable to solution by mutual agreement when parties share intersubjective understandings

of how conflicts are properly resolved.

In real-world conflicts, of course, ideational and material stakes may be in play simultaneously,

and parties may have mixed motives (or represent them disingenuously for strategic reasons). This is

true whether or not they agree on relevant social practices. But the distinctions between “material” and

“ideational” stakes, and between advantage-seeking and right-seeking, are, as we are using them here,

conceptually distinct; in neither case can one be reduced to the other.

We will attempt to justify our definitions and distinctions in more detail below, but first we need

to ask: Why is this important? Our answer is very much a practical one: no single approach to conflict

management will work for every possible conflict. The field of International Relations (IR) comes

perilously close to assuming otherwise. The behavioral revolution in political science generally, and the

“second debate” in IR specifically, has encouraged, in our view, an often unstated assumption—very

commonly internalized by practitioners—that any international conflict can in principle be solved by the

manipulation of costs and benefits.2 This is because of the centrality of rationalist materialism, which

2 Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: Random House, 1979); Robert Gilpin, War and

Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); John Lewis Gaddis, “International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War,” International Security 17, no. 3 (1992/93); Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). On the “second debate,” see Yosef Lapid, “The Third Debate: On the Prospects of International Theory in a Post-Positivist Era,” International Studies Quarterly 33, no. 3 (1989).

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John Ruggie and Alexander Wendt have characterized as a “tacit ontology.”3 Rationalist materialism

treats actors as utility maximizers and assumes (a) that all stakes can in principle be aggregated into a

single, measurable conception of “utility”; (b) that parties monitor and respond appropriately to

changes in perceived costs and benefits; and (c) that satisfaction is entirely a function of outcome and

not at all of process. Rational choice so conceived is an ideal type that only accurately describes human

behaviour in limited (mostly trivial) circumstances.4 Its descriptive inaccuracy might not matter if it

were powerfully heuristic (i.e., if the “as-if” assumption could be justified on the basis of performance);

but in our view, while purely rationalist approaches to conflict management may well apply to a narrow

range of real-world conflicts, history shows clearly that in many cases they fail—or, worse, inflame.

Ideas as stakes and motives

The Oxford English Dictionary gives 13 different formal definitions of the noun “idea,” and there

are many more colloquial ones. Small wonder that IR scholars have generally shied away from it. The

definition preferred by Goldstein and Keohane, who furtively attempted to introduce the concept into

positive IR theory—”beliefs held by individuals”— ultimately proved to provide little traction.5

Constructivism would seem to be a natural source of ideas about ideas for IR scholars, but, interestingly,

“ideas” have not figured as a central concept in constructivist work. Constructivists have, instead,

employed a variety of related concepts such as norms, rules, institutions, and practices.

3 John Gerrard Ruggie, “Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis,” in

Neorealism and Its Critics, ed. Robert O. Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 285; see also Alexander Wendt, “On the Via Media: A Response to the Critics,” Review of International Studies 26, no. 1 (2000).

4 See, e.g., Janice Gross Stein and David A. Welch, “Rational and Psychological Approaches to the Study of

International Conflict: Comparative Strengths and Weaknesses,” in Decision-Making on War and Peace: The Cognitive-Rational Debate, ed. Nehemia Geva and Alex Mintz (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997); James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, “The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders,” International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998); Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot, “International Practices,” International Theory 3, no. 1 (2011); Ted Hopf, “The Logic of Habit in International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations 16, no. 4 (2010).

5 Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, “Ideas and Foreign Policy: An Analytical Framework,” in Ideas and

Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change, ed. Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993). Goldstein and Keohane further distinguish three types of ideas (world views, principled beliefs, and causal beliefs) as well as three pathways through which ideas affect foreign policy (functioning as road maps, as focal points in multiple equilibria situations, and as institutionalized standard operating procedures). This approach is problematic in that it explicitly distinguishes ideas and interests (reflecting the standard practice of understanding interests in material terms), treats ideas as exogenous (and therefore fixed), and neglects the intersubjective nature of ideas.

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One difficulty with the concept is the ease with which everything can be reduced to, described

in terms of, or related to ideas. The core concepts used in IR theory and research are, after all, ideas.

