Interests Change, Ideas Do Not

So far, it seems that I have a different understanding of ideas and interests than some other students in this class. After reviewing a couple PowerPoints from assignment 2, I couldn't help but wonder why their concepts of ideas and interests did not match mine. I will go through my understanding of these two terms, and then I hope you will comment your own understanding.

When looking at the Laffey and Weldes model it appears that it is more simple than I had previously thought. The model suggests that interests do not/cannot exist without the presence of ideas. I understood ideas to mean everything around you, what you were socialized in, and the environment you exist in. An idea is not something that can just be changed instantly, it would take a long period of time and a new way of thinking. Interests however can change easily as they are not the way a person thinks, they are what a person thinks about. The Laffey and Weldes model is the model that I find most compelling when analyzing international events, when using this understanding. Who knows, maybe what I understand is not what is meant at all. I hope that you will share your view and why you believe that to be the correct reasoning, so that I can look at other points of view.


https://auisgroup1summer18.blogspot.com/2018/05/interests-change-ideas-do-not.html

models,models everywhere

I think these models are best used as proofs of one another to build a more accurate picture. The rationalist approach is a good initial model and provides inputs to Laffey and Weldes.  The last and most important piece is to take the fully integrated model and utilize intelligence on the high-level actors within the states and make conjecture at the likelihood that the human actors will behave out of line with interests of the country. Each model provides another layer of complexity to create a complete picture of a states interests defined within its own scope that takes into account the very real effect of power struggle and personal interests of world leaders and their influential constituents.

I think it was pretty unanimous amongst the class that everyone found both models to be inadequate. I think that instead of looking at them as competing modes of analysis we might better use these as tools. I think that using the ideas/interests model it would be the best model to use in the absence of detailed intelligence and longstanding experience with a particular regime. A basic assumption of rationality can be a litmus test to further define motivations for an actor. Also, this can start to classify beliefs of an actor into categories that are discreet and objectively relatively simple to analyze. This model provides relatively safe interpretations as they are based more so on observable results and doesn’t require any sort of conjecture or guessing. From here we can see if this model has been good at predicting past behaviors and if so is sufficient.

So once the litmus test of rationality is not met we move onto the Laffey Weldes. Most international actions do not act simply “rationally” they act with some eye toward they world view or construct they view as their ideal society.  The purpose of international agreements is to serve domestic interests.  This is where we can build upon the rationalist model and incorporate the separate pieces into a more succinct over all picture given the additional factors and considerations given using Laffey and Weldes. When we look at the actor through their own eyes and motivations with an eye to the rationalist basis we can get an idea of baseline and how far an actor moves from there.  The only wrench left is for specific interests of the political leaders.

In the American response to the Iranian hostage crisis the interests group within the Carter administration pushed the president to certain ends. They manipulated the President into taking inflammatory moves like brining the Shah into the U.S. and taking military actions. Additionally, Carter himself had certain moral interests that overtook his purely rational thought. These pieces of information would be considered critical intelligence and allow a government to more accurately predict the moves of the President.  

This method of multiple analysis with the addition of critical intelligence would yield the most accurate model. I think the Laffey/Weldes will be the more accurate model as global interests continue to meld.

When does an idea become an interest?

I want to bring it back to the blog post I did prior to the beginning of Module two and expressing my frustration with the readings in failing to determine a route for detecting the ideas of an actor(s). In a conflict, for example, it seems like it would be much easier to draw a line between the interests of two actors but once you start to look at it from the constructivist point of view that becomes much more complicated.

I’m in agreement with the argument of Laffey and Weldes that interests are ultimately the products of ideas. So, if it’s the case that it’s easier to determine interests than ideas, but interests are products of ideas we’re once again faced with the question: how can we accurately determine ideas OR interests?

I struggled with this through the activity for Module two. I landed on my topic when I started to think about the global economic crisis of 2008 and started looking at the actors that instigated various financial reforms to initiate recovery. The G20 was seen as a major deliberator on the reforms. The effectiveness of the G20 is almost constantly under criticism.  I think a rationalist might say, like the UN, they are an inefficient and unnecessary body. But looking further and further into their enhanced role in 2008, facing a global economic meltdown, they were so essential in instilling ideas of cooperation among the most important international players. The economic interests were clear and maybe the ideas they were instilling did not originate with the G20, but they did reiterate them, and the world did notice. In this case we can’t track the origination of the ideas but perhaps we can demonstrate where the ideas took root and I think that is an important step to determining where an idea might begin to develop into interest.

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

Module 1, Week 2 post-class

Is the international system Hobbes' state of nature? Does morality exist in that system? Does justice? These are big questions and, for many students of international relations, ones with answers that turn their views cynical. At least they did for me. But they also give me hope.


My understanding of the international system is that it is very much like Hobbes' state of nature. Using a theory of man in the state of nature is a helpful tool in understanding the international system because that system is comprised of states (as the primary actors) and states are made up of men. Therefore, if we know what the state of nature is like for men we can extrapolate what it is like for states in a similar situation. I do not consider myself to be a realist, but I do accept some of their doctrine as a helpful method for explaining the international system. As such I view the international system, in the absence of international organizations, very much like I view Hobbes' state of nature: life for states is solitary and, if you're not careful, short, nasty and brutish.


While the creation of a sovereign or commonwealth in this system seems unlikely, it seems to me that mankind has sought to mitigate this state of nature in the international realm through institutions. In this way, and against realist ideology, I view institutions as man's attempt to pull himself out of the state of nature; where the individual is able to submit himself to a sovereign for safety, states seek to do so through international organizations (either through collective security agreements like NATO or more far-reaching organizations like the UN).


Which brings me to morality. Does morality exist in the Hobbesian state of nature in the international system? The short answer is not really. Morality is a wildly subjective term. Putting aside the fact that what most people consider morality is most likely based on Western liberal ideas (not shared by a good many people on this planet), in the absence of established institutions/norms, the answer is certainly no. Men and states operating in the state of nature are not penalized for killing one another to survive. It is just that: survival. When looking at states' behavior across generations there are very few decisions made that are not based on self-interest and generally involve advancement at someone else's expense. We can judge these things in hindsight, but who are we to say what morality is and are we any different? With that said, as institutions have come into existence and a set of established norms with them, morality has slowly introduced itself into the system. Granted that morality, as I stated before, is based very much on the Western understanding of it, but it nevertheless represents a change where much of the global community agrees to uphold some basic tenets of morality that could never have been achieved on its own in the state of nature. As I said before, while there is no sovereign and certainly no commonwealth, these institutions, namely the UN, can perform some functions that fulfill some of those functions.


Justice. This is probably the trickiest one to answer because, in my opinion, defining justice is hard to do even with a solid definition of morality backing it up. Aside from that issue, however, I would say that categorically the answer to whether there is justice in the international system is not really. There simply is no body that truly enforces rule of law or norms in the system. The UN and the great powers have distributed justice before, sure, but it is very much on a case by case basis and is generally most likely to occur when interests are involved. I believe that eventually one day a sovereign or something close to it will exist in the international system and justice will indeed be upheld, but not yet.


Sorry for rambling. Got really into it.