Interests, ideas, and the study of state behaviour in neoclassical realism

Abstract

Ideational variables have frequently been employed in positivist-minded and materialist analyses of state behaviour. Almost inevitably, because of these commitments, such studies run into theoretical challenges relating to the use of ideas. In this article, I suggest that integrating ideational factors in positivist and materialist approaches to state behaviour requires: (1) distinguishing conceptually between interests and ideation as well as between individual beliefs and social ideas; and (2) addressing challenges of operationalisation and measurability. To that end, I employ neoclassical realism as a case study. I argue that a re-conceptualisation of ideas as externalised individual beliefs employed in political deliberation allows neoclassical realists to focus on how ideas and ideational competition intervene in the transmission belt from materially given interests to foreign policy choice. At the same time, it more clearly operationalises ideas as identifiable in language and communication. I suggest this reconceptualisation, while consistent with realist paradigmatic assumptions, need not be limited to neoclassical realism. Instead, transposed to different paradigms, it would similarly allow positivist-minded constructivists and institutionalists to avoid a conceptually and methodologically awkward equation of different ideational factors.

Neorealism, neoclassical realism and the problem(s) of history

“…104 This commitment to discernible variables, and to the independence and temporal priority of cause over effect implies a Humean concept of causality. 105 Here, causality refers to the 'difference between the systematic component of observations made when the explanatory variables take one value and the systematic component of comparable observations when the explanatory variables takes on another value'. 106 Where history affects the likelihood of specific outcomes, which in turn provide the independent variable for subsequent state behaviour, it creates iterative relationships of the kind usually associated with constructivism.…”

Indonesia’s Foreign and Maritime Policies Under Joko Widodo: Domestic and External Determinants

“…The articles employing neoclassical realism identify systemic/external stimuli that Indonesia currently faces, highlighting the importance of domestic politics in shaping various stakeholders' perception on such stimuli, as well as in influencing their conception of foreign policy goals and national interest (He, 2008;Korolev & Portyakov, 2018;Kuik, 2012;Laksmana, 2016;Lobell et al, 2009, p. 322;Magcamit, 2020;Meibauer, 2020;Rose, 1998;Sari, 2019;Sebastian & Syailendra, 2017;Smith, 2019;Sulaiman, 2019;Syailendra, 2017). 9 Departing from neorealism, which suggests that states placed in a similar position in the international system would behave similarly despite differing domestic structures, neoclassical realists 'seek to explain variation in the foreign policies of the same state over time or across different states facing similar external constraints' (Taliaferro et al, 2009, p. 21).…”

Realist avenues to global International Relations

“…NCR starts with variables pertaining to material reality before it introduces ideational variables. In contrast, thin constructivism’s ontological priority of ideas over matter means that it starts with variables pertaining to ideation (Barkin, 2003: 326; Meibauer, 2020; Sterling-Folker, 2002; Wendt, 1999). By this interpretation, NCR provides one path toward global IR different from constructivism.…”

“… 7. This literature has developed since the early 1990s in the works of, amongst others, Christensen (1996), Dueck (2004), Dyson (2009), Hadfield-Amkhan (2010), He (2017), Juneau (2015), Kitchen (2010), Larsen (2019), Meibauer (2020), Schweller (2018), K Smith (2016), NR Smith (2016), Steinsson (2017), Sterling-Folker (2009), Taliaferro (2006), Wivel (2005), Wohlforth (1993), and Zakaria (1998). …”