Power, interest, security, advantage, welfare, state, nation, you name it—all are ideas, and it does not

require too much persuasion to conclude that even very tangible stakes (wealth, territory, and so on)

are in some sense “ideational.” Constructivists can certainly be forgiven for avoiding the word when

norms, rules, institutions, and practices are all species of the genus. And yet we use the word every day.

Expunging it from our vocabulary is both unnatural and unsatisfying. They inevitably feature

prominently in narratives about politics and political conflict. Moreover, when they do, they have no

satisfying synonyms.6 So in a sense, we have no choice but to make use of the term. But to do so

effectively we must circumscribe it.

Our preference is to circumscribe it in part by distinguishing ideational stakes from material

ones. The Oxford English Dictionary has many fewer definitions of “material” than “ideational,” which

provides a degree of purchase on the distinction. The clearest is simply “Of or relating to matter or

substance; formed or consisting of matter.” So as an initial cut into the distinction, we can define

material stakes as things that can be measured with rulers or scales, and ideational stakes as everything

else. It will immediately become apparent, however, that it is wise not to be too literal about this.

Money, for example, is intangible unless printed or coined, and yet it is the quintessentially fungible

good. Fortunately, money can be measured.

To cut various potential Gordian knots, we will declare by fiat that a stake counts as material if it

is a hard power resource, and ideational if it is a soft power resource. Decent synonyms are “tangible”

and “intangible.”7 Ray Cline’s classic power calculus is both illustrative and instructive, because it sought

to combine both material (e.g., population, territory) and non-material elements (strategy, will).8

Importantly, the former could be measured objectively; the latter could only be assessed

impressionistically. Material stakes, in short, have true metrics; ideational stakes do not.

Drawing the distinction in this way is powerfully heuristic and helps us spot lacunae in theories

that overvalue parsimony. A rationalist, for example, has little choice but to describe the Crusades as

economic enterprises. They were certainly this, but no competent historian would say that they were

6 What, for example, would be an acceptable synonym in John M. Owen, The Clash of Ideas in World Politics:

Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510-2000 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010)?

7 Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004).

8 Ray S. Cline, World Power Assessment: A Calculus of Strategic Drift (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and

International Studies Georgetown University, 1975).

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nothing more. Nor would a competent historian dismiss ideology as epiphenomenal. Without invoking

ideas, it is difficult to make sense of what Owen calls the ‘long waves’ of warfare: the wars of religion

(1520-1650); the era of absolutism (1770-1850); and the contest between democracy, fascism, and

communism (since 1919).9 Some conflicts are simply primarily about ideas.

In addition to stakes, ideas can serve as motives. A motive is a reason why someone cares

about a stake. To a first approximation, one can be interested in a particular stake either for reasons of

advantage (i.e. the stake confers some benefit, whether material, social, or psychological in nature), or

for reasons of justice (i.e. one believes that one has a rightful claim to it whether or not it confers an

advantage). This is an important distinction because different kinds of motives engage different

psychodynamics of choice. Advantage seeking engages calculation, and while the calculation in question

may not be particularly well modelled by standard rational choice theory (prospect theory demonstrates

a number of systematic deviations from classical rationality that are functions, inter alia, of frame),10

nevertheless the primary concern is material satisfaction. When the justice motive is engaged, however,

a different set of criteria dominate. These do not engage calculation and are accordingly relatively

insensitive to tradeoffs. All other things being equal, parties animated by the justice motive are more

likely to be strident, inflexible, risk-acceptant, and belligerent than parties who seek simple advantage.11

These two dimensions—stakes and motives—yield the following four ideal-typical simple

conflicts:

9 Owen, The Clash of Ideas in World Politics.

10 Seminal works include Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decisions under

Risk,” Econometrica 47, no. 2 (1979); Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Rational Choice and the Framing of Decisions,” Journal of Business 59, no. 4 (1986).

