The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, by Peter J. Katzenstein, editor
1. Introduction: Alternative Perspectives on
National Security
Peter J. Katzenstein
It is always risky to pronounce a verdict of death on ideas, even after an extended
period of apparent lifelessness, but I predict that we have seen the last of the
"sociologists" in political science. . . . What has happened is that others too have
penetrated the characteristically sloppy logic and flabby prose to discover the
deeper problems of circularity and vacuousness inherent in the approach.
-- Brian Barry
This is a book written by scholars of international relations rummaging in the "graveyard" of sociological
studies. Since research and teaching is an eminently social process, it is perhaps understandable that
changing political circumstances and intellectual fashions reopen controversies that appeared to some to
have been already settled. This process can lead, in the best of circumstances, to what we might call
intellectual progress: the diminishing of sloppy logic, flabby prose, circularity in reasoning, and
vacuousness of insight.
Put briefly, this book makes problematic the state interests that predominant explanations of national
security often take for granted.1 For example, in the absence of geostrategic or economic stakes, why do
the interests of some powerful states in the 1990s, but not in the 1930s or the 1890s, make them intervene
militarily to protect the lives and welfare of citizens other than their own? Why did the Soviet Union
consider it to be in its interest to withdraw from Eastern Europe in the late stages of the Cold War, while
it had rejected such suggestions many times before? Answers to such questions are nonobvious and
important. State interests do not exist to be "discovered" by self-interested, rational actors. Interests are
constructed through a process of social interaction. "Defining," not "defending," the national interest is
what this book seeks to understand.2 In the context of a bipolar, ideological struggle, the Cold War made
relatively unproblematic some of the cultural factors affecting national security. Theories that abstracted
from these factors offered important insights. Now, with the end of the Cold War, the mix of factors
affecting national security is changing. Issues dealing with norms, identities, and culture are becoming
more salient. An institutional perspective permits us to investigate more closely the context, both
domestic and international, in which states and other actors exercise power.
This book offers a sociological perspective on the politics of national security. It argues that security
interests are defined by actors who respond to cultural factors. This does not mean that power,
conventionally understood as material capabilities, is unimportant for an analysis of national security.
States and other political actors undoubtedly seek material power to defend their security. But what other
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kinds of power and security do states seek and for which purposes? Do the meanings that states and other
political actors attach to power and security help us explain their behavior? Answers to such questions,
this book argues, raise issues of both theory and evidence.
Our point of departure is influenced greatly by the inability of all theories of international relations, both
mainstream and critical, to help us explain fully what John Mueller aptly calls a quiet cataclysm:3 the
dramatic changes in world politics since the mid-1980s, which have profoundly affected the environment
for the national security of states.4 The Soviet Union has ceased to exist, and its successor states,
organized in the Commonwealth of Independent States, are in the process of creating a new regional
international system while at the same time attempting to effect transitions from authoritarian socialism
to democratic capitalism. The international positions of the United States and Japan have changed greatly
as international competitiveness and financial power shifted away from the United States in the 1980s
and away from Japan in the 1990s. China is undergoing a fundamental transformation in its economic
structure and in its links to the international system. And the European Union (eu) appears to have been
perhaps an overambitious attempt to accelerate the pace of European integration in the face of German
unification. In South Africa, the Middle East, Central America, and Western Europe, long-standing
violent conflicts that only a few years ago appeared to be simply unsolvable are now finding negotiated
settlements. And in Europe, Central Asia, the Islamic world, and Africa, new conflicts are breaking out.
The main analytical perspectives on international relations, neorealism and neoliberalism, share with all
their critics their inability to foreshadow, let alone foresee, these momentous international
changes.5 Furthermore, with the end of the Cold War, international relations specialists, whatever their
theoretical orientation, are uncertain about how to interpret the consequences of change.6 Disagreement
is widespread on what are the most important questions, let alone what might constitute plausible
answers to these questions. Are we living in a unipolar, a bipolar, or a multipolar world? Is the world
increasingly divided into zones of peace among prosperous states at the center and zones of war between
poor states on the periphery? Is the risk of war rapidly increasing in Asia while it remains negligible in
Western Europe or is the reverse closer to the mark? Is the main cause of war on the periphery the
excessive strength or the deplorable weakness of states? Is ideological conflict between states in the
international system diminishing or increasing?
Without thinking specifically about the Cold War and national security, some sociologists wrote in the
1970s and 1980s about large-scale processes of change in and possible transformation of the global
system. They privileged factors that appear to be relevant to our understanding of some of the changes
that we are now observing. Immanuel Wallerstein, for example, argued that the dynamism inherent in the
world capitalist economy would seek increasing integration of the socialist bloc.7 And John Meyer
articulated a model of global sociopolitical organization that embeds states.8 This has opened up
productive lines of research that undermine the plausibility of making a sharp distinction between
international anarchy and world government as the only analytical alternatives for thinking about
international relations. Taken together, Wallerstein's and Meyer's analyses recognize the importance of
combining an analysis of power and wealth with issues of state sovereignty and cultural elements in the
international society of states.
The uncertainties that mark international relations scholarship make this the right time to cast about for
analytical perspectives that differ on key points from established theories, thus inviting us to take a fresh
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look at the world we live in.9 This volume concentrates on two underattended determinants of national
security policy: the cultural-institutional context of policy on the one hand and the constructed identity of
states, governments, and other political actors on the other. We explore these determinants from the
theoretical perspective of sociological institutionalism,10 with its focus on the character of the state's
environment and on the contested nature of political identities. The primary purpose of this book is to
establish these causal factors, and the theoretical orientations from which they derive, as relevant for the
analysis of national security.
The empirical essays in this volume illustrate how social factors shape different aspects of national
security policy, at times in ways that contradict the expectations derived from other theoretical
orientations. This book does not offer a theory of national security.11 To insist on such a theory now
would be premature for an approach that is in the early stages of developing a theoretically coherent,
empirically oriented research program. And it would be immodest in the midst of a wide-ranging
discussion of economic and sociological approaches in the social sciences. Instead, this book seeks to
redress the extreme imbalance between structural and rationalist styles of analysis and sociological
perspectives on questions of national security.
The authors in this volume adhere to the sociological use of such concepts as norms, identity, and culture
as summary labels to characterize the social factors that they are analyzing.12 These factors result from
social processes, purposeful political action, and differences in power capabilities.
The authors use the concept of norm to describe collective expectations for the proper behavior of actors
with a given identity. In some situations norms operate like rules that define the identity of an actor, thus
having "constitutive effects" that specify what actions will cause relevant others to recognize a particular
identity. In other situations norms operate as standards that specify the proper enactment of an already
defined identity. In such instances norms have "regulative" effects that specify standards of proper
behavior. Norms thus either define (or constitute) identities or prescribe (or regulate) behavior, or they do
both.
For example, Dana Eyre and Mark Suchman in essay 3 argue that advanced weapon systems are one
measure signifying that a state is modern. Governments thus spend their precious funds to buy such
weapon systems even if they have only a marginal effect on national security. Analogously, large
battleships at the beginning of the twentieth century and a secure second-strike capability at century's end
confer world- or superpower status on states. Similarly, in essay 5, Martha Finnemore argues that global
models of statehood have important effects on policies of military intervention. Relatedly, Richard Price
and Nina Tannenwald show in essay 4 that a taboo delegitimizing the use of chemical and nuclear
weapons has, to different degrees, constrained the self-help behavior of states.
The essays refer to identity as a shorthand label for varying constructions of nation- and statehood. The
process of construction typically is explicitly political and pits conflicting actors against each other. In
invoking the concept of identity the authors depict varying national ideologies of collective
distinctiveness and purpose. And they refer as well to variations across countries in the statehood that is
enacted domestically and projected internationally.
For example, Thomas Berger traces in essay 9 the transformation of Germany's and Japan's collective
purpose from war to commerce. Thomas Risse-Kappen, in essay 10, argues that the collective identity of
democratic states has been central to the creation of a transatlantic security community, marked by what
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Karl Deutsch called "dependable expectations of peaceful change."13 And Michael Barnett shows in
essay 11 that changing and contested notions of Arab national identity help to define security threats and
shape the dynamics of alliance formation.
Finally, the authors in this volume invoke the term culture as a broad label that denotes collective models
of nation-state authority or identity, carried by custom or law. Culture refers to both a set of evaluative
standards (such as norms and values) and a set of cognitive standards (such as rules and models) that
define what social actors exist in a system, how they operate, and how they relate to one
another.14 Richard Price and Nina Tannenwald (in essay 4) and Dana Eyre and Mark Suchman (in essay
3), respectively, exemplify these two usages of the term. Furthermore, Elizabeth Kier (essay 6), Alastair
Johnston (essay 7), and Thomas Berger (essay 9) invoke specific cultural arguments about France, China,
Germany and Japan, and, at times, about some of the political and military organizations within these
countries.
The definitions of these concepts share an emphasis on what is collective rather than subjective.
Sociological approaches to the analysis of national security sometimes seem nebulous in their
specification of the factors that affect the behavior of states or other political actors. We can easily
conjure up the image of a column of 50,000 tanks stretching from Cleveland to Seattle that tells us
something about the size of the Soviet military at the end of the Cold War. It is harder to fathom what
force caused Governor Michael Dukakis, the Democratic candidate for president in 1988, to dress up in
military fatigues and ride around on a tank--looking foolish in the process--to demonstrate his toughness
on the issue of national defense. Collectively shared expectations of the American public about the
military toughness of presidential candidates are what made the governor behave the way he did.
