The International Political Sociology of Security

Trine Villumsen Berling

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317524793
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book builds a theoretical approach to the intractable problem of theory/practice in international relations (IR) and develops tools to study how theory and practice 'hang together' in international security.

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's political sociology, the book argues that theory and practice take part in struggles over basic understandings (doxa) in international fields through what the book calls doxic battles. In these battles e.g. scientific facts, military hardware and social networks are mobilised as weapons in a fight for recognition. NATO's transformation and fight for survival and the rapidly growing number of think tanks in European security in the 1990s is taken as an example of these processes. The book studies a variety of sources such as funding to science programmes in Europe; think tanks and research centres in European security; NATO's relations with the EU, the WEU and the OSCE; and the mobilization of theory at crucial points in the transformation process.

Theory as Practice and Capital will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, security studies and critical theory.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315722375-1

Indeed, had we listened to theory, we would not have come half as far. Theory told us that NATO enlargement and a NATO-Russia relationship would be mutually exclusive goals. Practice proved otherwise.

(Solana 1999b: Article V)

These words were stated by the then NATO Secretary General Javier Solana when he was confronted with predictions concerning the eastern enlargement of NATO in the late 1990s. Not only do these bold words signal a confident Secretary General proud of a strong Atlantic Alliance and a hope or belief in the fact that old enmities can be – perhaps even already had been – replaced with friendly relations and cooperation in new contexts. Importantly, the quote also frames a new and puzzling competitor – if not threat – in European security: Theory. Research and politics were apparently seen to be in conflict over European security decisions. This places science in a hitherto largely unexplored relationship with security practice that this book will seek to shed light on.

In order to capture this relationship, this book challenges the privileged and external position of the objective researcher with no influence on his or her object of study so prevalent in mainstream studies of International Relations (IR) (King et al. 1994). Instead, the researcher – or at least theory in some form – ‘enters the game’. The relationship between theory and practice, as a theoretical and epistemological question, thus becomes the first important subject of the book. How has this relationship been understood in mainstream IR and Security Studies ¹ , and what are the recent developments in this debate? Is the relationship best defined by a ‘gap’ between different types of agents? Or is the Constructivist meta-point about the co-construction of social reality a more adequate point of departure for further research on the matter? The book argues for the construction of an approach to the relationship between theory and practice that takes its point of departure in IR Reflectivism. This means that the book applies an approach that is sensitive to discursive representations and challenges the privileged role of the theorist. However, I agree with Iver B. Neumann (Neumann 2002: 639) that ‘what is needed … are empirical studies that specify exactly how IR practices contribute, or do not contribute to the status quo.’ A Reflectivist/Constructivist understanding of discursive representations is merely a first step to understanding how the theory/practice relationship can be understood in general and how it functions in European security. Hence, the book argues that in order to get a full grasp of the status and depth of the theory/practice relationship, a turn to Bourdieusian sociology can strengthen IR discussions in general and studies of the science/policy nexus after the linguistic turn ² in particular. Such a turn will address the question of whether there is more than a discursive link between theory and practice, and how this link can be analysed by zooming in on sociological patterns of practice in loosely structured fields.

The case of European security and IR

European security in the 1990s remains one of the paradigmatic cases for understanding change in international relations (e.g. Behnke 2013; Kristensen 2011; Pouliot 2010). The area underwent such profound and unexpected transformations from before to after the end of the Cold War that it continues to be a source of wonder and contestation in IR and Security Studies. Overall, I would argue that the orthodox and heterodox positions within what this book will term the field of European security changed from mutual agreement on a militarily defined nature of threats, on states as the primary actors, and on a conception of change as one of recurring conflict. The difference in position lay in whether arms control, détente, dialogue or ‘common security’ was a strategy to be pursued (heterodoxy) or whether military balancing was seen as the only or most viable way forward (orthodoxy). Peace research occupied a position of heterodoxy whereas states, NATO and national foreign policy institutes occupied orthodox positions (Berling 2012a). After 1989 these positions gradually changed. An understanding of security broader than military threats came to structure the field and spurred new orthodox and heterodox positions. The orthodoxy focused on the possibility of qualitative change in IR and on a strategic environment constituted by civilized, democratic space (Rasmussen 2003), while Samuel P. Huntington’s (1993, 1996) heterodoxy demarcated space culturally (‘the West against the rest’) and coupled it with an understanding of the impossibility of change and a return to recurring war. Both agreed, however, that security was about more than military capabilities and threats and that change could be brought about through active security politics (Buzan and Hansen 2009: Chapters 4–7; Guzzini and Jung 2004; Huysmans 2006; Krause and Williams 1997; Risse-Kappen 1994; Villumsen 2008; Wæver and Buzan 2007). While the new orthodox position grew out of a weak heterodox trend in the 1980s to focus on a broader concept of security (Buzan 1991 [1983]), the solidification and acceptance of the position only occurred after the end of the Cold War (see e.g. NATO’s Strategic Concept 1991). The changes to European security thus took place on all levels: the nature of threats changed, the logic with which the strategic environment was understood to function was altered, and with it the means by which security could be obtained. Notably the role of NATO was put under pressure during this period of time. Having been the guarantor of military security in an environment of potentially recurring conflict, the Alliance had built a modus operandi of balance of power. But with the new understanding of threats, security and the strategic environment, novel practices and agents were called for.

