International Institutions and Socialization in Europe

by Jeffrey T. Checkel

Overview

These essays originally appeared as a special issue of the journal International Organization (59, 4, Fall 2005). The collection represents a shift in research on international institutions, from a preoccupation with showing that institutions mattered in world politics to a more recent exploration of the processes, mechanisms, and conditions under which they matter. The emphasis is resolutely eclectic. Rationalism is the social theory of choice for some contributors; others are more comfortable with social constructivism. Still others combine the two. Employing numerous theories, methods, and data sources, the essays in Part II offer fascinating, richly detailed, multi-causal stories of how NATO, the European Union, and other institutions may socialize states and individuals, thus building new senses of belonging.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521689373
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/19/2007
Series:	International Organization Ser. , #59
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	292
Product dimensions:	6.02(w) x 8.94(h) x 0.59(d)

About the Author

Jeffrey T. Checkel is Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo. His research and teaching interests are international relations theory, European integration, politics in the former USSR and West Europe, and human rights. He is the author of Ideas and International Political Change: Soviet/Russian Behavior and the End of the Cold War, and has published widely in leading European and American scholarly journals.

Read an Excerpt

Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-68937-3 - International institutions and socialization in Europe - Edited by Jeffrey T. Checkel
Excerpt

Part I

International Institutions as Community Builders

---

1

International Institutions and Socialization in Europe

Introduction and Framework

Jeffrey T. Checkel

Is Europe different? For many theorists, policy analysts, and politicians, the answer is obvious: “Of course!” Europe’s degree of integration, level of political community, and pooling of sovereignty far outstrip those seen anywhere else. If there is any place in the world where the nation-state would seem to be in retreat, it is in Europe. Moreover, recent years have witnessed a seeming acceleration of the continent’s “specialness.” A common currency has been successfully introduced, a constitutional convention held, and a (supranational) constitution is now being discussed and debated. This all looks and sounds more like federalism and supranational polity building than the anarchy and Westphalian system that have so fascinated theorists of international politics over the centuries.

   As with many headline stories, this one, which emphasizes Europe’s sui generis nature, is overstated. Yet, as mostwould admit, there is something to it; Europe is different. Contributors to this volume do not so much disagree with this claim as approach it from a different angle. Leaving the scripting of headlines to others, we are—to continue the journalism metaphor—the investigative reporters, working down in the trenches, exploring the how and why.

   Europe is thus our laboratory for getting at some bigger issues concerning the relation of institutions, states, and individuals. When do international institutions create senses of community and belonging? If and when this happens, what does it mean for individual and state allegiances, interests, and identities? What processes underlie such transformative dynamics? What happens to the national and domestic in such situations? These are big questions, ones to which we still have incomplete answers. The latter, to give away perhaps the central punch line of this volume, will only come when we more systematically explore the relation between states and institutions, between the national and supranational, and between rational choice and more sociological perspectives.

   Contemporary Europe offers a wonderful opportunity and setting for exploring such relations. The past decade has seen the (already rich) alphabet soup of international institutions of Western Europe extended eastwards. In the early 1990s, organizations such as the Council of Europe (CE) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) moved quickly to expand, offering membership to numerous transition states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.¹ More recently, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has done likewise, albeit on a more limited scale. Even for the European Union (EU), once a laggard in this race to expand, enlargement to the east became a reality in May 2004.

   This institutional activity in post–Cold War Europe has not escaped the attention of social scientists. Students of what might be called the new comparative regional organizations have explored its effects.² Likewise, EU scholars have begun to study how the EU’s policies—notably, its application of conditionality—are promoting domestic change among the transition states of Eastern Europe.³ Renewing and reinvigorating an earlier neofunctionalist line of reasoning, Western Europeanists are once again examining how participation in the institutional structures of the EU may affect the interests and identities of state agents.⁴

   A common theme running throughout this work is the socializing potential of international institutions. This volume makes that theme explicit. We examine the conditions under which, and mechanisms through which, institutions in Europe socialize states and state agents, leading them to internalize new roles or group-community norms. To paraphrase Ruggie, the challenge for us is to ask—and begin to answer—“what makes Europe and its institutions hang together.”⁵

   This disaggregation exercise is essential if we are to better explain the striking variation in socialization outcomes across contemporary Europe. Why is it that one can talk of the Europeanization of German national identity, but not British?⁶ Five decades after the European project began, how is it that prominent Europeanists can still vehemently disagree on the socializing power of the Brussels bureaucracy?⁷ Why is it that some states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are quickly socialized into the dominant values of the West, while others are laggards?