Collective expectations can have strong causal effects. Such expectations deserve close scrutiny, this
book argues, for a better understanding of national security policy.
This essay points to some analytical gaps left by the predominant perspectives. The next essay proposes
an approach for filling those gaps. The empirical essays that follow seek to show that perspectives that
neglect social factors foreclose important avenues for empirical research and theoretical insight that are
relevant for explaining specific aspects of national security.
Why Traditional National Security Issues?
The end of the Cold War has put new national security issues beside the long-standing fear of a nuclear
war between the two superpowers and their preparations for large-scale conventional wars: ethnic
conflicts leading to civil wars that expose civilian populations to large-scale state violence; an increasing
relevance of economic competitiveness and, relatedly, of the "spin-on" of civilian high technology for
possible military use; increasing numbers of migrants and refugees testing the political capacities of
states; threats of environmental degradation affecting national well-being; and perceived increases in the
relevance of issues of cultural identity in international politics, including human rights and religion.
The 1970s and 1980s had already witnessed some evidence of this trend. It divided American realist
academics and political practitioners on the one hand and reformers staffing the Brandt, Palme, and
Brundtland Commissions and European peace researchers on the other.15 In the case of Japan, whose
power was increasing sharply in the 1980s, opinion also was divided.16 Did Japan's strategy of
"comprehensive security" represent merely a politically convenient ruse to counter American pressure for
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greater defense expenditures? Or was it a genuine political innovation that reflected the political
experiences of Japan since 1945?
In a prescient article published in the early 1980s Richard Ullman made a general case for broadening the
concept of security.17 Ullman viewed national security as more than a goal with different trade-off
values in different situations. He insisted that national security is threatened by the consequences of
events that quickly degrade the quality of life of state and nonstate actors alike, thus narrowing
significantly the future range of political choice.18 But at the height of the second Cold War in the early
1980s, security specialists did not consider seriously the arguments of European peace researchers.
Japanese national security policy was not an important topic. And the political climate in the early 1980s
was not favorable to Ullman's argument.
With the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union, the political and intellectual climate
has changed.19 In distinguishing between traditional, narrow definitions and recent, broad conceptions
of security studies, Stephen Walt, Edward Kolodziej, and Barry Buzan, among others, have articulated
very different views about how to define the concept of security, as well as about the scope of analytical
approaches and empirical domains appropriate to security studies.20 The narrow definition of security
tends to focus on material capabilities and the use and control of military force by states.21 This
contrasts with the distinctions among military, political, economic, social, and environmental security
threats that affect not only states but also groups and individuals, as well as other nonstate actors.22
Since different analytical perspectives suggest different definitions of national security, such
disagreements are probably unavoidable.23 Those interested in the state and in traditional issues of
national security tend to favor established realist and liberal approaches developed during the last
decades. A new generation of scholars built on these approaches in reinvigorating the field of security
studies as an intellectually challenging field of academic scholarship during the 1980s. In contrast, those
interested in unconventional, broader definitions of national security--such as economic competitiveness,
human rights, or human welfare--as affecting not only states but also nonstate actors tend to favor
alternative analytical perspectives.24
What scholars and policy makers consider to be national security issues is not fixed but varies over time.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, for example, pronatalist policies were widely believed to
strengthen national power and security. In the interwar period the focus on eugenics illustrated a partial
shift from the quantity to the quality of population as an important measure of national power and
security. And after 1945 there was a dramatic discontinuity as national elites no longer viewed
population control policies as sources of national security but as sources of national well-being. To take a
second example, in the case of plutonium, the very recent past has witnessed an analogous process of
issue transformation. Once considered to be only a security issue, plutonium has now become an
environmental issue as well.25 The domain of national security issues thus is variable. In the nineteenth
century, the concept covered economic and social dimensions of political life that, for a variety of
reasons, were no longer considered relevant when national security acquired a narrower military
definition in the first half of the twentieth century, especially during the Cold War. The intellectual move
to broaden the concept thus returns the field of national security studies to its own past.
This book is self-conscious in bringing together two fields of study usually kept apart. Its theoretical
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stance highlights the social determinants of national security policy, but it adopts a traditional, narrow
definition of security studies. It does so despite the fact that the argument for a broadening of the field
has substantial intellectual merit and is reflected in the changing agenda of United States foreign policy
as well as in the curricula of many schools of foreign affairs.26
Why, then, does this book focus on traditional issues of national security? The main reason is a healthy
respect for the sociology of knowledge. Intellectual challenges are often disregarded because they do not
meet reigning paradigms on their preferred ground. It might have been easier to point to the limitations of
existing theories of national security by investigating some of the "new" security issues. But in all
likelihood that exercise would have been pointless. Such a challenge would be dismissed as skirting the
hard task of addressing the tough political issues in traditional security studies. This book deals with
what most scholars of national security would consider to be hard cases. It chooses political topics and
empirical domains that favor well-established perspectives in the field of national security. If the style of
analysis and the illustrative case material can establish plausibility here, it should be relatively easy to
apply this book's analytical perspective to broader conceptions of security that are not restricted to
military issues or to the state.
Existing Analytical Perspectives
Like other subfields in international relations, security studies is influenced by the major theoretical
debates in international relations. Structural neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism as the two
dominant paradigms agree on the central importance of international anarchy for the analysis of
international politics. Even though neoliberalism to date has had little direct influence on national
security studies, indirectly, through this shared assumption, it has helped consolidate the orienting
Hobbesian framework that motivates most studies of national security.27
In addition, neorealism and neoliberalism share other areas of agreement on basic theoretical
issues.28 Neorealist and neoliberal perspectives focus on how structures affect the instrumental
rationality of actors. Neorealists emphasize that the competitive pressure of an anarchic international
system is a constant in history; it determines important types of state behavior such as balancing. In an
interdependent world, neoliberals insist, international institutions provide an alternative structural context
in which states can define their interests and coordinate conflicting policies. But the assumption of
unified state actors and a focus on an anarchical, systemic context of states are common to both.
Kenneth Waltz's formulation of a neorealist theory has had a profound influence on the field of security
studies.29 Waltz's theory is explicitly structural. It argues that the international state system molds states
and defines the possibilities for cooperation and conflict. According to Waltz, the international state
system has three distinctive characteristics. It is decentralized; the most important actors--states--are
unitary and functionally undifferentiated; and differences in the distribution of the capabilities of the
most important states distinguish bipolar from multipolar state systems. Waltz is careful to specify only a
restricted domain in security affairs as relevant for neorealist theory. But within that domain
developments in international politics are driven by the balancing of differences in capabilities in the
international system.30
Robert Keohane has been very influential in shaping the analytical perspective of neoliberal
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institutionalism on questions of political economy and international relations.31 According to Keohane,
international politics after hegemony does not necessarily collapse into the unmitigated power politics
that realists infer from conditions of international anarchy. Instead the international order that hegemons
have created through institutions can continue to ameliorate the problem of international anarchy. These
institutions facilitate monitoring, enhance political transparency, reduce uncertainty, and increase
policy-relevant information. The institutional infrastructure of a post-hegemonic system thus can
facilitate the coordination of conflicting policies by lowering the transaction costs associated with
cooperation. Neoliberals insist that conflict inheres in the international system. But that condition is not
immutable. Under some political conditions, international conflict can be ameliorated through collective
management.32
Structural neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism share a similar, underlying analytical framework,
susceptible to the same weakness. Kenneth Waltz privileges systemic effects on national policy and
sidesteps the motivations that inform policy. He argues that "neorealism contends that international
politics can be understood only if the effects of structure are added to the unit level explanations of
traditional realism. . . . The range of expected outcomes is inferred from the assumed motivation of the
units and the structure of the system in which they act."33 Since causes operate at different levels and
interact with one another, explanations operating at either level alone are bound to be
misleading.34 Robert Keohane concurs when he writes that "institutional theory takes states' conceptions
of their interests as exogenous: unexplained within the terms of the theory. . . . Nor does realism predict
interests. This weakness of systemic theory, of both types, denies us a clear test of their relative
predictive power."35 The consequences of this shortcoming for both neorealism and neoliberalism are in
Keohane's view far-reaching. "Without a theory of interests, which requires analysis of domestic politics,
no theory of international relations can be fully adequate. . . . Our weak current theories do not take us
very far in understanding the behavior of the United States and European powers at the end of the Cold
War. . . . More research will have to be undertaken at the level of the state, rather than the international
system."36
Both neorealism and neoliberalism thus express a widely accepted, though problematic, social science
paradigm suggesting a three-step analysis.37 First, there is the specification of a set of constraints. Then
comes the stipulation of a set of actors who are assumed to have certain kinds of interests. Finally, the
behavior of the actors is observed, and that behavior is related to the constraining conditions in which
these actors, with their assumed interests, find themselves. This perspective highlights the instrumental
rationality of actors and focuses on decisions and choice.
