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    The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations
    The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations
    The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations
    Ebook363 pages42 hours

    The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations

    By Christian Reus-Smit

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    This book seeks to explain why different systems of sovereign states have built different types of fundamental institutions to govern interstate relations. Why, for example, did the ancient Greeks operate a successful system of third-party arbitration, while international society today rests on a combination of international law and multilateral diplomacy? Why did the city-states of Renaissance Italy develop a system of oratorical diplomacy, while the states of absolutist Europe relied on naturalist international law and "old diplomacy"? Conventional explanations of basic institutional practices have difficulty accounting for such variation. Christian Reus-Smit addresses this problem by presenting an alternative, "constructivist" theory of international institutional development, one that emphasizes the relationship between the social identity of the state and the nature and origin of basic institutional practices.


    Reus-Smit argues that international societies are shaped by deep constitutional structures that are based on prevailing beliefs about the moral purpose of the state, the organizing principle of sovereignty, and the norm of procedural justice. These structures inform the imaginations of institutional architects as they develop and adjust institutional arrangements between states. As he shows with detailed reference to ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, absolutist Europe, and the modern world, different cultural and historical contexts lead to profoundly different constitutional structures and institutional practices. The first major study of its kind, this book is a significant addition to our theoretical and empirical understanding of international relations, past and present.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateNov 2, 2009
    ISBN9781400823253
    The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations

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      The Moral Purpose of the State - Christian Reus-Smit

      Cover: The Moral Purpose Of The State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations by Christian Reus-Smit

      The Moral Purpose Of The State

      Table of Contents

      Cover

      Half Title

      Series Page

      Title

      Copyright

      Dedication

      Contents

      List of Table and Figures

      Preface

      Introduction

      Chapter One. The Enigma of Fundamental Institutions

      Fundamental Institutions Defined

      Existing Accounts of Fundamental Institutions

      Summary

      Chapter Two. The Constitutional Structure of International Society

      Communicative Action and Institutional Construction

      Sovereignty, State Identity, and Political Action

      Constitutional Structures

      Fundamental Institutional Production and Reproduction

      The Purposive Foundations of International Society

      Summary

      Chapter Three. Ancient Greece

      Ancient Greece as a State of War

      Extraterritorial Institutions in Ancient Greece

      The Constitutional Structure of Ancient Greece

      The Practice of Interstate Arbitration

      Hegemonic Power, Rational Choice, Territorial Rights?

      Rereading Thucydides

      Conclusion

      Chapter Four. Renaissance Italy

      The Italian City-States

      Images of Renaissance Diplomacy

      The Constitutional Structure of Renaissance Italy

      The Practice of Oratorical Diplomacy

      Conclusion

      Chapter Five. Absolutist Europe

      Westphalia and the Genesis of Modern Institutions?

      Absolutism, Political Authority, and State Identity

      The Constitutional Structure of the Absolutist Society of States

      The Fundamental Institutions of Absolutist International Society

      Generative Grammar, Institutional Practices, and Territoriality

      Conclusion

      Chapter Six. Modern International Society

      From Holism to Individualism

      The Constitutional Structure of Modern International Society

      The Fundamental Institutions of Modern International Society

      Conclusion

      Chapter Seven. Conclusion

      The Nature of Sovereignty

      The Ontology of Institutional Rationality

      The Dimensions of International Systems Change

      The Richness of Holistic Constructivism

      The Contribution to Critical International Theory

      A Final Word on Aristotle

      Bibliography

      Index

      Landmarks

      Cover

      Half Title

      Series Page

      Title

      Copyright

      Dedication

      Contents

      List of Tables

      List of Illustrations

      Preface

      Start of Content

      Bibliography

      Index

      List of Tables

      Table 1 Constitutional Structures and the Fundamental Institutions of International Societies

      List of Illustrations

      Figure 1. The Constitutive Hierarchy of Modern International Institutions

      Figure 2. The Constitutional Structure of International Society

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      Princeton Studies in

      International History and Politics

      Series Editors

      Jack L. Snyder and

      Richard H. Ullman

      Recent Titles

      The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations by Christian Reus-Smit

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      Regional Orders at Century’s Dawn: Global and Domestic Influences on Grand Strategy by Etel Soligen

      From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role by Fareed Zakaria

      Changing Course: Ideas, Politics, and the Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan by Sarah E. Mendelson

      Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea by Leon V. Sigal

      Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the Wars by Elizabeth Kier

      Roosevelt and the Munich Crisis: A Study of Political Decision-Making by Barbara Rearden Farnham

      Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947-1958 by Thomas J. Christensen

      Satellites and Commisars: Strategy and Conflict in the Politics of the Soviet-Bloc Trade by Randall W. Stone

      Does Conquest Pay? The Exploitation of Occupied Industrial Societies by Peter Liberman

      Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History by Alastair Iain Johnston

      The Moral Purpose Of The State

      Culture, Social Identity, and

      Institutional Rationality in

      International Relations

      Christian Reus-Smit

      Princeton University Press Princeton, New Jersey

      Copyright © 1999 by Princeton University Press

      Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,

      Princeton, New Jersey 08540

      In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,

      Chichester, West Sussex All Rights Reserved.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Reus-Smit, Christian, 1961-

      The moral purpose of the state: culture, social identity, and institutional

      rationality in international relations / Christian Reus-Smit

      p. cm. — (Princeton studies in international history and politics)

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 0-691-02735-8 (cl : alk. paper)

      1. International relations—Moral and ethical aspects.

      2. International relations and culture. I. Title. II. Series.

      JZ1306.R48 1999

      327.1'01—dc21 98-33162 CIP

      This book has been composed in Sabon

      The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements

      of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper)

      http://pup.princeton.edu

      1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

      Printed in the United States of America

      This book is dedicated to my teachers

      Joseph Camilleri

      Robin Jeffrey

      Peter Katzenstein

      Henry Shue

      Contents

      List of Table and Figures

      Preface

      Introduction

      Chapter One

      The Enigma of Fundamental Institutions

      Fundamental Institutions Defined

      Existing Accounts of Fundamental Institutions

      Summary

      Chapter Two

      The Constitutional Structure of International Society

      Communicative Action and Institutional Construction

      Sovereignty, State Identity, and Political Action

      Constitutional Structures

      Fundamental Institutional Production and Reproduction

      The Purposive Foundations of International Society

      Summary

      Chapter Three

      Ancient Greece

      Ancient Greece as a State of War

      Extraterritorial Institutions in Ancient Greece

      The Constitutional Structure of Ancient Greece

      The Practice of Interstate Arbitration

      Hegemonic Power, Rational Choice, Territorial Rights?

      Rereading Thucydides

      Conclusion

      Chapter Four

      Renaissance Italy

      The Italian City-States

      Images of Renaissance Diplomacy

      The Constitutional Structure of Renaissance Italy

      The Practice of Oratorical Diplomacy

      Conclusion

      Chapter Five

      Absolutist Europe

      Westphalia and the Genesis of Modern Institutions?

      Absolutism, Political Authority, and State Identity

      The Constitutional Structure of the Absolutist Society of States

      The Fundamental Institutions of Absolutist International Society

      Generative Grammar, Institutional Practices, and Territoriality

      Conclusion

      Chapter Six

      Modern International Society

      From Holism to Individualism

      The Constitutional Structure of Modern International Society

      The Fundamental Institutions of Modern International Society

      Conclusion

      Chapter Seven

      Conclusion

      The Nature of Sovereignty

      The Ontology of Institutional Rationality

      The Dimensions of International Systems Change

      The Richness of Holistic Constructivism

      The Contribution to Critical International Theory

      A Final Word on Aristotle

      Bibliography

      Index

      Table and Figures

      Table

      Table 1. Constitutional Structures and the Fundamental Institutions of International Societies

      Figures

      Figure 1. The Constitutive Hierarchy of Modern International Institutions

      Figure 2. The Constitutional Structure of International Society

      Preface

      Reading a good book inspires awe, even deference. One gets a sense of intellectual mastery, a sense that the work was forged in a single act of creation, a sense that the ideas flowed with ease. Writing a book strips away this aura. One learns that intellectual frustration lies behind each chapter, that books grow out of years of trial and error, that most ideas dry up instead of flow. Behind the story on the page lies another story, and it is invariably one of labored intellectual growth, not divine inspiration.

      This book has had a long gestation. It was sparked by an interest in the development of critical international theory, a theory that treats the prevailing international order as historically contingent, a theory that explores the origins of the present system of sovereign states and asks how it might change in the future. This was paralleled by an interest in Hedley Bull’s idea that sovereign states can not only form international systems but also international societies. It made sense to me that modern states share certain elementary interests and values and have constructed rules and institutions to express and further those goals.

