'The international' as governmentality

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 35, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 677-701

  Neumann, Iver B ^a,b   Sending, Ole Jacob ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OSLO   (Norway)

^b NORWEGIAN INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS NUPI   (Norway)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 36248958290     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/03058298070350030201     Document Type: Article

References (97)

1. Previous versions of this article were presented to the annual Millennium conference, LSE, 21-22 October 2006, and the annual joint seminar of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and the Danish Institute of International Studies, Oslo, 7 November 2006. We should like to thank the participants, particularly Fritz Kratochwil and Stefano Guzzini, for comments on those occasions, as well as Fredrik Engelstad, Patrick Jackson, Cecilie Basberg Neumann, Arild Underdal and Mike Williams for written comments.
2. Brian C. Schmidt, The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998).
3. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-05; London: Allen & Unwin, 1976;
4. see especially his own reference to former work on p. 200, n. 28.
5. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 6.
6. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 6-7.
7. Weber, '"Objectivity" in Social Science and Social Polity', in The Methodology of the Social Sciences, ed. Edward A. Shils (1904; Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1949).
8. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 90.
9. Weber, 'Economy and Society, Vols. 1 & 2', ed. Günther Roth and Claus Wittich, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 7.
10. Kenneth R. Muse, 'Edmund Husserl's. Impact on Max Weber', in Max Weber, vol. II: Critical Assessments (1981; London: Routledge, 1991), 259.
11. Weber, 'Economy and Society, Vols. 1 & 2', 216.
12. Patrick Jackson, 'Foregrounding Ontology: Dualism, Monism, and IR Theory'. Ms, forthcoming in Review of International Studies.
13. Fritz Ringer, Max Weber's Methodology: The Unification of the Cultural and Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). Openness to a number of different readings is probably a prerequisite for a thinker to become a classic, for without it, there will not be that contradictory reception that guarantees the texts their status as present. There are direct parallels to be drawn here to other founders of sociological though; causal vs. functional explanations in Durkheim, voluntaristic vs. materialistic explanations in Marx, etc.
14. Conceptual contenders included sundry peace researchers, budding post-structuralists like Richard Ashley ('Political Realism and Human Understanding', International Studies Quarterly 25, no.2 (1981): 204-36), and, of course, constructivists.
15. Stefano Guzzini, Realism in International Relations and International Political Economy: the Continuing Story of a Death Foretold (London: Routledge, 1998), 26.
16. Michael C. Williams, 'Why Ideas Matter in International Relations: Hans Morgenthau, Classical Realism, and the Moral Construction of Power Politics', International Organization 58, no. 3 (2004), 633-65.
17. Cf. Martti Koskenniemi, (2004), The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
18. Williams, 'Why Ideas Matter in International Relations', 633-65.
19. Williams, 'Why Ideas Matter in International Relations', 643.
20. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations (4th edn; New York: Knopf, 1967), 9 (emphasis added);
21. see also Williams, 'Why Ideas Matter in International Relations', 638.
22. John M. Hobson and Leonard Seabrooke, 'Reimagining Weber: Constructing International Society and the Social Balance of Power', European Journal of International Relations 7, no. 2 (2001): 239-74.
23. Hobson and Seabrooke, 'Reimagining Weber';
24. David Owen, Maturity and Modernity: Nietzsche, Weber, Foucault and the Ambivalence of Reason (London: Routledge, 1997);
25. Williams, 'Why Ideas Matter in International Relations', 4.
26. Guzzini, Realism in International Relations and International Political Economy, 29-30; 198. Clearly, the influence of the Chicago School on Morgenthau was an additional factor.
27. Note, for example, how this is a key theme in two authors which inspire much present-day work on norms, namely Habermas and Giddens. With a view to our Foucauldian critique of Weber's concept of the ideal type below, it is worth noting that Giddens celebrates Weber's historical scholarship, but that he, too, is dismissive of its methodological reach. In introducing the Protestant Ethic, for example, he writes that this work, together with the other studies of world religions, 'were intended as analyses of divergent modes of the rationalization of culture, and as attempts to trace out the significance of such divergencies for socio-economic development'. 'On the level of abstract method', Giddens states, 'Weber was not able to work out a satisfactory reconciliation of the diverse threads that he tried to knit together; but his effort at synthesis produced a distinctive style of historical study' Anthony Giddens, 'Introduction' pp. 1-12 in Max Weber ([1904-05]) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1976), 5, 2.
