Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T07:58:36.351Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Foreign policy leadership and national integration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Philip G. Cerny
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

National integration and the legitimation of authority

The study of foreign policy leadership is characterized by a number of conceptual and methodological problems for the researcher. It is located on the divide between the study of the individual and the idiosyncratic, on the one hand, and the structural and patterned on the other; it stands at the crossroads of the internal political system and the international arena; and it lends an aura of personalized comprehensibility to complex processes of change and development, integration and disintegration, in the multidimensional political, social and economic environment in which it is set. Its very choice of subject matter seems to assume that political actors, although working within specific systemic constraints, also possess opportunities to make and/or enforce choices under permissive conditions which allow a significant amount of conscious manipulation. Furthermore, such studies often take for granted that the nation-state is the most significant unit of analysis – in the sense that it is treated as given rather than as problematic. This essay attempts to chart a course through these complex waters by developing a set of interrelated hypotheses about a particular type of foreign policy leadership and the uses to which it is put – namely the legitimation of the authority of the state itself within what have been called “modern national culture societies”.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , April 1979 , pp. 59 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1979

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Page 59 note 1. Znaniecki, Florian, Modern Nationalities: A Sociological Study (Westport, Conn., 1973Google Scholar [orig. pub. 1952]).

Page 59 note 2. Cf. Moore, Barrington, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Harmondsworth, Middx., 1967)Google Scholar.

Page 60 note 1. I.e., the change from ‘status’ to ‘contract’, from a diffuse socio-economic structure to one based on a complex division of labour, from decision-making structures based on ‘right reason’ or natural law to ones based on formal economic rationality, from authority based on traditional or charismatic legitimation to authority based on legal-rational norms. Gf. Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, ed. Parsons, Talcott (New York, 1947)Google Scholar; Etzioni, Amitai and Etzioni, Eva (eds.) Social Change: Sources, Patterns and Consequences (New York, 1964)Google Scholar; and Levy, Marion J., Jr., Modernization and the Structure of Societies: xi Setting for International Affairs (Princeton, 1966), 2Google Scholar vols.

Page 60 note 2. Direct economic exploitation, administrative decision-making divorced from the local socio-cultural context, lack of ‘national’ consciousness or political expertise on the part of both elites and masses, etc.

Page 60 note 3. I.e., the adoption of Western perspectives and experiences - and patterns of material expectation - by peripheral elites, the concentration of pure resource power in the indus-trialised world, and the subordinate role played in the world production process by Third World economies. Galtung, Johan, ‘On Power in General’, in Galtung, (ed.) The European Community: A Superpower in the Making (London, 1973)Google Scholar, ch. 2.

Page 60 note 4. E.g., Bendix, Reinhard, Nation-building and Citizenship (Garden City, N.Y., 1969)Google Scholar, Eisenstadt, S. N. and Rokkan, Stein, Building States and Nations (Beverly Hills, 1973)Google Scholar, 2 vols.

Page 60 note 5. Cf. Jaguaribe, Helio, Political Development: A General Theory and a Case Study (New York, 1973)Google Scholar; Amin, Samir, Accumulation on a World Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment (New York, 1974)Google Scholar, 2 vols.

Page 60 note 6. “… all modern national culture societies (unlike conservative tribal societies and folk communities, exclusive religious sects, and certain stabilised, peaceful states) tend to expand; their very formation is a dynamic, expansive process, and their further development depends upon … [other] kinds of expansion.” Znaniecki, op. cit. pp. 114—115.

Page 61 note 1. Moore, op. cit. ch. 2.

Page 61 note 2. Hoffman, Stanley, ‘Paradoxes of the French Political Community’, in Hoffman, et al. In Search of France (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 1–117Google Scholar.

Page 61 note 3. Cerny, P. G., ‘Political Purpose and the Role of the State in the Thought of Charles de Gaulle’, II Pensiero Politico, vii (1974), pp. 403–411Google Scholar.

Page 61 note 4. Gaulle, Charles de, Memoires d'espoir (Plon, Paris, 1970-1971)Google Scholar, 2 vols.; cf. also Cerny, P., ‘De Gaulle, the Nation-State, and Foreign Policy’, The Review of Politics, xxxiii (1971), pp. 254–278Google Scholar.

Page 62 note 1. Ward, Barbara, Nationalism and Ideology (London, 1966), pp. 17—19Google Scholar.

Page 62 note 2. In effect, the concept of a “legitimate order” can (but does not necessarily) imply a “reciprocity of expectations” (which Weber identifies as that basis of social relations distinct from those based on an “exercise of authority”: Bendix, op. cit. p. 19) between the governors and the governed in the manner of a social contract; ideology in this sense provides the specific content of such a relationship.

Page 62 note 3. Although the potentialities - and dangers - of the manipulation of kinship structures for the purpose of creating national solidarity can be seen in the history of German unification.

Page 63 note 1. “Because the meaning of the [political] act in these cases depends only partly or not at all upon its objective consequences, which the mass public cannot know, the meaning can only come from the psychological needs of the respondents; and it can only be known from their responses.” Edelman, Murray, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana, 1964)Google Scholar, p. 7.