11 Harald Müller and Gregor Hoffman, “The Saliency of Justice Conflicts in International Relations: Diagnosis and

Remedies,” paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, San Francisco, CA (3 April 2013); David A. Welch, Justice and the Genesis of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

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Table 1: Ideal-Typical Simple Conflicts

MOTIVE

Advantage Right

STA

KE

Material i. Pure material

(e.g., conflict over strategically valuable territory)

ii. Mixed material (e.g., useless islands

disputes)

Ideational iii. Mixed ideational (e.g., tariff disputes)

iv. Pure ideational (e.g., religious conflict )

We would like to stress that these are indeed ideal types. Relatively few real-world conflicts may fall

squarely into any particular cell. But identifying ideal types is useful for correcting analytical gaps. For

example, as we have noted, rationalism’s exclusive focus on consequentialist logics renders it unable to

explain or understand both Type II and Type IV conflicts (i.e. conflicts where parties are motivated by

justice concerns). Further, to the extent that rationalist theories operationalize interests in purely

material terms, they also either neglect or misunderstand Type III conflicts, which correspond closely to

what has been called strategic social construction. Failure to recognize the existence and distinctiveness

of such conflicts leads to an inability to offer distinct strategies for managing and resolving them. Such

strategies may include the use of transitional justice mechanisms, such as truth and reconciliation

commissions, or attempts to reframe conflicts such that they are more amenable to resolution via the

use of side payments.

Individual conflicts may involve both mixed stakes and mixed motives. Accordingly, the four

kinds of simple conflicts yield eleven varieties of “complex conflicts”:

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Table 2: Complex Conflicts

CLASS Type elements

A i, ii

B i, iii

C i, iv

D i, ii, iii

E i, ii, iv

F i, iii, iv

G i, ii, iii, iv

H ii, iii

I ii, iv

J ii, iii, iv

K iii, iv

Further, there is no guarantee that parties to a particular conflict will have the same motives or

that they will understand the stakes in the same terms. Such cases of perceptual mismatch may be an

important, overlooked factor in explaining the intractability of many conflicts. If parties disagree

fundamentally over what they are fighting about, and if parties are motivated by very different

concerns, they may struggle to agree on the elements of a durable peace. In a dyadic conflict, there are

105 possible permutations of disagreement between two actors on the nature of a conflict. This yields a

total of 120 possible conflict types—4 simple conflicts, 11 complex conflicts, and 105 cases of mismatch.

Of course, many conflicts have more than two distinct parties; as the number of parties increases, the

number of possible combinations increases rapidly. A three-party conflict, for example, would have

approximately 1800 possible combinations. For each of the 120 possible combinations between two

parties, there would be an additional 15 options for the third party’s position (15*120=1800).

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Table 3: Perceptual Mismatch in Conflict Classification

i ii iii iv A B C D E F G H I J K

i

ii X

iii X X

iv X X X

A X X X X

B X X X X X

C X X X X X X

D X X X X X X X

E X X X X X X X X

F X X X X X X X X X

G X X X X X X X X X X

H X X X X X X X X X X X

I X X X X X X X X X X X X

J X X X X X X X X X X X X X

K X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

To this point we have distinguished simply between material and ideational stakes. However, it

is not obvious that all ‘ideas’ function in a similar manner. Accordingly, we suggest distinguishing

between three kinds of ideational stakes: (1) identity; (2) justice; and (3) rule/institution. Identity stakes

refer to values related directly to issues of group membership and to core standards of conduct that

define a group.12 Justice stakes refer to values having to do either with rightful allocations of (tangible

and non-tangible) goods or with rightful processes of decision-making and allocation.13 Finally,

rule/institution stakes refer to values connected to the form and content of the rules that constitute

social institutions and thus inform the nature of shared social practices.14 As with the other parts of our

conflict typology, we understand these ideational stake types as ideal-typical in nature. In actual conflict

situations, actors should be expected to possess varying combinations of the ideal-typical elements (e.g.

identity-justice, justice-rule/institution, etc.). Further, actors will vary in terms of the degree of salience

they accord to individual elements of a complex ideational stake. Finally, it should be emphasized that

12

Jennifer Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma,” European Journal of International Relations 12, no. 3 (2006).

13 Welch, Justice and the Genesis of War; Cecilia Albin, Justice and Fairness in International Negotiation (New York:

Cambridge University Press, 2001) On the importance of procedural justice, see Christian Reus-Smit, The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999).

14 Mark Raymond, “Social Change in World Politics: Secondary Rules and Institutional Politics” (Ph.D. diss.,

University of Toronto, 2011).

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the content of these ideal-typical categories—the “stuff” of identity, justice, and social rules—is heavily

context dependent. What is just or unjust, what is a crucial aspect of group identity, and what is an

intelligible, reasonable social rule will depend in large part on the actor’s culture.