      Over time these two interests converged around a desire to understand the origins, development, and transformation of the modern society of states. I had become increasingly frustrated with Bull’s account of modern international society. His description of the basic institutional framework that facilitates coexistence between states is instructive, but he fails to explain why this particular framework emerged. Why isn’t modern international society organized differently? Other members of the English School—particularly Martin Wight, Adda Bozeman, and Adam Watson—provide clues, but nothing in the way of systematic explanation.

      When first conceived, this was to be a study of modern international society alone. Two things changed that. The first was Peter Katzenstein’s exhortation to study it comparatively, a recommendation that both excited and terrified me. Studying small states in world markets is one thing; studying big systems in world history is another. The second was a rereading of Bozeman’s classic work, Politics and Culture in International History. Her tour de force taught me that different systems of states have developed different institutional practices—ancient Greek, Renaissance Italian, absolutist European, and modern sovereign states have chosen very different institutional solutions to solve their cooperation problems and achieve coexistence. This not only gave me a reason to study it comparatively, it gave me a mystery to unravel. Why have four systems of sovereign states—all subject to the insecurities and uncertainties of anarchy—evolved markedly different fundamental institutions?

      It has taken five years of research and writing to complete this book. Fortunately, I have not traveled this road alone. The journey has taught me much, and I am especially grateful for the support and intellectual guidance provided by Peter Katzenstein and Henry Shue. My project was to study the ethical foundations of international institutions, or put differently, the institutionalization of ethics. Nowhere could I have found a better pair to guide me. Both have the rare ability to nurture new ideas while offering challenging intellectual supervision, and I have been greatly influenced by the examples and standards they set. Amy Gurowitz and Richard Price have also been there for the journey, providing friendship and intellectual comradery. They have taught me the value of challenging, hard-fought debate, the type of debate where mutual respect and rapport give you the confidence to chance even the boldest and most tenuous of ideas.

      I have also benefited greatly from insightful comments provided by Robyn Eckersley, James Goldgeier, Richard Falk, Paul James, Michael Janover, Audie Klotz, Marc Lynch, Albert Paolini, Margaret Nash, Judith Reppy, Gillian Robinson, Katherine Smits, Pasquale Stella, David Strang, Natalie Tomas, and Alexander Wendt, each of whom read various draft chapters and in some cases versions of the entire manuscript. Helpful comments were provided by other SSRC-MacArthur Fellows at conferences in Malaysia and Argentina, and I thank members of the Melbourne International Relations Theory Group and seminar participants at the Australian National University, Cornell University, Harvard University, the University of Minnesota, Monash University, and Yale University.

      The research and writing of this book would have been more difficult and more protracted had it not been for the generous financial support provided by graduate fellowships from the Peace Studies Program at Cornell University and the Mellon Foundation, and from an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellowship on Peace and Security in a Changing World. I subsequently received generous assistance from an Australian Research Council Small Grant and from the Faculty of Arts at Monash University. While writing the first draft of the manuscript I held visiting positions in the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and in the Ashworth Center for Social Theory at the University of Melbourne. I thank both institutions for their support and for the use of their facilities, especially their bountiful libraries. The book was revised after I joined the Department of Politics at Monash University, and I am grateful to David Golds-worthy and Ray Nichols who, as heads of the department, made me welcome and provided constant support and encouragement.

      An earlier version of the book’s central argument, illustrated by condensed versions of the ancient Greek and modern cases, was published as The Constitutional Structure of International Society and the Nature of Fundamental Institutions in International Organization 51 (autumn 1997).

      Special thanks go to my research assistant, Margaret Nash. To her fell the boring tasks of library searching, photocopying, and compiling the bibliography, tasks she fulfilled with great skill and good humor. Without her assistance many hours of revising would still lie ahead of me. I am also indebted to my editor at Princeton University Press, Ann Himmelberger Wald. At a time when horror stories abound about the traumas of publishing, she has been a patient source of insight, guidance, and support.

      Finally, I thank my partner, Heather Rae, who helped me work through and tease out my ideas, who painstakingly read the entire manuscript, and who shares with me the joys of life in our House in the Woods.