Page 63 note 2. Kissinger, Henry A., A World Restored; Metternich, Castelreagh and the Problems of Peace 1812–1822 (Boston, 1957)Google Scholar, p. 331.

Page 63 note 3. Gf. Kavanagh, Dennis, Political Culture (London, 1972), pp. 10–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

Page 63 note 4. Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and in Five Nations (Boston, revised edn., 1965), p. 305Google Scholar.

Page 63 note 5. Znaniecki, loc. cit.

Page 64 note 1. Aron, Raymond, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations (London, 1966), p. 371Google Scholar (French edn., 1962).

Page 64 note 2. Nettl, J. P., Political Mobilization (London, 1967), pp. 174–175Google Scholar.

3. A claim for such convergence in Norway is made in Eckstein, Harry, Division and Cohesion in Democracy; A Study of Norway (Princeton, 1966)Google Scholar; for a comparative perspective, cf. Hans Daalder, ‘Parties, Elites and Political Developments in Western Europe’, in Palma, Giuseppe di (ed.), Mass Politics in Industrial Societies: A Reader in Comparative Politics (Chicago, 1972), pp. 4–36Google Scholar.

Page 64 note 4. Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics, op. cit. p. 13.

Page 64 note 5. Ibid. p. 4.

Page 65 note 1. Stamps, Norman L., Why Democracies Fail (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1957), p. 47Google Scholar.

Page 65 note 2. Almond and Verba, op. cit. p. 192; also Verba, Sidney, ‘Comparative Political Culture’, in Pye, Lucian W. and Verba, (eds.), Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton, 1965), P.529Google Scholar

Page 65 note 3. Kelman, Herbert C., ‘Patterns of Personal Involvement in the National System: A Social and Psychological Analysis of Political Legitimacy’, in Rosenau, James N. (ed.), International Politics and Foregn Policy (New York, 1969), pp. 280–283Google Scholar.

Page 65 note 4. Talcott Parsons, ‘A Functional Theory of Change’, in Etzioni and Etzioni, op. cit. p. 87.

Page 65 note 5. John H. Herz, ‘The Territorial State Revisited: Reflections on the Future of the Nation-State’, in Rosenau. op. cit. p. 83.

Page 66 note 1. Verba, op. cit. p. 530.

Page 66 note 2. Lasswell, Harold A., World Politics and Personal Insecurity (New York, 1965), p. 77Google Scholar (orig. pub. 1935).

Page 66 note 3. Ake, Claude, ‘Charismatic Legitimation and Political Integration’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, ix (1966-1967), pp. 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I prefer Ake's term “political integration” (which he distinguishes from the meaning of the term used by Haas and others) to “nation-building”, “authority legitimation”, etc., because it indicates a more over-arching process which subsumes the others. Nettl distinguishes between ideology - the active ingredient in this symbolic process - and culture, which is created and moulded by ideology; op. cit. p. 27.

Page 66 note 4. Almond and Verba, op. cit. pp. 105–106.

Page 67 note 1. Edelman, Murray, Politics as Symbolic Action: Mass Arousal and Quiescence (Chicago, 1971), pp. 31–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

Page 67 note 2. Deutsch, Karl W., Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations Nationality (Cambridge, Mass., 2nd edn., 1966), p. 97Google Scholar.

Page 67 note 3. Brown, Bernard E., ‘The French Experience of Modernization’, World Politics xxi, p. 376Google Scholar

Page 68 note 1. Deutsch, op. cit, p. 172; also cf. Kelman, op. cit. p. 278.

Page 68 note 2. Nettl, op. cit. p. III.

Page 69 note 1. Ibid. p. 199.

Page 69 note 2. Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics, op. cit. p. 138.

Page 69 note 3. Nettl, op. cit. p. 144.

Page 69 note 4. Ibid. p. 115.

Page 69 note 5. Ibid. p. 247.

Page 69 note 6. Ibid. p. 300.

Page 69 note 7. Ibid. p. 143.

Page 70 note 1. Ibid. p. 219.

Page 70 note 2. Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics, op. cit. p. 19.

Page 70 note 3. Idem.

Page 70 note 4. Verba reminds readers of the significance of “salient crises” in this regard; op. cit. PP. 555 ff.

Page 70 note 5. Rosenau, James N., ‘The National Interest’, in Rosenau,The Scientific Study of Foreign Policy (New York, 1971), p. 239Google Scholar.

Page 70 note 6. Gf. Gunnar Myrdal, et al., ‘The Principle of Cumulation’, in Etzioni and Etzioni, op. cit. PP. 457–458.

Page 71 note 1. Smelser, Neil J., ‘Mechanisms of Change and Adjustment to Change’, in Hoselitz, Bert F. and Moore, Wilbert E. (eds.), Industrialization and Society (The Hague, 1963), p. 45.Google Scholar

Page 71 note 2. Frankel, Joseph, National Interest (London, 1970), p. 43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

Page 72 note 1. Kelman, op. cit. p. 284.