Nevertheless, we suspect there may be general patterns relating these broad types of ideational

stakes, on the one hand, and conflict patterns and dynamics, on the other. This proposition is perhaps

most easily illustrated with respect to identity, as scholars have drawn connections between nationalism

and protracted violent conflict.15 Even in cases of identity conflict, however, it is important to be

attentive to effects produced by other types of ideational stakes. For example, it is possible that identity

effects are amplified by justice concerns (e.g. in relation to the distribution of resources between two

identity groups). Similarly, it is possible that conflicts implicating potential change to social rules and

institutions are likely to be more protracted and more violent because they are understood as having

more extensive and far-reaching consequences in shaping future social interaction than conflicts that do

not involve the contestation of rules and institutions. Further, the contestation of social institutions is

likely to raise issues of both distributional and procedural justice. Differences in the composition of

complex ideational stakes may be consequential for effective conflict management and resolution. For

example, conflicts characterized by highly salient justice considerations may be more amenable to

resolution via truth commissions, judicial prosecutions, or other locally recognized procedures.

Likewise, conflicts involving both a particular dispute as well as more general contestation of social rules

and institutions require attention specifically directed toward the more diffuse institutional issues. A

durable resolution requires both settling the particular dispute as well as establishing how that

resolution will affect future social interaction. Note, as well, that the latter stake may involve a broader

set of actors; this insight underlies the practice of allowing amicus briefs in Western legal systems.

Finally, the composition of complex ideational stakes may often be consequential for effective conflict

management and resolution for the simple reason that actors party to a conflict may well have different

understandings of the stake in question. This suggests that establishing agreement between parties on

the nature of the stake in their conflict may be a vital factor in rendering conflicts tractable.

The important point for the moment is that treating conflict as an essentially unified

phenomenon overlooks a great deal of potential variation that the historical record suggests may be

highly consequential in terms of understanding and explaining conflict dynamics—and thus also in terms

15

Ted Robert Gurr, “Peoples against States: Ethnopolitical Conflict and the Changing World System,” International Studies Quarterly 38, no. 3 (1994); Mary Kaldor, New & Old Wars, 2nd ed ed. (Stanford, CA: Stanford Unversity Press, 2006).

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of effectively managing and resolving conflict. A great deal can be gained by taking more seriously the

role of ideas as stakes and motives for parties in conflict, as well as the idea that different mixtures of

stake types and motivations produce meaningfully different conflict types. The more specified typology

of conflict outlined above provides the basis for a systematic research effort into the effect of stake type

on conflict properties and dynamics. Potential questions in such an effort include: (1) whether more

complex conflicts (in terms of the diversity of motives and stakes) are likely to be more protracted or

intractable; (2) whether conflicts involving ideational dimensions are more protracted, more violent, or

both; (3) whether side payments and other techniques associated with rationalist theories are effective

in managing and resolving conflicts involving ideational dimensions; (4) whether conflicts with ideational

dimensions entail distinct processes and practices not found in conflicts lacking such dimensions; and (5)

whether conflicts involving different kinds of ideational stakes operate according to different logics.

Ideas and the Constitution of Conflict Processes

In addition to their roles as conflict stakes, ideas affect conflict processes by constituting and

governing practices for the conduct of conflict. The insight underlying this point is that such practices

are not random; rather, agents tend to conduct conflicts in socially intelligible and rule-guided ways.

The reason this matters is that if we can alter social rules and norms relating to when political violence s

justified and how it is conducted, there is potential to reduce levels of violence, increase tractability, and

enhance the importance of non-violent means of conflict management and resolution. In the remainder

of this section we briefly develop the case for a sustained focus on the way in which ideas constitute

conflict processes. In the third, final, section of the paper we turn to policy implications and avenues for

further research.

Our argument here draws heavily on the insights generated by constructivists. To date,

constructivists have demonstrated the socially constructed nature of the international system and of key

practices in international politics. For reasons deriving at least in part from the intellectual history and

sociology of international relations, they have done so primarily by showing that the historical record fits

uneasily with the orthodox realist narrative—that anarchy is constructed and contingent rather than

immutable; that norms and institutions are efficacious rather than epiphenomenal; and that actors are

motivated by multiple logics of action. Accordingly, constructivist research on processes of conflict

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remain relatively underdeveloped.16 Therefore, we believe that a sustained effort to understand the

social construction of processes of conflict offers benefits both to students of conflict and security, and

to constructivists.