      Christian Reus-Smit

      Sherbrooke Forest

      October 1997

      The Moral Purpose Of The State

      Introduction

      When the representatives of states signed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, they enacted two basic institutional practices. In signing the accord, they created contractual international law, adding a further raft of rules to the growing corpus of codified legal doctrine that regulates relations between states. And by accepting generalized, reciprocally binding constraints on their trading policies and practices, they engaged in multilateral diplomacy. By the middle of the twentieth century states had been enacting these paired institutional practices for the best part of a century, and they have since repeated them many times over, in areas ranging from nuclear nonproliferation and air traffic control to human rights and environmental protection. For almost 150 years the fundamental institutions of contractual international law and multilateralism have provided the basic institutional framework for interstate cooperation and have become the favored institutional solutions to the myriad of coordination and collaboration problems facing states in an increasingly complex world. Without these basic institutional practices the plethora of international regimes that structure international relations in diverse issue-areas would simply not exist, and modern international society would function very differently.

      International relations scholars of diverse intellectual orientations have long acknowledged the importance of fundamental institutions. Hans Morgenthau attributes such institutions to the permanent interests of states to put their normal relations upon a stable basis by providing for predictable and enforceable conduct with respect to these relations.¹ Hedley Bull claims that fundamental institutions exist to facilitate ordered relations between states, allowing the pursuit of elementary goals of social life.² Robert Keohane likens basic institutional practices to the rules of chess or baseball, arguing that a change in these practices would alter the very nature of international relations.³ And Oran Young observes that international actors face a rather limited menu of available practices among which to choose. A ‘new’ state, for example, has little choice but to join the basic institutional arrangements of the states system.⁴

      If we survey the institutional histories of modern international society and its major historical analogues, two observations can be made about fundamental institutions. To begin with, fundamental institutions are generic structural elements of international societies.⁵ That is, they provide the basic framework for cooperative interaction between states, and institutional practices transcend shifts in the balance of power and the configuration of interests, even if these practices’ density and efficacy vary. For instance, the modern institutions of contractual international law and multilateralism intensified after 1945, but postwar developments built on institutional principles first endorsed by states during the nineteenth century, and which first structured interstate cooperation long before the advent of American hegemony. Second, fundamental institutions vary from one society of sovereign states to another. The governance of modern international society rests on the institutions of contractual international law and multilateralism, but no such institutions evolved in other historical societies of states. Instead, the ancient Greek city-states developed a system of third-party arbitration, the renaissance Italian city-states practiced oratorical diplomacy, and the states of absolutist Europe created institutions of dynastic diplomacy and naturalist international law.

      Since the early 1980s, the study of international institutions has experienced a renaissance, with distinctive neorealist, neoliberal, and constructivist perspectives emerging. Yet as chapter 1 explains, none of these perspectives adequately accounts for either the generic nature of fundamental institutions or institutional variations between societies of sovereign states. According to neorealists, institutions reflect the prevailing distribution of power and the interests of dominant states. But as we shall see, these are ambiguous predictors of basic institutional forms. Fundamental institutions tend to transcend shifts in the balance of power, and under the same structural conditions, states in different historical contexts have engaged in different institutional practices.⁶ Neoliberals claim that states create institutions to reduce the contractual uncertainty that inhibits cooperation under anarchy and they claim that the nature and scope of institutional cooperation reflect the strategic incentives and constraints posed by different cooperation problems.⁷ Because states can choose from a wide range of equally efficient institutional solutions, however, neoliberals are forced to introduce structural conditions, such as hegemony and bipolarity, to explain the institutional practices of particular historical periods.⁸ Like neorealism, this approach fails to explain institutional forms that endure despite shifts in the balance of power and is contradicted by the emergence of different fundamental institutions under similar structural conditions. Constructivists argue that the foundational principle of sovereignty defines the social identity of the state, which in turn shapes basic institutional practices. Sovereign states are said to face certain practical imperatives, of which the stabilization of territorial property rights is paramount. The institution of multilateralism, they argue, evolved to serve this purpose.⁹ While this line of reasoning is suggestive, it fails to explain institutional differences between societies of sovereign states. The states of ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, and absolutist Europe also faced the problem of stabilizing territorial property rights, yet they each constructed different fundamental institutions to serve this task.

      This general failure to explain the nature of fundamental institutions represents a significant lacuna in our understanding of international relations. All but the most diehard neorealists recognize the importance of basic institutional practices, yet we presently lack a satisfactory explanation for why different societies of sovereign states create different fundamental institutions. Explanations that stress material structural conditions, the strategic imperatives of particular cooperation problems, and the stabilization of territorial property rights all fail to account for such variation. The social textures of different international societies—their elementary forms of social interaction—thus remain enigmatic, undermining our understanding of institutional rationality and obscuring the parameters of institutional innovation and adaptation in particular social and historical contexts.

