Daniel Jacobi

Dissident Foreign Policy and the (Re-)production of International Orders

This chapter introduces ‘dissidence’ as a core concept of one alternative approach to the study of deviance in international politics. Its main goal is to outline a perspective that allows focusing on a particular kind of deviant foreign policy practice and on its effects on regional or global political orders. We prefer not to designate these practices as deviant, however, because that would imply a prior understanding of what qualifies as normal foreign policy behavior or a prior definition of the existing norms from which they deviate. Some of the chapters in this volume demonstrate that such an approach can indeed be fruitful. However, our specific interest in an open-ended reconstruction of dissident practices — including the question against what exactly they are agitating — requires us to leave the characterization of international norms and institutions to the texts we analyze. Why do we then speak of ‘dissident’ foreign policy and what do we mean by that? After all, quite a few other terms are used for largely the same phenomena that we want to study: States that challenge international rules are often called ‘rogue states’, ‘pariah states’ or ‘outlaw nations’. Why do we not just stick with these terms instead of introducing a new one?