Ideas structure and guide both decisions about when to engage in conflict, and how to engage in

conflict. This is true at every level of analysis; the relevant difference between levels pertains to the

applicable rule-set. To say that behaviour is rule-guided, however, does not amount to a claim either

that rules completely determine behaviour, or that rules are always obeyed. In fact, one major function

of social rules is that they provide discursive resources that enable criticism of violators; further, rule

systems also typically contemplate violations ex ante by specifying both procedures for identifying and

responding to them and by establishing further rules governing legitimate responses to particular kinds

of violations. Rather, written and unwritten rules function as instruction manuals or playbooks, telling

actors how to perform specific activities and roles such that their actions will be socially intelligible and

stand the best chance of prompting the desired response both from members of their own social groups

and from non-group members.17

The importance of social rules for determining when actors engage in conflict can be

demonstrated by noting that, over the course of the history of the Westphalian system, states have

gone to war for different reasons.18 These reasons are at least partially reflective of changing social

rules and institutions that structure international practice, and thus render certain reasons for war more

or less socially intelligible and morally acceptable. The rules of the international system have clearly

changed over the last century—most importantly, war for conquest (whether for dynastic or national

aggrandizement) is now illegitimate while war for purposes of humanitarian intervention may be gaining

legitimacy in at least some circumstances.19 Further, the international community has evolved

16

This point has been noted by Jeffrey T. Checkel, The Social Dynamics of Civil War: Insights from Constructivist Theory (Vancouver, BC: School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University, 2011), 11. For a notable attempt to think through constructivist insights for the study of conflict, see J. Samuel Barkin, Realist Constructivism: Rethinking International Relations Theory (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

17 The most important works of rule-oriented constructivism are Nicholas Greenwood Onuf, World of Our Making:

Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1989); Friedrich V. Kratochwil, Rules, Norms, and Decisions on the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs, Cambridge Studies in International Relations. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). In addition, see H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1994).

18 Kalevi J. Holsti, “Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order, 1648-1989,” (1991).

19 International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa, ON:

International Development Research Centre, 2001).

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machinery for the collective authorization of political violence based on shared (if still contested)

standards of self-defence and threats to international peace and security.

As a result of these changes in social rules (in addition to a great deal of hard work by thousands

of individuals on behalf of states, intergovernmental organizations, and nongovernmental

organizations), conflicts between states are now more likely to be settled using non-violent means, or at

least means substantially short of interstate war.20 Further, even in cases of norm violation, the

international community possesses a relatively robust discursive framework that facilitates the criticism

of violators and the organization of collective responses. While it would be wrong to claim that

interstate war is impossible, or that states have become fundamentally more other-regarding, it does

appear that they have—with a few notable exceptions—embraced both the utility and the rightfulness

of non-violent conflict resolution. Other concurrent factors, most notably nuclear deterrence, have

undoubtedly mattered a great deal in some particular cases; however, there remains substantial

evidence supportive of the conclusion that a broad norm exists sharply circumscribing the exercise of

the state’s rightful monopoly on the use of force, and that this norm has been a significant causal factor

in the declining incidence of interstate war over the last several decades. Given that analysts of world

politics have generally agreed the international system is distinguished precisely by the diminished

efficacy of social rules, this is a puzzling outcome—especially when set against the continued incidence

of civil conflict at the state and sub-state levels.

Beyond the theoretical significance of showing that the relationship between levels of analysis

and the existence and efficacy of social rules is more complex and variegated than mainstream theories

both of international relations and of comparative politics have generally recognized, this finding has

additional important implications. First, it indicates the need for further comparative historical study of

rules on the use of violence between political communities. The existing literature on the history of the

international system addresses such issues in passing, rather than as a central object of inquiry.21 More

remains to be said, especially with respect to ancient and non-Western contexts. Broadening the

empirical base of knowledge will enrich attempts to understand and explain variation in the rules

governing when warfare has been employed by human polities, as well as efforts to understand the

consequences of such variation on the incidence of war—and thus to better inform policy.

20

Human Security Centre, Human Security Report 2005: War and Peace in the 21st Century (New York, NY, 2005).

21 Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, Third ed. (New York, N.Y.: Columbia

University Press, 2002); Rodney Bruce Hall, “Moral Authority as a Power Resource,” International Organization 51, no. 4 (1997); Reus-Smit, The Moral Purpose of the State; Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society: A Comparative Historical Analysis (New York: Routledge, 1992).

