Getting Socialized to Build Bridges: Constructivism and Rationalism, Europe and the Nation-State

Abstract

Building on the empirical findings of the preceding articles, we advance three arguments+ First, while socialization research has typically been construed as constructivism's home turf, this volume's emphasis on mechanisms and scope conditions reveals that rational choice has much to contribute here as well+ We develop this claim by undertaking a "double interpretation" of each essay, which allows us to advance more fine-grained arguments connecting the two social theories+ Second, while there are good conceptual reasons for expecting a predominance of international socialization in Europe, the empirical cases instead suggest that its effects are often weak and secondary to dynamics at the national level+ We make sense of this puzzle by reasoning more explicitly in longitudinal terms, by drawing on work on European identity, and by noting that students of European socialization-as well as integration-have much to gain by "bringing the domestic back in+" Finally, while our collaborators have demonstrated the empirical and theoretical benefits of combining a social ontology with a positivist epistemology, this comes at a cost, with normative perspectives neglected+ This matters-and all the more so in a Europe marked by supranational constitution-and polity building+ Socialization dynamics may well take us beyond the nation-state, but their legitimacy and governance implications bring us back-forcefully-to it+ As a scientific term, the concept of socialization originated more than 100 years ago-in the first issue of the American Journal of Sociology+ 1 It later became a central term in sociology through the work of Durkheim, who saw it as the process through which individuals develop from the stage of being driven by instinct to being a sociable human being+ 2 Socialization research in general has, since then, been marked by a definitional paradox+ The closer the definition gets to the common-sense meaning of socialization-actors internalize norms and standards of behavior by acting in social structures-the more it runs into operational prob-We are grateful to the project participants and contributors to this volume for valuable discussions on the themes addressed here+ For detailed comments on earlier versions of this essay, we thank two anonymous reviewers, the IO editors, Peter Katzenstein, and Ron Mitchell+ 1+ Ross 1896+

EU governance and European identity

“…The socialization (whose congealed form is collective identity) is expected to modify actors' preference formation from idiosyncratic to more collective-orientated. This bridge-building socialization stresses the relevance of norms of appropriate behaviour within a collectivity (Zürn and Checkel 2005: 1045-1079.…”

Intergovernmental Organizations, Socialization, and Member-State Interest Convergence

“…Our results also do not speak to the different micro-processes underlying institutional socialization+ Scholars working on this subject have identified several possible socialization mechanisms, or micro-foundations, including persuasion~nor-mative suasion!, social influence, role-playing, and even strategic calculation+ 87 But even if our model does not distinguish between these socialization mecha- 86+ Gartzke et al+ 2006+ It is important to note, however, that this result is not necessarily at odds with the ones presented here+ First, our results show the cumulative socialization effect of structured IGOs, which would not be picked up using the IGO-year unit of analysis+ This unit of analysis instead captures the average effect of an individual IGO+ Second, the statistical sample used by these authors included unstructured0minimal IGOs, which we also show to produce no socialization effect~see Table 4!+ Finally, the disadvantage in using the IGO-year unit of analysis is that it forces scholars to treat "time" as a causal variable+ In constructivist theory, the causal variable is structured institutions, and not time+ While it may require time for such institutions to produce any socialization effect, a time counter will be a poor proxy variable if the temporal socialization effect of structured IGOs is nonlinear~see Figure 2!+ 87+ See Johnston 2001; and Checkel 2005+ nisms~and, in our defense, it was not designed for this purpose!, it does provide an avenue for moving in this direction+ To the extent that scholars can identify particular institutional structures or attributes facilitating specific socialization mechanisms, then it should be possible to collect data on these features and then substitute more specific institutional variables into a dyad-year model of interest similarity to replace the more general IGO membership variable used here+ This is surely a promising line of empirical research, but socialization theory needs to identify more clearly what particular institutional features facilitate a high density of interactions leading to memberstate socialization+ If theory does not move first in this regard, then data collection on specific institutional features will face an inevitable charge of "barefoot empiricism+"…”

“…In this article, we make an effort in this direction by testing the constructivist hypothesis about international socialization using a large-N quantitative methodology more common to the rationalist research tradition+ We justify this as a valuable and important exercise because rationalist scholars have arguably ignored the constructivist socialization hypothesis due to doubts about its empirical validity+ Indeed, this point has often been raised by rationalists and constructivists alike+ 6 It would be wrong to say that there is no empirical evidence concerning international socialization, but much of the research has taken a small-N approach to the subject+ Furthermore, the limited number of larger-N quantitative tests that exist have focused exclusively on European institutions, arguably an easy case for the socialization hypothesis+ 7 Finally, some of these quantitative tests reported only limited socialization effects even in Europe+ 8 Thus, while the underlying theory is certainly plausible, it remains uncertain whether it can stand up to more systematic empirical tests+ Some scholars might respond that a systematic empirical test can never be constructed because state interests-a key dependent variable for the international socialization hypothesis-cannot be directly measured+ On this point, we simply 3+ As Wendt acknowledged on this point: "Neoliberals make things hard for themselves by accepting this constraint, and their efforts to explain cooperation under it are admirable"; see Wendt 1994, 384+ 4+ See Wendt 1994 and Finnemore 1996+ 5+ Johnston 2001+ 6+ See, for example, Goldstein and Keohane 1993, 6;Katzenstein, Keohane, and Krasner 1998, 677;Checkel 1998, 325;Johnston 2001, 511;and Zürn and Checkel 2005 Kelley 2004;and Hooghe 2005+ disagree+ Recent data collection efforts have provided IR scholars with stronger and more comprehensive operational measures for state interest similarity+ We admit that these data are not perfect, but few, if any, operational measures could meet such a standard+ To paraphrase Voltaire: it is foolish to let the perfect stand in the way of the good+ With this understanding in mind, our article begins with a presentation of international socialization theory leading to a hypothesis about how IGOs promote interest convergence among member-states+ We then demonstrate how this hypothesis can be tested systematically using relatively new data on dyadic interest similarity 9 and joint structured IGO membership+ 10 Our results show strong statistical support for the institutional socialization hypothesis, using both global and more restricted regional samples+ Indeed, this structured IGO effect is as substantively strong, if not stronger, than any other factor in explaining dyadic interest convergence+ We also demonstrate how our IGO result is consistent with a longer-term socialization process and cannot be explained by the short-term effect of institutional information+ Next, we show some limits to the institutional socialization hypothesis+ Unstructured IGOs reveal no effect in promoting member-state interest convergence+ Following recent theory that argues that great powers in the international system often use IGOs for coercive means, 11 we a...…”

Europe united? The impact of the EU's eastern enlargement, five years on

“…Observed variations in rule adoption, moreover, are explained in large part by the independent variables hypothesised in the external incentives model, including most notably a credible membership perspective and clear political conditionality, as well as tolerable domestic costs of compliance ( [39], 210-211). Other studies of the enlargement process have employed varying theoretical frameworks and focused on different policy areas, but here too the general finding is that explicit and credible membership conditionality is the most important source of EU leverage and policy change in the new and candidate countries, with socialisation, persuasion and lesson-drawing having a much weaker and more variable impact (see for example [24,25,37,44,51]). …”