In Search of an International Community:
Between Historical, Legal and Political Ontologies
Mor Mitrani
The Department of International Relations
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
[email protected]
Introduction
*** Preliminary Draft ***
The idea that states can hold common values and standards of conduct as well as some capacity to
act in the international arena in collective manners for collective goals - namely that states can
convene and take part in a collective “We” of states - is epitomized in the concept of “international
community.” Although the term “international community” is widely used by scholars, practitioners
and international political leaders and is an integral part of the common vocabulary, most usages of
it either take its existence for granted or use it in order to understand other phenomena, like
international law or international legitimacy. Only few have sought to explore the international
community as a subject on its own right, let alone define, identify its members, and characterize its
ways of actions and sources of legitimacy (see for example Abi-saab, 1998; Addis, 2008; Danilenko,
1991; Warbrick & Tierney, 2006). This is especially puzzling given the notion that while the power
and sphere of influence of the international community are not sustained by any concrete material
factor, and its authority stems from the mere usage of the term along with the practical and
normative substances that are attributed being to it. There is therefore a need to theorize the
concept and scrutinize its effects on states’ patterns of conduct and relations in the realm of
international politics.
Essentially, the concept of international community is a sociological construct, nonetheless as a
sociological construct it can be reckoned through four main ontologies: historical, legal, political and
discursive. The paper will survey these ontologies and assess the viability of applying them as means
to answer the question: who is the international community, as well as the need to interweave them
in order to comprehensively gauge its implications on states’ behavior. It will argue that since the
concept “the international community,” is to a great extent a discursive practice, the optimal way to
understand it, is through epistemological lenses, via the scrutiny of how the concept is perceived and
constructed by states and through states’ dialogue in the context of inter-state discourse.
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A. The concept of community at the international level – sociological perspective
The theoretical discussion on international community entails a preliminary discussion on the
sociological concept of “community.” The term community, as rooted in sociological writings,
denotes to a human association in which individuals interact based upon shared common features of
identity. The most influential work on the concept of community is Ferdinand Tonnies seminal
book (1963 [1887]), Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. The book presents two ideal-types of peaceful social
association: Gemeinschaft ("community")
and Gesellschaft
("society"). Gemeinschaft as
opposed
to
Gesellschaft is united by will, a feature that establishes not only shared understandings, identity and
interests, but also the possibility of a collective action based on an authentic sense of unity and
shared moral imperatives. While both types of association are constructed through social relations
that are based on ‘rational and human will,’ they are differentiated by the origins of the relationships
- real and organic (kinship-based) relationships will indicate for a Gemeinschaft , and artificial,
imaginary and mechanical connections will stand for a Gesellschaft (see Kritsiotis, 2002: 962). The
question is whether and how we can apply the sociological depiction of a community to the supermacro level of the international. As the focus is inevitably on the interactions and relationships
among the members of the community, in order to identify an international community, we ought to
account for its members and assess whether they share, or at least see themselves as sharing,
commonalities that establish an authentic sense of unity.
Conventionally, two main answers can be found: those who conceive it as the community of states
(and states only), and those who see it as a community of individual persons and thus as the
community of humankind (Kritsiotis, 2002:968). The latter is an ideal-type construct infused by
cosmopolitanism, that stands in contradiction with the idea of the international community of states,
mainly since it cannot be realized in practice while world politics are still governed and managed by
states and state-centered institutions that hinder the feasibility of a purist cosmopolitan community.
Conversely, a conception of the international community as a community of communities in general
and of states in particular (Addis, 2008; Mapel & Nardin, 1999), refers to a general sociological
notion that groups of states (or other international actors) are capable of both sharing a certain level
of communal feeling and acting on behalf of this shared feelings, hence bestows to the international
community some agential capacities to either
Gonzalez-Pelaez, 2002: 32-33).
