Social Construction of International
Politics and Security
Peking University – University of Chicago Summer Institute on
International Relations Theory and Method
August 18-22, 2014
Keven Ruby
Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism
University of Chicago
[email protected]
Overview of Main Arguments
• Social structures and processes explain
important phenomena in international politics
• Existential threats are socially constructed
• The state itself is a social construction in
which fear of existential threats play a key role
• Application in a case: US response to 9/11
Realism
• The international system is anarchic (no global
government)
• States like actors, unitary, seek survival
• System is defined by distribution of material power
(polarity)
• Behavioral rule: self-interest and self-help 
– balancing (Waltz)
– power-maximization (Mearsheimer)
• World is conflictual, cooperation is hard
• System change means change in distribution of power
Some Real(ism) Puzzles
• Why does the US fear Soviet and North Korean
nuclear weapons but not those of Britain or
France?
• Why is state death become increasingly rare after
1648?
• Why does NATO persist after the Cold War?
• Why do states no longer use chemical or nuclear
weapons in war?
• Why does Germany not pursue an assertive and
independent foreign policy?
Social Theory of Int’l Politics (Wendt)
• Systemic theory, direct challenge to Waltz
• States unitary actors in anarchy, but no single “logic of
anarchy”
• Anarchy is not empty: it is a culture constructed from
the social interaction of states
• Three Cultures of Anarchy
– Hobbesian culture: states as enemies, self-help, war of all
against all (pre-Westphalia)
– Lockian culture: states as rivals, competition and limited
war (current Westphalian system)
– Kantian culture: states as friends, security communities
(e.g., the EU)
IR Constructivism
• Ideas, norms, culture give meaning to material world and
action
– Norms: Shared expectations about appropriate behavior that
regulate behavior and constitute actor identities
– Culture: Systems of norms, rules, and models defining actors in
a system and how they relate to each other
– Identity: image of self formed in relation with others, what it
means to be a specific actor
• Meaning is intersubjective, a structure created, sustained,
changed through interaction
• Key Questions: How do norms, ideas, culture shape political
actors and behavior? What explains changes in the
meaning of “objects” and behavior? What makes “objects”
possible?
Constructivisms Plural
• Multiple epistemological foundations captured by label
– Mainstream Constructivism (e.g., Wendt, Finnemore,
Tannenwald)
– Post-structuralists (e.g. Campbell, Doty, Ashley)
– Feminist theorists (e.g., C. Weber, Tickner)
– Practice theorists (e.g., Adler & Poulliot)
• Key axis of debate is social nature all reality, esp. the
state, whether state “body” is given or itself the effect
of social processes/practices
• Inter-constructivist debates often more acrimonious
than fights with non-constructivists, heart of science
debate
Methods
• Focus is on language, discourse, but also practices through which norms,
identities and culture are produced
• For mainstream constructivists, commitment to empirical science
– Study causation and constitution
• Analytic lens, NOT A THEORY OF IR
– Can be used to explain cooperation or conflict
• Methodological pluralism
– Case studies
– Process tracing
– Genealogy
– Discourse analysis
Substantive Contributions Across
Levels of Analysis
• International Institutions and Law
– E.g., sovereignty and human rights intervention (Barkin),
Legitimacy and Authority in IR (Hurd)
• International Political Economy
– E.g., cultures of capitalism that shape normative commitment to
ideal in the face of contradictory evidence (Blythe)
• Security
– E.g., NATO as a security community (e.g., Adler), nuclear and
chemical weapons taboos (Tannenwald, Price), construction of
WMD as category (Bentely)
• Foreign Policy
– E.g., identity and response to 9/11 in Germany and Japan
(Katzenstein), cultures of national security (Jepperson et al.),
Securitization (Buzan, Waever et al)
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF
EXISTENTIAL THREATS
“[S]ecurity studies may be defined as the study of
the threat, use, and control of military force.”
--Stephen Walt, The Renaissance of Security Studies, p. 212
“[D]efining national security merely (or even
primarily) in military terms conveys a profoundly
false image of reality.”
--Richard Ullman, Redefining Security, p. 129.
Non Traditional Threats
•
•
•
•
•
Migration
Global Warming
Resource scarcity
Terrorism
Social fragmentation
• Are these threats?
