Module 2, Week 3 Pre-Class

The collection of readings regarded a lot of deep thought and questioning.

I liked Weber's piece as a primer to get you out of your own head and the conceptions you may have of the idea of..well, the idea. He focuses mainly on capitalism (special emphasis on adventure capitalism) and the development and the (slightly racially-charged) perfecting of ideas carried out in the West. While lending credit to thinkers, healers and men of science from other cultures, it is clear he places the responsibility for advancing mankind forward on Western intellect, particularly Europe. What I got out of the piece (aside from a very interesting breakdown of how capitalism and the drive for profit can be man/states' guiding light) was that ideas, particularly rationality, are not necessarily innate.

Goldstein and Keohane take ideas and try to fit them properly into the rationalist framework. The clearly delineate the two.  The crux of their argument is that interests are a rational aim one works toward accomplishing, some for of material gain. An idea is a non-material interest, immeasurable, a belief in one's head. They break down their entire argument as ideas vs interests.

Laffey and Weldes push back and things get rather weird. They disagree with rationalists in that they view ideas AS interests. They do not like the rationalist idea that the immeasurable (ideas) is less important than the measurable (interests). Their claim is that the way one looks at the world is how one goes about approaching. Ideas are social constructs, not individual ones and are practices. The phrasing they use for ideas is symbolic technologies, i.e. rationality is an idea and interests come from ideas.

This whole series of readings left me with more questions than answers. I prefer the Goldstein/Keohane approach because the constructivist approach paints a world where determining an actor's interests is damn near impossible as it requires knowing how each and every actor views the world, seeing through their eyes, and provides no across-the-board baseline for applying it to predicting behavior. I agree with Laffey and Weldes' in theory, but resort to Golstein and Keohane in practice.

Ideas Interests feedback loop

As the class dissected the readings this week the consensus was, this was a dense set of reading.  Goldstein and Keohane separate Ideas and interests into separate discreet categories that international actors use to decide a course of action. While this is a very useful way to analyze and predict the behavior of an actor it over simplifies a much more complex process. This technique simplifies the variables and makes assumptions to a manageable analysis.  Weldes and Laffey use a model that does not view ideas and interests as separate. They view both as building blocks that influence one another.  This use of ideas as symbolic technology can pull together seemingly separate motives that are actually based on the same idea. They way they define ideas as being something social not just as an individual and not a constant creates a model with much more flexibility to encapsulate the complexity of human nature inherent in International relations.

While reading Christopher Hemmers, Historical Analogies and the Definition of Interests: The Iranian Hostage Crisis and Ronald Reagan's Policy Toward the Hostages in Lebanon, I think he does an excellent job of delving into the nature of human decision making in a way that supports Weldes and Laffey. He demonstrates how Ideas and interests are not separate. He looks closely at analogies as an idea and how they affect not only interest but the underlying idea of what a country’s interests are.  First, he introduces the way that analogies have been used in rationalist theory

“Taking its cue from psychological studies of analogical reasoning, this literature departs from purely interest-based explanations by maintaining that decision-makers need cognitive constructs, like the lessons of history, to figure out what policies will best advance their interests. However, despite this difference, the existing literature has remained squarely within the rationalist explanatory framework by assuming that an actor's interests are unaffected by the process of analogical reasoning and are simply deducible from the actor's position in a given material structure (Goldstein & Keohane, 1993).” 268

Which I agree is a critical flaw. He goes on to explain exactly why this is a flaw and exemplify a different development of critical policy choices.

 “-it ignores the possibility that certain actors may, as a result of a certain historical analogy, come to define their interests from the interests in a way that is different from the interest imputed to them by any rationalist theory. Policy makers may take on certain interests as a result of lessons they draw from specific historical events, which can affect the policies they pursue” 269

Hemmers proposes a sort of feedback loop in analogies and decisions making that keeps the two from being completely separated. It is the international relations equivalent of the chicken and the egg argument.  Basically, we look at an idea and the outcomes and the actor may realign their interests based on consequences.  In his example he uses the Lebanon hostage crisis. To summarize, in the most economical version, is that Reagan  seeing the resultant issues from the Iranian hostage crisis and rifts it created within prior administrations, realigned his priorities to make the Lebanese hostages a high priority for himself.  You can see the idea/interest feedback loop. Reagan had the idea that his situation was similar and chose to realign his interests based on the results of the situation.

