Recognising Normative State Action in International Life

What? History as Prologue

What is power – that is, what constitutes the workings of power – tends to be the question that provides the point of departure for any analysis of the concept. In response to this query, history has long been established not only as a valid, but also as a much-needed reference point for the study of international politics. For instance, generations of IR scholars have poured over the work of Thucydides to decipher patterns that can increase the contemporary relevance of their inquiries into the mechanics of power. In this setting, in its Western variants (both American and European) at least, IR has internalised the ‘myth of 1648’ as the cornerstone of its disciplinary inquiry (Teschke, 2003). It appears that in what are increasingly labelled ‘the nascent Chinese schools of IR’ the notion of ‘Tianxia’ (‘all under heaven’) acquires a similar foundational status to that of Westphalia by providing both an ordering principle (i.e. the descriptive features of power) and a ‘blueprint for reform that could save the world from its current state of turmoil’ (i.e. the prescriptive features of power) (Jiang, 2013, p. 18). In other words, the bulk of the conversation seems to focus the relevance of historical comparisons to contemporary world politics.

It is in this setting that China’s expanding outreach and diversifying roles have provided a novel context for the ongoing reconsiderations of the theory and practice of world politics. Thus, while in the wake of the Cold War commentators were pondering how far Western power can (and would) spread in a geopolitical environment characterised by ‘the end of history’, today the debate seems to be how far Chinese ideas will reach. This should not be surprising. If democracy has indeed become ‘the fundamental standard of political legitimacy in the [post-Cold War] era’ (Held 2004), it is to be expected that the concurrent ‘democratisation’ of IR would enunciate a cacophony of alternative (and non-Western) voices promoting distinct visions of the ‘appropriate’ forms of legitimation and authority in global life. Thus, paraphrasing Hedley Bull’s and Adam Watson’s well-known adage, the ‘rise of Asia’ becomes shorthand for the expansion of international societies.

It appears that the focus on the notion and practices of Tianxia in Chinese IR means a reconsideration of the frameworks for understanding and explaining international interactions (Ford, 2010; Hsiung, 2012). Thus, many see Tianxia as a new Pax Sinica – that is, an ambitious strategy for regional/global domination through the establishment of a Sinocentric (regional/world) order. Others dismiss such reading of Tianxia merely as a Western strategy of narrativising historical experience, which conjures up images of quasi-imperialistic visions of global order. For the prominent Chinese scholar Jiang Qing, either side of this polarised conversation misses the key feature of Tianxia: its emphasis on the ‘Confucian Way of the Humane Authority’ (Jiang, 2013, p. 22). In other words, the critical point about Tianxia is the radical potential for putting ‘morality into politics’ (Jiang, 2013, p. 38). The emphasis on morality uncovers the relational characteristics of power underpinning Jiang’s account of the Confucian constitution of international order. In particular, the association of power with authority rather than the production of intended effects stresses that all social (and, especially, political) relations are interpersonal; they rest on interactions between individuals. Hence, the recognition of power relations reflects contextual interpretations of their ‘legitimacy that comes from history and culture’ (Jiang, 2013, p. 8).

This distinct point of departure brings into focus the norms and values of China’s foreign policy. In fact, as Jiang’s work demonstrates, Chinese schools of IR offer probably the most conspicuous indication of what has been termed the ‘return to tradition(huixiang chuantong)’ in the country’s policy making (Davis, 2012, p. 30). The proposition is that China’s international outreach is informed by the long shadow of its philosophical oeuvre – especially Confucianism, but also Daoism and the works of numerous pre-Qin thinkers. It is not coincidental therefore that the mushrooming of Confucius Institutes around the world has become one of the most conspicuous indications of China’s global outreach.

