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The art of aiming at a moving target: A critique of Lechner and Frost’s Practice Theory and International Relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2020

NORA STAPPERT Open the ORCID record for NORA STAPPERT [Opens in a new window]
NORA STAPPERT*
Affiliation:
Centre of Excellence for International Courts (iCourts), Copenhagen University, Faculty of Law, Karen Blixens Plads 16, 2300Copenhagen, Denmark
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*Email: nora.stappert@jur.ku.dk
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Abstract:

How can we account for the normative dimension of international practices? Silviya Lechner and Mervyn Frost’s Practice Theory and International Relations answers this question by proposing, with a considerable degree of epistemological sophistication, what the authors call ‘normative descriptivism’, which they combine with a focus on ‘macro practices’. In this contribution, I start by examining the authors’ engagement with IR’s practice turn, and the insights this engagement may offer on the underlying objective of their approach. I then turn to Lechner and Frost’s decision to eclipse history. The contribution concludes by using the evolution of international law as a cursory illustration of the types of analyses Lechner and Frost’s approach would lead to. It thereby emphasises potential challenges inherent in the authors’ combination of internalism as rooted in individual self-consciousness and a focus on ‘macro practices’, including the possibility that it might limit the potential to critically question the standard that becomes identified as universal.

Keywords

evolution of international lawinternalismmacro practicesnormative dimension of international practicespractice theory
Type
Articles
Information
Global Constitutionalism , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 183 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020 

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References

1 See Lechner, S and Frost, M, Practice Theory and International Relations (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2018) 118–23, 190–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See Ralph, J and Gifkins, J, ‘The Purpose of United Nations Security Council Practice: Contesting Competence Claims in the Normative Context Created by the Responsibility to Protect’ (2017) 23(3) European Journal of International Relations 630.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

3 See Lechner and Frost (n 1) 62–94.

4 Ibid 49, 51.

5 Ibid 30, 182–9.

6 See ibid 203–21.

7 Ibid 12.

8 Ibid 33.

9 See, e.g., Pouliot, V, ‘Practice Tracing’ in Bennett, A and Checkel, JT (eds), Process Tracing: From Metaphor to Analytical Tool (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015) 237;Google Scholar Bueger, C, ‘Pathways to Practice: Praxiography and International Politics’ (2014) 6(3) European Political Science Review 383CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Lechner and Frost (n 1) 15.

11 Ibid 25.

12 Ibid 34 and also 42.

13 See Adler, E and Pouliot, V, ‘International Practices: Introduction and Framework’ in Adler, E and Pouliot, V (eds), International Practices (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011) 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 See Lechner and Frost (n 1) 4.

15 See ibid 2.

16 See ibid 128.

17 See ibid 25, 133.

18 See ibid 77.

19 See N Stappert, ‘Practice Theory and Change in International Law: Theorizing the Development of Legal Meaning through the Interpretive Practices of International Criminal Courts’ International Theory (forthcoming).

20 See Lechner and Frost (n 1) 57–61.

21 See ibid 29.

22 See ibid 10–11, 19–20, 62–94.

23 See ibid 198–201.

24 For some examples that the authors might have engaged with benefit, see Friedrichs, J and Kratochwil, F, ‘On Acting and Knowing: How Pragmatism Can Advance International Relations Research and Methodology’ (2009) 63(4) International Organization 701;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Gadinger, F, ‘On Justification and Critique: Luc Boltanski’s Pragmatic Sociology and International Relations’ (2016) 10(3) International Political Sociology 187;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hopf, T, ‘Change in International Practices’ (2018) 24(3) European Journal of International Relations 687;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Bueger, C, ‘Communities of Security Practice at Work? The Emerging African Maritime Security Regime’ (2013) 6(3–4) African Security 297;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Pouliot, V, International Pecking Order: The Politics and Practice of Multilateral Diplomacy (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 See Lechner and Frost (n 1) 79–94. See also Adler, E and Pouliot, V (eds), International Practices (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Pouliot, V, International Security in Practice: The Politics of NATO-Russia Diplomacy (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 See also Lechner and Frost (n 1) 62, fn 2, which serves as an overview bibliography for literature within IR’s practice turn. It only includes one reference to an article published after 2014.

27 See ibid 11, 79.

28 Adler and Pouliot (n 13) 6; see Lechner and Frost (n 1) 79–94.

29 As a starting point, see the concluding chapter in Adler and Pouliot’s edited volume discussing their conceptualisation of practices; RD Duvall and A Chowdhury, ‘Practices of Theory’ in E Adler and V Pouliot (eds), International Practices (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011) 335. For some further examples, see especially Ralph and Gifkins (n 2); S Schindler and T Wille, ‘Change in and Through Practice: Pierre Bourdieu, Vincent Pouliot, and the End of the Cold War’ (2015) 7(2) International Theory 330.