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Second, the recognition that changeable rules govern the conditions under which political

violence is legitimate at the system level indicates that, at least in principle, such normative shifts are

possible in other social contexts—particularly at the domestic level. The crucial questions are under

what circumstances such shifts can occur, and by what pathways or mechanisms. We do not have

complete answers to either question, but we suggest for now that two broad pathways for such norm

shifts can be identified: (1) the spread of existing international system norms to the domestic context;

and (2) the development of localized analogues to international system norms.

Note that it is possible, and consistent, for an actor to have genuinely internalized the norm that

the use of political violence is illegitimate at the international level and simultaneously believe it is

legitimate at the domestic level. Indeed, while this formulation reverses common wisdom (and much

past practice) regarding the legitimacy of political violence, such beliefs may have been operative among

leaders at various points in the history of the international system. At the height of the nineteenth-

century Concert system, for example, great power leaders believed that a drive for hegemony was

illegitimate but also maintained that force could be used under certain circumstances to suppress

rebellion at the domestic level.22 In contemporary world politics, it is certainly possible to imagine

leaders who recognize the international norm against warfare (perhaps without having fully internalized

it) but that nevertheless maintain the legitimacy of using force to suppress rebellion. In contrast,

minority groups in postcolonial societies might seek to maintain the legitimacy of pursuing ‘national

liberation’ or secession while nonetheless accepting a general norm against interstate war. The

possibility of this combination of beliefs matters because it helps explain why the spread of a norm

against interstate warfare has not led to a decline in the incidence of civil war. The diffusion of

international norms of peaceful dispute resolution may indirectly support the extension of such

principles to disputes at the domestic level (thus effectively reversing the relationships investigated by

scholars of the democratic peace), but any such indirect relationship is clearly not a sufficient cause for

adoption of peaceful dispute resolution practices at the domestic level. However, the lack of a sufficient

automatic effect in no way precludes the possibility of successful norm entrepreneurship based on such

a linkage.23 In the current international system, such norm entrepreneurship faces the additional

difficulty of spreading an international system norm with a distinctively Western provenance to a variety

22

Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848 (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1994); Mlada Bukovansky, Legitimacy and Power Politics: The American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002); Owen, The Clash of Ideas in World Politics.

23 On norm entrepreneurship, see Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and

Political Change,” International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998).

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of heterogeneous non-Western cultural contexts. Constructivist research suggests that cross-cultural

norm promotion is possible, but that its prospects are decisively shaped by the skill of the norm’s

proponents in ‘localizing’ it, or making it congruent with the pre-existing norms operative in that

particular community.24

The second potential pathway for the generation of normative shifts pertaining to rules

governing the legitimacy of political violence entails the development of localized analogues to

international system norms. The crucial difference is the absence of appeals to international norms by

norm promoters, who instead rely exclusively on local norms, traditions, practices, and customs.

Distinguishing between these two pathways allows investigation of whether and how international

norms, and norm promoters, can play a constructive role in encouraging the adoption of peaceful means

of dispute resolution, as well as the delegitimization of political violence as a means of resolving

disputes. While these pathways are distinct, most cases of norm promotion and contestation now seem

to involve both kinds of processes—and that trend is likely to continue given the opportunities for

engagement presented by modern information technology. Better understanding of interaction effects

in processes of norm contestation offers potential benefits in reducing political tensions associated with

the international community’s attempts to play a constructive role in conflict situations. Further,

distinguishing between attempts to spread or localize international system norms and attempts to

create domestic analogues to those norms highlights the importance of utilizing local knowledge in

processes of conflict management and resolution. While the international community is most familiar

with a standard set of such practices—involving highly developed and specialized terminology including

“Track Two” diplomacy, monitoring and verification, confidence building measures (CBMs),

demobilization, power-sharing, etc.—these practices have little inherent legitimacy in many of the social

contexts in which they are employed. Similarly, practices of state building as solutions to problems of

failed states generally fail to account for local practices, or for alternative governance arrangements

created by local actors to cope in the context of state failure.25 We suggest that according increased

importance to local practices of dispute resolution, and to culturally endogenous basic institutional

forms, offers significant benefits to the potential effectiveness of international efforts at conflict

management and resolution. A medical analogy may be somewhat helpful in illustrating the point: the

24

On localization, see Amitav Acharya, “How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism,” ibid.58, no. 2 (2004).

