In or out? International community membership: beliefs, behaviour, contextuality and principles

Abstract

Recently, increasing references are made to the international community that is conceptually and analytically useful when distinguished from the international society. Supposedly, the relations of some international agents can be described as a community due to their shared we-feeling, identity or ethos. This article discusses ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ international communities and suggests additional criteria that ought to be considered when determining whether a particular actor or agent is or is not a member of the international community. Moreover, the article suggests a dynamic conception of the international community as a context-dependent configuration rather than as some relatively stable subgroup of the international society. In this sense, this article offers an innovative perspective to collectivities through a focus on the international community. On a different level, this opportunity is used to draw attention to the roles beliefs play in and in the study of international politics.

Notes

The author would like to thank Friedrich Kratochwil, Nicholas Onuf and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. Any error of judgement or fact is, as always, the author's.

In this article I forgo the possibility of referring to discussions regarding international regimes. One important reason for this choice is that those discussions posed questions and provided some answers to them within a particular historical time and context (Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986; see particularly chapter 2 in Kratochwil 1991). Meanwhile, however, those debates have evolved to concern the fragmentation and constitutionalization of the international level in general and of international law in particular. Consider, for example, Fassbender (1998) in this light.

² See also Buzan (2004).

³ This might provide insight to the reasons why in some cases the two concepts operate as synonyms.

⁴ Note here that according to a ‘civic republican’ account of political communities no common ethos is required. In fact, the argument would be that a properly deliberative democratic political community should contain a plurality of voices and interests in order to avoid internal corruption (see, for example, Madison 1787; 1788; Sunstein 1988; da Silva 2009).

⁵ This second point would result also if one took a regime approach and argued that the international community is something akin to a regime (defined as ‘principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issue-area’ as in Krasner 1982, 185; see, however, Kratochwil 1984).

⁶ Note here a curiosity if it is indeed the case that Iran is not considered a member. The Iranian regime is condemned for not upholding the principles of the international community but it is not a member of the community whose principles it violated. One might presume that the Iranian regime has no obligation to follow the principles exactly because it is not a member. In this case, however, there seems to be an underlying belief that the principles of the international community in question are universal and hence applicable to the Iranian regime.

⁷ In fact, they have worried many for longer than that, but to name a few contributions to the debates, the case of Iran has been discussed, for example, by Brooks and Wohforth (2005), Bowen and Kidd (2004) and Sagan (2006); North Korea has been reviewed often with reference to the six-party talks as, for example, in Perry and Schoff (2004); and both cases have been discussed as examples of a wider problem as, for example, in Montgomery (2005) and Chung (2005).

⁸ The Non-Proliferation Treaty has been joined by 190 parties. Moreover, at times behaviour deemed irresponsible may result in calls for intervention. For instance, the recent revelations by WikiLeaks account how Saudi Arabia has urged the United States to intervene in Iran (Guardian2010).

⁹ Here one might see—suffused in lay thinking—the remnants of nineteenth and early twentieth century liberal internationalist thought. It is unfortunately beyond the scope of this article to pursue this suggestion further.

¹⁰ On the R2P framework, see especially UNGA A/RES/60/1(2005) and A/63/677(2009).

¹¹ The discussion regarding the R2P framework remains lively. For overviews of the debates, see, for example, Bellamy (2010) and Luck (2011).

¹² Moreover, whether domestically or in its foreign affairs, North Korean behaviour can hardly be said to correspond to the R2P framework's notion of sovereignty as responsibility.

¹³ Note here that North Korea may already be part of a very thin international community on the basis of a shared identity, namely ‘we, the sovereign states’, but this international community is so thin that it is indistinguishable from the international society.

¹⁴ See for example Na (2010). Consider also the supposed ‘biggest danger’ (indecisiveness) of the international community vis-à-vis Iran (Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2010).

¹⁵ Consider the tradition that distinguishes between Gesellschaft (usually translated as society) and Gemeinschaft (usually translated as community) initiated by Tönnies (2001 [1887]). From the perspective of modernity, Gemeinschaft refers to something more primitive and emotional. Here, clans and tribes provide the usual examples. In contrast, Gesellschaft is more suitable for modernity as it reflects the contractual and rational arrangement of a polity. Given the Latin roots, in the English language society (societas) has been from the start more contractual, voluntary and akin to an association. For example, Buzan argues that the international society is understood as contractual and rational relations between states similar to Gesellschaft. In his typology, the conceptual understanding of the international system refers to Hobbesian or Machiavellian realism, the international society to Grotian rationalism and world society to Kantian revolutionism (Buzan 2004, 7–8).

¹⁶ I thank one anonymous reviewer for reminding me to mention this. See also Fuchs (1992), Lebow and Lichbach (2007) and Ziman (1991).

¹⁷ Mercer (2010, 3) approaches beliefs from a different angle: ‘[a]n emotion is a subjective experience of some diffuse physiological change whereas a feeling is a conscious awareness that one is experiencing an emotion.…A belief is a proposition, or a collection of propositions, that one thinks is probably true.’

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hannes Peltonen

Hannes Peltonen (PhD) works in the Faculty of Social Sciences, at the University of Lapland, in Finland. Email: [email protected]