Within IR, two broad approaches offered explanations of the situation of NATO after the demise of the Soviet Union: the Rationalists and the Reflectivists (Keohane 1988). The Rationalist model – often known as variants of (neo-)realism – emphasised rational state actors and an international system dominated by balance-of-power and alliance-building (see e.g. Walt 1987; Waltz 1993b, 2000). To this approach, the end of the Cold War came as a surprise: what seemed to be a stable, but delicate, balance of power situation in a bipolar structure suddenly ended. A (re)turn to a multipolar world was the only thinkable outcome (Mearsheimer 1990) and the dissolution of NATO was seen as a logical consequence of the lack of an external, balancing enemy to the Alliance (cp. Buzan and Hansen 2009: 166). Opposed to this explanation stood variants of Reflectivism. Generally, a distinction has been made within Reflectivism between what has been called ‘Soft Constructivism’ (or mainstream/modernist Constructivism) and ‘Radical Constructivism’ (Adler 2002, 1997b). Soft Constructivism lets norms play a role as an intervening variable in Rationalist-type arguments (Adler 1997a; Risse-Kappen 1996; Schimmelfennig 1998; Adler and Barnett 1998a, 1998b), whereas Radical Constructivism more explicitly focuses on the role of language as constitutive of social reality (Toews 1987: 881–882). Along these lines, the transformation of European security and the survival of NATO was understood as an example of the persistence of shared norms in security communities (Adler and Barnett 1998b; Pouliot 2006), or as the formation of a distinct NATO security discourse, narrative or identity which reconfigured international relations after bipolarity (Ciuta 2002; Fierke and Wiener 1999; Hansen 1995, 2006; Neumann 1999; Williams and Neumann 2000; Behnke 2013).

Neither of these approaches fully captured the symbolic power struggles that went into the transformation of NATO’s role in European security. Notably, the role of social scientific agents and paradigms were important for understanding the transformation of what might be called – with Bourdieu – a European field of Security, understood as a relational field of struggle tied together by a central stake – the power to define European security – and a variety of forms of power to back up bids for legitimacy. Seen from such a Bourdieusian framework for analysis, a focus on the (re-)creation of specific types of capital and practices in a relatively autonomous field, constituted by both material and symbolic forms of power, will bring struggles to the fore which have been missed by Rationalists and Reflectivists alike. This book argues that the change in the struggles which took place in the European field of security went from a struggle over the distribution of a select number of capitals – notably military – between states or alliances, to a larger field of contest in which struggle occurred over definitions of capital bringing into play new actors, such as think tanks. States were no longer the primary actors. Military was no longer the primary source of power. And change in IR became thinkable. The Rationalist state/military prism did not capture this, and Reflectivism only grasped parts of the struggles by either remaining focused on states or overlooking the power practices behind norms and discourses (for an elaborate version of this argument, see Williams 2007). Indeed, theory itself became an important power practice in the European security field when looked at from a Bourdieusian point of view.

It should therefore have come as no surprise to the discipline of IR that Javier Solana made the statement that began this chapter. In addition to pointing to what was perceived as the inadequacy of Cold War theorizing in the post-Cold War world, this quote also epitomized central power struggles that took place in European security. A competitive relationship between the theory and practice of European security in which (social) science and politics struggled to define security anew revealed that science is not a detached, neutral practice, but indeed a power practice like any other social practice (Bourdieu 2004). For IR this means that ‘science’ has to be taken into account as a player – and not just as a detached observer – in European security. ³ Within the IR mainstream, this feature had been largely overlooked ⁴ or at least deemed unimportant for the changes that took place, whereas IR Reflectivism has argued from a meta-theoretical and philosophical point of view that science is not a detached activity that stands apart from its object of study, but instead co-constitutes it (see e.g. Smith 2004; Klein 1994; for discussion, see Berling 2012b). Bourdieu would of course agree (Bourdieu 2004). But the way science and security practice ‘hung together’ in a more practical sense has not been addressed in any systematic way in IR (but see Büger and Villumsen 2007; Berling 2012b). Important features of the power struggles that came to change European security were therefore missed.

A practice approach to security

This book can be considered to belong to the practice turn still to be fully discovered by IR (Schatzki et al. 2001; Spiegel 2005; see also Reckwitz 2002; in an IR context, see Büger and Gadinger 2007; Neumann 2002; Hansen 2006; Adler and Pouliot 2011). In IR and Security Studies the turn to practices has recently entered debates to the extent where it might indeed be termed an intellectual fashion, not least with the influx of security studies scholars working with a theoretical starting point in the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (e.g. Adler-Nissen 2012, 2014; Pouliot 2010; Mérand 2008; Berling 2012a, 2012b; Hamati-Ataya 2012, 2013; Leander 2002a). Adding to that debate, I emphasize how a reflexive, sociological dimension can be added to the Reflectivist debate, so that the largely linguistic analyses of IR Poststructuralism are complemented with a focus on a range of different types of resources and strategies. This makes an analysis of the relationship between NATO theory and practice possible, but also points in the direction of formulating a more general sociological approach to the study of international relations. With inspiration from Bourdieu, the Reflectivist point about the impossibility of detached knowledge production can be translated into a prerogative of always including the place and role of science in analyses of the social in a wider sense. The objectivist gaze of the scholar plays a significant role in structuring social reality and must be considered as a power practice. A broader focus on social struggles in fields follows.

In a se...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgement
• 1 Introduction
• 2 When theory meets practice
• 3 A sociology of IR. Doxic battles and the (re)configuration of a field
• 4 Field-specific capital and agency in the European field of security
• 5 Practical patterns of interaction
• 6 Doxic battles in European security: the mobilization and redefinition of capital
• 7 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index