Treating International Institutions as Social Environments

Abstract

Socialization theory is a neglected source of explanations for cooperation in international relations. Neorealism treats socialization~or selection, more properly! as a process by which autistic non-balancers are weeded out of the anarchical international system. Contractual institutionalists ignore or downplay the possibilities of socialization in international institutions in part because of the difficulties in observing changes in interests and preferences. For constructivists socialization is a central concept. But to date it has been undertheorized, or more precisely, the microprocesses of socialization have been generally left unexamined. This article focuses on two basic microprocesses in socialization theory-persuasion and social influence-and develops propositions about the social conditions under which one might expect to observe cooperation in institutions. Socialization theories pose questions for both the structural-functional foundations of contractual institutionalist hypotheses about institutional design and cooperation, and notions of optimal group size for collective action.It is fair to say that for most international relations theorists there are two main ways in which involvement in international institutions changes state behavior in more cooperative directions. The first is through material rewards and punishments: in pursuit of a~mostly! constant set of interests or preferences a state responds to positive and negative sanctions provided exogenously by the institution~rules, membership requirements, etc.! or by certain actors within the institution. The second is through changes in the domestic distributions of power among social groups pursuing~mostly! a constant set of interests or preferences such that different distributions lead to different aggregated state preferences.Few would deny that these are plausible, observable, and probably quite frequent ways in which policies change direction after a state enters an international institution. But constructivists would expand this list, and ask if and how involvement in international institutions changes state behavior in the absence of these two conditions, and in the presence of conditions that are unique to social groups qua social groups, namely, socialization processes. How would one know if socialization processes were critical in producing cooperative behavior? Why it is important for IR theory to figure out an answer to this question?

Testing the Value of the Postwar International Order

“…That is the topic to which we now turn. 20 See, for example, Betts, 2012. 21 Johnston, 2001, pp. 501-502.…”

Transgovernmental networks and rationalist outputs? The partial social construction of EU foreign policy

“…It is here where the literature has generally failed. It has failed to convincingly show how nationally-oriented practices have been subsumed by social ones, or at least, how they have been substantively altered in their functioning and logic (Johnston 2001;Sarugger 2013).…”

“…On a whole, the consequences of this move should be more lucidly drawn, including with regard to the alleged distinctive and novel nature of the EU as political actor. Arguably, one of the possible sources of change frequently mentioned in the literature is socialization -which can include different micro-processes, such as persuasion and social influence (Johnston 2001). The work on this subject, however, still has a lot to demonstrate.…”

Preventing protectionism: International institutions and trade policy

“…Social and cultural IGOs, for example, may create "bilateral sympathy, understanding and affinity, and interpersonal connections" across borders that have economic benefits such as the expansion of trade between members (Ingram, Robinson, and Busch 2005, 831). Similarly, international institutions, seen from a constructivist angle, are important social environments that promote cooperation and propagate norms (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) through the key mechanisms of persuasionand social influence (Johnston 2001). …”