   In addressing such puzzles, our contribution is fourfold. Theoretically, this volume explores the mechanisms of state/agent socialization from a variety of analytic perspectives, including social constructivist, rational choice, and social psychology. We do not pretend to offer a single theory of socialization; rather, we emphasize the development of scope conditions. In theoretical terms, the volume’s goal is to offer middle-range theories of socialization.

   Empirically, this theoretical diversity helps us capture the complex reality of contemporary Europe, where a variety of mechanisms are socializing states and individuals/groups within them. The authors in this volume thus analyze the socialization potential and practices of several different European institutions (EU, NATO, CE, and OSCE), and do so in both Western and Eastern Europe and at the macro (state socialization by European institutions) and micro (individual agent socialization) levels.

   Methodologically, each contributor addresses a series of operational issues— how to recognize socialization; the development of empirical indicators; what counts as good data—and theorizes in terms of scope conditions (when and under what conditions a particular socialization outcome is more likely). Attention to such questions improves the validity of individual contributions, while also helping to place the nascent socialization literature in international relations (IR) and EU studies on a more systematic footing.⁸

   In policy terms, our findings speak to important debates among both European and international policymakers. For the EU’s ten new member states, which joined the Union on 1 May 2004 and are highly protective of their sovereignty, a key question is whether membership will lead to a diminution or, worse yet, loss of national identity. Our results suggest this is unlikely. For an international community that has devoted much time and effort to helping the formerly communist states rejoin Europe, an important issue is whether conditionality and incentives, or diplomatic suasion, or some combination thereof best promotes domestic change. Our findings strongly endorse the use of mixed strategies that combine different policy instruments.⁹

   The remainder of this introductory essay is organized into five parts. In the first section, I introduce this volume’s research questions and concepts. Second, I briefly survey the state of the art in the EU and IR socialization literature. Third, I highlight the particular causal mechanisms of socialization explored in this volume. Fourth, I address methodological and design issues. In the concluding—fifth—section, I preview the empirical studies and the critiques/extensions that make up the core of the book.

International Socialization: Questions and Definitions

The central question we explore is whether international institutions have the ability to socialize agents in contemporary Europe. Contributors view international institutions as both formal organizations (working groups of the EU’s Council, for example) and specific intergovernmental organizations (such as NATO or the CE). Our agents—the targets of socialization—include both individual policymakers and states.

   We adhere to a classical definition of socialization—one with deep roots in sociology and symbolic interactionism—whereby it is defined as a process of inducting actors into the norms and rules of a given community.¹⁰ Its outcome is sustained compliance based on the internalization of these new norms.¹¹ In adopting community rules, socialization implies that an agent switches from following a logic of consequences to a logic of appropriateness; this adoption is sustained over time and is quite independent from a particular structure of material incentives or sanctions.¹²

   Yet there is more than one way in which agents may follow a logic of appropriateness.¹³ On the one hand, agents may behave appropriately by learning a role— acquiring the knowledge that enables them to act in accordance with expectations— irrespective of whether they like the role or agree with it. The key is the agents knowing what is socially accepted in a given setting or community. Following a logic of appropriateness, then, means simply that conscious instrumental calculation has been replaced by conscious role playing. We call this Type I internalization or socialization.

   On the other hand, following a logic of appropriateness may go beyond role playing and imply that agents accept community or organizational norms as “the right thing to do.” We call this Type II internalization/socialization, and it implies that agents adopt the interests, or even possibly the identity, of the community of which they are a part. Conscious instrumental calculation has now been replaced by “taken-for-grantedness."

   It is important to keep the two different types of internalization in mind when analyzing socialization. Both represent a shift away from a logic of consequences; both require a logic of appropriateness; and both capture distinct aspects of the socialization dynamics observed in contemporary Europe.

   If the purpose is to theorize socialization processes, however, we also need to ask when a shift to internalization occurs, and how. The former requires that one distinguish between situations in which change results from socialization and situations in which it is induced by a calculation of costs and benefits. When do actors switch from a logic of consequences to a logic of appropriateness? To ask “how” is to think about mechanisms, with three highlighted here: strategic calculation, role playing, and normative suasion. In turn, these suggest three modes of rationality that may contribute to socialization outcomes: instrumental, bounded, and communicative.

   Some may be surprised by our inclusion of (instrumentally rational) strategic calculation because it invokes images of self-interest perceived as alien to a socialization model. In reality, though, this is a matter of dispute, with one recent review arguing that how “dispositions become anchored as part of an individual’s identity [that is, internalized] and how they shape this person’s preferences and behavior towards new objects or issues are matters of debate.”¹⁴ Given our problem-driven perspective and our concern for integrating diverse analytic traditions, we are thus open to the possible role of each form of rationality.