25Ken Menkhaus, “Governance without Government in Somalia: Spoilers, State Building, and the Politics of

Coping,” International Security 31, no. 3 (2007).

15

difference is essentially that between an organ transplant and the use of a person’s own stem cells to

regenerate organ function without risk of tissue rejection.

Just as rules and norms govern when actors engage in violent conflict, actors’ conduct in conflict

(i.e. how they engage in violent conflict) is similarly guided and structured by an evolving set of norms

and rules. The question of how armed conflict is to be conducted has been the subject of normative

inquiry dating back to at least the Catholic Just War tradition.26 Rules restricting wartime conduct in the

modern international system date to the nineteenth-century efforts of the International Committee of

the Red Cross (ICRC) to initiate and develop the field of international humanitarian law. Such efforts

continue in the work of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, along with a group of like-minded

states, to ban anti-personnel landmines, as well as state led efforts to ban the use of chemical and

biological weapons.27 Nina Tannenwald has also persuasively made the case for the existence of a

‘nuclear taboo’.28 However, such restrictive rules take for granted the existence of more fundamental,

largely unwritten enabling rules that constitute the practice of warfare in the first place. A focus on the

constitutive role of ideas in accounting for how armed conflicts are conducted requires analysis of both

kinds of rules. Interstate wars, civil wars, insurgencies, terror campaigns, and other forms of armed

conflict may proceed according to different sets of social rules. This variation in the playbook or

instruction manual may well have crucial consequences for effective conflict management and

resolution. Again, the point is that rather than treating conflict as a single phenomenon, a great deal

can be gained by differentiating between conflicts on the basis of various aspects of their social content

and investigating the ways that such variation alters conflict properties and dynamics.

While we have argued that there are good reasons to examine the role of social rules and norms

in governing both when and how conflicts are conducted, it is important to recognize the difficulty in

supposing that social institutions are susceptible to intentional, efficient change as a result of the

purposive acts of agents.29 At present, issues of institutional design and institutional change remain

26

The Just War tradition continues to play a major role in thinking about normative questions related to the use and conduct of war. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 3rd ed. (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2000).

27 Richard Price, “Reversing the Gun Sights: Transnational Civil Society Targets Land Mines,” International

Organization 52, no. 3 (1998).

28 Nina Tannenwald, “The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Normative Basis of Nuclear Non-Use,” ibid.53,

(1999).

29 This point is recognized in James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, “The Institutional Dynamics of International

Political Orders,” ibid.52, no. 4 (1998); see also Alexander Wendt, “Driving with the Rearview Mirror: On the Rational Science of Institutional Design,” ibid.55, (2001).

16

relatively incompletely understood. Indeed, given the complexity of the social world, constructivists are

typically somewhat skeptical about the extent to which social science can be expected to produce

covering law style explanations; however, it does not follow that constructivist research is congenitally

unable to provide policy-relevant insight.30 As the extensive body of empirical constructivist research

shows, the value-added provided by constructivism resides in the ability to explore the dynamics of

particular social practices and to provide high-resolution insight on specific causal and constitutive

processes. The other side of the coin, however, is that constructivism requires high informational inputs

to generate conclusions, and that those conclusions are probabilistic and contingent—thereby placing a

premium on policymakers’ ability to make judgments about the extent to which a novel situation

genuinely resembles prior cases. We are inclined to conclude that these problems are more reflective of

the nature of the social world than of problems with constructivist or other varieties of qualitative

research. As such, the constructivist position on research methods is a virtue rather than a vice;

methods that forthrightly acknowledge the nature of the social world are more apt to generate high-

quality, policy-relevant guidance. While cases of simple, efficient cause-and-effect relationships

between attempts at norm promotion and institutional outcomes are likely to be rare, we nevertheless

believe there is sufficient reason to expect more modest yet still highly significant gains from sustained

research on the role of ideas in constituting processes of conflict and on the circumstances under which

such ideas can change—for better or worse.

Conclusion: Policy Implications and Avenues for Further Research

We have attempted to demonstrate that ideas have overlooked impacts on conflict properties

and dynamics, and that they have these effects because of their roles as stakes, as motives, and as rules

constituting conflict processes. We have also attempted to suggest both that these insights require

further investigation and that there is nevertheless a solid basis to conclude that such research will be

highly policy relevant. By way of conclusion, we would like to dwell a bit more on each of these issues.