Variants of realist and liberal perspectives do acknowledge the importance of social facts. However, in
adopting economic styles of analysis, they often misunderstand concepts such as prestige and reputation,
which they view as "force effects rather than as social attributions."38
Robert Gilpin is one of the most important and insightful realists. He has developed a compelling
argument about war and change. While he appreciates the importance of sociological insights for
understanding the context of rational behavior, his book argues in an economic mode.39 Yet a core
assumption of Gilpin's basic model embodies an unanalyzed concept of identity, the distinction between
revisionist and status quo powers.40 And Gilpin's analysis of the international system explicitly
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incorporates recognition by others, or prestige. For Gilpin this is a functional equivalent to the concept of
authority in domestic politics and has functional and moral grounding.41 Gilpin asserts, but does not
demonstrate, that "ultimately" prestige rests on military or economic power. But he writes that "prestige,
rather than power, is the everyday currency in international relations."42
Analogously, Robert Keohane is a leading neoliberal scholar favoring an economic mode of analysis. He
writes that "much of my own work has deliberately adopted Realist assumptions of egoism, as well as
rationality, in order to demonstrate that there are possibilities for cooperation even on Realist
premises."43 In thinking about egoism and empathy, Keohane poses the central question of "how people
and organizations define self-interest."44 The answer lies in the issue of identity, in variations in the
degree of expansiveness and restrictiveness, with which people and organizations relate to one another.
To what extent does the "self" incorporate relevant aspects of the "other" in its calculations of gains and
losses? The answer to this question takes Keohane away from considerations of more or less myopic
calculations of interest to "deeper" questions of values. Keohane concludes that "since the notion of
self-interest is so elastic, we have to examine what this premise means, rather than simply taking it for
granted."45 Such relational thinking falls squarely in the sociological rather than the economic mode of
analysis.46
Similarly, a theory of historical change popular among realists and rationalists mimics a sociological
institutional perspective. Stephen Krasner, for example, gives an account of sovereignty that relies
heavily on the concept of punctuated equilibrium and historical path-dependence.47 In this view, the
social determinants that this volume analyzes are acknowledged to exist, but they are banished to a
remote past or to a distant future. The big bangs in history contrast sharply with the slight tremors of the
present. The social determinants that are thus admitted to exist during epochal shifts, this book claims,
exist throughout history, be it heroic or mundane.48
Finally, in a bold neorealist analysis of European politics after the Cold War, John Mearsheimer invokes
the importance of social factors. Mearsheimer makes a case for a carefully managed process of nuclear
proliferation to help stabilize an emerging war-prone, multipolar European system no longer held in
check by the Soviet threat from the East and, possibly, the American night-watchman state from the
West. Nuclear powers can reduce the dangers of proliferation by helping to "socialize emerging nuclear
societies to understand the nature of the forces they are acquiring. Proliferation managed in this manner
can help bolster peace."49 Similarly, Kenneth Waltz has conceded in one of his more recent writings that
"systems populated by units of different sorts in some ways perform differently, even though they share
the same organizing principle. More needs to be said about the status and role of units in neorealist
theory."50
This book relaxes the two core assumptions that mark, to different degrees, both neorealism and
neoliberalism. First, what happens if, in contrast to neorealism, we conceive of the environment of states
not just in terms of the physical capabilities of states? Neoliberalism has already effected this move with
its focus on institutions. But its efficiency-oriented view of the role of institutions in political life is open
to reinterpretation if we also relax a second assumption.51 What happens if, contrasting with
neoliberalism, we do not focus our attention solely on the effects that institutional constraints have on
interests? This perspective neglects the crucial fact that institutions can constitute, to varying degrees, the
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identities of actors and thus shape their interests. Relaxing core assumptions of the two central
perspectives in international relations theory, this book argues, is useful for two reasons. It may help us
discern new aspects of national security. Alternatively, it may help in accounting for anomalies in
existing analyses of national security.
Cultural-Institutional Context and Political Identity
The end of the Cold War and the issues of international politics that are emerging as central make this a
propitious time for rethinking established analytical approaches to national security. This book focuses
on the effects that culture and identity have on national security. The prevailing theories deliberately
slight these effects. For realists, culture and identity are, at best, derivative of the distribution of
capabilities and have no independent explanatory power. For rationalists, actors deploy culture and
identity strategically, like any other resource, simply to further their own self-interests.
Neorealism, for example, insists that shifts in the balance of relative capabilities are the main
determinants of international politics. Yet it is difficult to link the end of the Cold War and the
disintegration of the Soviet Union causally to dramatic changes in power capabilities.52 It is
undoubtedly true that the relative economic and military decline of the Soviet Union convinced the
Soviet military of the need for fundamental reform. Realist insights thus are relevant to an interpretation
of political developments since the 1980s.53 But they are no more than partial.
For example, the process of German unification within multilateral frameworks illustrates well the
shortcomings of realist analysis.54 The Bush administration did not seek to exploit the weakness of the
Soviet Union through an aggressive foreign policy. It remained instead committed to the institutional
innovation of multilateralism that it had brought to Europe at the end of World War II.55 The Soviet
Union was willing to accept multilateral institutions to solve its national security problems. Germany
eschewed neutralism in favor of continued membership in the Western Alliance and a deepening of the
process of European integration. After a brief moment of uncertainty in December 1989 and January
1990, France, in contrast to Britain, decided in favor of European integration as the most appropriate way
of dealing with the consequences of German unity. Soon after the disintegration of the Soviet Union,
nato's Cooperation Council, reinforced subsequently by the Partnership for Peace, became a forum for
the discussion of security issues between the West and all Central and Eastern European states as well as
all successor states of the Soviet Union except Georgia. None of these choices was automatic. None is
irreversible. But the logic of balancing in a world of relative capabilities did not dictate political action in
the halls of government in 1989-1990. Realism does not offer a compelling explanation of the end of the
Cold War.
While neoliberalism helps us understand the importance of institutions at the end of the Cold War, it is of
less use in making intelligible the central features of international politics after the Cold War. During the
Cold War, it may have been reasonable to take for granted state identities, at least on the central issues of
national security along the central front that divided East from West.56 Definitions of identity that
distinguish between self and other imply definitions of threat and interest that have strong effects on
national security policies. Furthermore, such definitions of identity are rarely captured adequately with
the language of symbolic resources sought by self-interested actors. For most of the major states, identity
has become a subject of considerable political controversy. How these controversies are resolved--for
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example, in the United States, in the member states of the European Union, in Russia and the members of
the Commonwealth of Independent States, in China and in many parts of the Third World--will be of
great consequence for international security in the years ahead. In sum, recent changes in world politics
remind us that other approaches, here a perspective emphasizing social factors, are useful in sharpening
our thinking on issues that neorealism and neoliberalism slight.
Social Determinant 1: Cultural-Institutional Context
In sharp contrast to the realist view of the international system as a Hobbesian state of nature,
neoliberalism offers a theory of the cultural-institutional context of state action. It defines regimes as
particular combinations of principles, norms, rules, and procedures.57 Power shapes international
regimes. Often these regimes emerge when a hegemonic state, such as the United States after 1945,
attempts to mold the international order to suit its interests and purposes. But international regimes do
not simply mirror power relationships. With the passing of time they acquire their own dynamic.
Regimes reduce transaction costs and thus enhance the potential for coordinating conflicting state
policies. Regimes present states with political constraints and opportunities that can substantially affect
how governments calculate their interests.
While the analysis of economic regimes has become a focus of scholarly attention, American scholars
have made relatively few attempts to apply this analytical perspective to issues of national security. In
the original volume on international regimes, Robert Jervis, for example, was very tentative in his
assessment of whether security regimes have existed since 1945.58 And in a subsequent essay he reached
cautious conclusions about the possibility of relatively high levels of cooperation between states
confronting a security dilemma in international politics.59 Other scholars have given greater weight to
cultural-institutional factors in their analyses of security regimes and the security cooperation between
the United States and the Soviet Union.60 In the most recent synthetic and authoritative restatement of
this line of research, Volker Rittberger has gone furthest in incorporating a prescriptive element as a
defining characteristic of a regime.61
In an important article, Friedrich Kratochwil and John Gerard Ruggie have noted that these lines of
argument subscribe to a view that is too behavioralist.62 The dominant, neoliberal application of regime
theory captures only what in a statistical sense is "normal" about norms. But norms reflect also the
premises of action.63 While above a certain threshold behavioral violations invalidate norms, occasional
violations do not. Critics of neoliberal institutionalism have made this their central point. These critics
insist that social change engenders a process of self-reflection and political actions that are shaped by
collectively held norms.64
Although their criticism has not been answered to date, these observers have failed to produce the
empirical research necessary to shake the rationalist and behavioral assumptions of neoliberal
theory.65 But this is beginning to change.66 For example, in the area of arms control Emanuel Adler has
relied on a sociological perspective to show how the arms control community in the United States
institutionalized its influence in government and how it subsequently diffused and institutionalized its
views in international agreements.67 And several scholars have investigated with interesting results the
effects of the culture of military organizations.68
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Self-reflection does not occur in isolation; it is communicated to others. In the process of communication
norms can emerge in a variety of ways: spontaneously evolving, as social practice; consciously
promoted, as political strategies to further specific interests; deliberately negotiated, as a mechanism for
conflict management; or as a combination, mixing these three types. State interests and strategies thus are
shaped by a never-ending political process that generates publicly understood standards for action.69
The behavioral compliance of actors with norms thus is only one part of the story, and that part must be
linked to another aspect, the justifications proffered.70 This line of reasoning is a departure from
neoliberal theory, but it would be a great mistake to overemphasize this difference. The most widely
accepted definition of what constitutes a regime refers specifically to implicit norms.71 This definition
thus grants scholars a wide measure of latitude in the type of evidence that they collect and in the
methods of analysis that they rely on. Since a large amount of the scholarship on international regimes
relies on qualitative case histories, the shift in analysis is not very great, so long as analysis adheres to the
conventions of an empirically oriented social science.