Owing to the ideational weight of China’s cultural baggage, Jiang draws attention to the cognitive grammars provided by China’s strategic culture. He is nevertheless quite careful about the impact of such preoccupations. After all, as Jiang’s analysis of the concept of ‘Tianxia’ reminds us, ‘changes in historical circumstances may necessitate changes in the form of rule’ (Jiang, 2013, p. 32). The intent of Jiang’s intellectual endeavour is to frame the key characteristics of what Western scholarship increasingly refers to as the Eastphalian ‘example’, ‘model’ or ‘new paradigm’ of power implicit in China’s rise. In this setting, the prioritisation of the notion of ‘Tianxia’ comes to suggest China’s ‘singularly historical practice of universal principles that is open to emulation not as a universal pattern, but for its procedures in articulating the universal to concrete historical circumstances’ (Dirlik, 2012, p. 291). In particular, as Jiang demonstrates, such a focus draws attention to the significance of the Confucian tradition in the ongoing re-articulation of China’s perceptions of international order, self-identity and global role(s).

While detractors might question the intent driving Jiang’s endeavour (in particular, what might be perceived as his thinly disguised support for soft versions of authoritarianism), fans would welcome his ability to demonstrate that the canon of Confucianism does not constrain political imagination, but offers an enabling platform for entrepreneurial innovation. In this respect, what emerges is a depiction of China’s outlook that presents an intriguing intersection of the discursive memory of the past with the dynamic contexts of the present and the anticipated tasks of the future. The reconsideration implicit in the current re-engagement with the legacy and lessons of Confucianism might indeed appear to be ‘high-flying political ideals, very far from China’s current situation’ (Jiang, 2013, p. 67); yet, this should not be interpreted as a dismissal of the endeavour to practise politics differently. In particular, it suggests the creative potential implicit in the relational nature of power, where the interpersonal context of interactions transforms the particular relationship of power into an ongoing inquiry on whether the extant ‘political setup provides the best feasible alternative’ (Jiang, 2013, p. 141). Thus, the re-imagination implicit in the current excavation and interpretation of China’s ancient thought may indeed become the historical cornerstone not only of a nascent theory and practice of Chinese IR, but potentially of a new politics of critique, thinking and knowledge capable of imagining global life other than what it currently is (Kavalski, 2007; 2015). Such constitutive possibility is rarely (if ever) articulated in the mainstream obsession with whether the alleged power shift would pacify China or make it more belligerent.

When? International Behaviour as if Norms Mattered

When does someone have power – in other words, when do intentions start to influence the patterns of international affairs? In the post-Cold War period, such inquiries have tended to focus on the normative aspect of world affairs. The issue of the normativity of international actors has long been a bone of contention in the study of IR. In fact, as Marjo Koivisto’s book reveals, the disciplinary research has generally tended to bifurcate its investigations into one of two dominant strands. On the one hand, the analytical subscription to a rational calculus of international action leaves little, if any, room for the influence of unquantifiable variables such as norms, values and beliefs. On the other hand, the prioritisation of normative intangibles seems to draw attention to the role played by identities, emotions, communitarian practices and cosmopolitan inclinations. Such understanding is rooted in a binary that reduces international action either to the moral purposes of individual governments or to the appropriate conduct outlined in the conventions, principles and statutes of international law. As a result, states – which, as Koivisto emphasises, are still the key players on the world stage – seem to be treated either as the ruthless, cold-blooded and self-interested actors envisioned by Machiavelli or as the peaceful, cooperative and ethical political entities intended by Kant.

Yet such a bifurcation is very much contrived. As Koivisto points out, just because the international behaviour of some actors can be framed as normative does not mean that it is not strategic. After all, it is often overlooked that Ian Manners’ oft-quoted definition of ‘normative powers’ frames them as actors able to ‘shape what can be “normal” in international life’. As he insists (and few would disagree) ‘the ability to define what passes for “normal” in world politics is, ultimately, the greatest power of all’ (Manners, 2002, p. 253). Such conceptualisation negates both the proposition that normative behaviour cannot be strategic and the claim that normative action is illustrative of irrational foreign policy behaviour. Instead, the emphasis on normative state power draws attention to the idiosyncratic strategic cultures of states. Such strategic cultures underpin both the cognitive frameworks of their international interactions and the way(s) in which they practise foreign policymaking. Thus, the expression of what is ‘normal’ simultaneously invokes certain (subjective) national agendas and reflects the complex effects of the social institutions of the state.

