The history of international political orders is written in terms of continuity and change in domestic and international political relations. As a step toward understanding such continuity and change, we explore some ideas drawn from an institutional perspective. An institutional perspective is characterized in terms of two grand issues that divide students of international relations and other organized systems. The first issue concerns the basic logic of action by which human behavior is shaped. On the one side are those who see action as driven by a logic of anticipated consequences and prior preferences. On the other side are those who see action as driven by a logic of appropriateness and a sense of identity. The second issue concerns the efficiency of history. On the one side are those who see history as efficient in the sense that it follows a course leading to a unique equilibrium dictated by exogenously determined interests, identities, and resources. On the other side are those who see history as inefficient in the sense that it follows a meandering, path-dependent course distinguished by multiple equilibria and endogenous transformations of interests, identities, and resources. We argue that the tendency of students of international political order to emphasize efficient histories and consequential bases for action leads them to underestimate the significance of rule- and identity-based action and inefficient histories. We illustrate such an institutional perspective by considering some features of the coevolution of politics and institutions, particularly the ways in which engagement in political activities affects the definition and elaboration of political identities and the development of competence in politics and the capabilities of political institutions.

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The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders

In recent years, a great deal has been written about a `constructivist' approach in International Relations, which argues that international reality is socially constructed by cognitive structures ...

Seizing the Middle Ground:: Constructivism in World Politics

Social constructivism in international relations has come into its own during the past decade, not only as a metatheoretical critique of currently dominant neo-utilitarian approaches (neo-realism and neoliberal institutionalism) but increasingly in the form of detailed empirical findings and theoretical insights. Constructivism addresses many of the same issues addressed by neo-utilitarianism, though from a different vantage and, therefore, with different effect. It also concerns itself with issues that neo-utilitarianism treats by assumption, discounts, ignores, or simply cannot apprehend within its characteristic ontology and/or epistemology. The constructivist project has sought to open up the relatively narrow theoretical confines of conventional approaches—by pushing them back to problematize the interests and identities of actors; deeper to incorporate the intersubjective bases of social action and social order; and into the dimensions of space and time to establish international structure as contingent practice, constraining social action but also being (re)created and, therefore, potentially transformed by it.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2601360.pdf

What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge

Socialization theory is a neglected source of explanations for cooperation in international relations. Neorealism treats socialization (or selection, more properly) as a process by which autistic non-balancers are weeded out of the anarchical international system. Contractual institutionalists ignore or downplay the possibilities of socialization in international institutions in part because of the difficulties in observing changes in interests and preferences. For constructivists socialization is a central concept. But to date it has been undertheorized, or more precisely, the microprocesses of socialization have been generally left unexamined. This article focuses on two basic microprocesses in socialization theory—persuasion and social influence—and develops propositions about the social conditions under which one might expect to observe cooperation in institutions. Socialization theories pose questions for both the structural-functional foundations of contractual institutionalist hypotheses about institutional design and cooperation, and notions of optimal group size for collective action.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3096058.pdf

Treating International Institutions as Social Environments

International Security Studies (ISS) has changed and diversified in many ways since 1945. This book provides the first intellectual history of the development of the subject in that period. It explains how ISS evolved from an initial concern with the strategic consequences of superpower rivalry and nuclear weapons, to its current diversity in which environmental, economic, human and other securities sit alongside military security, and in which approaches ranging from traditional Realist analysis to Feminism and Post-colonialism are in play. It sets out the driving forces that shaped debates in ISS, shows what makes ISS a single conversation across its diversity, and gives an authoritative account of debates on all the main topics within ISS. This is an unparalleled survey of the literature and institutions of ISS that will be an invaluable guide for all students and scholars of ISS, whether traditionalist, ‘new agenda’ or critical. • The first book to tell the post-1945 story of International Security Studies and offer an integrated historical sociology of the whole field • Opens the door to a long-overdue conversation about what ISS is and where it should be going • Provides a detailed institutional account of ISS in terms of its journals, departments, think tanks and funding sources