Social Determinant 2: Collective Identity
International regimes are social institutions that mitigate conflict in a decentralized international society
of states. But a rationalist theory of regimes factors out of its analysis the actor identities that often are
consequential for the definition of actor interests. Cultural-institutional contexts do not merely constrain
actors by changing the incentives that shape their behavior. They do not simply regulate behavior. They
also help to constitute the very actors whose conduct they seek to regulate.
International and domestic environments shape state identities.72 With the end of the Cold War, issues
of collective identity have become centrally important, probably more so than the reduction in political
uncertainties that inhibit agreements. For example, the shape and speed of the European integration
process and the question of how that Europe will relate to the outside world is of critical political
importance and has given rise to xenophobia and a new wave of nationalism. Analogous political
developments are occurring in Eastern Europe, in the member states of the Commonwealth of
Independent States, in many Third World countries, and in the United States. And in Asia the
intensification of efforts to create new forms of multilateralism designed to facilitate policy coordination
is closely linked to contested definitions of Asian identity.
With few exceptions, neorealism also remains silent on the issue of identity--for two reasons. First, it
stresses the ecological dynamics that self-selection and functional imperatives have for states. Second,
neorealism seeks to distance itself from traditional realism, which did pay attention, implausibly, to
human nature73 and, plausibly, to issues of national identity. Since neorealists view states as
undifferentiated and unitary actors, they sidestep consideration of issues concerning the character of the
state and the construction of state identities.74
The international and domestic societies in which states are embedded shape their identities in powerful
ways. The state is a social actor. It is embedded in social rules and conventions that constitute its identity
and the reasons for the interests that motivate actors.75 On this point the contrast between a sociological
perspective on the one hand and neoliberalism and neorealism on the other is substantial. History is more
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than a progressive search for efficient institutions that regulate property rights. And history cannot be
reduced to a perpetual recurrence of sameness, conflict, and balancing. History is a process of change
that leaves an imprint on state identity. In a broad historical perspective the eventual success of the
national state in Western Europe should not blind us to the wide array of institutional experimentation,
both domestic and international, that preceded it.76 Influenced by a long history of universal empires,
regional kingdoms, and subcontinental empires, Asian states also differ greatly from the conventional
image of unified, rational states.77 The historical evidence compels us to relinquish the notion of states
with unproblematic identities.
The identities of states emerge from their interactions with different social environments, both domestic
and international. Despite differences in theoretical formulation, the analysis of nationalism offers an
important example. Ernest Gellner stresses the importance of the instrumental logic of nationalism;
Benedict Anderson emphasizes that national identities are socially constructed; and Ernst Haas combines
both perspectives in his discussion of nationalism as an instrumental social construction.78 All insist that
the national identities of states are crucial for understanding politics and that they cannot be stipulated
deductively. They must be investigated empirically in concrete historical settings.
The international society of states also shapes varying state identities by virtue of recognizing their
legitimacy and admitting them to international organizations whose membership is often restricted only
to states.79 Governments crave the diplomatic recognition by members of the international society of
states because it bestows upon them the legitimacy they may need to secure their existence. In Africa and
elsewhere, for example, sovereignty constitutes and legitimates states that are extremely weak in terms of
material power.80 Statehood thus depends partly on position in the international society of states.
The analysis of transnational relations and of world systems offers analytical perspectives that also
elucidate the relations between states and their social environments.81 Often the social environments that
affect state identity link international and domestic environments in a way that defies the reification of
distinct domestic and international spheres of politics. After 1945, for example, the institutionalization of
the welfare state created a system of "embedded liberalism" based on the compromise between advocates
of domestic welfare capitalism and proponents of a liberal international order.82 In her research on
European guestworkers Yasemin Soysal has demonstrated one of the consequences of embedded
liberalism for changing notions of citizenship in Western Europe.83 In contrast to past practice,
European nation-states have become responsible for the welfare of all persons, not just citizens, living
within their borders. Traditionally defined on the basis of nationality, individual rights in Western Europe
are now codified into notions of universal personhood rather than nationality. This is a novel and
important change in the matrix of factors affecting the international relations of Europe.
This book analyzes the effect of political identities. It views states as social actors. It analyzes political
identities in specific historical contexts. And it traces the effects that changing identities have on political
interests and thus on national security policies.
Neorealist and neoliberal theories adhere to relatively sparse views of the international system.
Neorealism assumes that the international system has virtually no normative content. The international
system constrains national security policies directly without affecting conceptions of state interest.
Neoliberalism takes as given actor identities and views ideas and beliefs as intervening variables between
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assumed interests and behavioral outcomes.84 In this view states operate in environments that create
constraints and opportunities.
These analytical perspectives overlook the degree to which social environments and actors penetrate one
another. The domestic and international environments of states have effects; they are the arenas in which
actors contest norms and through political and social processes construct and reconstruct identities. The
cultural-institutional context and the degree to which identities are constructed both vary. In some
situations neorealist and neoliberal assumptions may be warranted. But these perspectives often overlook
important political effects that condition international politics and thus affect issues of national security.
This book makes two analytical moves simultaneously. It stipulates a more social view of the
environment in which states and other political actors operate. And it insists that political identities are to
significant degrees constructed within that environment. It thus departs from materialist notions and the
rationalist view of identities as exogenously given. That is, this book seeks to incorporate into the
analysis of national security both the cultural-institutional context of the political environment and the
political construction of identity. The empirical studies illustrate how both factors help to shape the
definition of interests and thus have demonstrable effects on national security policies.
Why Bother?
Neorealism offers an orienting framework of analysis that gives the field of national security studies
much of its intellectual coherence and commonality of outlook. Furthermore, neorealism holds forth the
promise of a tight, deductive theory as the ultimate prize of theorizing about national security. Kenneth
Waltz himself, however, has been very circumspect in his theoretical claims. He argues that his theory,
formulated at the level of the international system, seeks to explain only the recurrence of the balancing
behavior of states in history.
Neorealism is too general and underspecified to tell us anything about the direction of balancing, let
alone about the content of the national security policies of states. Therefore, particular studies of national
security, typically, adapt some features of Waltz's theory and, in addition, import more or less loosely
clustered groups of variables from other fields (such as organization theory, comparative politics, or
political psychology) and graft them onto the orienting framework that neorealism provides. The
theoretical contribution of these studies lies in the formulation and testing of, at best, loosely linked
hypotheses. The politically substantive and most interesting scholarship in the field is historical in nature
and offers little hope of moving to a deductive style of "theory" anytime soon.
This book puts at center stage analytical concepts that the existing literature on national security
acknowledges only obliquely. Some studies seek to explain aspects of national security with reference to
social facts. But they tend to do so in a manner that subordinates the causal force of social facts to a
materialist or rationalist view of the world. In this view, for example, identities and norms either are
derivative of material capabilities or are deployed by autonomous actors for instrumental reasons. Based
on the assumption that rationality is a natural rather than a constructed concept, these books view
ideologies largely in the service of rational calculations.
The "myths of empires," for example, that Jack Snyder analyzes in accounting for the conditions under
which great powers overexpand result from different patterns of domestic politics. While Snyder
acknowledges that international factors also play a role, he argues that specific domestic coalitions
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develop aggressive strategic perspectives that serve particular political interests. Elites manipulate mass
publics through propaganda. In this view imperial ideologies are rationalizations for parochial interests,
products that entrepreneurs sell in political markets. As Snyder writes, his theory of domestic politics
roots its analysis "securely in a rational-choice framework. . . . It is more accurate to say that statesmen
and societies actively shape the lessons of the past in ways they find convenient than it is to say that they
are shaped by them."85 Snyder acknowledges in passing that the "blowback" of propaganda, the blurring
of the line between "fact and fiction . . . sincere beliefs and tactical argument,"86 entraps political leaders
not only in their own confusions but in the political context that they helped create. But since this aside
cuts against Snyder's rationalist interpretation of ideology, it remains one underdeveloped page in a long
theoretical essay. Sociologists and cultural historians are likely to demur by insisting that "blowback is
big."
Stephen Walt's theory of balance of threat shows a similar theoretical inclination.87 As is true of
Snyder's work, Walt's threat theory is not a minor modification of neorealism but a substantial departure
from it. While Walt continues to subscribe to realism as an orienting framework, his emphasis on threat
perception moves away from the systemic level and shifts analysis from material capabilities to
ideational factors.88 Walt views ideology as a variable that competes with others for explanatory
power.89 But balance-of-threat theorizing poses an obvious question about the importance of ideology in
the threat perceptions of states. If one views ideology as a system of meaning that affects the definition
of threat, then Walt's conclusions may warrant further investigation, for the cost calculations that states
make when they weigh ideological solidarity against security concerns are not exogenous to their
ideological affinities.90
James March and Johan Olsen, among others, have elaborated this view in an often neglected chapter of
their much-cited book. Ideologies, norms, and identities do not simply serve instrumental purposes.
March and Olsen argue that obligatory action contrasts with consequential action. Behavior is shaped not
only by goals, alternatives, and rules of maximization or satisficing central to rationalist models of
politics. Behavior is shaped also by roles and norms that define standards of appropriateness.