Koivisto’s analysis helps to overcome the false binaries implicit in most analyses of power transition, which tend to prioritise either normative or rational explanations. What distinguishes her study is the focus on the institutional embeddedness of purposeful state behaviour. By exploring a diverse set of diplomatic practices, Koivisto’s detailed analysis allows her to interpret the state as ‘an emergent institutional ensemble, which is reproduced and transformed by strategic/normative political projects of state agents’ (Koivisto, 2012, p. 15; emphasis in original). In this respect, normative state power is neither separate nor different from the strategic calculus of the state – especially, state elites. This is a point which oftentimes remains occluded from the conversation on normative state power. Rather than opposites, therefore, normative and rational action are two avatars of the attempt to assert the influence of a state on the international domain. Thus, what can be construed as the ‘normative’, on the one hand, and the ‘rational’, on the other, are not only overlapping aspects, but to all intents and purposes are instances of the same strategic behaviour. However, as Koivisto suggests, depending on the context, the relevant state-makers frame any particular instance of a state’s international interactions either in a predominantly normative or in a rational way. Yet the prominence of the normative, for instance, does not occur at the expense of the rational or vice versa. In other words, strategic political action is not bifurcated between the two.

In this respect, the coexistence of the normative and rational aspects of state power reflect the distinct codes, habits and roles that states enact in different spatial, temporal and issue-specific contexts (Kavalski, 2013). Koivisto’s analysis is steeped in the ontology of philosophical realism – a move that allows her to overcome the excessive analytical binaries between normativity and power that more often than not define the current discourses and practices of IR. At the same time, by bringing the ontology of philosophical realism into the power transition debate, Koivisto’s study accounts for the dynamic transformations in the organisational forms of state power in global life. In particular, Koivisto’s framing of normative state power allows her to explore the intersection between formal and informal normativities belying the exercise of power by different state institutions.

Hence, in contrast to the dominant mood of the discipline, Koivisto frames norms as ‘moral facts’ whose bearing is uncovered in the process of contextual reproduction and reflexive transformation of the institutional effects of normative state power (Koivisto, 2012, p. 101). Thus, in a radical departure from previous research on normativity, her investigation demonstrates that normative state power can actually be treated simultaneously as the objective property and the subjective abstraction of purposive social actors (by the way, this is an inference that resonates with Jiang’s Confucian emphasis on the relational nature of power). While purposive social actorness is indeed embedded in a panoply of state institutions, it also reflects the contingent habits and perceptions of government officials. Such attention to the role of individuals in the makeup of normative state power teases out its interpersonal character – namely ‘it is not the state which acts; it is always specific sets of politicians and state officials located in specific parts of the state system’ (Koivisto, 2012, p. 68). Thus, going back to Lasswell’s now classic definition of ‘power’, the situation of normative state power emerges as truly interpersonal – it is observable within the located practices and activities of state elites.

As illustration for this argument, Koivisto offers a thoughtful re-reading of the case study of the Nordic welfare state. The Nordic model has become an established focal point in the disciplinary inquiry of political science. Yet, despite the wealth, breadth and depth of existing studies, Koivisto uncovers an underlying flaw in their examination: the nearly universal omission that the emergence, development and evolution of the Nordic welfare state model is the result of ‘a commitment to scientific planning of organizational arrangements in global politics’ (Koivisto, 2012, p. 17). In other words, the historical narrative of the Nordic welfare state demonstrates the ‘multiscalar’ nature of normative state power. The suggestion is that unlike the dominant preoccupation with the ‘national’ characteristics of power, Koivisto’s analysis of normative power reveals that state power is

not confined to one scalar level: the state makes successful (or unsuccessful) claims to institutionalise state space at various scales, and so do other social forces. It follows that the state does not ‘possess’ the national scale; instead the state’s pursuance of national scale must be understood in relation to other social forces potentially pursuing the same scale (Koivisto, 2012, p. 75).

