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The Liberal International Order and Peaceful Change: Spillover and the Importance of Values, Visions, and Passions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2020

Trine Flockhart Open the ORCID record for Trine Flockhart [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay focuses on the role of institutions as agents of peaceful change from a perspective that emphasizes the importance of a wide spectrum of human emotions to better understand the less quantifiable but nevertheless important conditions for being able to sustain initiatives for peaceful change. It aims to throw light on the often overlooked psychological and emotional hurdles standing in the way of agents’ ability to undertake and sustain action designed to lead to peaceful change. To do so, the essay returns to the pioneering work of Ernst Haas and his important concept of “spillover.” The essay shows that the neofunctional understanding of spillover was a theoretically important innovation, but that it was missing three essential elements: an understanding of the need for positive emotions and ontological security; an understanding of the link between values and identity; and a realization of the importance of a shared vision for the “good life.” To illustrate the problems with Haas's version of spillover, but also to highlight the significant potential of the theory, the essay turns to the crisis of the liberal international order as an example of a forum where the agency to undertake peaceful change seems to be faltering. The essay concludes that the ability of the liberal order to effect peaceful change is currently hampered because the order is characterized by negative emotions, contested values, and a vision of the good life that is seen as mainly a benefit for the cosmopolitan elite.

Keywords

Ernst Haasontological securitygood lifeemotionstransformational changeWestlessness
Type
Roundtable: International Institutions and Peaceful Change
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , Winter 2020 , pp. 521 - 533
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

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References

NOTES

1 Paul, T. V., “Assessing Change in World Politics,” International Studies Review 20, no. 2 (June 2018), pp. 177–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, academic.oup.com/isr/article-abstract/20/2/177/5026360. For a thorough conceptual and theoretical discussion of peaceful change, see Peter Marcus Kristensen, “‘Peaceful Change’ in International Relations: A Conceptual Archaeology,” International Theory, November 12, 2019, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-theory/article/peaceful-change-in-international-relations-a-conceptual-archaeology/B7ED04369C6902AB62720AA9C1D78925.

2 Emma Hutchison, “Emotions, Bodies, and the Un/Making of International Relations,” Millennium 47, no. 2 (January 2019), pp. 284–98, journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0305829818811243.

3 Flockhart, Trine, “The Problem of Change in Constructivist Theory: Ontological Security Seeking and Agent Motivation,” Review of International Studies, 42, no. 5 (December 2016), pp. 799–820CrossRefGoogle Scholar, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-international-studies/article/problem-of-change-in-constructivist-theory-ontological-security-seeking-and-agent-motivation/5CC379187B7C0EF84D4EE07E5BBF30C4.

4 I discuss the apparent paralysis in the liberal international order in more detail in Flockhart, Trine, “Is This the End? Resilience, Ontological Security, and the Crisis of the Liberal International Order,” Contemporary Security Policy 41, no. 2 (2020), pp. 215–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13523260.2020.1723966?journalCode=fcsp20.

5 Neofunctionalism is an integration theory developed in the aftermath of the Second World War. It theorized that functionally motivated integration in individual policy sectors would gradually spread to other sectors through the process of spillover. As presented by Haas, neofunctionalism is a “self-consciously eclectic” effort at explaining the dynamics of change in an international system composed largely—but not exclusively—of established nation-states. Schmitter, Philippe C., “Ernst B. Haas and the Legacy of Neofunctionalism,” Journal of European Public Policy 12, no. 2 (2006), pp. 255–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Ernst B. Haas, The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social, and Economic Forces, 1950–1957 (1958; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), p. xxi; Ben Rosamond, “The Uniting of Europe and the Foundation of EU Studies: Revisiting the Neofunctionalism of Ernst B. Haas,” Journal of European Public Policy 12, no. 2 (April 2005), pp. 237–54; and Jeppe Tranholm-Mikkelsen, “Neo-Functionalism: Obstinate or Obsolete? A Reappraisal in the Light of the New Dynamism of the EC,” Millennium 20, no. 1 (March 1991), pp. 1–22.

7 Only weeks before his death in 2003, Haas specified what he had left unsaid in the original version of The Uniting of Europe: that “the study of integration is a step toward a theory of international change at the macro level.” Haas, Uniting of Europe, p. xv.

8 Emanuel Adler, “Ernst Haas's Theory of International Politics” (paper presented at a conference honoring Ernst B. Haas, University of California, Berkeley, March 20, 2000; speech manuscript provided by the author).

9 Haas, Uniting of Europe, p. xv.

10 Ibid.

11 Henri Tajfel, Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations (London: Academic Press, 1978); and Mark Rubin and Miles Hewstone, “Social Identity Theory's Self-Esteem Hypothesis: A Review and Some Suggestions for Clarification,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 2, no. 1 (February 1998), pp. 40–62.

