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Social theory and science diplomacy
Open Research Europe
Abstract
This essay discusses the relationship between social theory and science diplomacy for both academic and policy application. This discussion is based on workpackage 2 Power with Science Diplomacy of H2020 Inventing a shared Science Diplomacy for Europe (InsSciDE) and consortium-wide discussions.
The outcome of the discussions on theory of science diplomacy is that it is unfeasible to develop one theory of science diplomacy. Science diplomacy practice is rich and wide-ranging. Science diplomacy as a concept continues to be contested and there is no consensus on a definition, which makes for dynamic research and debate. The conceptual instability of science diplomacy complicates defining it. After defining science diplomacy, it remains unclear what about science diplomacy to theorize.
Ideal types of science diplomacy practices address the definitional challenge for the time being and allow theorizing which brings order to rich empirical material and links science diplomacy practices to diplomacy analytically rather than normatively. Looking at science diplomacy as an independent, intermediary, or dependent variable contributes to theorizing it.
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Political psychology applies what is known about human psychology to the study of politics. It examines citizens’ vote choices and public opinion as well as how political leaders deal with threat, mediate political conflicts, and make foreign policy decisions. The second edition of the Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology gathers together a distinguished group of international scholars to shed light on such questions as: To what extent are people’s political choices influenced by information outside of conscious awareness? Does personality affect leadership style? Do strong emotions distort the political process and worsen or enhance political decisions? Focusing on political psychology at the individual level (genes, early childhood, personality, decision-making, emotions, values, ideology) and the collective (group identity, social justice, mass mobilization, political violence, prejudice reduction), this interdisciplinary volume covers models of the mass public and political elites and addresses both domestic issues and foreign policy. The volume provides an up-to-date, comprehensive, and expertly distilled account of cutting-edge research within both psychology and political science.
This article argues that the (re-)constitution of diplomacy is intimately linked to gender and the practices of exclusion and inclusion of women and men over time. While the big debates in both academia and among practitioners concern the change and continuity of diplomacy in the last hundred years, gender has received scant, if any, attention. The overarching aim of this article is therefore to advance a new research agenda, which can spur future gender studies and contribute to rethinking diplomacy. It presents an original narrative about three distinct bodies of diplomatic scholarly work that focus on (1) diplomatic history; (2) descriptive representation; and (3) gendered institutions. We conclude that first there is a need to move out of Europe and North America to provide greater focus on Africa, Asia and Latin America. Second, there is a need to move beyond the descriptive single case studies towards more systematic comparisons, which can trace change in institutional gender dynamics over time. Ethnographic work can provide novel insights to gendered micro-processes and the daily mundane institutional practices. Third, as part of the gender turn in the field of diplomacy international feminist theory can generate significant theoretical contributions to the transformation of diplomacy.
Realism explains the ruling of the international system through the underlying distribution of power among states. Increasingly, analysts have found this power analysis inadequate, and they have developed new concepts, most prominently structural power. The usage of structural power actually entails three different meanings, namely indirect institutional power, nonintentional power, and impersonal power. Only the first, however, is compatible with the current neorealist choice-theoretical mode of explanation. This is the basic paradox of recent power approaches: by wanting to retain the central role of power, some international relations and international political economy theory is compelled to expand that concept and to move away from the very theory that claims to be based on power. Neorealism does not take power seriously enough. At the same time, these extensions of the concept are themselves partly fallacious. To account simultaneously for the different meanings of structural power and to avoid a conceptual overload, this article proposes that any power analysis should necessarily include a pair or dyad of concepts of power, linking agent power and impersonal governance. Finally, it sketches some consequences of those concepts for international theory.