      This book sets out to explain the form that fundamental institutions take and why they vary from one society of states to another. It explores the factors that shape institutional design and action—the reasons why institutional architects consider some practices mandatory while others are rejected or never enter their thoughts. My approach is influenced by two distinct, yet complementary, perspectives on the politics and sociology of international societies. I draw on the insights of constructivist international theory, linking basic institutional practices to intersubjective beliefs about legitimate statehood and rightful state action, though in a new and novel fashion. And I explicate the relationship between state identity and fundamental institutions through a macrohistorical comparison of different societies of states, building on the work of leading members of the English School, particularly Martin Wight and Adda Bozeman.¹⁰ My aim is to develop a historically informed constructivist theory of fundamental institutional construction.

      Like other constructivists, I explain fundamental institutions with reference to the deep constitutive metavalues that comprise the normative foundations of international society. In chapter 2, however, I argue that constructivists have so far failed to recognize the full complexity of those foundations, attaching too much explanatory weight to the organizing principle of sovereignty. If we cast our eyes beyond the standard recitations of our textbooks, and the canonical assumptions of our theories, to reflect on the actual practices of states in different historical contexts, we find that sovereignty has never been an independent, self-referential value. It has always been encased within larger complexes of metavalues, encoded within broader constitutive frameworks. To allow systematic comparisons across historical societies of states, I conceptualize these ideological complexes as constitutional structures. I argue that these structures can be disassembled into three normative components: a hegemonic belief about the moral purpose of the state, an organizing principle of sovereignty, and a systemic norm of procedural justice. Hegemonic beliefs about the moral purpose of the state represent the core of this normative complex, providing the justificatory foundations for the organizing principle of sovereignty and informing the norm of procedural justice. Together they form a coherent ensemble of metavalues, an ensemble that defines the terms of legitimate statehood and the broad parameters of rightful state action. Most importantly for our purposes, the prevailing norm of procedural justice shapes institutional design and action, defining institutional rationality in a distinctive way, leading states to adopt certain institutional practices and not others. Moulded by different cultural and historical circumstances, societies of sovereign states develop different constitutional structures, and it is this variation that explains their distinctive institutional practices.

      Chapters 3 to 6 illustrate this argument through a comparative analysis of institutional development in four societies of sovereign states: the ancient Greek, the Renaissance Italian, the absolutist European, and the modern. All four of these systems exhibit a basic similarity—they have all been organized according to the principle of sovereignty. That is, their constituent units have claimed supreme authority within certain territorial limits, and these claims have been recognized as legitimate by their respective communities of states.¹¹ Although this organizing principle has received formal legal expression only in the modern era, the sovereignty of the state has been institutionally grounded in each of the four cases. Beyond simply declaring their independence, states have exercised socially sanctioned rights to sovereignty. Because of the anarchical structures of these interstate systems—their lack of central authorities to impose order—realists have woven them into a single narrative of historical continuity, a narrative designed to prove the ubiquity of the struggle for power and the eternal rhythms of international relations. As argued above, though, significant differences distinguish these societies of states, differences illustrated in table 1. In each case, sovereignty has been justified with reference to a unique conception of the moral purpose of the state, giving it a distinctive cultural and historical meaning. What is more, these conceptions of the moral purpose of the state have generated distinctive norms of procedural justice, which have in turn produced particular sets of fundamental institutions.

      For the ancient Greeks, chapter 3 explains, city-states existed for the primary purpose of cultivating a particular form of communal life—which Aristotle calls bios politikos, the political life. The polis was the site in which citizens, freed from material labors, could participate—through action and speech, not force and violence—in the decisions affecting their common life. This moral purpose informed a discursive norm of procedural justice, whereby cooperation problems between individuals were resolved through a process of public political discourse, centered on the adjudication of particular disputes before large public assemblies and jury courts. In this procedure, codified law played little role in the decisions of adjudicating bodies, nor was their role to inscribe generalized rules of conduct. Assemblies and courts exercised an Aristotelian sense of justice, involving the highly subjective evaluation of the moral standing of the disputants, the circumstances of the case at hand, considerations of equity, and the needs of the polis. This discursive norm of procedural justice also informed the ancient Greek practice of interstate arbitration. Disputes between states—spanning the entire spectrum of cooperation problems—were adjudicated in public forums, before arbitrators charged with exercising a sense of justice and equity as well as an awareness of the particularity of each case. This system involved neither the formal codification of general, reciprocally binding laws, nor the

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