Improvisation and strategic behavior are embedded in a social environment that constitutes the identity of
the actors and their interests and that shapes the norms that also help to define their interests. "Political
processes are as much concerned with managing interpretations and creating visions as they are with
clarifying decisions. . . . We are led to a perspective that challenges the first premise of many theories of
politics, the premise that life is organized around choice. Rather, we might observe that life is not only,
or primarily, choice but also interpretation."91 Applied to questions of national security, the work of
Elizabeth Kier on strategic culture offers a compelling application of that general perspective.92 In a
landmark study, Barry Posen, for example, developed sophisticated arguments that link the preference of
military organizations for offensive doctrines to the functional needs of military
organizations--specifically their wish to control resources, to be autonomous from civilian interference,
and to enhance the social prestige of military officers.93 Kier has reexamined existing explanations of
the choice of offensive and defensive military doctrines by military leaders, investigated fully the
historical evidence, carefully evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of alternative explanations, and
come to an unambiguous conclusion: military organizations do not have an inherent preference for
offensive doctrines. One cannot deduce the interests of the military from either the functional needs of
the military or the international balance of power. Instead, the political preferences for offensive or
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defensive doctrines of different branches of the military reflect organizational interests. And these must
be understood within the context of specific organizational cultures, which are themselves nested in
broader political-military cultures distinctive of the politics of different states.
A perspective that emphasizes obligatory action does not have to deny consequential action and the
importance of the instrumental political use of norms and identities. For example, moral entrepreneurs
who manipulate ideas, John Mueller and Ethan Nadelmann argue in different projects, have had
important effects on how elites and mass publics view the institution of war and a variety of state policies
combatting acts such as piracy, slavery, counterfeiting of national currencies, hijacking of aircraft,
trafficking in women and children for purposes of prostitution, and trading in drugs.94 As these
examples make clear, empirical research on national security needs to evaluate the competing claims of
both obligatory and consequentialist perspectives.
This book makes its main analytical move at the level of an orienting framework that privileges social
factors. Contrasting analytical claims are best articulated in the form of specific hypotheses that are
applied in particular empirical domains. This is the strategy that the empirical essays in this volume
follow. It is on the ground of evidence that we have the best chance of intellectually engaging contrasting
analytical perspectives that differ on questions of ontology, epistemology, and methodology.
For particular research questions in specific situations it may be sensible to conceive of states as actors
with unproblematic identities that balance and bandwagon or conduct their political business in
institutions that lower transaction costs. But for many research questions and in many situations we must
capture additional factors to explain problematic aspects of national security policies.
The effort to test sociological, culture-based explanations against economic, interest-based explanations
centers on identifying and describing problems overlooked by existing scholarship and specifying the
social factors, here state identity and the cultural-institutional context, that shape conceptions of actor
interest and behavior. Some essays in this book view the context of states and governments as more
permeated by social facts than is typical of most scholarship on national security. Other essays focus on
the problematic nature of the identity of states and governments. While the individual essays privilege
one or the other aspect in their empirical research, the book as a whole makes both moves
simultaneously. In this view the crucial question is not to establish whether interests prevail over
identities and norms or whether identities and norms prevail over interests. What matters is how
identities and norms influence the ways in which actors define their interests in the first place.
Essay 2 explicates more fully the theoretical approach, with its dual focus on cultural-institutional
context and identity. It compares that approach to others in the analysis of international and domestic
politics; it makes some basic conceptual distinctions; finally, drawing on the individual case studies as
well as other literature, it reviews the effects of culture and identity on interests and national security
policy.
Part 1 focuses on the cultural-institutional context in which states and governments define their interests
and act. Dana Eyre and Mark Suchman analyze in essay 3 the effects that norms of military prowess have
on some of the weapons procurement policies of states. Richard Price and Nina Tannenwald, in essay 4,
analyze the historical evolution in norms of the non-use of chemical and nuclear weapons. In essay 5
Martha Finnemore examines the effects of changing norms on patterns of military intervention. She
shows how shifts in understandings about the reasons to intervene and the means of intervening have
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changed the modalities of national security policies. In essay 6 Elizabeth Kier analyzes the effects of the
organizational culture of the French military on the evolution of offensive and defensive military
doctrine. Finally, in essay 7 Alastair Johnston argues that China's national security policy in the Maoist
period resulted from a "hard" strategic culture of parabellum, a quintessentially constructed worldview,
rather than from the condition of international anarchy. What unites these essays and sets them apart
from related inquiries is their detailed attention to the effects of the cultural-institutional context on
national security policies.
Part 2 analyzes how constructed, collective identities of political actors, such as states or governments,
affect their interests and policies. In essay 8 Robert Herman traces the political process by which
cosmopolitan reformers in the Soviet Union articulated and put into practice newly invented or
rediscovered notions of a "Western" Soviet Union, thus helping to end the Cold War. Thomas Berger, in
essay 9, deals with Germany and Japan as two instances in which collective identities have been deeply
transformed by the effects of World War II in a political process marked by political contestation and
historical contingency. In essay 10, Thomas Risse-Kappen examines the changing identities that help
define changing security communities among liberal democracies in the North Atlantic area. And
Michael Barnett, in essay 11, examines the effects of contested and changing identities on security
policy, both in an Arab nation increasingly divided and between the United States and Israel.
The essays in parts 1 and 2 span domestic and international levels of analysis as well as national,
regional, and global political contexts. They engage the present as well as the past. They deal with
Western and non-Western states operating at different levels of development. But this diversity in
empirical application conceals a unity of theoretical purpose. All these essays specify a political outcome
or set of outcomes that is central to students of national security. And all of them either derive a plausible
set of expectations from existing theories that do not address their question or offer a plausible
explanation derived from existing analytical perspectives that they test against a preferred culture- or
identity-based explanation.
The two essays in part 3 conclude the volume. In essay 12, Paul Kowert and Jeffrey Legro deal with the
origins and consequences of norms and identities. Their analysis connects this book back to a set of
intellectual concerns that distinguish a number of current approaches. In the interest of mapping
directions for future work, they seek also to impose greater specification of variables and causal patterns.
And they point to gaps and oversights in this book's approach and findings. Finally, essay 13 considers
some recent realist and liberal writings that are trying to grapple with the issues of culture and identity
raised in this book; it summarizes the approach, hypotheses, and main findings of the empirical essays
and explores further some of the issues raised in them; it points to a broader research agenda for national
security studies; and it concludes with a discussion of the implications of this book's perspective for the
role of the United States in a changing world.
This book argues that we should not take for granted what needs to be explained: the sources and content
of national security interests that states and governments pursue. A focus on political identity and the
cultural-institutional context, this book claims, offers a promising avenue for elucidating the changing
contours of national security policy.
For their careful readings and critical comments of previous drafts I would like to thank the
members of the project; the participants at the Social Science Research Council/MacArthur
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Workshops at the University of Minnesota and Stanford University in 1994; and Emanuel
Adler, Thomas Christensen, James Goldgeier, Peter Haas, Gunther Hellmann, Ronald
Jepperson, Mary F. Katzenstein, Robert Keohane, Jonathan Kirshner, Atul Kohli, Charles
Kupchan, John Odell, Judith Reppy, Shibley Telhami, Stephen Walt, Alexander Wendt, and
two anonymous readers for Columbia University Press.
Note 1: Although, properly speaking, I am referring to state security, I am adhering to the conventional
usage in the field of national security studies. Back.
Note 2: See Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1996); Stephen D. Krasner, Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S.
Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). Back.
Note 3: John Mueller, Quiet Cataclysm: Reflections on the Recent Transformation of World Politics
(New York: Harper Collins, 1995). Back.
Note 4: This project thus resembles others that seek to reevaluate or refine international relations theory
in light of recent events. See Richard Ned Lebow and Thomas Risse-Kappen, eds., International
Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Robert
O. Keohane and Helen Milner, eds., Internationalization and Domestic Politics (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1996); Miles Kahler, ed., Liberalization and Foreign Policy (forthcoming); and
Thomas Risse-Kappen, ed., Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-State Actors, Domestic
Structures, and International Institutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Back.
Note 5: Sean M. Lynn-Jones, ed., The Cold War and After: Prospects for Peace (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1991); Michael J. Hogan, ed., The End of the Cold War: Its Meaning and Implications (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the End of the Cold
War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). Back.
Note 6: Ken Jowitt, New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1992); Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky, The Real World Order: Zones of Peace, Zones of
Turmoil (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, 1993); Robert O. Keohane, Joseph S. Nye, and Stanley
Hoffmann, eds., After the Cold War: International Institutions and State Strategies in Europe, 1989-1991
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993); Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace:
Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Meredith
Woo-Cumings and Michael Lorriaux, eds., Past As Prelude: History in the Making of a New World
Order (Boulder: Westview, 1993); Mike Bowker and Robin Brown, eds., From Cold War to Collapse:
Theory and World Politics in the 1980s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Hans Henrik
Holm and Georg S¿rensen, eds., Whose World Order? Uneven Globalization and the End of the Cold
War (Boulder: Westview, 1995). Back.
Note 7: Immanuel Wallerstein, "Socialist States: Mercantilist Strategies and Revolutionary Objectives,"
in Immanuel Wallerstein, The Politics of the World Economy, pp. 86-96 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1984); Immanuel Wallerstein, "Marx, Marxism-Leninism, and Socialist Experiences in
the Modern World System," in Immanuel Wallerstein, Geopolitics and Geoculture: Essays on the
Changing World System, pp. 84-97 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Back.