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act or legitimate members’ actions (Buzan &
B. The international community – A socio-historical ontology
Socio-historical ontology of the international community discerns it as evolving throughout history
as a result of the inter-state system formation and consolidation process that began in the Peace of
Westphalia (1648). From a historicist perspective, the international community is not a new concept,
and one can find multiple references dating back to the beginning of the 20th century that allude the
formulation or potential formulation of an international community, albeit not necessarily a cohesive
one. These accounts are usually linked to the field of integration studies, striving to place the
development of a community at the international level as part of the wider process of political
communities’ formation. By applying a transaction-based conception, the main argument is that states
over time establish nets of communication and social transactions that integrate them around
common norms of peaceful state conduct that arguably mark states’ ripeness for an international
community (e.g. Leo & Martin, 1943).
The most notable work in this respect, is Deutsch’s seminal work, The Political Community at the
International Level – (1957), which tracks historically the evolution of the polity and sets the criteria
that allowed it - in different historical periods - to form a community, focusing on the prospects of
establishing a supranational (security) community. Cobb and Elder (1970) also explore the linkage
between integration, the concept of community and the absence of conflict, and points to the end of
World War II as creating supranational regional communities in various areas of the world.
Resonating with the Deutschian perspective, they call to focus on social interactions rather than on
actor- or system- oriented perspectives. Using a communication-based lens they posit the requisites
which produce greater cohesion among states. These are manifested in values’ congruence both at
the level of international institutions and of states’ shared habits, producing in turn peaceful means
of conflict resolution. These works discern the idea of community at the international level as a
historical construct, and the ‘sense of community’ as both the generator of (peaceful) historical
change and the outcome of historical changes.
When Deutsch’s vision was revived in Adler and Barnet (1998) seminal book, “Security
Communities,” the emphasis on the “sense of community,” got even deepened. In one of the
book’s chapters, Russet (1998) links the concept of security communities and the concept of the
international community, and points to the peaceful end of the Cold War as an historical moment
that realized the three components of the Kantian triangle at once: Consolidation of democracy;
economic interdependence and transnational institutions, leading to a shift of the core of
international politics from the idea of sovereignty to the Kantian triad. A shift, that both describes
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and prescribes - from a neo-Kantian perspective - a partial, uneven and nascent global security
community sustained by democratic peace, affects in turn on the embedment of re-constructed
notions of international law, in the spirit of Kant’s perpetual peace thesis.
The depiction of the international community as a historical construct especially via the concept of
‘security communities’ tends however to focus more on the security aspect rather than on the
community one. It thus portrays the community at the international level more as means to achieve
peace than as a condition of its own. As such, it tends to take the existence of the international
community almost for granted as a facilitator of peace or at least as an expected outcome of the
historical evolution of polities and not as a subject of its own right, and thus it is insufficient in order
to gauge what is the international community.
C. From historical to legal – The International Community as a legal ontology
A second, and probably the most common and acceptable way to depict the international
community is from a legal point view, envisaging it as the fundamental prism to understand and
frame international law, by conceiving the international community as the sociological, some would
say constitutional, context in which international law emerge. From a socio-legal angle as well, the
concept of the international community is not new and the notion that international law is
manifestation of the international community is evident through various legal texts that aim to
define and set the scope of international law and entwine the essence of international law with the
idea of the international community. Notable examples are the “1949 Draft Declaration on the
Rights and Duties of States” which contends that "the States of the world form a community
governed by international law," and “The 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law”
asserting that all states "are equal members of the international community."' The Vienna
Convention on the Law of Treaties refers to the recognition and acceptance by "international
community of States as a whole,” of both the legal rules of international law and of violations of
international law and international crime (see Danilenko, 1991).
