BOOK REVIEW SYMPOSIUM: THE INTERNATIONAL POLITICSOF RECOGNITION, BY THOMAS LINDEMANN AND ERIKRINGMAR

The international politics of recognition, by Thomas Lindemann and Erik Ringmar,Boulder, CO, Paradigm, 2011, 256 pp., US$150.00 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-59451-809-6; US$42.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-59451-810-2

On the reality of mental constructs

Erik Ringmar

Every attempt to illuminate the world will inevitably leave some things obscured. Bysetting ones theoretical focus on one set of objects, other objects will become blurred.The fact that the world is in this way obscured or blurred is not, in itself, problematic. Thequestion rather is what the net gains are of each theoretical innovation. Have we learnedmore or less? Is the picture as a whole more representative of what we take as the mostsalient, most important, features of the world to be? Of the three readers of TheInternational Politics of Recognition represented in this review symposium, ConstanceDuncombe (2014) and Yana Zuo (2014) insist, with some reservations, that our attempt isworth it, whereas Christian Olsson is far less sure.1 The task is consequently to removeDuncombe and Zuos reservations and to reassure Olsson either that our project can beamended to incorporate his concerns or, alternatively, that his worries are misplaced. SinceZuos comments refer mainly to Thomas Lindemanns contribution, they will beaddressed by him. Comments by both Duncombe (2014) and Olsson (2014) will bediscussed here.

Bias towards Western examples

Constance Duncombe focuses, above all, on the relative lack of attention to non-Westernexamples in our discussion. There is a tendency, she says, for The International Politics ofRecognition to universalize Western experiences and thereby to ignore examples fromother parts of the world. A broader focus, she suggests, might also provide a space toconsider conceptions of emotions from a broader range of cultural perspectives(Duncombe 2014, 2). There is no doubt that Duncombe points to an oversight. There isa chapter on Taiwans search for recognition in the book and other chapters, discussingnuclear proliferation and terrorism, touch on other non-Western experiences, yet therecould, and perhaps should, have been more. There is absolutely no reason why therecognition logic would not apply in these cases too. Indeed, recognition logic is arguablyparticularly applicable to relations between Western and non-Western states. These rela-tions, after all, have always been characterized by a lack of recognition, and states inEurope and North America do still not recognize states in other parts of the world as theirequals.

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My contribution to this special issue tries to make up for this oversight by focusingexplicitly on the practices of non-recognition through which relations betweenEuropeans and non-Europeans have been conducted (see Ringmar 2014). The interna-tional society of civilized states as it came to be formed in Europe in the course of thenineteenth century was possible, I argue, only because non-European states actively wereexcluded from it. It is the non-recognition of the non-European that made recognition ofthe European possible. To the extent that this logic continues to apply and it does wecan expect continued misunderstandings and more wars. There is a rich, and largelyunexplored, research field here to which we can only hope others will make contributions(Ringmar 2013, 9093).

The personification of the state

Christian Olssons points are more critical. He questions some of the fundamental assump-tions on which our discussion rests, most obviously the idea that the state can be comparedto a person. He objects, he says, to the tendency to reduce the state or society to arepresentative agent with ideas, emotions and motivations (Olsson 2014, 1). The volume,he says, is replete with cases where states think or feel. This encourages a naive form ofsocial psychology, reduces complex organizations to the individual decision-makers said torepresent them, essentializes states, and ignores the historical and social context of theirdevelopment. There is too much variation among the political units that we call states for usto treat them all as agents of the same kind.

The question of the personhood or otherwise of the state is by now fairlywell discussed, and as the discussion has revealed, the question has far-reaching philoso-phical, historical and methodological implications (Ringmar 1996, 439466; Jackson2004, 255258). Briefly stated, this is the justification for our position: subjects whoregard themselves as sovereign states and individuals have a curious ontologicalstatus. They are real and yet they are at the same time imagined. Indeed, it is their status asimaginary constructs which makes them real (Searle 2006, 24). There would be no senseof self but for this imaginary construction. Sovereign subjects exist first and foremostin the stories that they tell about themselves and that are told about them (Ricur 1996,137198; Stanghellini and Rosfort 2013, 7986). The alternative is to follow Hobbes andto make the subject into a transcendental entity, which exists prior to all empiricalinvestigations. Alternatively, we can follow Hume and see the subject only in its empiricalmanifestations. In either case, however, the subject disappears from our investigation from the world, with Hobbes, and in the world, with Hume (Hollis 1985, 217233).