28. Guzzini, Realism in International Relations, 24.
29. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977);
30. Henry Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace 1812-22 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957);
31. Steven Krasner, 'Regimes and the Limits of Realism: Regimes as Autonomous Variables', International Organization 36, no. 2 (1982): 497-510.
32. Y. H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach, Polities: Authority, Identities, and Change (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1996).
33. A well-known critique of the so-called neorealists, for example, concerns how the structure (the states system) is seen as generating agencies (or "units", ipso facto, states). John G. Ruggie, 'Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neo-Realist Synthesis', World Politics 35, no. 2 (1983): 261-85.
34. Of course, a contemporary realist may hold the idea of a timeless realm regardless of any appeal to Weberian or Morgenthauian authority; the primary topic under discussion so far has been genealogy, not truth.
35. Jennifer Sterling-Folker,'Competing Paradigms of a Feather? Constructivism. and Neoliberal Institutionalism Compared', International Studies Quarterly 44, no. 2 (2000): 97-119.
36. See John G. Ruggie, Constructing the World Polity: Essays on International Institutionalization (London: Routledge, 1998), 856.
37. Nicholas G. Onuf, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1989).
38. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
39. James Fearon and Alexander Wendt, 'Rationalism v. Constructivism: A Sceptical View', in Handbook of International Relations, eds. Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse and Beth Simmons (London: Sage, 2002).
40. Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996);
41. Amy Gurowitz, 'Mobilizing International Norms: Domestic Actors, Immigrants, and the Japanese State', World Politics 51, no. 3 (1999), 413-45;
42. Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Indentity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
43. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, 'International Norms Dynamics and Political Change', International Organization 52 (4) (1998): 887-917;
44. Pernille Rieker, Europeanization of National Security Identity: The EU and the Changing Security Identities of the Nordic States (London: Routledge, 2006);
45. Michael Zürn and Jeffrey Checkel, 'Getting Socialized to Build Bridges: Constructivism and Rationalism, Europe and the Nation-State', International Organization 59, no. 4 (2005): 1045-79.
46. Adler, 'Constructivism and International Relations', 103.
47. As demonstrated by Stefano Guzzini, 'The Concept of Power: A Conceptual Analysis', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 33, no. 3 (2005): 495-522,
48. and Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), such views may account for the content of, and changes in, different world orders. Wendt summarises these ideal-typical world orders, or different conceptions of 'the international', as Hobbesian, Lockean or Kantian.
49. See also Jeffrey Checkel, 'Why Comply? Social Learning and European Identity Change', International Organization 55, no. 3 (2001):553-88;
50. Gurowitz, 'Mobilizing International Norms'; Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink (eds.), Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
51. Risse, ' "Let's Argue!" Communicative Action in World Politics', International Organization 54, no. 1 (2000): 1-39;
52. Zürn and Checkel, 'Getting Socialized to Build Bridges'.
53. In this view, the international realm is defined in much the same way as did the founders of international law. Under the heading 'The Flight From Politics', Koskenniemi argues that 'Since the publication of Emmeric de Vattel's Droit des gens... (1758), jurists have written about international matters by assuming that the liberal principles of the Enlightenment and their logical corollary, the Rule of Law, could be extended to apply in the organization of international society just as they had been used in the domestic one.' Martti Koskenniemi, 'The Politics of International Law', European Journal of International Law 1, no. 2 (1990): 4-32 at 4.Constructivist theory - at least in its (American) moderate version - brings to bear a similar view of the international realm.
54. Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore, Rules for the World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004);
55. Susan Park, 'Theorizing Norm Diffusion within International Organizations', International Politics 43, no.3 (2006): 342-61.