30 See, e.g., Kratochwil, F, ‘Making Sense of “International Practices”’ in Adler, E and Pouliot, V (eds), International Practices (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011) 36, 36;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Ringmar, E, ‘The Search for Dialogue as a Hindrance to Understanding: Practices as Inter-Paradigmatic Research Program’ (2014) 6(1) International Theory 1, 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 See Bueger, C and Gadinger, F, International Practice Theory: New Perspectives (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2014) 8–20.Google Scholar

32 Ibid 22 and also generally 21–58.

33 See Martin-Mazé, M, ‘Returning Struggles to the Practice Turn: How Were Bourdieu and Boltanski Lost in (Some) Translations and What to Do about It?’ (2017) 11(2) International Political Sociology 203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Bueger and Gadinger (n 31) 20.

35 See Lechner and Frost (n 1) 182–21.

36 Ibid 206 and also generally 203–21.

37 See ibid 210, indirectly also 7–10.

38 See ibid 132–6.

39 See Navari, C, ‘The Concept of Practice in the English School’ (2010) 17(4) European Journal of International Relations 611.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 See Lechner and Frost (n 1) 127–53.

41 Ibid 165 and generally 154–81.

42 Ibid 167 and generally 165–9.

43 See ibid 132–3.

44 See ibid 132–40.

45 Ibid 133.

46 See ibid.

47 For a first overview, see Buzan, B and Little, R, ‘The Historical Expansion of International Society’ in Navari, C and Green, D (eds) Guide to the English School in International Studies (Wiley Blackwell, Chichester, 2014) 59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 See Lechner and Frost (n 1) 143, 177.

49 See ibid 143–5.

50 Ibid 143.

51 Ibid, fn 45. See also Brown, C, ‘Cosmopolitanism, World Citizenship and Global Civil Society’ (2000) 3(1) Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 7, 18.Google Scholar

52 See ibid 143.

53 Ibid 179 and also 177.

54 See UNHCR, Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2017, <https:// www.unhcr.org/5b27be547.pdf> 14.

55 See ‘Jeden Tag ein Anschlag auf eine Asylbewerberunterkunft’ Die Zeit (6 November 2017) <https:// www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2017-11/bundeskriminalamt-anschlag-asylbewerberheime-fluechtlinge>.

56 Lechner and Frost (n 1) 181.

57 See, e.g., S Seth, ‘Historical Sociology and Postcolonial Theory: Two Strategies for Challenging Eurocentrism’ (2009) 3(3) International Political Sociology 334. Such critique, however, does not seem to be relevant to Lechner and Frost. Just consider the following example the authors give to illustrate their criticism of what they reject as an externalist standpoint: ‘A group of diplomats have performed an action they recognise as signing an international peace treaty. A social scientist comes along and makes the case that in spite of what the diplomats profess to have done, a reflexive examination shows that their action is best understood as reproducing the structure of empire. But this explanation may be questioned as arbitrary’. Lechner and Frost (n 1) 77.

58 See ibid 167. For a first conceptual overview, see e.g. de Cleen, B, ‘Populism and Nationalism’ in Kaltwasser, CR et al. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Populism (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017) 342, 349–50.Google Scholar

59 See Lechner and Frost (n 1) 77.

60 Ibid 144.

61 Ibid 219.

62 See ibid 122.

63 See ibid 12, 57–61, 95, 123.

64 See ibid 105, 111–12.

65 Ibid 115 (emphasis in original).

66 See ibid 101–4.

67 Ibid 116.

68 See ibid 117.

69 See ibid 122.

70 See ibid.

71 Ibid 191–4.

72 Ibid 53–5.

73 Ibid 219.

74 Ibid 150.

75 Ibid 151.

76 See ibid 113, 217.

77 Ibid 115 (emphasised in original).

78 Ibid 217 (partly emphasised in original).

79 Ibid 199.

80 See ibid 115–16.

81 Ibid 117 (original emphasis).

82 Ibid 28.

83 See Shaffer, G and Ginsburg, T, ‘The Empirical Turn in International Legal Scholarship’ (2012) 106(1) American Journal of International Law 1. See also, for example,CrossRefGoogle Scholar Holtermann, J and Madsen, MR, ‘European New Legal Realism and International Law. How to Make International Law Intelligible’ (2015) 28(2) Leiden Journal of International Law 211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See already Max Weber, ‘R[udolf] Stammler’s ‘‘Overcoming’’ of the Materialist Conception of History’ in HH Bruun and S Whimster (eds), Max Weber: Collected Methodological Writings (Routledge, Abingdon, 2012) 185.

84 Lechner and Frost (n 1) 27.

85 For example, see ibid 143–4.

86 Ibid 221.

87 As but one example, take the assessment of ‘Trumpism [as] an attack on the three foundational features of the global constitution – democracy, human rights, and the rule of law’ proposed in a recent editorial in this journal. Havercroft, J et al., ‘Donald Trump as Global Constitutional Breaching Experiment’ (2018) 7(1) Global Constitutionalism 1, 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

88 See similarly Ralph and Gifkins (n 2).

89 See Lechner and Frost (n 1) 147, 182, 211–12.

90 Ibid 217, 220 (partly emphasised in original).