The rationale is straightforward, as law essentially requires some sort of legal community that would
be committed to both formulate and comply with it. Based on this logic, the mere existence of
international law insinuates the existence of an international (legal) community, exclusive to states at
least while states are both the principle (if not sole) law-making authority of international law and
the principle legal subjects of international law. Residing with the school of legal positivism, the
international community is portrayed not only as regulated by international law but also as
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constituted by it, and especially by customary international law. This is a sociological assertion in
essence since the existence of the legal community is contingent upon the extent to which states
conceive themselves as subjects of common rules, members in a voluntary association of those who
accept the rules (Mapel & Nardin, 1999; Whelan, 1999). Rightful membership in the international
community therefore entails sovereign states to conform to the common standards of political
behavior that set the legitimate and rightful conduct of states in the international arena. Diehl, Ku,
& Zamora (2003) argue that the international community, through international institutions, set the
normative framework of the acceptable and expectable standards in various issue areas for behavior
and operation in the international system. This is though a somehow circular conceptualization as
international law is both the indicator and the originator of the international community (Simma &
Paulus, 1998), as the international community is both setting the operating systems and embodying
them, and thus questions regarding who is the international community or what are its exogenic
characteristics, namely the normative structure and substance that infuse the international
community, still remain elusive.
The constitutional strand of International Law suggests the UN and the UN charter as the
constitutions of the international community. According to this, the international community was
constituted with the establishment of the UN and the articulation of the charter as a binding
covenant of existing and normatively desired international community (Abi-saab, 1998; Cassese,
1989; Dupuy, 1997; Fassbender, 2009), manifesting, practically and discursively, a degree of unity
that has deepened “areas of cooperation,” and radically shifted the structure and substance of
international law (see Dupuy, 1997). The entrenchment of the concept of the international
community to the UN charter is more than a socio-legal depiction but rather a political declaration,
as the charter itself is a state-centric political project that emphasizes the notion that the
international community is exclusive to sovereign states. Conversely though, Addis (2008) expounds
the concept of universal jurisdiction as the constitutive function through which the international
community as a collective (legal) identity is being enacted. Universal jurisdiction is “a process
through which the international community imagines its identity,” since it both constitutes the
international community and regulate the legal behavior of its members (Addis, 2008: 133).
Nevertheless, the international community Addis points to is genuinely different the one that is
associated with the international community of states, as he portrays a community of humankind as
a whole, constituted from the bottom-up, through the participation of its individual constituents.
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The legal ontology interweaves the concept of international community with concepts of change and
continuity as changes in the normative structure and substance of the international community are
accounted as explaining changes in international law.
More specifically, according to Abi-Saab
(1998), the degree of community shared by members of a certain international society denotes to the
legal position a certain international society will ascribe to, ranging from a core of ‘law of
coexistence’ to a core of ‘law of cooperation’. In this regard the “degree of community” is treated as
a dynamic variable that once changes, “in relation to a given subject, at a given moment,” affects the
socio-legal position of states regarding world politics. As such, and corresponding with Tonnies, the
international community could be reckoned as a specific type states’ association in which the degree
of unity responds to political changes and in return would change international law infrastructure. In
this regard, the end of the Cold War and the dissolve of the Eastern bloc in the early 1990s are seen
as drivers of change in the structure of the international community, manifested in ever-growing
scope of international law. The argument here is that the political changes created a gap between the
normative frameworks of the international community and the existing international legal order and
necessitated adapting central international law measures to be compatible with the changes in the
international community (Abi-saab, 1998; Danilenko, 1991). The end of the Cold War is thus
portrayed as promoting the international community by the transformation from a framework
designated at maintaining states’ sovereignty to an “an emerging normative order of a nascent
international community” (Warbrick & Tierney, 2006).
This depiction combines to a great extent both historicist and legal ontologies, as on the one hand,
the international community is seen as a historical construct that is shaped in light of historical
political changes and on the other hand as the normative framework that subscribes the contexts in
which practices of international law will be re-constructed in light of the historical processes. In this
respect, Ruggie (1983) conceives
the international community as embodying “a matrix of
constraints and opportunities for state action,” (Ruggie, 1983: 94) and as composed of social,
normative and institutional elements. Therefore, changes in any of these components and their
interplay, as he demonstrates through the case-study of human rights, potentially require adapting
the communities’ norms in order to ensure their adequacy to the changing political contexts.