56. Guzzini, 'The Concept of Power', 497.
57. See also Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations;
58. Hans J. Morgenthau, 'Positivism, Functionalism, and International Law', American Journal of International Law (1940): 260-84,
59. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations.
60. Judith Goldstein and Lisa Martin, 'Legalization, Trade Liberalization, and Domestic Politics: A Cautionary Note', International Organization 54, no. 3 (2000): 603-32;
61. Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations; Christian Reus-Smit (ed.), The Politics of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
62. Williams, 'Why Ideas Matter in International Relations', 639.
63. After all, they were both heavily influenced by Nietzsche, cf. Wilhelm Hennis, Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction, trans. Keith Tribe (London: Allen & Unwin, 1988), 146-62.
64. Colin Gordon, 'Governmental Rationality: An Introduction', in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991), 4.
65. Gordon, 'Governmental rationality', 92.
66. Owen, Maturity and Modernity, 154.
67. Gordon, 'Governmental Rationality.
68. Foucault, 'An Ethics of Pleasure', in Foucault Live (Interviews 1966-84), ed. Sylvestre Lotringer (1982; New York: Semiotext, 1989), 261.
69. Barry Hindess, 'Politics as Government: Michel Foucault's Analysis of Political Reason, Alternatives 30, no. 389-413 (2005): 403.
70. Gordon, 'Governmental Rationality', 102-03.
71. Mitchell Dean, Governmentality. Power and Rule in Modern Society (London: Sage, 1999);
72. Niklas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Refraiming Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
73. Foucault, 'The Subject and Power', in Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, ed. James D. Faubion (1982; London: Penguin, 2000), vol. III, 341.
74. Foucault, 'Qu'est-ce que les Lumière?' Dits et écrits (1980-1988) (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), vol. IV, 687-88.
75. Foucault, 'Table ronde du 20 mai 1978', Dits et écrits (1980-1988) (Paris: Gallimard, 1980), vol. IV, 26. This is a misdirected shot on Foucault's part, since this actually never was Weber's aim.
76. Foucault, 'Table ronde du 20 mai 1978', 27.
77. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 13.
78. Mark Laffey and Jutta. Weldes, 'Policing and Global Governance', in Power in Global Governance, ed. Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 59-79;
79. compare Didier Bigo, Policing Insecurity Today (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006);
80. Jeff Huysmans, The Politics of Insecurity: Fear, Migration and Asylum in the EU (London: Routledge, 2006);
81. Laffey and Weldes,'Policing and Global Governance', 77;
82. Sergei Prozorov, Understanding Conflict between Russia and the EU: The Limits of Integration (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006).
83. Laffey and Weldes, 'Policing and Global Governance', 77.
84. Himadeep Muppidi, 'Colonial and Postcolonial Global Governance', in Power in Global Governance, ed. Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 281.
85. Janice Bially Mattern, Ordering International Politics: Identity, Crisis and Representational Force (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005).
86. John W. Meyer and Ronald Jepperson, 'The Actors" of Modern Society: The Cultural Construction of Social Agency', Sociological Theory 18, no. 1 (2000), 100-20.;
87. Thomas, George W. et al. (ed.), Institutional Structure: Constituting the State, Society, and the Individual (Newbury Park: Sage, 1987).
88. Meyer and Jepperson, 'The Actors" of Modern Society', 106.
89. See Francois Debrix,'Space Quest: Surveillance, Governance and the Panoptic Eye of the United Nations', Alternatives 24, no. 3 (1999): 269-94;
90. Michael Dillon, 'Global Liberal Governance: Biopolitics, Security, and War', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 30, no. 1 (2001): 41-66;
91. James Ferguson and Akhil Gupta, 'Spatializing States: Toward an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality', American Ethnologist 29, no. 4 (2002): 981-1002;
92. Ronnie Lipschutz, 'Global Civil Society and Global Governmentality: Or, the Search for Politics and the State amidst the Capillaries of Social Power', in Power in Global Dominance, ed. Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 229-48;
93. Ole Jacob Sending and Iver B. Neumann, 'The Power of Civil Society: Governmentality Analysis Trumps the Literature on Global Governance', International Studies Quarterly 50, no. 3 (2006): 651-72.
94. Christine Helliwell and Barry Hindess, 'The Empire of Uniformity and the Government of Subject Peoples', Cultural Values 6, no. 1 (2002): 2.
95. Helliwell and Hindess, 'The Empire of Uniformity and the Government of Subject Peoples' 2.
96. Hindess, 'Politics as Government', 409.
97. Compare Ruggie, 'Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity'.