The attention to the multiscalarity of power also leads her to conclude that ‘the nation state is not the natural form of the modern state, but is rather a political ideal employed both in the practice and theory of world politics’ (Koivisto, 2012, p. 187). In this respect, perhaps Koivisto’s key contribution to the IR conversation on power is the suggestion that normative state power is not merely an aspect either of the domestic or external outlook of individual countries, but that it is contextually produced in the process of interpersonal interactions. In this setting, what is especially noteworthy is the suggestion that it is the interactions between ‘ “world politics” in general’ and ‘national politics in particular’ that provide ‘the context within which the actual social institutions and practices conditioned by normative state power can be established’ (Koivisto, 2012, p. 97). Such a framing opens up the possibility of analysing power through the ability ‘to make choices in context, which in turn affects the context’ (Kavalski, 2012, p. 169). Thus, by drawing attention to the interpersonal dynamics of international interaction, Koivisto suggests that power is not merely an attribute of an international actor, but a relationship – a feature that much of the current debate on power transition seems to ignore.

How? Playing the Great Game to Get Recognised

How do powers ensure that others follow their lead? In other words, how does power transmit appropriate institutions, practices and norms, while in the process proscribing the inappropriate ones, to its targets? Being a complex process, the exercise of power draws attention to the different ways in which compliance is achieved. The spectrum, as Alexander Cooley outlines, is rather wide – usually ranging from coercion to socialisation into promoted rules and standards of behaviour. In this setting, the perception is that the more consensual the compliance, the more long-term the effects of power. Yet the mode through which power is exercised is conditioned by the context to which it is applied. In other words, it is the idiosyncratic setting, dynamics and history of specific sets of interactions that frame each instance of power relations.

In this respect, Central Asia has become one of the most emblematic features of the post-Cold War geography of IR. In fact, Cooley goes as far as labelling the region ‘a window into the multipolar world’ (Cooley, 2013, p. 11). During the 1990s, the region became an idiom symbolising the pervasive uncertainty of the post-Cold War climate of global life (Kavalski, 2012, 2015). Thus, rather than a transitory stage, the persistence of the seemingly erratic character of Central Asian trends has challenged the dominant frameworks for the study of both global and regional politics. Yet, despite the seeming coherence of the mental maps that Central Asia generates, observers have been stumped as to what shape and direction the possible trajectories of regional IR might take. In particular, what has puzzled observers is how power flows in the panoply of Central Asian interactions.

As Cooley demonstrates, at the crux of the issue of power relations is the growing complexity of regional affairs, largely owing to the proliferation of both intra-regional and extra-regional agency. On the one hand, Central Asia has emerged as context for the international agency of a number of international actors. For instance, Cooley has focused on the US, Russia and China, but he is quite explicit that this is only the tip of the iceberg (e.g. Turkey, Iran, India, Saudi Arabia and the EU are just a few of the international actors that are oftentimes added to this mix). On the other hand, the Central Asian states themselves (in particular, their governing regimes) have been quite proactive, and some of them increasingly adept, in exploiting the growing international interest in the region. In particular, for the Central Asian state elites the assortment of international suitors has provided ample space for buttressing their appearance of legitimacy – both domestically and internationally. In the context of such proliferation of agency and variables (each one of which is a moving target), most commentators have opted for exploring either the interactions between the international actors vying for influence in Central Asia, or the patterns that define the diversity of regional actors. As a result, the picture that emerges is invariably lopsided, prioritising either the extra-regional or the intra-regional dynamics (Kavalski, 2010; 2012).