I think this is a much better model due to following a learning pattern and real time analysis of growth and change. It creates the situation for real world feedback to effect change within administrations and their posture. I think this model will be the best fit for the current information/technology age where ideas and information travel more rapidly and lead to a more dynamic environment.

Hemmer, Christopher. "Historical Analogies and the Definition of Interests: The Iranian Hostage Crisis and Ronald Reagan's Policy toward the Hostages in Lebanon." Political Psychology 20, no. 2 (1999): 267-89. http://www.jstor.org.proxyau.wrlc.org/stable/3792077.

Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane, “Ideas and Foreign Policy: An Analytical Framework,” in Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Cornell University Press, 1993).

Mark Laffey and Jutta Weldes, “Beyond Belief: Ideas and Symbolic Technologies in the Study of International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations 3:2 (1997).

What in the World are Symbolic Technologies

When I first began reading the assigned article, "Beyond Belief: Ideas and Symbolic Technologies in the Study of International Relations" by Mark Laffey and Jutta Weldes, I thought I had a good understanding of what the authors were trying to convey. This however changed after the second page and I became confused. What are the authors trying to explain here? I understood the arguments made against constructivist and realist theories, but then it took a turn when they began to talk about ideas and interests. What do Laffey and Weldes mean by symbolic technologies, and why can't I go back to reading works by 17th century philosophers? Obviously I had many more questions than understandings going into the week's online class.

After failing to guess the meaning of symbolic technologies, Professor Shirk explained that interests come from ideas. Apparently the argument that Laffey and Weldes were attempting to make was that juxtaposition of ideas and interests was not possible, as interests only exist because of the existence of ideas. Now, I am sure that Professor Shirk had really simplified the meaning, but it was still somewhat confusing. In an attempt to understand this, I tried to relate it back to the lecture posted for the module by Professor Jackson.

Specifically, I tied this concept of "interests coming from ideas" to the example Professor Jackson made about growing up with certain preferences, based on a person's surroundings and interactions. The argument was that people have different preferences based on the area, culture, or time they grew up in. I grew up in a very small town of farming families; therefore, my preferences would be different from someone who grew up in say Chicago, who never had to worry directly about the price of feed or hay. In my comparison, the ideas are what made me think a specific way, by the experiences and culture I grew up in. The interests would then be the preferences in the example by Professor Jackson, these are the personal interests of an individual, forming of the environment that that individual was raised in.

Now, my grasp of these concepts could be offbase. I hope that by re-reading the article, watching the online session, and asking questions in next week's session, I will better understand just what Laffey and Weldes are conveying.


https://auisgroup1summer18.blogspot.com/2018/05/what-in-world-are-symbolic-technologies.html

Week 3, Module 2

While reading Max Weber’s the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism I had to appreciate the bold nature of his critical assertions. It is one thing to suggest a change and another entirely to demand “the naïve manner of conceptualizing capitalism by reference to a “pursuit of gain” must be relegated to the kindergarten of cultural history and methodology and abandoned once and for all.” Pg. 153  

While reading this I was harkened back to Hobbs’s Leviathan. Works seek to overhaul previous notions and redefine the topic they are writing about. I think Weber does an excellent job of providing a frame work upon which a more scholarly analysis of economics can be understood. I think both Hobbs and Weber suffer from similar critical flaws. They really underestimate other cultures as well as overemphasize the necessity of defining things formally.

