Stacie E. Goddard

Brokering change: networks and entrepreneurs in international politics

Political entrepreneurs reside at the core of international relations (IR) theory. Structures might constrain agents, but entrepreneurs can remake and transform these structures, contesting norms, shifting identities and creating space for significant political change. Despite this, IR theorists note that key questions about entrepreneurs remain under-theorized. Under what conditions are political entrepreneurs likely to emerge? Who is likely to succeed as an entrepreneur, and how do entrepreneurs produce structural change? I argue scholars could strengthen their answers to these questions by drawing from the growing program of social network theory. Networks influence entrepreneurship in three ways. First, networks provide certain actors – brokers – with resources to effect change. It is not an actor’s attributes or interests but her position, then, that enables entrepreneurial behavior. Second, networks create the conditions of entrepreneurship. While certain networks are extremely stable, others contain contradictions that allow entrepreneurs to emerge. Finally, network theory posits structural mechanisms – including mobilization, polarization, and yoking – to explain political change.

When Right Makes Might: How Prussia Overturned the European Balance of Power

From 1864 to 1871, Prussia mounted a series of wars that fundamentally altered the balance of power in Europe. Yet no coalition emerged to check Prussias rise. Rather than balance against Prussian expansion, the great powers sat on the sidelines and allowed the transformation of European politics. Traditionally, scholars have emphasized structural variables, such as mulitpolarity, or domestic politics as the cause of this underbalancing. It was Prussias legitimation strategies, howeverthe way Prussia justified its expansionthat undermined a potential balancing coalition. As Prussia expanded, it appealed to shared rules and norms, strategically choosing rhetoric that would resonate with each of the great powers. These legitimation strategies undermined balancing coalitions through three mechanisms: by signaling constraint, laying rhetorical traps (i.e., framing territorial expansion in a way that deprived others states grounds on which to resist), and increasing ontological security (i.e., demonstrating its need to secure its identity in international politics), Prussia effectively expanded without opposition. An analysis of Prussias expansion in 1864 demonstrates how legitimation strategies prevented the creation of a balancing coalition.

Correspondence: Taking Offense at Offense-Defense Theory

I n his article ”Offense, Defense, and the Causes of War,”’ Stephen Van Evera claims that ”offense-defense theory” is ”important,” has “wide explanatory range. . . . wide realworld applicability. . . . large prescriptive utility. . . . [and] is quite satisfying” (p. 41). Van Evera’s conclusions are, however, unwarranted. First, his reformulation of influential arguments made prominent by Robert Jervis stretches the meaning of key concepts such that interesting avenues of empirical inquiry are closed off rather than opened. Second, the hypotheses--or “prime predictions”-Van Evera derives from the theory are themselves products of faulty deductive logic. Furthermore, they are nontestable, presumably nonscientific in Van Evera’s understanding of the term.’ Van Evera’s results are thus of little use to the social scientist who is interested in understanding the myriad causes of war and conditions facilitative of peace. In his classic article, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” Jervis argued that the security dilemma is more virulent and the international system less stable when offense enjoys an advantage over defense. By contrast, when defense is more potent, status quo powers find it easier to adopt compatible security policies, and the pernicious effects of international anarchy are greatly d imin i~hed .~ Although the operation-

Rhetoric, Legitimation, and Grand Strategy

This introductory framing paper theorizes the role of legitimation—the public justification of policy—in the making of grand strategy. We contend that the process of legitimation has significant and independent effects on grand strategys constituent elements and on how grand strategy is formulated and executed. Legitimation is integral to how states define the national interest and identify threats, to how the menu of policy options is constituted, and to how audiences are mobilized. Second, we acknowledge that legitimation matters more at some times than others, and we develop a model specifying the conditions under which it affects political processes and outcomes. We argue that the impact of legitimation depends on the governments need for mobilization and a policys visibility, and from the intersection of these two factors we derive five concrete hypotheses regarding when legitimation is most likely to have an impact on strategy. Finally, we explore who wins: why legitimation efforts sometimes succeed in securing public assent, yet at other times fall short. Our framework emphasizes what is said (the content of legitimation), how it is said (technique), and the context in which it is said. We conclude by introducing the papers in this special issue, revisiting the larger theoretical stakes involved in studying rhetoric and foreign policy, and speculating about how changes in the technologies and sites of communication have, or have not, transformed legitimation and leadership in world politics.

The Rhetoric of Appeasement: Hitler's Legitimation and British Foreign Policy, 1938–39

Few grand strategies have been more scrutinized than Britains decision to appease Nazi Germany. From 1933 to 1938, Britain eschewed confrontation and attempted to settle German demands. However in the five months following the negotiations at Munich, the British abandoned appeasement and embraced a policy of confronting the German state. The roots of both appeasement and confrontation can be found in Germanys legitimation strategies. Until the Munich crisis, Adolf Hitler justified Germanys aims with appeals to collective security, equality, and self-determination—norms central to the European system established by the Treaty of Versailles. After Munich, in contrast, German politicians abandoned these legitimation strategies, arguing instead that expansion was justified as a matter of German might, and not international rights. As Britain came to see German demands as illegitimate, so too did they decide this revisionist state was insatiable, impervious to negotiation, and responsive only to the language of force.

Time and the Intractability of Territorial Disputes

what’s time got to do with it? Time seems integral to Hassner’s theory, creating intractable territorial disputes through three processes. First, conquered territory undergoes material entrenchment, as lines of transportation and communication link territory to the core of the state. Second, functional processes, such as mapping, make borders less ambiguous and less negotiable. Third, time creates symbolic attachments: as individuals aght, live, and die in conquered land, they construct myths to legitimate their territorial claims. Although Hassner’s arguments are intuitively plausible, it is unclear what effect time really has in his theory. Neither the duration of a territorial conoict nor a lack of settlement proves that disputes become more intractable over time. For example, territorial conoict could endure because initial conditions make it difacult to solve. Hassner claims that he controls for these conditions and that variables such as initial power and material value are unrelated to the conoict’s duration or resolution (p. 114 n. 19). But by his own account, it is initial perceptions of territorial value and cohesion that most affect the dispute’s entrenchment. If this is the case, it is not time but actors’ existing perceptions that make territorial disputes persist: conoict is not entrenched; it starts out as more difacult to solve. Hassner might respond that although initial perceptions explain variable rates of entrenchment, entrenchment occurs in all conoicts, even if the territory is initially perceived as worthless. Thus entrenchment is not reducible to initial conditions. This argument would be more convincing if Hassner provided evidence that disputes become intractable in the absence of initial perceptions. His two cases where initial perceptions of value are absent—Antarctica and the Spratly Islands—exhibit no entrench-