Our first recommendation for future research is that there is a need for a more nuanced

understanding of conflict that distinguishes between conflict types on the basis of the extent and kind of

their ideational content. Such an understanding of conflict enables a systematic investigation of the

30

For such an argument, see Fred Chernoff, “Conventionalism as an Adequate Basis for Policy-Relevant Ir Theory,” European Journal of International Relations 15, no. 1 (2009). For a more accurate representation of the constructivist position, see Steven Bernstein et al., “God Gave Physics the Easy Problems: Adapting Social Science to an Unpredictable World,” ibid.6, (2000).

17

consequences of such variation for conflict properties and dynamics. This investigation entails a number

of related questions, as we suggested above: (1) whether more complex conflicts (in terms of the

diversity of motives and stakes) are likely to be more protracted or intractable; (2) whether conflicts

involving ideational dimensions are more protracted, more violent, or both; (3) whether side payments

and other techniques associated with rationalist theories are effective in managing and resolving

conflicts involving ideational dimensions; (4) whether conflicts with ideational dimensions entail distinct

processes and practices not found in conflicts lacking such dimensions; and (5) whether conflicts

involving different kinds of ideational stakes operate according to different logics.

Second, the conflict typology we have proposed also makes clear the possibility that parties may

fundamentally disagree on the nature of their conflict. This suggests the importance of understanding

how such perceptual mismatches—or, in constructivist terms, absences of intersubjective agreement—

affect severity, duration, tractability, and other conflict properties.

Third, there is a need for further research on the ways ideas constitute specific conflict

processes and how such processes shape conflict properties and dynamics. Such research would

advance understanding of conflict forms in ways potentially relevant to improving the effectiveness of

conflict management and resolution efforts (on which more below), but it would also benefit the

constructivist international relations research agenda by helping remedy insufficient attention to the

social dynamics of conflict as opposed to more clearly pro-social human behaviour.

To be clear, we believe that the above questions are deserving of investigation in their own

right. Further, potential policy implications must remain provisional pending the completion of at least

some of the research we have recommended. Nevertheless, we believe it is possible to make some

brief comments about how this kind of research may be able to inform efforts to manage and resolve

conflicts. A better understanding of the mechanics of different kinds of conflicts could lead to the

development of alternate conflict management and resolution strategies more suited to conflicts with

particular ideational profiles. Further, the typology of conflicts we have proposed could assist in

accurately matching conflicts with appropriate management and resolution tools. This typology also

draws attention to the possibility that intractability may stem from unrecognized or unresolved

differences in actors’ understandings of conflict stakes. To the extent that this is true in a given case,

successful management or resolution may require significant time and effort in reconciling these

perceptual differences as a precondition for genuine progress.

Additional policy implications can be expected to flow from research into the rule-guided nature

of conflict. First, attempts to explain, understand and predict parties’ behaviour in conflict can be

18

enhanced by additional knowledge about the social forms and practices salient to a particular actor.

Second, the counterfactual validity of norms and rules means that knowledge of applicable social rules

remains relevant even in cases of violation—namely by providing discursive resources for exerting

inexpensive pressure on norm violators. While some apparently intractable conflicts may thus be

rendered more amenable to management and resolution, achieving such outcomes requires

policymakers to have a relatively high degree of social competence. That is, they must accurately

understand the content of the rule-sets salient both to other parties to the conflict and to relevant third-

party audiences in order to effectively take advantage of any resulting opportunities. Third, change in

rules constituting conflict practices can make a conflict either more or less tractable, as well as more or

less lethal. Though it is important to bear in mind the inefficient nature of social change and the

policymaking difficulties presented by unintended consequences, constructivists have contributed

meaningful knowledge about the dynamics of social change. Those insights can be further developed

and harnessed to improve policymaking. For example, attempts to change social rules are more likely to

succeed if they are pursued in a procedurally legitimate fashion. This suggests the importance of taking

local knowledge, practices, and institutional forms seriously. Where the international community seeks

to facilitate conflict management and resolution, it must be more willing to adopt a culture of

experimentation rooted in local practices and to tailor procedures accordingly even at the potential

expense of common wisdom about best practices.

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