In fact, Cooley quite poignantly points out that it is the very lopsidedness of most observations that underpins the tendency to conjure up memories of the nineteenth-century ‘Great Game’ played by Britain and Russia in the region. Consequently, the effects of such partial explanations can be seen in the rekindling of the clichéd imagery of the region as a ‘land of discord’, ‘pulpit of the world’, ‘geographic pivot of history’, ‘grand chessboard’ and so on (Kavalski, 2006). Rather than aiding the inquiry, the affective economy of these depictions more often than not befuddles the explanation and understanding of the historical and institutional legacies, regional patterns and socioeconomic structures impacting the shape, processes and content of Central Asian affairs. In particular, it obfuscates the evolution of power relations as the emergence of distinct sets of explanations in the context of complex interpersonal interactions. Thus, by persistently framing Central Asian politics ‘in terms of timeless imperial competition, we have overlooked the important changes in world order and global governance that the region now visibly embodies’ (Cooley, 2013, p. 5).

To illustrate this point, Cooley eloquently demonstrates that what is ‘new’ about the ‘new Great Game’ in Central Asia is precisely the simultaneity in the proliferation of the external (i.e. from outside the region) and the internal (i.e. from within the region) exercise of power. In other words, the ‘new Great Game’ challenges entrenched perceptions of the passivity of Central Asian states and their lack of capability for independent agency in international life. Especially, the proliferation of international agency in the region has provided a facilitating environment for Central Asian states to engage in ‘pick-and-choose’ strategies and bandwagoning-for-profit policies. The space for such independent agency by Central Asian states reveals the qualitative distinction of the current ‘new Great Game’ from its nineteenth-century variant (to the extent that this label offers an appropriate framing of current dynamics). In other words, regional states might be compelled to indicate their preferred model of external agency, but they are not constrained to comply with its injunctions for long and oftentimes swing their preferences to another external pole of attraction.

It is this qualitatively new environment that radically changes the assessment of the Central Asian agency of both intra-regional and extra-regional actors. Cooley labels this altered context the ‘multiple principals problem’ (Cooley, 2013, p. 68). Owing to the multiplicity of actors with vested interest in the region, none of their Central Asian agency can be treated in isolation from all the others or the multidirectional foreign policy pursued by the Central Asian states themselves. In this setting, the tables appear to be turned. As Cooley’s analysis of American, Russian and Chinese overtures in the region illustrates, none of them is aspiring to hegemonic control of the region, but rather that that they be given preferential treatment in accessing the strategic energy resources of Central Asia. In other words, the attention is on which international actor the Central Asian states recognise as their preferred partner. And here, Cooley – just like Jiang and Koivisto – draws attention to the strategic features of normative state power. In particular, he investigates the ability to achieve ‘foreign policy goals’ through ‘normative influence’ (Cooley, 2013, p. 172) as a critical indicator of such recognition.

In this setting, China appears to have become the ‘winner on points’ (Cooley, 2013, p. 165). In contrast, the assessment of Russia’s policy towards Central Asia reveals that ‘it lacks a single overriding strategic goal’ (Cooley, 2013, p. 51). At the same time, the lack of American (as well as Western) influence in the region can be read as a result of a similar strategic disconnect – a disinterest that has only occasionally been moderated by the attention to the ‘base politics’ (Cooley, 2013, p. 167) of some Central Asian states during the military mission in Afghanistan. It has to be remembered that China was not a natural partner for the region and yet, owing to its thoughtful exercise of normative state power, Beijing has been able to become the ‘most privileged partner’ of the Central Asian states (Cooley, 2013, p. 92). Unlike other international actors who have been willing and interested only to acquire the resources of Central Asia, China has been able to convince regional states of its long-term commitment to a partnership in the region by establishing a confidence-building mechanism that eventually grew to become one of the most prominent Asian regional institutions: the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. It has been precisely this kind of strategic investment in shifting the normative perceptions and preferences of Central Asian states through the iterated practices of deliberate interactions with the region that have earned China the recognition of a privileged partner.