The depiction of the international community as a matrix accentuates though the main peril in both
the historicist and legal ontologies, that lack a concrete political perspective as they both pay less
attention both to the political settings that establishes the international community and to the
implications the concept has on political behavior. In this regard, neither the socio-legal perspective
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nor the socio-historical one, provide the theoretical tools to envisage the international community,
mainly since both acknowledge its role in the international political arena but fail to portray it as a
political phenomenon of its own. Thus, both perspectives use the concept of ‘international
community’ as theoretical conduit to explain certain political outcomes but rather evade the need to
explain the international community itself as a political outcome, as a political construct on its own.
D. The international community as a socio-political construct
From a political perspective, it seems natural to focus on the English School of international
relations as a framework for the political concept of the international community. To a great extent
the English school allows bridging the socio-historicist and the socio-legal depictions, as it is infused
both by the Grotian thought regarding international law and recognizes the role of historical context
in the evolvement of states’ patterns of conduct. This agglomeration is the basis for one of the main
theoretical notions of the English School, that states are capable of sharing common interests, rules
and values in the framework of the “international society” (Bull, 1977).
The affinity between the theoretical concept of the international society and the concept of the
international community clearly invites an attempt to use the former as an effective leverage to
portray the international community as a political construct. Interestingly though, the concept of the
international community is not very common among English School scholars, and only few
accounts attempted to theorize the commonalities and linkages between the theoretical framework
of the international society and the concept of the international community as it is being used in the
political arena (Buzan & Gonzalez-Pelaez, 2002: 34). The conventional conceptualization of the
international society supposedly refers to an association of states that lacks (or at least does not
necessarily hold) a degree of unity, and therefore cannot be automatically equated with the concept
of the international community. Brown (1995), for example, argues that the international community
is not a feasible political construct as it stands in contradiction to the main ordering principle of the
international society – sovereignty.
Nonetheless, the English School conceptualization of the
international society does not necessarily render the international society and the international
community as mutually exclusive. The common premise that the international society is not
confined to particular substantial features does not preclude an identity or a “We-ness” feature, and
thus does not stand in contradiction to a possibility that members of the international society would
collectively unite around a certain issue area or norm in processes that formulate at least nascent
(international) community.
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The concept of the international society can therefore be seen, at least theoretically, as the political
framework that enables a certain international community, as a specific - a thicker and denser;
maybe even solidarist - type of international society (Buzan & Gonzalez-Pelaez, 2002:35). Buzan and
Gonzales (2002) recognize the possibility of multiple international communit(ies), at the sub-global
level, and depict international communities as smaller hubs within the international society in which
one can find “tighter net of states within international society that share a higher degree of
integration defined by a strong common identity,” In this respect, a political ontology of the
international community depicts it as tying single actors among themselves and via a greater (not
necessarily global) external environment in which they seeks to act in, serving thus as “a political
function for those who act in its name.” (Buzan & Gonzalez-Pelaez, 2002) (31). As such, the
community is more than the sum of its members’ actions, but rather a pseudo-entity of its own that
serves as the source that supplies guidance and boundaries of legitimate actions through common
institutions, and transcends particular members and enables referring and establishing a collective
“We” of states. It therefore allows adding a third component to the discussion of the linkage
between international community and international law – international political legitimacy that is for
itself constructed via common interactions between and among states (Clark, 2005; Coicaud, 2002;
Pauly & Grande, 2005).
The emphasis - added by the English School - on international legitimacy contributes a political
dimension by highlighting mutual recognition as a key component of a collective ‘We’ of states. The
international community thereby is a political construct that states are aware and minded to, whether
they operate in its context or not. Its distinguishing feature is the status of its members: nationstates, and thus sovereignty (even when its substances change along the years) is both the basic entry
criteria and the general reference point of operation in the international realm.. Ontologically, this
political perspective provides a structural framework to understand the international community as a
political construct but fail to shed light on its agential features, namely on the processes that
construct it and its actions (or more accurately actions on behalf of it) as a pseudo-political entity. In
this regard, the political ontology gives extra leverage to answer how the international community
can be recognized, but again the question ‘what is the international community’ remains open. We
should thus take one step further from the sociological notion that states are capable of constructing
an international community, a political construct that its mere existence can account for historical
changes and of socio-legal developments – and face the challenge of developing tools to understand
the contents and patterns of states’ political behavior that constitute the international community.