Page 72 note 2. Edelman, Politics as Symbolic Action, op. cit. p. 101.

Page 72 note 3. Aristotle, Politics, book I; cf. Marcel Merle, Sociologie des Relations Internationales (Paris, 1974)Google Scholar, ch. 1.

Page 72 note 4. Rosenau, James N., ‘Foreign Policy as an Issue-Area’, in Rosenau (ed.), Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy (New York 1967), p. 24Google Scholar.

Page 73 note 1. Camus, Albert, The Rebel (London, 1953)Google Scholar.

Page 73 note 2. Rosenau ‘Foreign Policy as an Issue-Area’, loc. cit.

Page 74 note 1. Lasswell, op. cit. p. 55.

Page 74 note 2. Rosenau, ‘Foreign Policy as an Issue-Area’, op. cit. p. 45.

Page 75 note 1. Stability is, of course, by definition a ‘conservative’ objective; in this sense we do not see it as an inherent property of functional general systems in the structural-functional sense so much as the logical goal of a dominant group or structure (whether newly-established or long-established, traditional or revolutionary). It is possible, of course, to posit that the right or correct goal of any system worth the name is the maintenance of stability because peace and lack of violent conflict is good in itself; this is the Hobbesian principle which political scientists and sociologists have been dealing with throughout the modern and contemporary period. But to treat stability as somehow above issues is to miss the fact that stability itself i s a central issue. Gf. pertinent remarks in Rosenau, ‘Foreign Policy as an Issue-Area’, op. cit. p, 13n., and Merle, op. cit. pp. 273–275.

Page 76 note 1. Cf. Apter, David E., The Politics of Modernisation (Chicago, 1965), pp. 138–144Google Scholar.

Page 77 note 1. Weber, op. cit.

Page 77 note 2. Johnson, Douglas, France (London, 1969), p. 108Google Scholar.

Page 78 note 1. Rustow, Dankwart A., ‘Atatiirk as Founder of a State’, Daedalus, iiic (1968), p. 794Google Scholar.

Page 78 note 2. Tucker, Robert G., ‘The Theory of Charismatic Leadership’, Daedalus, iiic (1968), p. 744Google Scholar.

Page 78 note 3. Apter, David E., Charisma, Nkrumah, and the Coup’ Daedalus, iiic (1968), p. 760Google Scholar.

Page 78 note 4. Quoted in Tucker, op. cit. p. 745.

Page 78 note 5. Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics, op. cit. p. 76.

Page 78 note 6. Tucker, loc. cit.

Page 78 note 7. Lasswell, op. cit. p. 19.

Page 78 note 8. Edelman, Politics as Symbolic Action, op. cit. p. 81, and The Symbolic Uses of Politics, op. cit. pp. 96–97.

Page 78 note 9. Schweitzer, Arthur, ‘Theory and Political Charisma’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, xvi (1974), pp. 153–154Google Scholar-

Page 79 note 1. Ibid, pp. 154–165, 179.

Page 79 note 2. Apter, ‘Nkrumah, Charisma, and the Coup’, op, cit. p. 766.

Page 79 note 3. Tucker, op. cit. p. 737.

Page 80 note 1. Max Weber, ‘The Routinization of Charisma’, in Etzioni and Etzioni, op. cit. ch. 9

Page 80 note 2. Rustow, op. cit. p. 797.

Page 80 note 3. Weber, ‘The Routinization of Charisma’, op. cit. p. 54.

Page 80 note 4. Ake, op. cit. p. 2.

Page 81 note 1. Apter, ‘Nkrumah, Charisma, and the Coup’, op. cit. p. 770. Conversely, if the leader has no new norms to impose, and if his charisma simply masks a petty and stupid tyranny, then any “normative exemption” may be followed by a period of normative collapse charac-terised by lack of value direction or authority along with widespread criminal activity on the part of the lower echelons of the army, the police, the bureaucracy, etc. This is the case in Idi Amin's Uganda. I am indebted to Professor AH Mazrui for this observation.

Page 82 note 1. Aron, op. cit. p. 49.

Page 82 note 2. Netti op. cit. p. 142

Page 83 note 1. Idem.

Page 83 note 2. Lasswell, op. cit. p. 35.

Page 83 note 3. Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics, op. cit. pp. 32—33.

Page 83 note 4. Smelser, op. cit. p. 47.

Page 83 note 5. Morse, Edward L., ‘The Transformation of Foreign Policies: Modernization, Interdependence, and Externalization’, World Politics, xxii (1970), p. 389Google Scholar.

Page 84 note 1. Cf. Cerny, P. G., ‘The Fall of Two Presidents and Extraparliamentary Opposition: France and the United States in 1968’, Government and Opposition, v (1970), p. 297Google Scholar. The controversy surrounding Nixon even before the Watergate revelations is also an archetypical example; for a good analysis of the symbolic process involved, cf. Bennett, W. Lance, The Political Mind and the Political Environment: An Investigation of Public Opinion and Political Consciousness (Lexington, Mass., 1975)Google Scholar, chs, 3 and 4.