Arguing deep ideational change

ABSTRACT

How do actors come to contest previously uncontested background ideas? This is a difficult question to ask. On the one hand, deep backgrounds seem to be too foundational for actors to transform. Their political efficacy appears to end where ideas constitute their efficacy in the first place. On the other hand, ideas must not be reified. Even deeply taken-for-granted ideas do not always stay the same, and agents have a lot to do with these changes. In order to answer this question, we draw from social theory and rhetorical studies. We conceptualize the deep background as nomos, and the more easily accessible background as endoxa. We then proceed to identify three sets of conditions that make nomic change possible. These relate to opportunity, message, and messenger. Nomic change becomes possible when the need for something new has become widely established and a supply of new nomic ideas is easily available (opportunity); new nomic ideas are ‘smuggled’ into more orthodox and widely resonating arguments (message) as well as rhetorical encounters in which these arguments are made; and advocates are widely recognized as interlocutors (messenger). A plausibility probe of nomic contestation about nuclear governance provides evidence for this framework.

KEYWORDS:

• Argumentation
• change
• governance
• justification
• rhetoric
• nuclear weapons

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Markus Kornprobst is Professor of International Relations at the Vienna School of International Studies. Before coming to Vienna, he researched and taught at the Mershon Center at the Ohio State University, the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford University, and the School of Public Policy at University College London. His research interests encompass Diplomacy and Governance, International Communication, International Peace and Security, International Relations Theory, European Politics, and African Politics. His research appears in leading journals including International Organization, European Journal of International Relations, and the Journal of Modern African Studies. He is the author of Irredentism in European politics (Cambridge University Press, 2008), co-author of Understanding international diplomacy (Routledge, 2013) as well as co-editor of Arguing global governance (Routledge, 2010) and Metaphors of globalization (Palgrave, 2007).

Martin Senn is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Innsbruck. In his research, he focuses on ideas and international order, rhetoric, the (non)proliferation of nuclear weapons, and targeted-killing practices. Martin Senn's recent publications include 'The art of constructing (in)security: Probing rhetorical strategies of securitisation’, which is forthcoming in the Journal of International Relations and Development, a special section on ‘Background ideas in international relations’ (together with Markus Kornprobst) in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, and a co-authored piece (with Christoph Elhardt) on ‘Bourdieu and the bomb: Power, language, and the doxic battle over the value of nuclear weapons’ in the European Journal of International Relations.

Notes

1. For these strong ontological connotations, see also Bourdieu (2001b, p. 51) and McComiskey (1994).

2. Locus (pl. loci) is the Latin translation of the Greek topos (pl. topoi); we use the Latin term because we draw more from Roman than Greek rhetoric in this article (see also our conceptualisation of authority along the lines of auctoritas below).

3. Bourdieu’s notions of symbolic power and the ‘authorized spokesperson’ (1991, p. 109) allude to this kind of constitution of communicative authority.

4. This is very close to Aristotle’s use of the term (1995). See also Renon (1998) and Haskins (2004).

5. We developed a related distinction in Kornprobst and Senn (2016).

6. On the malleability of credibility, conceptualized as ethos, see also Oliensis (1998) and Goodwin (2001).

7. The nomos is usually uncontested. This status makes it possible for the nomos to constitute a field in the first place. Endoxa, by contrast, are much more contested in a field. There are many communities embracing different clusters of endoxa (Kornprobst & Senn, 2016).

8. On the porous boundaries of orders, see also Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) as well as Fligstein and McAdam (2012).

9. Even formal logicians hold that the foundations on which reasoning is based cannot be proven (Gödel, 1931).

10. On rhetorical practices, see De Certeau (1984). On practices more generally, see Adler and Pouliot (2011).

11. Judging by the signatories to the 2015 Humanitarian Pledge, there are more HI parties to the NPT than non-HI parties (about two-thirds versus one-third).

12. This resembles informal argumentation analyses as developed by Crawford (2002) and Kornprobst (2008).

13. Interview with a diplomat representing a North American state, conducted in Vienna, 6 March 2014; interview with a diplomat representing an East Asian state, conducted in Vienna, 21 February 2014.

14. Interview with a diplomat representing an EU member state, Vienna, 4 April 2013. Interview with a diplomat representing a European state, Vienna, 31 January 2014.

15. Interview with diplomat representing a lead NAM state, Vienna, 15 April 2013.

16. The Humanitarian Pledge (2015) originates with the 2015 HI Conference in Vienna, where it was introduced as Austrian Pledge.

17. All of these components featured in much detail at the 2014 HI Conferences in Nayarit (http://www.sre.gob.mx/en/index.php/humanimpact-nayarit-2014) and Vienna (Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs, 2015).

18. Interview with Bernhard Schneider, Head of Department of the Legal Office, ICRC, Vienna, 4 February 2014.

19. Interview with a diplomat representing an EU member state, Vienna, 4 April 2013. Interview with a diplomat representing a European state, 31 January 2014.

20. Interview with a diplomat representing a European state, 31 January 2014.

21. NPT/CONF.2010/P.C.II/WP.26.

22. Interview with John Loretz, Program Director, IPPNW, New York, 3 March 2015.

23. Interview with Luis Alfonso de Alba, Permanent Representative of Mexico to the United Nations in Vienna, 6 March 2014.

24. Currently, there is a domestic battle in Norway, pitting the government against parliament, about whether Norway should sign the Humanitarian Pledge or not. The government, concerned about its NATO commitments, shies away from this step because the Pledge calls for a legal ban on nuclear weapons. This sharpening of the disarmament formulation made it a recalcitrant actor.

25. Interview with Luis Alfonso de Alba, Permanent Representative of Mexico to the United Nations in Vienna, 6 March 2014; interview with Alfredo Alejandro Labbe Villa, Permanent Representative of Chile to the United Nations, Vienna, 4 June 2013.

26. Interview with a diplomat representing an EU member state, Vienna, 4 April 2013.

27. For a detailed overview, see International Law and Policy Institute (2014, p. 188).

28. A list of the signatories can be found at http://www.icanw.org/pledge/ (accessed 13 February 2016).

29. Interview with a diplomat representing a European state, Vienna, 31 January 2014.

30. http://www.icanw.org/campaign-news/powerful-statement-of-setsuko-thurlow-in-vienna/.