Studies in this issue show that the epistemic communities approach amounts to a progressive research program with which students of world politics can empirically study the role of reason and ideas in international relations. By focusing on epistemic communities, analysts may better understand how states come to recognize interests under conditions of uncertainty. According to this research program, international relations can be seen as an evolutionary process in which epistemic communities play meaningful roles as sources of policy innovation, channels by which these innovations diffuse internationally, and catalysts in the political and institutional processes leading to the selection of their shared goals. The influence of epistemic communities persists mainly through the institutions that they help create and inform with their preferred world vision. By elucidating the cause-and-effect understandings in the particular issue-area and familiarizing policymakers with the reasoning processes by which decisions are made elsewhere, epistemic communities contribute to the transparency of action and the development of common inferences and expectations and thereby contribute to policy coordination. International cooperation and, indeed, the development of new world orders based on common meanings and understandings may thus depend on the extent to which nation-states apply their power on behalf of practices that epistemic communities may have helped create, diffuse, and perpetuate.
The growing technical uncertainties and complexities of problems of global concern have made international policy coordination not only increasingly necessary but also increasingly difficult. If decision makers are unfamiliar with the technical aspects of a specific problem, how do they define state interests and develop viable solutions? What factors shape their behavior? Under conditions of uncertainty, what are the origins of international institutions? And how can we best study the processes through which international policy coordination and order emerge? While a variety of analytic approaches have been used to address the problems of international cooperation, the approaches have yielded only fragmentary insights. At its core, the study of policy coordination among states involves arguments about determinism versus free will and about the ways in which the international system is maintained and transformed. Among the overlapping topics of debate are whether national behavior is determined or broadly conditioned by system-level factors, unit-level factors, or some complex interplay between the two; whether state policymakers can identify national interests and behave independently of pressures from the social groups they nominally represent; and whether states respond consistently to opportunities to create, defend, or expand their own wealth and power, to enhance collective material benefits, or to promote nonmaterial values.' A related question of
For sixty years, U.S. government officials have conducted public diplomacy programs to try to reach Arab public opinion—to inform, educate, and understand Arab attitudes. American public affairs officers have met serious challenges in the past, but Arab public criticism of the United States has reached unprecedented levels since September 11, 2001. Polls show that much of the negative opinion of the United States, especially in the Middle East, can be traced to dissatisfaction with U.S. foreign policy. Rugh, a retired career Foreign Service officer who twice served as ambassador to countries in the region, explains how U.S. government officials have dealt with key problem issues over the years, and he recommends ways that public diplomacy can better support and enhance U.S. national interests in the Middle East. This struggle for the hearts and minds of the Arab world, so crucial to the success of American efforts in post-occupation Iraq, is carried out through broadcasting, cultural contacts, and educational and professional exchanges.
Rugh describes the difference between public diplomacy and propaganda. He points out that public diplomacy uses open means of communication and is truthful. Its four main components are explaining U.S. foreign policy to foreign publics; presenting them with a fair and balanced picture of American society, culture, and institutions; promoting mutual understanding; and advising U.S. policy makers on foreign attitudes. Public diplomacy supports the traditional diplomatic functions of official business between governments. Whereas diplomats from the United States deal with diplomats of foreign governments, public affairs officers deal with opinion leaders such as media editors, reporters, academics, student leaders, and prominent intellectuals and cultural personalities. Rugh provides an up-close-and-personal look at how public affairs officers do their jobs, how they used innovation in their efforts to meet the challenges of the past, and how they continue to do so in the post-September 11 era.
In recent years a rich outpouring of case studies on community decision-making has been combined with a noticeable lack of generalizations based on them. One reason for this is a commonplace: we have no general theory, no broad-gauge model in terms of which widely different case studies can be systematically compared and contrasted.
Among the obstacles to the development of such a theory is a good deal of confusion about the nature of power and of the things that differentiate it from the equally important concepts of force, influence, and authority. These terms have different meanings and are of varying relevance; yet in nearly all studies of community decision-making published to date, power and influence are used almost interchangeably, and force and authority are neglected. The researchers thereby handicap themselves. For they utilize concepts which are at once too broadly and too narrowly drawn: too broadly, because important distinctions between power and influence are brushed over; and too narrowly, because other concepts are disregarded—concepts which, had they been brought to bear, might have altered the findings radically.