12 Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity, 1991); and Jennifer Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics: State, Identity and the Security Dilemma,” European Journal of International Relations 12, no. 3 (September 2006), pp. 341–70; and Flockhart, “Problem of Change in Constructivist Theory.” See also R. D. Laing, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (1969; London: Penguin, 1990); Charles Taylor, Human Agency and Language, Philosophical Papers 1 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1985); and Hutchison, “Emotions, Bodies, and the Un/Making of International Relations.”

13 Rubin and Hewstone, “Social Identity Theory's Self-Esteem Hypothesis.”

14 Richard Ned Lebow, A Cultural Theory of International Relations (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

15 Michael Billig and Henri Tajfel, “Social Categorization and Similarity in Intergroup Behaviour,” European Journal of Social Psychology 3, no. 1 (January/March 1973), pp. 27–52; and Tajfel, Differentiation between Social Groups.

16 Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, p. 47.

17 Ibid., p. 44.

18 Flockhart, “Problem of Change in Constructivist Theory.”

19 Haas, Uniting of Europe, p. xv.

20 Emanuel Adler and Beverly Crawford, Progress in Postwar International Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 29.

21 Maria Josepha Debre and Hylke Dijkstra, “Institutional Design for a Post-Liberal Order: Why Some International Organizations Live Longer than Others” (working paper, Maastricht University, September 20, 2019).

22 Flockhart, “Is This the End?”; and Jessica Schmidt, “Intuitively Neoliberal? Towards a Critical Understanding of Resilience Governance,” European Journal of International Relations 21, no. 2 (June 2015), pp. 402–26, journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1354066114537533.

23 Emanuel Adler, World Ordering: A Social Theory of Cognitive Evolution (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

24 Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, p. 38.

25 Richard Ned Lebow, The Rise and Fall of Political Orders (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

26 Felix Berenskoetter, “Reclaiming the Vision Thing: Constructivists as Students of the Future,” International Studies Quarterly 55, no. 3 (September 2011), pp. 647–68, academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/55/3/647/1827582?redirectedFrom=fulltext.

27 John Williams, “Structure, Norms and Normative Theory in a Re-Defined English School: Accepting Buzan's Challenge.” Review of International Studies 37, no. 3 (July 2011), pp. 1235–53, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-international-studies/article/structure-norms-and-normative-theory-in-a-redefined-english-school-accepting-buzans-challenge/F4C75260FD950ACB2F540E62711E043D.

28 John M. Cooper, “Aristotle on the Goods of Fortune,” Philosophical Review 94, no. 2 (April 1985), pp. 173–96, www.jstor.org/stable/2185427?origin=crossref&seq=1.

29 Robert Jervis, Francis J Gavin, Joshua Rovner, and Diane N Labrosse, eds., Chaos in the Liberal Order: The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018); and Amitav Acharya, “Asia after the Liberal International Order,” East Asia Forum, 10, no. 2 (2018), www.eastasiaforum.org/2018/07/10/asia-after-the-liberal-international-order/.

30 At the time of writing, there is much to suggest that the accelerating globalization of the past century may in fact be in the process of turning into deglobalization as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is too big a question to address in this short article, but it does not change the fundamental argument being made here, as a change from globalization to deglobalization would constitute a new and unforeseen form of transformational change that is likely to have negative impacts on the ontological security of relevant agents.

31 Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: SAGE, 1992).

32 Leon Fuerth and Evan M. H. Faber, Anticipatory Governance Practical Upgrades: Equipping the Executive Branch to Cope with Increasing Speed and Complexity of Major Challenges (Washington, D.C.: Center for Technology and National Security Policy, National Defense University, 2012).

33 Flockhart, “Is This the End?”

34 David Chandler, “Beyond Neo-Liberalism: Resilience, the New Art of Governing Complexity,” Resilience 2, no. 1 (January 2014), pp. 47–63, www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21693293.2013.878544; Schmidt, “Intuitively Neoliberal?”; and Flockhart, “Is This the End?”

35 Munich Security Conference, Munich Security Report 2020: Westlessness (Munich: Munich Security Conference Foundation).

36 Ibid, p. 22.

37 Charles A. Kupchan and Peter L. Trubowitz, “Dead Center: The Demise of Liberal Internationalism in the United States,” International Security 32, no. 2 (Fall 2007), pp. 7–44, www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/isec.2007.32.2.7.

38 Reus-Smit, Christian, On Cultural Diversity: International Theory in a World of Difference (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Allan, Bentley B., Vucetic, Srdjan, and Hopf, Ted, “The Distribution of Identity and the Future of International Order: China's Hegemonic Prospects,” International Organization 72, no. 4 (Fall 2018), pp. 839–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/distribution-of-identity-and-the-future-of-international-order-chinas-hegemonic-prospects/6B178D9A058C016F6C7A50A089AA7290.

39 Flockhart, Trine, “The Coming Multi-Order World,” Contemporary Security Policy 37, no. 1 (March 2016), pp. 3–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Kristensen, “‘Peaceful Change’ in International Relations.”