I think Weber errs in categorizing other cultures. “The organization of political and social groups on the basis of status has existed historically on a broad scale… yet the Rex et Regnum has appeared only in the west” Pg. 151 I Think he does not know enough about the various levels and the complex nature of Bushido culture in japan. They have many classes and extremely sophisticated etiquette. There were many layers from Shogun to Daimyo into the Bushi class. Quite frankly before the English even knew what tea was, the Japanese had developed their intricate “tea ceremony”. Additionally, his antiquated view point that other cultures didn’t use complicated math or have ledgers is untrue. Some of the earliest evidence of anything written is ledgers created for trade.

How do you determine interests and ideas?

Our reading this week took us through an analysis of ideas and interests, looked at the rationalist and constructivist approach of the two and introduced a wide spectrum of metaphors to describe ideas, from viewing them as commodities to viewing them as symbolic technologies.


An important item that I felt was lacking from these articles was how to apply these theories to actors in order to determine how they will reach a decision. Questions like those brought up in the lecture: How does one determine an actor’s interests? Is it possible to determine what an actor believes? At the end of the reading I felt that the answers to these questions were severely lacking.


I think a lot can be determined from an observation of an actor’s interactions with other actors. Looking at how the actor presents itself (or its intent) or what sort of communication and types of language they’re using. Professionally addressing differences in ideologies to an external state’s legislative body in person suggests a different kind of actor than one who puts forward angry, misspelled allegations over Twitter.


From the other side of things, it’s useful to look at how external actors are responding to said actor. Are external actors in agreement, are they grudgingly going along, or are they in outright opposition to the actions of the state and, if so, how are they expressing this opposition? Looking at actors at these points in their decision-making may be too far along in the process to determine how they arrived at an idea but could start to address how they’ve calculated their interests.


In international studies, I don’t know that it’s possible to determine what an actor believes before they decide upon an action. Beliefs can too often be contorted by an actor’s environment. In policy, for example, I think it’s often the case that the ideas or interests that originally formulate a policy can be so twisted and changed by the time they reach external actors and are enforced, that the question should be asked: should these policies always be taken into account as the firm belief of the state enacting the policy or should they be taken as a belief of certain individual actors within a state? From an external perspective, is it okay to address a state with many different internal ideas as one unilateral decision?

I’m looking forward to exploring these questions throughout this module.

Ideas, Interest, and That Thing Called Capitalism

I have to be honest, I was not looking forward to the Max Weber reading this week as I have grown somewhat tired of his texts on capitalism. However, I was presently surprised to find that it was a short reading that did not go extensively into the argument of and perceived history of capitalism, which I had expected. The except of the text "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" by Max Weber, translated by Stephen Kalberg, was an introduction to Module 2 on ideas and interests. The article examines loosely how ideas can be used to further personal and economic interests, to the creation of modern capitalism.

The second reading, "Ideas and Foreign Policy" by Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane looks more closely at the role of ideas and how they affect policy. One question laid out by Goldstein and Keohane is whether ideas have an impact on political outcomes. Goldstein and Keohane would say that yes, ideas do have an impact on political outcomes, and there are even some ideas listed in the article. First, the authors list the three pathways in which ideas can affect policy: ideas serve as road maps, ideas affect strategic interactions, and ideas are embedded in institutions. Instead of just repeating what was in the text, I am going to look at which concept is more influential in creating policy, ideas or interests.

When looking at ideas and interests, I do not believe that one has to be chosen over the other. I know that reflectivists would argue that something would have had to influence policy, and deciding between the two can help to explain why individuals or even countries make specific policies or take certain actions. However, I believe that ideas and interests go hand in hand to influence foreign policy. For example, a country might be aware of an idea that is widely agreed upon, however the state's own interests could be a larger driving factor in creating policy, in order to extend or even sustain a countries resources. In other words, the preservation of the state is the first interest in a policymakers actions. In addition to this, interests can be put into effect through the use of ideas. Therefore in this respect, one need not be chosen over the other.

https://auisgroup1summer18.blogspot.com/2018/05/ideas-interest-and-that-thing-called.html