Communication/Signaling in IR

NOTE: I have switched to an outline format for my daily responses.

Question: Both rationalist and constructivist theorists emphasize the importance of communication in international politics, but they think about this relationship in very different ways. Assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of rationalist and constructivist theories of communication, with specific application to a major controversy in the field of international relations. Examples of such controversies might include the causes of war, the origins of inter-state cooperation, or the circumstances under which we may expect system change.

Answer: Rationalists and constructivists in IR conceptualize communication and signaling differently. Rationalists focus on the difficulties of signaling resolve and credible commitment between states as a mechanism leading to war. Constructivists focus on the mechanism of argumentative rationality and persuasion as ways in which actors construct and constitute identities, structure, and norms of appropriate behavior in the international system. I will describe and assess the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. Finally, I will apply these theories to the explanation of war in the international system.



Rationalists assume that states employ instrumental rationality, which requires fixed, exogenously determined preferences.
For structural realists, communication is epiphenomenal and irrelevant to fixed preferences of security and power-seeking (Waltz, Mearsheimer) (Walt, Glaser, signal type)
For neoliberal institutionalists, communication is a way to signal intentions and cooperate, hoping to secure a preferable pre-war bargain that will avert conflict (Fearon, Keohane). Credible commitment is aided by domestic audience costs, tied hands, sunk costs. (Fearon)
However, communication never transcends strategic, rhetorical “cheap talk,” and even when logic of appropriateness is appealed to, it is always in justification of consequentialism. (Holzinger).
There is always an incentive to misrepresent one’s type and resolve and defect under the constraints of anarchy, (Fearon, Waltz, Jervis) therefore communication is never taken seriously.
Strengths: parsimony in taking preferences as exogenously given, but even among rationalist school, preferences diverge; also, theory is dismissive of the causal importance of communication, especially as there is strong incentive to misrepresent and defect. This allows for greater focus on weightier variables such as material capabilities and power distribution.
Weakness: too offhandedly dismisses importance of communication and speech acts. Signaling type and intentions matters greatly for many problems in IR. Additionally, communication and argumentation can play an important constitutive role in setting up bargaining situations as well as constructing identities and the rules of the game.

Constructivists focus on the mutual social construction of structure and agents. State behavior is constrained by the logic of appropriateness, which is determined through intersubjective understandings (Wendt, Finnemore). Communication is the mechanism through which state learning takes place.
The logic of argumentative rationality as espoused by Risse, Checkel, and Crawford holds that through argumentation, states engage in constructing identities and appropriate rules of behavior. Communication creates the context and expectations for state interaction.
This is Wendt’s argument that the self-help behavior exists only because states have agreed and acted upon this behavior. There is nothing exogenous about anarchy that requires Waltz’s self-help premise.
Crawford outlines the way in which brute force has become increasingly delegitimized in IR in favor of norms of equality and human rights. She goes the farthest of the constructivists in saying that without persuasion and argumentation, there would be no mobilization for strategic action and no ability for coercion.
Therefore, constructivists claim that types and identities are constituted through communicative action (Habermas) and that all strategic interaction must be preceded by argumentative rationality.
Communication plays a much more central and necessary role in constructivism, as its locus is enmeshed with all interstate activity.
Strengths: explains and allows for change in identities and contexts for state interaction. Also empowers weaker states and non-states.
Weaknesses: too easily dismisses important variables such as the distribution of power and capabilities. Focuses on agency too much rather than structure. Additionally, when are states really even open to persuasion? It may not be possible to disentangle instances of true argumentation/persuasion and strategic argumentation. Especially as states in anarchy have incentive to deceive and misrepresent type and interests.

Causes of War
For rationalists, the logic of the international system is anarchy. Uncertainty causes suspicion, and the incentive to deceive and defect leads to further mistrust. Realists like Jervis claim that misperceptions of intentions and “types” of states sets off the spiral model of arms races and other dangerous conflict situations. If states were able to signal peaceful intent and credibly commit to such identities, the security dilemma could be resolved and war would be averted.
Fearon discusses mechanisms through which states can credibly commit, such as through sinking costs and incurring domestic audience costs to reneging on a particular commitment.
These are just two ways in which rationalists view communication, signaling, and credibly committing as affecting interstate war.

Constructivists view communication as a primary determinant of when war is considered legitimate. Communication determines what issues and conditions are legitimate for war: which are issues of state sovereignty, and which warrant international intervention. (Finnemore). Additionally, argumentative rationality empowers and gives voice to previously unacknowledged interests and actors, giving them a place in the debate of warfare. Additionally, argumentation has determined legitimate activity in wartime, such as conventions on POWs, and resulted in a treaty against landmines (Pryce). Rationalists do not offer an account of such constraints, as they fixate on the goal at hand of gaining security and emerging from the war at an advantage.

Conclusion:
Constructivists and rationalists look at the utility and problems of interstate communication from very different perspectives. Rationalists view communication only as a tool in the instrumental pursuit of fixed preferences such as amassing security and signaling types in order to reach a stable equilibrium and avert war. Constructivists view communication radically differently, as a means through which actors, norms, strategic contexts are framed and constituted, and the rules of conflict and warfare are designed and redesigned by intersubjective agreement that comes through the mechanism of argumentation and persuasion. Rather than merely signaling one’s type, argumentation defines and illustrates what that type is in the first place. Scholars have much to learn about the constitution of the strategic context from constructivists, and about the instrumentally rational decision making of rational theories. The two are not mutually exclusive. Even if preferences are fixed and exogenously determined, according to rationalists, these goals are constituted at some point, through some process. Constructivism sheds light on the preference formation in the first place. Even rationalists don’t agree on exactly what a state’s fixed preference should be. In this case, Legro’s two step would be an illuminating tool to cohere the logic of consequences and logic of appropriateness in IR theory.