   The purpose of this analytic disaggregation is to explore questions of scope and domains of application. When, and under what conditions, is a particular mechanism more likely to lead to Type I or Type II socialization and internalization? Table 1 summarizes this volume’s analytic goals.

Table 1. Analytic Goals

---

• To explore the ability of international institutions to socialize states and state agents in contemporary Europe
• To theorize and document a set of socialization mechanisms as intervening variables linking input (international institutions) and output (socialization outcome or internalization)
• For each mechanism, to articulate and empirically test a set of conditions (scope conditions) for when it is more likely to produce internalization (Type I or II)

---

Institutions, Socialization, and Social Agents: The State of the Art

Until recently, scholars in both IR theory and EU studies have undertheorized socialization. Within IR, neorealists and neoliberals have had little to say about such dynamics. Neorealists invoke the term, but their usage is at odds with standard definitions.¹⁵ They tend to conceive socialization as a process of selection and competition, whereby states are compelled to emulate the self-help balancing behavior of the most successful actors in the system. Over time, all actors thus come to share realist behavioral traits. However, the emergence of such commonalities has no connection to the social context within which these states operate, and is driven by no process of internalization.¹⁶ Neoliberals, from their side, rarely mention socialization. More generally, social interaction, internalization, and the study of preference change have not been a central focus in their research program.¹⁷

   Socialization plays a much more important role in the work of the English School. Here, international society—and not international anarchy—is given top recognition; it is conceived as a highly social setting capable of socializing states.¹⁸ Unfortunately, scholars in this tradition—because of their holistic ontology and an avowedly nonpositivist epistemology—have paid little attention to theorizing either how socialization occurs (mechanisms) or its end point (internalization).¹⁹

   A similar state of affairs has confronted students of the EU. While the early neofunctionalist work of Haas and others hinted at the EU’s powerful socializing role, theoretical underspecification and methodological challenges hindered empirical research. The exact micro-mechanisms behind notions of spillover were never clearly specified. Difficult issues of self-selection—that is, that national officials heading to Brussels may already be highly pro-European—were never fully addressed.²⁰ This was and is unfortunate, for the EU’s densely institutionalized structure would seem an ideal laboratory and “social soil within which actors’ preferences might be transformed.”²¹

   Despite this background, the good news is that the past decade has seen a revi-talization of socialization research by both IR theorists and Europeanists. This work has a strong focus on the role of institutions in socialization, but views them in two distinct ways: as promoters or sites of socialization.

Institutions as Promoters of Socialization

One strand of research views institutions as promoters of socialization in public arenas. In an important sense, this work by IR constructivists builds on the arguments of the English School regarding the socializing effects of international society; its added value comes in systematically explicating how and when such effects occur.

   A volume edited by Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink represents the state of the art in this area. The book offers a five-stage model for explaining the process through which international norms have socializing effects at the national level. Empirically, the model traces the ways in which norms shape the politics of human rights change in a number of different settings.²²

   The editors’ approach is strongly influenced by work on social movements, however, and this unintentionally limits the pathways through which socialization is theorized to occur. Its starting point need not always be the social protest mechanism emphasized by Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink, in which national elites react in a calculating, strategic manner to movement pressure. Socialization can also begin via a process of social learning, in which state agents learn new roles and interests from the start and in the absence of social mobilization. Though the Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink model hints at this pathway, with the role it attributes to persuasion and arguing at certain points, it remains underdeveloped.²³

Institutions as Sites of Socialization

Addressing the problems highlighted above is another strand of socialization research that views institutions as sites of socialization for individuals. Here, Europeanists and a smaller group of IR constructivists have taken the lead. They theorize how state elites, in insulated settings where social pressure is absent or deflected, adopt multiple roles. This builds on a long tradition of research in IR theory and negotiation analysis that emphasizes the socializing effects of international organizations and institutions on the individuals who participate in them.²⁴

   Several Europeanists have explored the socializing effect of repeated meetings over long periods within EU institutions.²⁵ These studies often employ rigorous quantitative analysis. However, their tendency to operationalize socialization purely in terms of the duration of contact risks neglecting the qualitative context of these meetings. Indeed, prolonged contact in sessions marked by intense bargaining is likely to have quite different effects on actors than meetings devoted to puzzling and joint problem solving.