References to the material foundation of the state or to its coercive institutions orclass structure are not a solution to the problem we pose. The question of theontological status of sovereign subjects can have no material answer since the sovereignsubject is not a material thing but instead an entity which emerges from material things.If this sounds mysterious, we should remember that the same emergence takes place inour own brains where physiological processes give rise to consciousness and to a senseof self. The similarities between the processes that give rise to individual minds and tocollective subjects have often been pointed to, by Hume, for example, but also by thelatest research in neuroscience (Hume 1986, 299311; Damasio 1994, 299311).Obviously, the fictional status of the state does not in any way detract from an attentionto international conflicts and war. Stories have empirical, and all too concrete, conse-quences. When stories clash, so will political projects and, all too often, also armies(Ringmar 2006, 403421).

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The fact is, of course, that people really do speak about the state in this fashion. Thestate-as-body is a metaphor of medieval origin, and in the Renaissance the state came tobe talked about as an actor on the world stage, personified by its ruler or by diplomatsacting in its name. The state-as-it-appears-in-a-story is an actor who deliberates, plans andemotes. As such, it can be compared to a person. Indeed, for the purposes of the story, it isa person in exactly the same way that an individual human being is. The state, as Olssonpoints out, can indeed be studied in many other ways, and it can be compared to otherthings an institution, a coercive machinery, a legal structure, a protection racketand so on. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these alternative metaphoricaldescriptions. As always, the relevance of a particular metaphor is determined by what itallows us to learn about the world. We are interested in the subjectivity of the state, andwe have chosen our metaphor accordingly.

Reification of self-conceptions

Olsson is also unhappy with what he refers to as the ontological idealism of many of thecontributions to The International Politics of Recognition. What he objects to here is theway the self-conception of a state is discussed as a matter of ideas, without taking intoaccount the fact that these conceptions have a history which is highly conflictual and theresult of exercises of power. A states self-conceptions, Olsson says, is either nothingmore than the self-perception of foreign policy elites, or they are homogeneously sharedby larger parts of a politically organized society (Olsson 2014, 2). In the former case, itis important to understand the structural inequalities that domestically constitute them aselites with objective/material interests and subjective self-perceptions, and in the lattercase, to understand the material underpinning of the infrastructural power through whichthese collective self-perceptions are broadly diffused and disseminated, be it intentionallyor not, throughout the nation. Again, in other words, Olsson calls for more of a focuson material factors. Claims regarding identities, and questions of international recognition,are inseparable from objective and at least partly material social structures within states(and questions of domestic hierarchies).

Accusations of idealism are often bandied about in the social sciences, and alwaysused as an indictment. No one wants to be called an idealist since the implications arethat idealists make up worlds to fit their own fancy, without proper attention to the waythe world really is and works. Yet Olsson is surely correct to point out that all ideas, andin this case all self-conceptions, come from somewhere. They are produced by certainpeople in certain circumstances, for certain reasons, to serve certain interests, and theseself-conceptions, moreover, are often contested by groups and individuals who advocatetheir separate versions, for their separate reasons. Self-conceptions, we have arguedelsewhere, are often the result of rhetorical battles in which traditional power-holderswill try to reaffirm, or reinterpret, the old meanings which have kept them in power, whilechallengers will try to recode the established symbols to suit their purposes (Ringmar2008, 85). As a result of rhetorical battles such as these, a certain conception of the state isoften the result of a hegemonic use of power, of rhetoric and propaganda, or of culturalpreconceptions which are morally dubious or just plain wrong.

All of this is important, and it could, no doubt, have been discussed in more detail inThe International Politics of Recognition. It would indeed, as Olsson suggests, havedeepened and improved the analysis. And yet, this is not the topic which the articles inthe book set out to address. As the title of the book indicates, we are interested in theinternational politics of recognition and not primarily in issues of historical and domestic

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genesis. Much as when it comes to Duncombes point regarding Western-centric bias, thisrelative neglect provides an opportunity and not a challenge. Olsson is certainly correct topoint out that we need to know far more about how concepts of the state are formed. Weneed to study the rhetorical battles and the formative moments in which a certainconception of the collective self came to be established. These are tasks for anotherbook one to which the historical sociology which Olsson proposes can make crucialcontributions.

The historical sociology of the state

Closely related to the point concerning the reification of self-conceptions is Olssons pointabout the history of the state and the state system. States, he argues, and thereby interstaterelations, are the result of a process of concentration of resources, accumulation ofterritory, centralisation and bureaucratization of power, and monopolization of claims tolegitimate violence (Olsson 2014, 2). Since these processes take place at different timesand rates in different societies, not all states are states to the same degree and in the samefashion. In particular, the transformation of states into nation states takes place at anuneven pace. The existence of nation states makes a difference to the nature of theinternational system since the ideologies through which ordinary people are includedinto the state nationalism, democracy and socialism, above all are used to legitimatesubsequent state action. In particular, these ideologies provide the language in whichstates set themselves apart, define themselves as superior to others or in which they nursetheir resentment. As Olsson concludes: The likely link between mass-ideologies crim-inalizing or animalizing the enemy and collective violence is hence linked to particular,historically situated, features of the modern state (Olsson 2014, 3).