• Should they be treated
as threats?
• What are implications
of treating them as
existential threats?
Existential Threats
• Objective
– There are dangers “out there” that threaten the survival of a
given referent object and that demand a free hand in response
• Subjective
– Existential threats are “in the head,” individually experienced,
and if enough individuals are “frightened,” a response will be
required whether or not the danger actually threatens survival
(of particular individuals or the political community as a whole)
• Intersubjective
– Threats are socially constructed through discourse,
argumentation and persuasion such that a political community
comes to understand a threat as existential, freeing the relevant
actor from the established rules in the interest of survival
Securitization
• Core argument: Existential threats are socially
constructed through language (speech acts)
• Securitization: claim results in intersubjective
understanding of threat that allows the state
to break free of the rules of normal politics
• Goal is to explain empirical observation that
many kinds of threats are treated as
existential, including non-military ones
• Sectors : military, political, societal, economic,
environmental
Spectrum of Politics
Securitization
Nonpoliticized
(private sphere)
Politicized
(public sphere)
Securitized
(the political)
De-Securitization
Explaining War in Iraq
• Securitizing Actor: Bush administration
• Securitizing Move: Claim that Iraq WMD pose an
existential threat
• Referent Object: The homeland of the United States
• Audience: American public
• Facilitating Conditions: president is making claim, 9/11
attacks create urgency
• Result: Bush authorized to invade Iraq
• Framework compatible with, but broader in
applicability, than literature on threat inflation
Source: Althouse, Scott L., and Devon M. Largio. 2004. "When Osama Became Saddam:
Origins and Consequences of the Change in America's Public Enemy #1." PS (October):795-9.
Rhetorical Coercion (Krebs, Jackson)
• Language can coerce compliance, “twisting arms
by twisting tongues”
• Challenges liberal constructivist emphasis on
persuasion as mechanism
• Rhetorical coercion causes or prevents behavior
independent of target’s desired outcome
• Language and normative structures infused with
power, also opportunities for weaker actors
Critiques of Securitization
• Distracts from “real threats out there”
• Limited applicability outside of democratic states
• Framework, not a theory: can’t tell us when something
will be securitized
• Focus on language ignores other modes by which
security/threats become salient (e.g., images)
• Reifies referent objects, including the state: assumes
state is object that can be threatened rather than itself
the effect of securitization
Problematizing the State
• Campbell argues the state is the effect of practices, a
performance that produces the state as actor
• State identity constituted by discourses of danger
– Insecurity (fear) binds society to the state
– stabilize boundaries between state and international system,
and between state and society
– Problematizes the boundary between internal and external
security
• Exogenous shocks expose contingent nature of the state
– Loss of threats cause state to securitize new threats
– In US, End of Cold War led to drugs as new threat to the state
• Insecurity (fear) is the condition of possibility for the state
• Normative goal is emancipation
Application
• How can we apply the concepts of
constructivist security studies to understand a
real-world phenomenon?
• US response to 9/11
The Terrorism Puzzle
• State responds to terrorism “as if” it were
existential
– Global war on terrorism
– Department of Homeland Security
– USA PATRIOT Act
– Warrantless Wiretapping
– War
22
Terrorism
Murder
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
Fatalities (Thousands)
The Relative Cost of Terrorism
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Traffic
23
"I think it was Lenin who said that the
purpose of terrorism is to terrorize. It is
to alter behavior by putting enough fear
in people that they will not do what
they normally do…. To the extent the
terrorist is able to terrorize, there's no
question but they win.”
--Sec. Def. D. Rumsfeld
Inter-service Town Hall Meeting, Scott Air Force
Base, Illinois
April 18, 2002
“Terror, unanswered, cannot only bring down
buildings, it can threaten the stability of legitimate
governments.…I know many citizens have fears
tonight, and I ask you to be calm and resolute, even
in the face of a continuing threat.”
--G. W. Bush
Address to a joint session of Congress and the American People
September 20, 2001
State as Manager of Fear
• Model of the state based on Hobbes: fear of state of
nature both produces and threatens the state
• When discourses of danger put pressure on the state to
prioritize (securitize) threats the state believes are not
threatening, or against which no response is possible,
public fear becomes an objective threat.
