Edward Rhodes

Do Bureaucratic Politics Matter? Some Disconfirming Findings from the Case of the U.S. Navy

Allisons Model III (governmental or bureaucratic politics) suggests that state policies reflect the parochial concerns of intragovernmental “players in positions” and the relative power of these players. This article offers a critical test. It examines a policy area—U.S. decisions on the composition of naval forces—in which we would, a priori, expect bureaucratic politics to have a maximum effect and which participants, observers, and scholars have routinely described as critically influenced by bureaucratic politics. This article employs statistical methods to assess whether outcomes have indeed been affected by the parochial priorities and perceptions of individuals who, because of their relative power and the rules of the game, have dominated the relevant bureaucratic action-channels. Contrary to the expectations of the bureaucratic politics literature—indeed, contrary to the reports of firsthand observers and the actors involved—bureaucratic politics do not seem to have mattered: knowledge of bureaucratic interests and power does not permit us to predict outcomes. The article then proceeds to suggest an alternative model of state behavior that does provide significant explanatory power: the article demonstrates that shifts in force posture can be modeled as a function of ideas and images rather than of interests . This gives rise to speculation that in explaining American foreign and security policy the name of the game is not, as Allison suggests, politics, but the competition of ideas for intellectual hegemony.

The National State and Identity Politics: State Institutionalisation and “Markers” of National Identity

Nationality has been a key identity in international relations for much of the modern period, and the marriage of “nation” and “state” produced a powerful polity – the national state – that dominated global politics. This article investigates the forces that “pushed” and “pulled” nations and states together and explores the factors associated with violent identity politics. It argues that while recent decades have witnessed increasing instances of divorce between “nation” and “state” and a simultaneous proliferation of identity conflicts, the likelihood that identity conflicts will be expressed violently depends both on the character of the state (the timing of state institutionalisation relative to the construction of national consciousness, the democratic or non-democratic nature of the state, and the national or non-national basis for the legitimation of state authority) and on the principal “marker” used to construct national identity (blood, language, culture, religion, or citizenship).

The Good, the Bad, and the Righteous: Understanding the Bush Vision of a New NATO Partnership

This article analyzes the Bush administrations vision of NATO and its future development. Examining the statements of president Bush and other high-ranking US officials, the article explores the ways in which the administrations understanding of NATO is embedded in its vision of world politics as an epochal struggle between good and evil. While evil has assumed a variety of faces in the past, in todays world it is manifested as tyranny and terrorism. The restoration of humanitys birthright of freedom requires the faith and moral courage to eradicate, rather than accommodate or compromise with, this evil. For the Bush administration, this conception of an ongoing war between the righteous and the poor of spirit logically implies the need for widened membership in NATO, a new partnership with Russia, an expansion of the theater of struggle from Europe to the world, and a transformation of the alliances military capabilities.

Sea Change: Interest‐based vs. cultural‐cognitive account of strategic choice in the 1890s

(1996). Sea Change: Interest‐based vs. cultural‐cognitive account of strategic choice in the 1890s. Security Studies: Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 73-124.

Why Nations Fight: Spirit, Identity, and Imagined Community

Leaders, Ned Lebow provocatively and usefully argues in Why Nations Fight, are motivated to initiate war not simply by appetite and by fear, but by “spirit”—that is, by their desire for standing and revenge.1 This is, without question, a critically important observation if we are to understand why nations fight. It is an observation likely to be especially intriguing to constructivist scholars—which is what motivates this particular review. Spirit, of course, is a socially constructed reality. Esteem, self-esteem, and honor—the principal components of spirit—exist only in reflection or in anticipated reflection. They are functions of how (based on social interactions) we think others regard us, and how this compares to how we regard ourselves on those dimensions or characteristics we believe are important. Identity—how we socially construct or define who we are—determines the dimensions or characteristics we take to be important. In my own case, since I define myself as an academic, my self-esteem is not harmed at all by the realization that you think I am a terrible driver or a laughably poor sprinter—but for other individuals the slightest hint that they were perceived this way might trigger an immediate need for improved standing or revenge. What spirit means and what it motivates us to do or to respond to depends entirely on our construction of our identity. To understand the full implications of Lebow’s observation, though, we need to step back for a moment and think about modern war itself. Modern war, as Lebow observes, is “an increasingly complex social practice.”2 It is a social practice in two senses. First, it is a social interaction between nations—a violent and nasty sort of interaction to be sure, but nonetheless

Challenges of Globalization, Flattening and Unbundling:

We are currently witnessing a major transformation of twentieth-century institutions. It is not that the sovereign state, the business corporation or the other major institutions of national and international life are going away, but they are experiencing substantial ‘unravelling’. Driving this process are two underlying dynamics: the dramatic expansion of information and communication technology and a pervasive expansion of human capacity caused by wider access to education. The unravelling of institutions which results from these dynamics has three key elements. The first is globalization—a fundamental change in time–distance relationships and in the impact of physical and political boundaries. The second is the increased ability of single individuals or informally organized, non-hierarchic groups to solve complex problems, resulting in a ‘flattening’ of effective organizations. The third transformation is the ‘unbundling’ of services, as the ability of organizations to control information and markets declines. These transformations promise to change the relative competitiveness of various institutions.

Book Review: Ieva Zake, Nineteenth-century Nationalism and Twentieth-century Anti-democratic Ideals: The Case of Latvia, 1840s to 1980s (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008, 181 pp., £74.95 hbk)

US meta-theories such as formal theory or rational choice are not exported to the periphery, or even to semi-core areas such as the UK or Western Europe. Theories such as realism and interdependence theory do get exported, but for practical reasons they are employed in the periphery in relation to states’ foreign policies rather than as theories. Local IR communities, thus, remain relatively independent, practising kinds of IR that do not reproduce the activities most highly valued in the core of American IR, but they do not constitute different universes. Tickner and Wæver also conclude that the classical sociology of science dynamics do not function in the non-core, though this finding leaves an unacknowledged question mark hanging over the sociological approaches set out in the introduction. It is an occupational hazard of such volumes that individual readers will know more about some countries/regions and little or nothing about others, and that objections are likely to be raised by those familiar with a specific case. My own comment along these lines would be that although Tickner and Wæver note on more than one occasion that their project cannot restrict itself to what is conventionally considered part of IR, since this varies from place to place, they postpone any detailed discussion of this question to a later volume. This issue seems too important to be postponed, and I am not sure whether the tools proposed in this initial volume will be able to deal with, for example, the decidedly fuzzy disciplinary boundaries of IR in the UK. However, since such case studies cannot be written by committees – or would be less interesting if they were – it is both inevitable and desirable that these exchanges will take place. More problematic, perhaps, is a discussion that may not take place. There is still a surprising amount of resistance to the idea that IR is significantly different in different places. If Tickner and Wæver are correct in their basic contention that it is, as I think they are, there is a need for substantive debate about this. I suspect, though, that scholars who are inclined to resist the idea will probably not read this volume anyway. The question then remains: how and where can this important issue be debated? In the meantime, we can look forward to Tickner and Wæver’s second volume (Thinking IR Differently) and to its as yet untitled successor.