As Olsson acknowledges, Thomas Lindemann addressed this issue already in hisoriginal contribution to The International Politics of Recognition. Wars, Lindemannpointed out, are often the result of narratives which contain inflated self-presentations,or in which a state is seen as offended against by foreigners (Lindemann 2011, 209212).Yet Olsson insists that the correlations between such self-conceptions and warfare are bestexplained as a result of the conditions under which states developed. As he sees it,psychological accounts are always somewhat epiphenomenal, and they never get at theproper cause of a conflict. Wars fought for recognition, or for dignity, become less of auniversal characteristic of international relations than a phenomenon embedded in aparticular historical and geographical context characterized by total war, mass-conscrip-tion and formally egalitarian mass-ideologies (Olsson 2014, 000000). National identitiesare not the causes of wars but provide at best their permissive conditions.

What Olsson urges us to do here is to probe into the economic, social and politicalpreconditions for a certain conception of the self. And he is no doubt correct to point outthat the inclusion of ordinary people in the affairs of the state from the end of theeighteenth century onward be it on ever so unequal terms posed particular demandson the stories told about the state. Nationalistic appeals, after all, are a notorious way torally the people behind traditional elites and to lessen the demands for domestic reforms.Stories of national humiliation helped keep British aristocrats in power in the 1860s muchas it helps keep Chinese leaders in power today (Ringmar 2011, 532; Wang 2008, 783806). The ra-ra rhetoric associated with foreign wars limited the demands for socialreforms in France in the 1870s much as it has done in the United States during the lastdecade. Liberalism is an imperialistic ideology in whose name barbarian wars have been

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fought, and states in the process of democratizing are often militarily aggressive (Ringmar2013, 128134; Mansfield and Snyder 1995, 7997).

Yet a theory of recognition is not, and cannot be, a theory which explains the outbreakof all wars. Instead a theory of recognition is a theory which explains how identities arecreated, maintained, defended or lost, and in this process of identity creation, conflicts,leading to wars, can sometimes take place. This is not to say that all wars are fought foridentity-based reasons (Ringmar 2008, 9091). There are, as already Thomas Hobbespointed out, wars fought for competition and diffidence in addition to the wars foughtfor glory (Hobbes 1982, 185). To admit that a theory of recognition has limitations is notto say that it is irrelevant. Once more traditional, interest-based, explanations have donetheir job, there are still a sufficient number of cases left for identity-based explanations toexplore. The International Politics of Recognition provides a long list of examples.

The issue which Olsson raises is rather whether the stories told about the state can bereduced to material factors. If they can, then we can safely dispense with a discussion ofself-conceptions and their reception by others and instead focus on the economic, socialand political changes which states, and the state system, have undergone. Olsson claimsthat this can be done, yet we claim that it cannot. This is not to say that the materialcontext does not matter. All stories, after all, concern the environment in which they placetheir protagonists, and this environment is in addition to everything else also material. Yetmaterial factors are insufficient. What counts as a material factor, what makes it mean-ingful and what it means for action must always be appropriated by a story. Theenvironment which matters is always interpreted and emplotted, and only through astory can we make sense of what is happening. An inevitable feature of each story is anaccount of its main protagonists in this case the state. This is why an account of theidentity of the state will come to feature in all explanations of state actions even if, as wepoint out, the identity in question is not always put in question.

This holds true also for the examples that Olsson refers to. The rise of the workingclass and other potentially disruptive effects of industrialization may certainly be easier tocontrol if resentments can be directed towards foreigners or wars undertaken for a nationalcause. Yet as far as the political implications are concerned, processes of industrializationmean nothing in themselves and only something as they are made sense of in a publicdiscourse. Public discourses vary depending not only on material factors but also depend-ing on which stories people come to accept. Consider a contemporary example: the storyof national humiliation which the Chinese Communist Party uses to legitimate its hold onpower is a way to include, however deceptively, the quickly increasing Chinese workingclass into the state (Ringmar, forthcoming). The result is a potentially aggressive form ofnationalism which relies heavily on demands that China should be recognized on its ownpreferred terms. Yet it is not legitimate to explain the nationalistic rhetoric with the help ofthe material changes the country has gone through. Between material changes andnationalistic rhetoric is a process of identity formation which, far from being epipheno-menal, has its own political logic. As a result, the humiliation-based rhetoric is not theonly option. Other stories can be told about China, stories that describe a quicklymodernizing yet very different kind of country which also has far more amicable relationswith its neighbours. It is this logic of identity formation which a theory of recognitioncaptures.

