Towards a Framework of Alignment in International Relations

Abstract

Traditional theoretical frames of reference are challenged to account convincingly for new inter-state formations at the political level that fall outside the security lexicon. While it is clear that not all inter-state partnerships can be deemed alliances/coalitions, there is neither a model nor a framework of study put forward for those partnerships and arrangements that do not meet the criteria of security co-operation. The success of Alliance Theory in International Relations from mainly rationalist perspectives blurs the fact that it is one, although dominant, sub-set within a broader, generic concept of alignment. Formal strategic partnerships at the mini-lateral level that do not have as their primary property or motivator a security characteristic in the traditional (military) sense, such as the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Dialogue Forum, the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) Forum and potentially the Columbia-Indonesia-Vietnam-Egypt-Turkey-South Africa (CIVETS), in the event that it becomes a fully-fledged diplomatic and political initiative, do not fit comfortably in a securitized International Relations discipline. Nor do other types of partnerships such as the New Asian-African Strategic Partnership (NAASP), the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Co-operation (IOR-ARC), the G20 or arrangements such as Forum on China-Africa Co-operation (FOCAC) and the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD). Studies of these instances of co-operation are conducted in the absence of a context and without terms of reference. This article makes a contribution towards the development of an overarching framework of ‘alignment’ to provide a context under which various co-operation theories exist. It is argued that the concept of alignment can be fully recovered to its rightful place as an umbrella concept over and above its different forms, if reference to a security characteristic/property as a necessary element is removed. ‘Alignment’ is a value-neutral concept that neither infers nor connotes any particular content to an inter-state relationship. This is a necessary theoretical step so that the proliferation of new, non-traditional instances of international co-operation in the twenty-first century can be assessed within a substantive context that gives both structure and terms of reference for analysis.

Notes

1 Steve Smith's argument is that International Relations remains an American social science and that because positivism dominates in the USA to such an extent that other epistemological positions remain peripheral, there is consequently a narrower set of questions that are seen as legitimate. This is in comparison to the UK, which, Smith argues, are more pluralistic and thus rather more likely to permit the development of an International Relations discipline relevant to the dominant global questions of the new millennium.

2 For realists, anarchy is necessarily a ‘self-help’ system where central and collective authority are absent giving rise to the consequently competitive dynamics of the security dilemma and problem of collective action. Liberals on the other hand concede the causal powers of anarchic structure but argue that process can generate co-operation in an exogenously given ‘self-help’ system.

3 Onuf (1989, 261) argues that rules do not ‘govern’ all that is social; instead rules govern the construction of the situation within which choices are made intelligible. This relates to what Onuf describes as the misleading concept of ‘bounded rationality’ because people sensibly choose alternatives (means) suited to their circumstances to obtain a desired end. That it is not rationality that is bounded but rather the situation in which choices are made.

4 The distinction between alignments for and of identity is drawn from Ted Hopf's (2002) very useful distinction between ‘alliances for identity’ and ‘alliances of identity’. Ted Hopf too is guilty of using ‘alignment’ and ‘alliance’ here interchangeably where alignment for and alignment of would be more appropriate if the argument made here is agreed as applicable. According to Hopf, alliances for identity aim at preserving the state and can be merely a tactical alliance against a strategic threat (realist conceptions of threat) or a way of protecting autonomy. Whereas alliances of identity from Ted Hopf's constructivist perspective, is understood as an identity issue, which is not threat-based, but rather a relationship between two (or more) states based on a common understanding of each other's likeness or similarity. This is akin but not equivalent to Alexander Wendt's work on collective identity.