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Toward a Foucauldian analysis of international regimes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 May 2009
Extract
The liberal approach to international regimes is attractive in the development of thatconcept because it deploys a well-developed and rigorous set of analytic devices in the form of rational actor models. However, it also assumes that regimes are benevolent, voluntary, cooperative, and legitimate associations of actors, which unnecessarily limits theregime concept and encourages an ideological and apologetic position with respect to regimes. Following a critique of the liberal approach, this article suggests an alternative based on a fundamental assumption of contestability in regimes. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault which culminates in the concept of “power/knowledge,” it regards international regimes as attempts to define, order, and act within international public spaces. It also regards international regimes as loci and foci of struggle. Some aspects of this conceptualization are sketched in preliminary form, and a brief illustration in the area of nuclear nonproliferation is provided.
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References
For their comments on earlier drafts, I thank David Haglund, Michael Hawse, John Young, and their colleagues at Queen's University; Mark Zacher; Kal Holsti; Oran Young; Barry Cooper; Guy LaForest; Michael Kaduck; Sheila Singh; and the reviewers.
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34. Foucault, , “Two Lectures,” pp. 94–95Google Scholar. Invoking international law in this way implies that it is a discourse and has a set of associated disciplinary devices. Foucault, however, tends to treat law as outside of disciplinary techniques, although it may be colonized by them (see, for example, “Two Lectures”). If we accept international law as a discourse and discipline set, it appears to have a fundamental importance in international relations, providing generalized language, concepts, and mechanisms for the formal creation and characterization of international public spaces. International law as such, not just specific rules in substantive issue-areas, should be an important subject in regime analyses. If it is disputed or not followed, we must understand that in advanced games, rules are played, circumvented, and ignored as well as created, observed, and defended.
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41. For an application of Foucauldian ideas to collective decision making, see Shapiro, , Bonham, , and Heradstveit, , “A Discursive Practices Approach.”Google Scholar
42. See Haas, , “Why Collaborate?” pp. 370–75 and 385–86.Google Scholar
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45. The case of nonproliferation is explored further, although tentatively, in the following: Keeley, James F. and Singh, Sheila K., “Atomic Discipline: The Creation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association,Windsor, Canada, 1988Google Scholar; Keeley, James F. and Singh, Sheila K., “Before and After: The Comprehensive Test Ban and the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association,Quebec City, Canada, 1989Google Scholar; and Keeley, James F., “A Structural Overview of Civilian Nuclear Cooperation Agreements,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association,Quebec City, Canada, 1989.Google Scholar
46. In Fischer, David A. V., The International Non-Proliferation Regime 1987 (New York: United Nations, 1987), p. 3Google Scholar, the author lists the following “main elements”: agreed rules and norms seeking to proscribe proliferation (the NPT and nuclear weapon free zone agreements); complementary agreements such as the Partial Test Ban Treaty; security assurances by nuclear weapon states; various United Nations resolutions; bilateral supply agreements; Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines; IAEA, European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM), and national safeguard and control systems; and national means of verification. Smith adopts a similar broad approach, although he concentrates on the NPT and the IAEA. See Smith, Roger K., “Explaining the Non-Proliferation Regime: Anomalies for Contemporary International Relations Theory,” International Organization 41 (Spring 1987), pp. 253–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Shaker, Mohamed I., The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Origin and Implementation, 1959–1979 (London: Oceana Publications, 1980)Google Scholar, in which the author would seem to add the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT I) and other Soviet–U.S. arms control agreements.
47. Thus, there is concern about “new suppliers,” who may not adhere to regime norms and who may provide alternative sources of supply both to nonmembers and to disgruntled members of the regime. See, for example, Ing, Stanley, “Emergent Suppliers, the Non-Proliferation Regime and Regional Security,” in Dewitt, David B., ed., Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Global Security (London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 119–30.Google Scholar
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49. For an explication of these two general perspectives, see Meyer, Stephen M., The Dynamics of Nuclear Proliferation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), chaps. 1–3.Google Scholar
50. In “Explaining the Non-Proliferation Regime,” pp. 258–59, Smith suggests that “substantial reductions in the arsenals of the superpowers' nuclear inventories would run counter to the underlying logic of the NPT which views extended deterrence as central to non-proliferation” and that transfers of “sensitive” technologies would mean “a violation of Article I.” However attractive these contentions may be to dominant supplier and nuclear weapon states, they run contrary not only to the words of the NPT but also to its negotiating history, and they fail to account for the contentions over Articles IV and VI. The “extended deterrence” argument reverses the linkage in the nonproliferation discourse, seeing the possession of nuclear weapons by some as assisting in nondissemination. The issue is not which construction of the issue-area is “true” but, rather, that both the disconnected and the reversed construction differ radically from that found in the negotiation of the NPT. Nye, among others, treats “nonproliferation” and “nondissemination” as identical. He takes vertical proliferation as a problem for arms control, a separate regime, and finds the relations between arms control and “nonproliferation” to be paradoxical. See Nye, Joseph, “Maintaining a Non-Proliferation Regime,” International Organization 35 (Winter 1981), especially pp. 34–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In the original nonproliferation discourse of the NPT, there is no paradox and there is only one overall regime.
51. Here again, therefore, a concern arises about “new suppliers.”
52. Arendt, , The Human Condition, pp. 194–95.Google Scholar
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