Note 8: John W. Meyer, "The World Polity and the Authority of the Nation-State," in Albert Bergesen,
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ed., Studies of the Modern World System, pp. 109-37 (New York: Academic Press, 1980). Back.
Note 9: This is a major difference between the inspiration motivating this book and Frank W. Wayman
and Paul F. Diehl, eds., Reconstructing Realpolitik (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994).
Back.
Note 10: Recent volumes that articulate a similar perspective include Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen,
and Frank Longstreth, eds., Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio, eds., The
New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Back.
Note 11: I argue below that this is no particular liability for the approach chosen for the book; no such
theory exists in the field of national security studies. Back.
Note 12: One of the main difficulties in making the sociological approach of this book attractive for
scholars of national security lies in the intuitive equation of the concept of norm with morality. The book
focuses primarily on the analysis of regulatory norms (defining standards of appropriate behavior) and
constitutive norms (defining actor identities). It touches less directly on evaluative norms (stressing
questions of morality) or practical norms (focusing on commonly accepted notions of "best solutions").
See also various essays in Millennium: Journal of International Studies 22, no. 3 (Winter 1993). Back.
Note 13: Karl W. Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1957), p. 5. Back.
Note 14: This distinction between the cognitive and evaluative effects of norms is also made by scholars
working from within a cognitive paradigm. See, for example, Alexander L. George, "Domestic
Constraints on Regime Change in U.S. Foreign Policy: The Need for Policy Legitimacy," in Ole R.
Holsti, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alexander L. George, eds., Change in the International System, p.
235 (Boulder: Westview, 1980). Back.
Note 15: Raimo Varynen, "Towards a Comprehensive Definition of Security: Pitfalls and Problems"
(paper presented at the thirty-first annual convention of the International Studies Association,
Washington, D.C., April 10-14, 1990), pp. 1-2; John P. Lovell, "From Defense Policy to National
Security Policy: The Tortuous Adjustment for American Military Professionals," Air University
Review 32, no. 4 (May-June 1981): 42-54; J. A. Tapia-Valdes, "A Typology of National Security
Policies," Yale Journal of World Public Order 9, no. 1 (Fall 1982): 10-39; Bruce Andrews, "Surplus
Security and National Security: State Policy As Domestic Social Action" (paper presented at the annual
convention of the International Studies Association, Washington, D.C., February 22-26, 1978). Back.
Note 16: "Comprehensive Security: Japanese and U.S. Perspectives: A Conference Report of the
Northeast Asia-United States Forum on International Policy" (Stanford University, November 1981); J.
W. M. Chapman, R. Drifte, and I. T. M. Gow, Japan's Quest for Comprehensive Security: Defence,
Diplomacy, Dependence (New York: St. Martin's, 1982); Peter J. Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara,
Japan's National Security: Structures, Norms, and Policy Responses in a Changing World (Ithaca:
Cornell University East Asia Program, 1993). Back.
Note 17: Richard Ullman, "Redefining Security," International Security 8, no. 1 (Summer 1983):
129-53. Back.
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Note 18: Ibid., pp. 130-35. Back.
Note 19: Two surveys of the field of security studies from 1987 and 1992 illustrate this point very
clearly. See Joseph S. Nye Jr. and Sean M. Lynn-Jones, "International Security Studies: A Report of a
Conference on the State of the Field," International Security 12, no. 4 (Spring 1988): 5-27; and Lynn
Eden, " 'New Approaches to the Study of Conflict and Peace in a Changing World': Report on a
Conference Held January 16-17, 1992, Center for International Security and Arms Control, Stanford
University" Stanford University, Center for International Security and Arms Control, 1992. Back.
Note 20: Stephen M. Walt, "The Renaissance of Security Studies," International Studies Quarterly 35,
no. 2 (June 1991): 211-39; Edward A. Kolodziej, "Renaissance in Security Studies? Caveat Lector!"
International Studies Quarterly 36, no. 4 (December 1992): 421-38; Edward A. Kolodziej, "What Is
Security and Security Studies? Lessons from the Cold War," Arms Control 13, no. 1 (April 1992): 1-31;
Barry Buzan, People, States, and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations
(London: Wheatsheaf Books, 1983); Barry Buzan, "The Case for a Comprehensive Definition of
Security and the Institutional Consequences of Accepting It," Working Papers 4/1990 (Copenhagen:
Centre for Peace and Conflict Research, 1990); Barry Buzan, "New Patterns of Global Security in the
Twenty-first Century," International Affairs 67, no. 3 (1991): 431-51; Lester R. Brown, Redefining
National Security, Worldwatch Papers no. 14 (Washington, D.C.: Worldwide Institute, 1977); Joseph J.
Romm, Defining National Security: The Nonmilitary Aspects (New York: Council on Foreign Relations
Press, 1993); Simon Dalby, "Security, Modernity, Ecology: The Dilemmas of Post-Cold War Security
Discourse," Alternatives 17, no. 1 (Winter 1992): 95-134; Theodore C. Sorenson, "Rethinking National
Security," Foreign Affairs 69, no. 3 (Summer 1990): 1-18; Martin Shaw, "There Is No Such Thing as
Society: Beyond Individualism and Statism in International Security Studies," Review of International
Studies 19 (1993): 159-75; Ole Waever et al., Identity, Migration, and the New Security Agenda in
Europe (New York: St. Martin's, 1993); Wilhelm Agrell, "The Problems of Defining and Dealing with
the Civilian Aspects of Security" (unpublished paper, Research Policy Institute, University of Lund,
Sweden, December 1986); Deborah A. Stone, Policy Paradox and Political Reason (Glenview, Ill.:
Scott, Foresman, 1988), pp. 69-86; Ronnie D. Lipschutz, "Reconstructing Security: Discursive Practices,
Material Changes, and Policy Consequences" (paper prepared for delivery at the 1992 annual meeting of
the American Political Science Association, Chicago, September 3-6, 1992); Michael T. Klare and
Daniel C. Thomas, eds., World Security: Challenges for a New Century (New York: St. Martin's, 1994);
Graham Allison and Gregory F. Treverton, eds., Rethinking America's Security: Beyond Cold War to
New World Order (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992); Peter Digeser, "The Concept of Security" (paper
prepared for delivery at the 1994 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New
York, September 1-4, 1994); James Sperling and Emil Kirchner, "Introduction: The Changing Definition
of Security," in Emil Kirchner, Christoph Bluth, and James Sperling, eds., The Future of European
Security, pp. 1-22 (Brookfield, Vt.: Dartmouth Pub., 1995). Back.
Note 21: Walt, "The Renaissance of Security Studies," p. 212. Back.
Note 22: Kolodziej, "Renaissance in Security Studies?" pp. 422-23; Buzan, "New Patterns of Global
Security," pp. 432-33. Back.
Note 23: Proponents on either side of the debate agree that much would be lost, and little gained, if
broader security studies were compressed into the well-developed, narrower focus of strategic studies;
Walt, "Renaissance of Security Studies," p. 213; Buzan, "The Case for a Comprehensive Definition," pp.
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12-13. Back.
Note 24: Why these are the lines of division is not entirely clear. It is possible that nonstate actors and
issues that touch less directly on the balance of material capabilities lend themselves perhaps more easily
to the sociological perspectives that this book proffers. Back.
Note 25: I would like to thank John Meyer for drawing my attention to this analytical point and these
examples. Back.
Note 26: Andrew Rosenthal, "U.S. to Unveil Drug Plan with Wide Military Role," New York
Times, March 9, 1990, p. A5; Elaine Sciolino, "Bush Wants Intelligence Agencies to Reconsider Focus
on Military," New York Times, December 22, 1991, p. 6; Ken Brown, "Cold War Over, Foreign Affairs
Schools Refocus," New York Times, November 17, 1993, p. B7. Back.
Note 27: Robert O. Keohane, International Institutions and State Power: Essays in International
Relations Theory (Boulder: Westview, 1989), p. 6, for example, writes that the "causal impact of
international institutions on state policy is not as strong as that of states on international institutions." But
in contrast to realist thought, this version of liberalism focuses on deception rather than violence as the
most important consequence of international anarchy. Back.
Note 28: Robert Powell, "Anarchy in International Relations Theory: The Neorealist-Neoliberal Debate,"
International Organization 48, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 313-44; Emerson M. S. Niou and Peter C.
Ordeshook, " 'Less Filling, Tastes Great': The Realist-Neoliberal Debate," World Politics 46, no. 2
(January 1994): 209-34; Michael ZŸrn, "We Can Do Much Better! Aber muss es auf amerikanisch sein?
Zum Vergleich der Disziplin 'Internationale Beziehungen' in den USA und in Deutschland," Zeitschrift
fŸr Internationale Beziehungen 1, no. 1 (June 1994): 98-109. Grouping different theoretical formulations
under these two broad headings is a simplification. Each theory has a major and a minor variant.