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E. The international community as a discursive construct
This challenge requires, I argue, to push the ontological questions aside and focus on the notion that
the international community is to a great extent a discursive construct, namely that it exists only
once a political agent refers to its existence and attributes to it certain values, rules and virtues.
Therefore, by exploring the way political agents refer and narrate – namely talk about – the
international community we can learn what it is, and how it is being perceived by the agents that
arguably act in its context. The main premise in this regard is that words shape concepts and
concepts construct shared knowledge and reality (Kritsiotis, 2002: 992), and therefore construct
concrete practices and institutions. The discursive epistemology of the ‘international community’ as
a construct that is constituted through agents’ dialogue is not necessarily unique, and we can
specifically identify similar notions with regards to international law for example (Goodman & Jinks,
2004; Koh, 1997), and of course the idea of diplomacy per se. the great interest however lay in my
opinion not merely in understating the discursive construct but even further that by exploring these
dialogues and how they portray the interplay between such discursive construct – e.g. international
community and international law - we can gain a unique point of view on the patterns of states’
transactions and patterns of relations and further understand how states themselves conceive,
experience and narrate inter-state relations and practices of inter-state relations.
As such, the international community is rendered as both notional and practical - something that is
created and sustained by the acknowledgment of various social actors but is also acquired with
agential capacities, and is when in need is called to action or assigned responsibility (Erskine 2008:
699-700), and therefore is more than setting the framework of legitimate and rightful conduct, but
also serves as a legitimizing device used by political leaders and practitioners in international
discourse in order to claim legitimacy or render other’s actions as illegitimate (Bliesemann de
Guevara & Kühn, 2011; Ellis, 2009). The concept thus can as a discursive ‘vessel’ that is opened to
manipulation and used based on self-interest, for one’s political needs. Consequently, the
international community is often associated with western norms of rightful conduct in world
politics, and thus in practice represents collective values, norms and practices not of all states but
rather of the relatively small but powerful club of western-developed states. As a result, it may be
seen as rhetorical means of euphemism aimed at enforcing their power and interests in a disguise of
an overarching international community, by strategically framing and embedding an ‘international
community doctrine’ (see Blair 1999) in the normative vocabulary of international discourse.
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Nonetheless, even if this is indeed the case and the concept of the international community is
merely a rhetorical device that is used as a “political clone” to either legitimize the actions of
hegemonic powers or even to substitute for the absence of an organic community with shared sense
of unity at the international level (Tsagourias, 2006:211-212), there might be great significance in
understanding its role as a discursive practice. At the end of the day, the mere fact that it is used in
day-to-day international politics, let alone as mean to legitimize (of delegitimize) political behavior
suggests that states not only adhere significance to the idea of community at the international level
but also calculate and frame their actions in light of it. States therefore – individually and collectively
– both portray themselves and judge their fellow states’ based on their rightful conduct in the
framework of the international community.
Given these premises, the concept of the “international community,” is understood as a discursive
expression of collective and communal – existing and desired – constituents of international
relations, hence as a conceptualization of a collective “we” composed only of states and constructed
only due to their unique statist features and virtues. Furthermore, I suggest that the discursive
references to this collective “we” of states such as “the international community,” essentially reflect
a discursive choice that renders a conception of an inter-state “club” of states, implying on the rules
and practices of membership and conduct that the members of the “club” share. The underlying
hypothesis thus suggests that mapping the discursive use of these discursive references and
especially by tracing and exploring the textual and institutional contexts, within which they are used
in inter-state political discourse, can further explain dynamics of inter-state practices in general and
thus in international law in particular.
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