   Responding to such criticisms, a second group of Europeanists addresses this qualitative dimension and its relation to (possible) agent socialization. Arguing that the small size and expert focus of many EU committees promotes deliberation and common puzzling, these scholars portray socialization as being driven by Habermasian dynamics of communicative rationality.²⁶ However, a lack of attention to research methodology makes it hard for other scholars to ascertain deliberation’s causal role.²⁷

   At this point, the EU literature intersects with the work of IR constructivists doing work on socialization within international institutions. With a strong focus on agency, these scholars explicitly theorize the mechanisms of socialization hinted at above. To accomplish this, some draw on Habermas,²⁸ others seek to operationalize social learning concepts,²⁹ while still others emphasize dynamics of persuasion and social influence.³⁰

The Multiple Mechanisms of Socialization

Building on this research, the contributors to this volume seek to better specify the various mechanisms of socialization, viewing them generically as “a set of hypotheses that could be the explanation for some social phenomenon, the explanation being in terms of interactions between individuals and other individuals, or between individuals and some social aggregate."³¹ Typically, mechanisms operate at an analytical level below that of a more encompassing theory; they increase the theory’s credibility by rendering more fine-grained explanations.³² Mechanisms connect things; they are “recurrent processes linking specified initial conditions and a specific outcome."³³

   We thus seek to minimize the lag between international institutions and socializing outcomes—the adoption of new roles (Type I internalization) or changes in values and interests (Type II internalization)—at the individual or state level. As mechanism-based accounts are in principle “quite compatible with different social theories of action,"³⁴ our starting point is to highlight three distinct mechanisms connecting institutions to socializing outcomes: strategic calculation, role playing, and normative suasion.

Strategic Calculation

Strategic calculation³⁵ has deep roots in rationalist social theory. While incentives and rewards can be social (status, shaming) as well as material (financial assistance, trade opportunities), one might expect both to play some role in the socialization process. After all, if they are operative in other aspects of social life—as one knows to be the case—it would be odd if they were absent from socialization dynamics.³⁶

   When this mechanism operates alone, there can—by definition—be no socialization and internalization. No switch from a logic of consequences to one of appropriateness has occurred. Agents are viewed as instrumentally rational. They carefully calculate and seek to maximize given interests, adapting their behavior to the norms and rules favored by the international community. However, as argued below, it is possible that what starts as behavioral adaptation, may—because of various cognitive and institutional lock-in effects—later be followed by sustained compliance that is strongly suggestive of internalization and preference change. Given the desire to disaggregate the socialization process, it is thus still important to include a role for this first mechanism.

   Under what conditions are incentives and rewards likely to promote behavioral adaptation? Contributors to this project theorize several possibilities, all of which emphasize the importance of political conditionality in the socialization process. Defined as the use of material incentives to bring about a desired change in the behavior of a target state, conditionality is the quintessential incentives-based policy. It has long been a favored instrument of international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).³⁷ More importantly for this volume’s purposes, European regional institutions have used conditionality in the process of Eastern enlargement.

   Conditionality’s role can be explored more specifically by considering what Schimmelfennig calls intergovernmental reinforcement. Intergovernmental reinforcement by reward refers to a situation in which an international institution offers the government of a target state positive incentives—rewards such as aid or membership—on the condition that it adopts and complies with the institution’s norms. This is a classic use of political conditionality. Transnational reinforcement by reward refers to the same process, but now directed at nongovernmental actors in target states. Given these definitions, behavioral adaptation in line with community norms is more likely under the following conditions:

• Targeted governments expect the promised rewards to be greater than the costs of compliance (Intergovernmental Reinforcement).
• Targeted societal actors expect the costs of putting pressure on the government to be lower than the benefits of conditional external rewards, and these actors are strong enough to force the government to comply with the international norms (Transnational Reinforcement).³⁸

---

© Cambridge University Press

Table of Contents

Part I. International Institutions as Community Builders: 1. International institutions and socialization in Europe: introduction and framework Jeffrey T. Checkel; Part II. The Socializing Power of European Institutions?: 2. Strategic calculation and international socialization: membership incentives, party constellations and sustained compliance in central and eastern Europe Frank Schimmelfennig; 3. Several roads lead to international norms, but few via international socialization: a case study of the European Commission Liesbet Hooghe; 4. Multiple embeddedness and socialization in Europe: the case of council officials Jan Beyers; 5. The Janus face of Brussels: socialization and everyday decision making in the European Union Jeffrey Lewis; 6. Security institutions as agents of socialization? NATO and the 'New Europe' Alexandra Gheciu; Part III. Critique, Conclusions and Extensions: 7. Conclusions and extensions: toward mid-range theorizing and beyond Europe Alastair Iain Johnston; 8. Getting socialized to build bridges: constructivism and rationalism, Europe and the nation-state Michael Zürn and Jeffrey T. Checkel.

Editorial Reviews

'… an intellectual challenge and stimulating reading for both rationalist and constructivist-oriented scholars of European integration and international relations …' Political Studies Review

From the Publisher