• State can respond to societal fear in three ways:
– Eliminate the threat, most costly option not always feasible
– Appeasement, concessions to enemy to reduce intentions
– Target public fear
• States manage the twin threats of complacency and
panic, a core aspect of statecraft
Securitizing from Below
• Event interpreted as signaling vulnerability
creates widely shared fear of a threat
(intersubjective)
• Bottom-up demand to mobilize to reduce or
eliminate vulnerability
• Object of fear dominates political agenda,
crowding out alternatives
• Discourse of danger  political impact
(objective)
Discourse of Reassurance
• War on terrorism
– threat can be eliminated abroad
– Identifies and fixes enemies as
“axis of evil”
– World divided into friend vs. foe
• Expansion of state powers of
surveillance
– The threat will be uncovered
– We know where the danger lies
• The response to 9/11 to restore
feeling of security
– No necessary relationship to actual
security
– May make public objectively less
secure
– Reassurance makes aggressive
policies possible
• Homeland Security
– Centralization of security, promise
that terrorists will be uncovered
– Terror Alert: threat can be known
– Reinvigoration of individual
preparedness/civil defense
28
11/15/2007
29
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Value Added of Constructivism
• Norms, culture and identity matter for explaining
outcomes and actors in international politics
• Invites scholars to be critical, to question takenfor-granted concepts and explanations
• Identifies political dimension of security, role of
power in defining national security priorities and
policies
• Constructivism is an analytic lens: value depends
on substantive question
Your Questions?
EXTRA SLIDES
References
• Buzan, Barry, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde. Security: A New
Framework for Analysis. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998.
• Campbell, David. Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and
the Politics of Identity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press, 1998.
• Katzenstein, Peter J., ed. The Culture of National Security: Norms
and Identity in World Politics. New York: Columbia University Press,
1996.
• Krause, Keith, and Michael Williams. Critical Security Studies:
Concepts and Cases. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press, 1997.
• Wendt, Alexander. Social Theory of International Politics.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• Dated, but starting point for understanding debates
Nuclear Taboo (Tannenwald)
• Nuclear Taboo: “de facto prohibition against the use of nuclear
weapons” (not behavior, but normative belief) -- not deterrence or
public consequences
• Normative Effects:
– Regulative: refers to how norms constrain behavior, prevent actions
(punished for violation constrains)
– Constitutive: refers to how rules and norms, through actor practices,
create or define forms of behavior, roles, identities (“civilized” states
don’t do this)
– Permissive: shadow constitutive effects (non-nuclear but highly
destructive weapons ok)
• Taboo evolves over time: causal mechanisms are domestic and
world opinion, personal convictions of decision-makers
• No taboo in 1945, but non-use taken for granted by 1991 Gulf War
Identity, Insecurity &
Great Power Politics (Murray)
• What explains irrational power maximization?
• States require stable identity, self-understanding of
what it is, to be actors in international politics
• Identities are social, depend on being recognized by
other states
• When state’s own conception not recognized by
international community, triggers struggle for
recognition
• Material power allows state to force others to
recognize it, sometimes at expense of security
• Case: Pre-WWI German naval ambition
The Role of the Security Analyst
Theoretical
Tradition
Traditional
Security
Studies
Copenhagen
School
Critical
Security
Studies
Position Principles
Observers or
Advocates
1.
2.
3.
4.
Objectivity of threats
Objectivity of referent objects
Commitment to state centrism
Analytical commitment to security
as military threat
“Observe; Let
Others
Advocate!’
1.
2.
3.
4.
Threats socially constructed
Objectivity of referent objects
Sectors/widening
Goal is desecuritization
“Observe How
Others
Advocate!”
1. Threats socially constructed
2. Referent “Objects” socially
constructed
3. Commitment to uncovering
hegemonic discourses and stressing
ethics
4. Goal is emancipation
Critique
1. Ignores political/normative
implications
2. Theory is not neutral
1. Miss role of security in constructing
referent objects
2. Widening/sectors legitimates
securitization
1. No positive theory of power
2. Emancipation from what?
“To Observe Is
to Advocate!”
Eriksson (1999) Observers or Advocates