/pdf/the-evolution-of-international-security-studies-2gdx67e39e.pdf

The Evolution of International Security Studies

This text employs a cultural approach to take issue with the conventional wisdom that military organizations inherently prefer offensive doctrines It argues instead that a military's culture affects its choices between offensive and defensive military doctrines Drawing on organizational theory, it demonstrates that military organizations differ in their worldview and the proper conduct of their mission It is this organizational culture that shapes how the military responds to such constraints as terms of conscription set by civilian policy-makers In detailed case studies, the author examines doctrinal developments in France and Britain during the interwar period She tests her argument against two of the most powerful alternative explanations and illustrates that neither the functional needs of military organizations nor the structural demands of the international system can explain doctrinal choice She also reveals as a myth the argument that the lessons of World War One explain the defensive doctrines on World War Two

Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the Wars

~ Offensive military doctrines threaten international stability.’ World War I vividly illustrates how a crisis can spark a major war that might have been avoided if the major players had had defensive rather than offensive doctrines. Similarly, throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Army’s offensive doctrine in Europe fueled the arms race and heightened threat perception. The choice between offensive and defensive military doctrines is at least as important now as during the Cold War. Although restructuring military doctrines along defensive orientations will not erase ethnic hostilities or suspend territorial appetites, it could remove one of the structural impediments to cooperation in the post-Cold War world. Yet an adequate explanation for why states choose offensive or defensive military doctrines remains elusive. Many scholars credit civilian policymakers with formulating doctrine wellsuited to the state’s strategic environment, and blame the armed services’ parochial interests for the sometimes disastrous choice of offensive doctrines.2 However, using illustrations from doctrinal developments in the French army during the 1920s and 1930s, this article challenges this portrait of the role of civilians and military in choices between offensive and defensive military doctrines. Even during times of increased international threat, I argue, the international system is indeterminate of choices between offensive and defensive military doctrines; civilians intervene infrequently in doctrinal develop-

Culture and Military Doctrine: France between the Wars

Based on a new Army War College study of unit cohesion in the Iraq War, Wong et al. argue that successful unit performance is determined by social cohesion (the strength of interpersonal bonds amon...

Does Social Cohesion Determine Motivation in Combat?: An Old Question with an Old Answer

i D u r i n g the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton pledged to lift the ban on homosexuals in the U.S. armed services. Once in office, he met with enormous resistance from the U.S. military and its congressional allies, and by the summer of 1993, the original policy proposal was dead. Instead, Congress enacted the ”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue” policy: gays and lesbians can now serve in the military, but they must keep their sexual orientation private. Opponents of the open integration of gays and lesbians have discarded many of the standard justifications for excluding homosexuals from military service. For example, the Pentagon and its allies no longer argue that gays and lesbians are security risks because of the threat of blackmail. As early as 1957, a study commissioned by the U.S. Navy was unable to uncover any evidence that homosexuals were security risks.’ Thirty years later, another Department of Defense (DoD)-commissioned report repeated tlus finding: “Since [1957] no new data have been presented that would refute [the] conclusion that homosexuals are not greater security risks than heterosexuals.”2 Nor do opponents of allowing homosexu-

Homosexuals in the U.S. Military: Open Integration and Combat Effectiveness

1. Introduction: war and democracy in comparative perspective Elizabeth Kier and Ronald Krebs Part I. War and Democratic Transitions: New and Durable Democracies?: 2. Does war influence democratization? Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder 3. Dodging a bullet: democracy's gains in modern war Paul Starr 4. Armed conflict and the durability of electoral democracy Nancy Bermeo Part II. War and Democratic Publics: Reshaping Political Participation?: 5. The effects of war on civil society: cross-national evidence from World War II Rieko Kage 6. Veterans, human rights, and the tranformation of European democracy Jay Winter 7. War and reform: gaining labor's compliance on the homefront Elizabeth Kier 8. Spinning Mars: democracy in Britain and the United States and the economic lessons of war Mark Wilson Part III. War and Democratic States: Government by the People or over the People?: 9. International conflict and the constitutional balance: executive authority after war Ronald R. Krebs 10. Claims and capacity: war, national policing institutions, and democracy Daniel Kryder 11. War, recruitment systems, and democracy Deborah Avant Concluding reflections: 12. What wars do Miguel Angel Centeno.

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Elizabeth Kier

Papers

Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the Wars

Culture and Military Doctrine: France between the Wars

Does Social Cohesion Determine Motivation in Combat?: An Old Question with an Old Answer

Homosexuals in the U.S. Military: Open Integration and Combat Effectiveness

In war's wake : international conflict and the fate of liberal democracy