Neorealists have sought to systematize the insights of traditional realists. And neoliberals distinguish
themselves from traditional liberals. Although not unimportant, these differences pale compared with the
combined impact that the two main variants, neorealism and neoliberalism, have had on international
relations scholarship since the early 1980s. Hence I discuss them here. The first part of the concluding
essay examines briefly some attempts of reformulating realist and liberal perspectives to address the
issues that this book raises. For some important differences between realism and liberalism, see also
Keohane, International Institutions and State Power, pp. 1-20, and the discussion in Barry Buzan,
Charles Jones, and Richard Little, The Logic of Anarchy: Neorealism to Structural Realism (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 1-17. Back.
Note 29: Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
Back.
Note 30: This book's approach differs from Waltz's along all three dimensions. First, the international
society of states is distinguished by both organizational decentralization and elements of a shared culture.
Second, states are not unitary and functionally differentiated. Third, the distribution of capabilities and
the number of poles may be less important than some of the effects of the society of states. An additional
important difference lies in the fact that the recurrent balancing behavior of states that interests Waltz is
of little concern to any of the authors writing in this volume. Some of them are interested in the direction
of the balance, others in a variety of aspects of national security policy. A set of essays in two special
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issues of Security Studies (5, nos. 2 and 3 [Winter 1995/96 and Spring 1996]) takes stock of realist and
neorealist theory. Back.
Note 31: Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political
Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). Back.
Note 32: Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984); Kenneth A.
Oye, ed., Cooperation Under Anarchy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); Oran Young,
International Governance: Protecting the Environment in a Stateless Society (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1994). Back.
Note 33: Kenneth N. Waltz, "The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory," in Robert I. Rotberg and
Theodore K. Rabb, eds., The Origins and Prevention of Major Wars, pp. 41-42 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989). Back.
Note 34: Ibid., p. 42. Back.
Note 35: Robert O. Keohane, "Institutional Theory and the Realist Challenge After the Cold War," in
David A. Baldwin, ed., Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate, p. 285 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993). Back.
Note 36: Ibid., pp. 294-95. Back.
Note 37: James G. March, "Decision-Making Perspective: Decisions in Organizations and Theories of
Choice," in Andrew H. Van De Ven and William F. Joyce, eds., Perspectives on Organization Design
and Behavior, pp. 205-44 (New York: Wiley, 1981). Back.
Note 38: Francis A. Beer and Robert Hariman, "Realism and Rhetoric in International Relations," in
Francis A. Beer and Robert Hariman, eds., Post-Realism: The Rhetorical Turn in International Relations
(East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State University Press, in press), p. 21 of manuscript. Back.
Note 39: Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1981), pp. xii-xiii. Back.
Note 40: Ibid., pp. 10-11. Randall Schweller's interesting paper on neorealism illustrates the same point;
see Randall L. Schweller, "Neorealism's Status-Quo Bias," Security Studies 5, no. 3 (Spring 1996) (in
press). "Predatory states motivated by expansion and absolute gains, not security and the avoidance of
relative-gains losses, are the prime movers of neorealist theory" (ibid., p. 36 of manuscript). Back.
Note 41: Gilpin, War and Change, pp. 14, 28, 30. Back.
Note 42: Ibid., pp. 30-31. Back.
Note 43: Robert O. Keohane, "Empathy and International Relations," in Jane J. Mansbridge, ed., Beyond
Self-Interest, p. 227 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). Back.
Note 44: Ibid., p. 228. Back.
Note 45: Ibid., p. 236. Back.
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Note 46: Keohane writes further: "A complete analysis of regimes would have to show how international
regimes could change as a result not of shifts in the allegedly objective interests of states, or in the power
distributions and institutional conditions facing governments, but of changes in how people think about
their interests, including the possibility that they may be interested in the welfare of others, both from
empathy and from principle" (ibid.). In the early 1980s Keohane suggested that a different, sociological
line of argument about regimes would be possible, whereby norms would be "internalized" by actors as
part of their utility functions; see Robert O. Keohane, "The Demand for International Regimes," in
Stephen D. Krasner, ed., International Regimes, p. 154 n. 27 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983).
But his subsequent work has continued to draw almost exclusively on economic imagery and has
followed a rationalist path. See also Robert O. Keohane, "International Relations Theory: Contributions
of a Feminist Standpoint," in Rebecca Grant and Kathleen Newland, eds., Gender and International
Relations, pp. 41-50 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991). This paper clearly recognizes
feminism's sociological orientation toward the articulation of an "institutional vision of international
relations" (p. 44) and calls for an "alliance between two complementary critiques of neorealism,"
neoliberal institutionalism and feminism (p. 47). Back.
Note 47: Stephen D. Krasner, "Sovereignty: An Institutional Perspective," Comparative Political
Studies 21 (1988): 64-94. Back.
Note 48: I am indebted to John Meyer for drawing my attention to this point. Back.
Note 49: John Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future: Instability After the Cold War," International
Security 15, no. 1 (Summer 1990): 38. Back.
Note 50: Kenneth N. Waltz, "Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory," Journal of International
Affairs 44, no. 1 (1990): 37. See also Henry Nau, "Identity and International Politics: An Alternative to
Neorealism" (unpublished paper, George Washington University, April 1994). Back.
Note 51: One should note here that neoliberalism and institutional economics have been notably
unsuccessful in measuring transaction costs, an opaque concept at best that is central to an understanding
of how institutions work. Back.
Note 52: John Mueller, "The Impact of Ideas on Grand Strategy," in Richard N. Rosecrance and Arthur
A. Stein, eds., The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy, pp. 48-62 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993);
Richard Ned Lebow, "The Long Peace, the End of the Cold War, and the Failure of Realism,"
International Organization 48, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 249-77; see also Robert Herman's essay in this
volume. Back.
Note 53: William C. Wohlforth, "Realism and the End of the Cold War," International Security 19, no. 3
(Winter 1994/95): 91-129. Back.
Note 54: Rey Koslowski and Friedrich V. Kratochwil, "Understanding Change in International Politics:
The Soviet Empire's Demise and the International System," International Organization 48, no. 2 (Spring
1994): 244-46; Thomas Risse-Kappen, "Ideas Do Not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic
Structures, and the End of the Cold War," International Organization 48, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 185-214.
Back.
Note 55: John Gerard Ruggie, "Multilateralism: The Anatomy of an Institution," in John Gerard Ruggie,
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ed., Multilateralism Matters: The Theory and Praxis of an Institutional Form, pp. 3-47 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993). Back.
Note 56: This is a simplifying assumption, not an empirical claim. State identities are always politically
reproduced and contested. Furthermore, context makes a difference. The Cold War may have had a large
effect on state identities in Europe. But this does not mean that it necessarily did so, for example, in the
Third World. Back.
Note 57: Krasner, International Regimes; Volker Rittberger, ed., International Regimes in East-West
Politics (New York: Pinter, 1990); Volker Rittberger, ed., Regime Theory and International Relations
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1993). Back.
Note 58: Robert Jervis, "Security Regimes," in Krasner, International Regimes, pp. 173-94. Back.
Note 59: Robert Jervis, "From Balance to Concert: A Study of International Security Cooperation," in
Oye, Cooperation Under Anarchy, pp. 58-79. Although these are two widely cited papers, it should be
noted that Jervis was not writing from an unambiguous, neoliberal perspective. His analysis neglects
cultural-institutional factors and rests largely on changes in the payoffs of different policies as well as on
institutional features that increase transparency and warning time. Back.
Note 60: Harald MŸller, "The Internalization of Principles, Norms, and Rules by Governments: The
Case of Security Regimes," in Rittberger, Regime Theory and International Relations, pp. 361-88;
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., "Nuclear Learning and U.S.-Soviet Security Regimes," International
Organization 41, no. 3 (Summer 1987): 371-402. Alexander George, U.S.-Soviet Security Cooperation:
Achievements, Failures, Lessons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). Back.
Note 61: Volker Rittberger, "Research on International Regimes in Germany: The Adaptive
Internalization of an American Social Science Concept," in Rittberger, Regime Theory and International
Relations, pp. 10-11. Back.
Note 62: Friedrich Kratochwil and John Gerard Ruggie, "International Organization: A State of the Art
on an Art of the State," International Organization 40, no. 4 (Autumn 1986): 753-75. Other critics have
questioned the lack of precision in definition, the analytical usefulness, and the empirical application of
the regime concept; see Stephen Haggard and Beth A. Simmons, "Theories of International Regimes,"
International Organization 41, no. 3 (Summer 1987): 491-517; Martin J. Rochester, "The Rise and Fall
of International Organization as a Field of Study," International Organization 40, no. 4 (Autumn 1986):
777-813. Back.
Note 63: This leads to an important set of analytical distinctions that could be further clarified, relying on
Goldstein and Keohane's taxonomy of three types of beliefs; see Judith Goldstein and Robert O.
Keohane, "Ideas and Foreign Policy: An Analytical Framework," in Judith Goldstein and Robert O.
Keohane, eds., Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change, pp. 8-11 (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1993). "World views" and "principled beliefs" are publicly held and have
behavioral implications; they are "intersubjective." "Causal beliefs" can be held privately and do not
necessarily make claims on behavior; they are "cognitive." Back.
Note 64: Hayward R. Alker, Jr., "The Presumption of Anarchy in World Politics" (unpublished
manuscript, Cambridge, Mass., 1986); Richard K. Ashley, "The Poverty of Neorealism," International
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Organization 38, no. 2 (Spring 1984): 225-86; Richard K. Ashley, "Untying the Sovereign State: A
Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique," Millennium: Journal of International Studies 7, no. 2
(1988): 227-62; Richard K. Ashley, "Living on Border Lines: Man, Poststructuralism, and War"
(unpublished manuscript, Tempe, Ariz., 1988); Friedrich V. Kratochwil, Rules, Norms, and Decisions
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Back.