In this way, Cooley makes an important qualification to the existing analyses of power. His suggestion is that influence – and especially the ability of international actors to shape the behaviour and attitudes of other countries – is closely related to their recognition of a privileged partnership in a complex and contested normative space. In this respect, being recognised as a normative power in one region of the world should not be misunderstood as an indication that an actor has a global normative power or as a suggestion that, once earned, such recognition is a constant. On the contrary, the recognition of a leadership position requires ongoing and contextual commitment to the reaffirmation of that actor’s normative power. In other words, power is not only exercised through, but in fact is itself an iterated practice of, (interpersonal) interaction. Hence, Cooley’s key contribution to the power transition debate is the inference that the capacity of an actor to alter not just the perceptions, but the horizon of possibilities of others rests on the expectations (and especially recognition) engendered in the process of contextual and committed interactions.

Conclusion

Thinking about the changing meaning and practices of power in the context of the perceived shift of economic and increasingly political power towards Asia gravitates easily towards the realms of fiction and fantasy. Thus, an ungainly but important task is to distinguish between the phantoms and substance in the current deliberations of power in IR (Kavalski, 2007; 2011; 2014). The three books under review do just that by offering a much-needed and an extremely erudite reconsideration of the ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘how’ aspects of power. In this setting, what emerges is a procedural understanding of power that draws on an historically grounded and contextually nuanced framing of normative state action premised on recognition by the target states.

What the three books under review also demonstrate is the insufficient engagement with the concept of ‘power’ in the current literature on power transition. Instead, the analysis of power is subsumed within broader investigations of individual state action in international life. The contention here is that the exercise of power in contemporary world affairs is no longer merely about who gets what, when and how, but also about how global powers engage with other actors. In other words, owing to the growing multipolarity of international life, power needs to be perceived as legitimate in a ‘multiscalar’ (to use Koivisto’s term) global life. Such insistence suggests that the influence of any international actors emerges as a power in context – it is not entirely an intrinsic property of an actor, but depends on the kind of interactions it has in specific (temporal and spatial) contexts (i.e. the ‘multiple principles problem’ outlined by Cooley).

Thus, the meaning of power is not necessarily only about affecting the perceptions of other actors (which offers a rather limited scope of action), but mostly about framing the responses of those other actors. In other words, the discourse and practices of power are not about the relative capabilities of actors (as scripted by the narratives of ‘the struggle for power’), but about the kind of relationships they engender in their interactions (in the context of a ‘nascent struggle for recognition’) (Kavalski, 2013). In this respect, the patterns of international anarchy seem to be animated by the very status insecurity of international actors. Such insecurity reveals the uncertainty associated with the ‘constitutive vulnerability’ of states in global life – the ‘unpredictable responses and reactions of others to their power’ (Markell, 2003, p. 36).

Recognition, in this setting, is indicated by the specific attitudes, dispositions and behaviour of target states. In other words, recognition becomes – especially, recognition as ‘the most privileged partner’ as Cooley stresses – the permissive context for an actor’s exercise of power. As Jiang (2013), Koivisto (2012) and Cooley (2013) amply demonstrate, such recognition tends to be granted when the power-wielding actors deliver deliberate and credible commitments to the intended target. At the same time, the recognition of an actor as a normative state power rests on the ability to show contextual consideration for the effects of its actions on others. Thus, anarchy is not just ‘what states make of it’, but what reactions they engender in their struggle for recognition.

This assertion refers us back to Hans Morgenthau’s avowal that the ‘prestige of a nation is its reputation for power. That reputation, the reflection of the reality of power in the mind of the observers can be as important as the reality of power itself. What others think about us is as important as what we actually are’ (Morgenthau, 1965; emphasis added). Hence, the nascent struggle for recognition is not merely ‘a part of’, but becomes constitutive of the complex logic of global life (Kavalski, 2007; 2014). The legitimacy of power therefore derives from and is embedded in the practices through which it projects its social purpose in global life. At the same time, it is the exploration into the ways in which such recognition is granted that will likely frame the debate on the meaning and practices of power.