Changing the Rules: A Speech Act Analysis of the End of the Cold War

Abstract

Constructivists often refer to the end of the Cold War to illustrate their contention that social rules are not immutable. Agents can change the rules by performing actions that undermine them. In this article, we describe the Cold War as a set of social rules sustained by superpower speech acts. We show that, by altering their behavior, the superpowers undermined the felicity of these rules. In so doing, they progressively dismantled the rules of the Cold War. Our model captures the competing arguments in the ongoing debate about whether the rationalist buildup argument or the constructivist new thinking argument better explains the end of the Cold War. Within the model, we identify the rules that, when made infelicitous by the superpowers, resolves tensions in the Cold War rule system in ways consistent with each argument. We conclude by showing how these competing arguments are reflected in contemporary debates concerning the nature of the global security rules emerging in the post-cold-war world.

Rules, Agency, and International Structuration

“…The treatment of rules here will differ somewhat from that in Onuf () and in Duffy and Frederking (), who build on Onuf's treatment. I follow their lead toward active rules and recognize constitutive and regulative rules, which correspond closely to Onuf () instruction rules and directive rules.…”

“…I will argue in the section about agents and their identities that the narrative representation is necessary to explain actions situated in historical sequence. And third, this article differs in its treatment of rules from those by Kratochwil (1989), Onuf (1989), and Duffy and Frederking (2009) in how it relates rules to actions and how it accounts for the persistence or demise of social rules. In addition, as I will show in my account of practices below, the treatment of practices here satisfies criteria for good empirical theorizing of practices put forward by Adler and Pouliot (2011) and Kratochwil (2011) in their discussion of the "practice turn.…”

“…An explanation is problematic if it gives ontological priority either to purposive agents or to enabling and constraining structures. Second, constructivist IR theory has recognized the importance of intersubjective rules (Dessler ; Kratochwil ; Onuf ; Finnemore and Sikkink ; Duffy and Frederking ). An intersubjective rule is one communicated among persons and collective actors and comes to be known in common in a community.…”

“…But, to do so, rules will have to be treated carefully. The treatment of rules here departs from that of Onuf (1989) and Kratochwil (1989), as well as from Duffy and Frederking (2009), whose formal linguistic model builds on Onuf (1989). The two main differences appear in describing how rules relate to action and in feedback into rules.…”

Kaita ir nacionalinė tapatybė užsienio politikos studijose : Lietuvos atvejis

“…Pasak Emanuelio Adlerio, "vienas pagrindinių socialinio konstruktyvizmo tikslų -pateikti empirinį socialinių institucijų ir socialinės kaitos aiš-kinimą, tiriant veikėjus ir socialines struktūras" 12 . Gavanas Duffy ir Brianas Frederkingas pažymėjo, kad veikėjai ir socialinės struktūros nulemia vieni kitus: individų veiksmai formuoja visuomenes, o šios savo ruožtu formuoja individus 13 . Konstruktyvizmas pabrėžia subjektyvias ir intersubjektyvias sąveikas bei veiksmus, veikėjai gali būti individai, valstybės, nevalstybinės organizacijos, institucijos, visuomenės, regionai ar tarptautinė sistema ir pan.…”