Many investigators have also mistakenly assumed that power and its correlatives are activated and can be observed only in decisionmaking situations. They have overlooked the equally, if not more important area of what might be called “nondecision-making”, i.e. , the practice of limiting the scope of actual decisionmaking to “safe” issues by manipulating the dominant community values, myths, and political institutions and procedures. To pass over this is to neglect one whole “face” of power.
The University as a Transnational Actor with Transnational Power: American Missionary Universities in the Middle East and China - Volume 47 Issue 3 - Rasmus Gjedssø Bertelsen
Political psychology occupies an uncertain space in the study of international relations and foreign policy. Longstanding but gradually receding conceptions of the international relations field as a series of paradigmatic clashes among realist, liberal, Marxist, and constructivist approaches, or even between rationalism and constructivism, leave little if any room for the beliefs, personalities, emotions, perceptions, and decision-making processes of individual political leaders. 1 Many of the leading research programs in the international relations field today – including realist balance of power and transition theories, the bargaining model of war, democratic peace and capitalist peace theories, and a variety of institutionalist theories – give little or no causal weight to the role of individual political leaders. Debates in international political economy are commonly centered around system, state, and society-centered approaches while neglecting the individual level altogether (Ikenberry, Lake, & Mastanduno, 1988). Constructivist approaches, which should in principle be open to the inclusion of psychological variables, have until recently given little attention to individual agency (Shannon and Kowert, 2012). 2 At the same time, however, explanations of many consequential historical events give considerable causal weight to the role of individual political leaders. Few would think of explaining World War II or the Holocaust without Hitler, Soviet policy in the 1930s and 1940s without Stalin, Chinese foreign policy without Mao, or contemporary Russian policy without Putin. 3 The decisive role of individual leaders is not limited to autocratic states. Many explanations of the United States' invasion of Iraq in 2003 emphasize the critical role of George 1 Realists focus on states or groups trying to maximize power and/or security in an anarchic system lacking in an authoritative decision mechanism. Liberals emphasize the role of domestic interests, institutions, information, and values, along with patterns of economic relationships, in shaping state goals and interactions. Constructivists emphasize the importance of identities, ideas, norms, and meanings, and how they are socially constructed, reproduced, and changed though repeated interactions. There are numerous variations within each approach. For competing theoretical perspectives, see Carlsnaes, Risse, & Simmons (forthcoming).
Bertelsen, Rasmus G. (2012) Private Foreign-Affiliated Universities, the State, and Soft Power: The American University of Beirut and the American University in Cairo. Foreign Policy Analysis, doi: 10.1111/j.1743-8594.2011.00163.x
This article contributes to the understanding of the soft power of private foreign-affiliated universities and the interaction between such universities and the state for university soft power and national soft power. The analysis shows university soft power in their Middle East host societies and its basis of academic excellence and biculturalism. Historically, university soft power has been limited first by proselytizing and later by unpopular American foreign policy. The universities have previously undescribed reverse university soft power in the USA on behalf of the Middle East: advocating Middle East interests and raising moral, political, and financial support for education, healthcare, and development in the region. The USA has pursued national soft power through the American University of Beirut and the American University in Cairo since the 1950s. University soft power has been furthered by US government financial assistance to academic excellence, while too close association with the US government has threatened university soft power. The universities have contributed to the national soft power of the USA concerning milieu goals of attraction to education, language, and liberal norms among elites. The universities have not contributed to national soft power regarding the acceptance of unpopular US foreign policies in the Middle East, which was also not a university or US government goal.