Note 65: Keohane, International Institution and State Power, pp. 158-79; Goldstein and Keohane, "Ideas
and Foreign Policy," pp. 5-6, 26-27. Back.
Note 66: As the research in this volume and many of the volume's references illustrate, the charge of a
lack of empirical research has by now lost much of its bite. Cornell graduate students alone are finishing
a series of dissertations and books that provide a wealth of empirical research challenging exclusive
reliance on rationalist and behavioralist styles of analysis. See Robert Herman, "Ideas, Identity, and the
Redefinition of Interests: The Political and Intellectual Origins of the Soviet Foreign Policy Revolution"
(Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1995); Elizabeth L. Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military
Doctrine Between the Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Audie J. Klotz, Protesting
Prejudice: Apartheid and the Politics of Norms in International Relations (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1995); Gil Merom, "Blood and Conscience: Recasting the Boundaries of National Security" (Ph.D.
diss., Cornell University, 1994); Richard Price, A Genealogy of the Chemical Weapons Taboo
(forthcoming); Richard Price, "A Genealogy of the Chemical Weapons Taboo," International
Organization 49, no. 1 (Winter 1995): 73-104; Christian Reus-Smit, "The Moral Purpose of the State:
Social Identity, Legitimate Action, and the Construction of International Institutions" (Ph.D. diss.,
Cornell University, 1995); Nina Tannenwald, "Dogs That Don't Bark: The United States, the Role of
Norms, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1995);
Michael Marks, "The Formation of European Policy in Post-Franco Spain: Ideas, Interests, and the
International Transmission of Knowledge" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1993); and Dan Thomas,
"Between Reason and Power: International Norms and Political Change in Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union, 1975-1989" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1995). Back.
Note 67: Emanuel Adler, "Arms Control, Disarmament, and National Security: A Thirty-Year
Retrospective and a New Set of Anticipations," Daedalus 120, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 1-20; Emanuel
Adler, "The Emergence of Cooperation: National Epistemic Communities and the International
Evolution of the Idea of Nuclear Arms Control," International Organization 46, no. 1 (Winter 1992):
101-46. Back.
Note 68: Jeffrey W. Legro, Cooperation Under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint During World War II
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995); Kier, Imagining War; Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety:
Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). Back.
Note 69: Harald MŸller, "Internationale Beziehungen als kommunikatives Handeln," Zeitschrift fŸr
Internationale Beziehungen 1, no. 1 (June 1994): 15-44; James Johnson, "Habermas on Strategic and
Communicative Action," Political Theory 19, no. 2 (May 1991): 181-201; Oran Young, International
Cooperation: Building Regimes for National Resources and the Environment (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1989); Young, International Governance.
Back.
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Note 70: David Welch, Justice and the Genesis of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Back.
Note 71: Krasner, International Regimes, p. 2. Issues of definition and conceptualization are considered
at length in several essays in Rittberger, Regime Theory and International Relations.
Back.
Note 72: Alexander Wendt, "The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory,"
International Organization 41, no. 3 (Summer 1987): 335-70; Alexander Wendt, "Anarchy Is What
States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics," International Organization 46, no. 2
(Spring 1992): 391-425; Alexander Wendt, "Collective Identity Formation and the International State,"
American Political Science Review 88, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 384-96; Iver B. Neumann, "Identity and
Security," Journal of Peace Research 29, no. 2 (1992): 221-26. Back.
Note 73: J. Ann Tickner, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global
Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), p. 30. Back.
Note 74: Relatedly, state theory applied to the analysis of domestic politics or the domestic sources of
foreign policy has typically focused on the variability in the autonomy and the capacity of states, not on
their identity. See Bruce Andrews, "Social Rules and the State as a Social Actor," World Politics 27, no.
4 (July 1975): 521-40; Peter J. Katzenstein, "International Relations and Domestic Structures: Foreign
Economic Policies of Advanced Industrial States," International Organization 30, no. 1 (Winter 1976):
1-45; Stephen D. Krasner, "Approaches to the State: Alternative Conceptions and Historical Dynamics,"
Comparative Politics 16, no. 2 (January 1984): 223-46; Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and
Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Peter
B. Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1995). Back.
Note 75: Andrews, "Social Rules and the State as a Social Actor," p. 536. Back.
Note 76: Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, A.D. 990-1990 (Oxford: Blackwell,
1990). Back.
Note 77: Suzanne H. Rudolph, "Presidential Address: State Formation in Asia--Prolegomena to a
Comparative Study," Journal of Asian Studies 46, no. 4 (November 1987): 731-46. Back.
Note 78: Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983); Benedict
Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983); Ernst B. Haas, "Nationalism: An
Instrumental Social Construction," Millennium: Journal of International Studies 22, no. 3 (Winter 1993):
505-45. Back.
Note 79: John Gerard Ruggie, "Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist
Synthesis," World Politics 35, no. 2 (January 1983): 261-85; John Gerard Ruggie, "International
Structure and International Transformation: Space, Time, and Method," in Ernst-Otto Czempiel and
James N. Rosenau, eds., Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges: Approaches to World Politics for
the 1990s, pp. 21-36 (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, Lexington Books, 1989); Raymond Duvall and
Alexander Wendt, "Institutions and International Order," in Czempiel and Rosenau, Global Changes and
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Theoretical Challenges, pp. 51-74. Back.
Note 80: Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, "Why Africa's Weak States Persist: The Empirical and
the Juridical in Statehood," World Politics 35, no. 1 (October 1982): 1-24; Robert H. Jackson,
Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990); Meyer, "The World Polity"; George M. Thomas and John W. Meyer, "Regime
Changes and State Power in an Intensifying World State-System," in Bergesen, Studies of the Modern
World System, pp. 139-58. Back.
Note 81: Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, eds., Transnational Relations and World Politics
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972); Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System:
Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New
York: Academic Press, 1974); Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System II: Mercantilism and
the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600-1750 (New York: Academic Press, 1980).
Back.
Note 82: Ruggie, "Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity"; Peter J. Katzenstein, Small States
in World Markets: Industrial Policy in Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985). Back.
Note 83: Yasemin Nuhoglu Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in
Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Back.
Note 84: Goldstein and Keohane, "Ideas and Foreign Policy," p. 5.# Peter J. Back.
Note 85: Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1991), pp. 17, 30. Back.
Note 86: Ibid., p. 41. Back.
Note 87: Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987). Back.
Note 88: Walt is very explicit in arguing that balancing in inter-Arab relations is atypical. While states
typically "seek to counter threats by adding the power of another state to their own . . . in the Arab world
the most important source of power has been the ability to manipulate one's own image and the image of
one's rivals in the minds of other Arab elites" (ibid., p. 149). Back.
Note 89: In a second book, Revolution and War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), Walt extends
this analytical move from international threat perceptions to domestic threat perceptions. He argues that
revolutions affect threat perceptions through miscalculation, hostility, perception of offensive power, and
uncertainty--that is, through four different psychological mechanisms. Back.
Note 90: For a critical discussion of Walt's use of correlational metaphors and ways of drawing
conclusions, see Albert Yee, "The Causal Effects of Ideas Themselves and Policy Preferences:
Behavioral, Institutional, and Discursive Formulations" (unpublished paper, Brown University, 1993),
pp. 10-11, and Stephen Haggard, "Structuralism and Its Critics: Recent Progress in International
Relations Theory," in Emanuel Adler and Beverly Crawford, eds., Progress in Postwar International
Relations, pp. 420-22 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). For a more positive reading, see
Gunther Hellmann, "FŸr eine problemorientierte Grundlagenforschung: Kritik und Perspektiven der
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Disziplin 'Internationale Beziehungen' in Deutschland" Zeitschrift fŸr Internationale Beziehungen 1, no.
1 (June 1994): 82-83. Taken on Walt's terms, his analysis of ideology also fails to convince at times. He
appears to be bent on arguing the case against the importance of ideology, especially for the
superpowers, either by imposing excessively rigid definitional criteria or by coding decisions of cases
that are not compelling. For example, as noted in Douglas J. MacDonald's review in Journal of
Politics 51, no. 3 (August 1989): 795-98, Walt's restrictive definitional criteria of left-wing ideological
adherence (p. 186) preclude coding the support of "united front" movements by the Soviet Union as
alliances based on ideological considerations. And the ideologically close relations between the United
States and Israel are simply argued away by referring to Israel as a "welfare-state theocracy" that has
little ideological affinity with the United States (p. 200). Maybe so. But as Michael Barnett argues in this
book, U.S.-Israeli relations became much more problematic in the late 1980s when some segments of the
American public began to doubt that Israel was still behaving like an essentially like-minded
parliamentary democracy. Back.
Note 91: James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of
Politics (New York: Free Press, 1989), p. 51; March, "Decision-Making Perspective." Back.
Note 92: Kier, Imagining War. Back.
Note 93: Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the
World Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984). See also Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the
Offensive: Military Decison Making and the Disasters of 1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).
I neglect Snyder's work here, since Kier replicates Posen's research on interwar Europe. Back.
Note 94: Mueller, Quiet Cataclysm; Ethan A. Nadelmann, "Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution
of Norms in International Society," International Organization 44, no. 4 (Autumn 1990): 479-526. Back.
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