As always, the question of causality can only be settled through a historical investiga-tion of each particular case. Material factors cannot by themselves be the causes of wars,but neither can a particular process of identity formation. It could very well be, forexample, that a story of resentment and revenge was widely entertained in a country

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and yet that a particular war was fought for some entirely different reason. Before a storyof resentment and revenge can explain anything it must be entertained by the decision-makers and be made to matter. To establish whether this is the case to establish a motive is often a tricky and intricate business, and it requires us to dig deeply into the historicalsources. This is why a theory of recognition often leads to extensive historical investiga-tions. We must study the world as it really exists, but this reality includes mentalconstructs.

Note1. Lindemann and Ringmar (2011). A paperback edition of the book is due to appear later this

year.

ReferencesDamasio, A. R. 1994. Descartes Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York:

Penguin Books.Duncombe, C. 2014. The International Politics of Recognition, by Thomas Lindemann and Erik

Ringmar. Non-Recognition in International Relations: Developing New Approaches to PoliticalProblems. Global Discourse. doi:10.1080/23269995.2014.917036.

Hobbes, T. 1982. Leviathan. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Hollis, M. 1985. Of Masks and Men. In The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy,

History, edited by M. Carrithers, S. Collins, and S. Lukes, 217233. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Hume, D. 1986. A Treatise of Human Nature. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Jackson, P. T. 2004. Forum Introduction: Is the State a Person? Why Should We Care? Review of

International Studies 30 (2): 255258. doi:10.1017/S0260210504006047.Lindemann, T. 2011. Concluding Remarks on the Empirical Study of International Recognition.

In The International Politics of Recognition, edited by T. Lindemann and E. Ringmar, 209225.Boulder, CO: Paradigm.

Lindemann, T., and E. Ringmar, eds. 2011. The International Politics of Recognition. Boulder, CO:Paradigm.

Mansfield, E. D., and J. Snyder. 1995. Democratization and War. Foreign Affairs 74 (3): 7997.doi:10.2307/20047125.

Olsson, C. 2014. The International Politics of Recognition, by Thomas Lindemann and ErikRingmar. Warfare and Recognition in IR: on the Potential Inputs of the Historical Sociologyof the State. Global Discourse. doi:10.1080/23269995.2014.917037.

Ricur, P. 1996. Soi-Mme Comme Un Autre. Paris: Seuil.Ringmar, E. 1996. On the Ontological Status of the State. European Journal of International

Relations 2 (4): 439466. doi:10.1177/1354066196002004002.Ringmar, E. 2006. Inter-Textual Relations: The Quarrel over the Iraq War as a Conflict between

Narrative Types. Cooperation & Conflict 41 (4): 403421. doi:10.1177/0010836706069611.Ringmar, E. 2008. Identity, Interest and Action: A Cultural Explanation of Swedens Intervention in

the Thirty Years War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Ringmar, E. 2011. Free Trade by Force: Civilization against Culture in the Great China Debate of

1857. In Culture and External Relations, edited by J. Batora and M. Mokre, 532. Aldershot:Ashgate.

Ringmar, E. 2013. Liberal Barbarism: The European Destruction of the Palace of the Emperor ofChina. New York: Palgrave.

Ringmar, E. 2014. Recognition and the Origins of International Society. Global Discourse.doi:10.1080/23269995.2014.917031.

Ringmar, E. Forthcoming. Ourselves in the Other: Chinas Place in Four Recognition Regimes. InRecognition in International Relations: Rethinking an Ambivalent Concept in a Global Context,edited by C. Daase and C. Fehl. New York: Palgrave.

Searle, J. R. 2006. Social Ontology: Some Basic Principles. Anthropological Theory 6 (1): 1229.doi:10.1177/1463499606061731. http://ant.sagepub.com/content/6/1/12.short.

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Stanghellini, G., and R. Rosfort. 2013. Emotions and Personhood: Exploring Fragility, MakingSense of Vulnerability. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wang, Z. 2008. National Humiliation, History Education, and the Politics of Historical Memory:Patriotic Education Campaign in China. International Studies Quarterly 52 (4): 783806.doi:10.1111/j.1468-2478.2008.00526.x.

Zuo, Y. 2014. The International Politics of Recognition, by Thomas Lindemann and Erik Ringmar.On the Empirical Study of International Recognition. Global Discourse. doi:10.1080/23269995.2014.917035.

Erik RingmarDepartment of Political Science, Lund University, Sweden

erik@ringmar.net 2014, Erik Ringmar

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23269995.2014.947069

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Book Review Symposium: The International Politics of Recognition, by Thomas Lindemann and Erik RingmarBias towards Western examplesThe personification of the stateReification of self-conceptionsThe historical sociology of the stateNoteReferences