This article investigates the interacting soft power of two important categories of American transnational actors: American missionary universities in China and the Middle East and American religious, foundation and individual philanthropy. These transnational actors have had and have soft power in Chinese and Middle East societies based on academic excellence and biculturalism. However, this transnational actor soft power has historically been limited by religious proselytising, unequal treaties between China and the West, the humiliation of China, and American China and Middle East policy. The universities have had and continue to have reverse soft power in the USA attracting resources and advocating on behalf of China and the Middle East. Philanthropic support for the educational, research, healthcare and social development work of these universities has contributed to university soft power in the host societies. The universities and their philanthropic donors have strengthened US national soft power regarding milieu goals of elite attraction to education, language and liberal norms. However, US national soft power concerning possession goals of acceptance of foreign policies in China and the Middle East has not been strengthened, and was also not a university, philanthropic or government goal.
The concept of power remains elusive despite the recent and prolific outpourings of case studies on community power. Its elusiveness is dramatically demonstrated by the regularity of disagreement as to the locus of community power between the sociologists and the political scientists. Sociologically oriented researchers have consistently found that power is highly centralized, while scholars trained in political science have just as regularly concluded that in “their” communities power is widely diffused. Presumably, this explains why the latter group styles itself “pluralist,” its counterpart “elitist.”
There seems no room for doubt that the sharply divergent findings of the two groups are the product, not of sheer coincidence, but of fundamental differences in both their underlying assumptions and research methodology. The political scientists have contended that these differences in findings can be explained by the faulty approach and presuppositions of the sociologists. We contend in this paper that the pluralists themselves have not grasped the whole truth of the matter; that while their criticisms of the elitists are sound, they, like the elitists, utilize an approach and assumptions which predetermine their conclusions. Our argument is cast within the frame of our central thesis: that there are two faces of power, neither of which the sociologists see and only one of which the political scientists see.
572 p., tabl. Pour parler aujourd'hui non des puissants, comme certaine histoire, ou du pouvoir, comme certaine philosophie, mais des jeux sociaux, les champs, où se produisent les différents enjeux de pouvoir et les différents atouts, les capitaux, nécessaires pour y triompher, il faut mobiliser toutes les ressources de la statistique, de la théorie anthropologique et de l'histoire sociale. Comment s'est constituée la configuration singulière de pouvoirs, intellectuels, politiques, bureaucratiques, économiques, qui domine les sociétés contemporaines? Comment ces pouvoirs, notamment ceux qui s'autorisent de l'autorité conférée par l'Ecole, obtiennent- ils notre reconnaissance? Qu'est-ce que la compétence dont se réclament les technocraties ? Le travail de consécration qu'accomplit l'institution scolaire, notamment à travers les grandes écoles, s'observe dans l'histoire, à des variantes près, toutes les fois qu'il s'agit de produire une noblesse; et les groupes socialement reconnus, en particulier les grands corps, qui en sont le produit, fonctionnent selon une logique tout à fait semblable à celle des divisions d'Ancien Régime, nobles et roturiers, grande et petite noblesse. La noblesse d'Etat qui dispose d'une panoplie sans précédent de pouvoirs, économiques, bureaucratiques et même intellectuels, et de titres propres à justifier son privilège, titres d'écoles, titres de propriété et titres de noblesse, est l'héritière structurale ― et parfois généalogique ― de la noblesse de robe qui, pour se construire comme telle, contre d'autres espèces de pouvoirs, a dû construire l'Etat moderne, et tous les mythes républicains, méritocratie, école libératrice, service public. Grâce à une écriture qui alterne l'humour de la distance ethnographique avec la rigueur du raisonnement statistique ou de la construction théorique, Pierre Bourdieu propose une réalisation accomplie d'une anthropologie totale, capable de surmonter l'opposition entre l'évocation et l'explication, la description qui fait voir et le modèle qui fait comprendre. Déchirant l'écran des évidences qui protègent le monde familier contre la connaissance, il dévoile les secrets de la magie sociale qui se cache dans les opérations les plus ordinaires de l'existence quotidienne, comme l'octroi d'un titre scolaire ou d'un certificat médical, la nomination d'un fonctionnaire ou l'institution d'une grille des salaires.
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