In Search of an International Community: Between Historical, Legal and Political Ontologies

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1 In Search of an International Community: Between Historical, Legal and Political Ontologies Mor Mitrani The Department of International Relations The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Introduction *** Preliminary Draft *** The idea that states can hold common values and standards of conduct as well as some capacity to act in the international arena in collective manners for collective goals - namely that states can convene and take part in a collective We of states - is epitomized in the concept of international community. Although the term international community is widely used by scholars, practitioners and international political leaders and is an integral part of the common vocabulary, most usages of it either take its existence for granted or use it in order to understand other phenomena, like international law or international legitimacy. Only few have sought to explore the international community as a subject on its own right, let alone define, identify its members, and characterize its ways of actions and sources of legitimacy (see for example Abi-saab, 1998; Addis, 2008; Danilenko, 1991; Warbrick & Tierney, 2006). This is especially puzzling given the notion that while the power and sphere of influence of the international community are not sustained by any concrete material factor, and its authority stems from the mere usage of the term along with the practical and normative substances that are attributed being to it. There is therefore a need to theorize the concept and scrutinize its effects on states patterns of conduct and relations in the realm of international politics. Essentially, the concept of international community is a sociological construct, nonetheless as a sociological construct it can be reckoned through four main ontologies: historical, legal, political and discursive. The paper will survey these ontologies and assess the viability of applying them as means to answer the question: who is the international community, as well as the need to interweave them in order to comprehensively gauge its implications on states behavior. It will argue that since the concept the international community, is to a great extent a discursive practice, the optimal way to understand it, is through epistemological lenses, via the scrutiny of how the concept is perceived and constructed by states and through states dialogue in the context of inter-state discourse. 1

2 A. The concept of community at the international level sociological perspective The theoretical discussion on international community entails a preliminary discussion on the sociological concept of community. The term community, as rooted in sociological writings, denotes to a human association in which individuals interact based upon shared common features of identity. The most influential work on the concept of community is Ferdinand Tonnies seminal book (1963 [1887]), Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. The book presents two ideal-types of peaceful social association: Gemeinschaft ("community") and Gesellschaft ("society"). Gemeinschaft as opposed to Gesellschaft is united by will, a feature that establishes not only shared understandings, identity and interests, but also the possibility of a collective action based on an authentic sense of unity and shared moral imperatives. While both types of association are constructed through social relations that are based on rational and human will, they are differentiated by the origins of the relationships - real and organic (kinship-based) relationships will indicate for a Gemeinschaft, and artificial, imaginary and mechanical connections will stand for a Gesellschaft (see Kritsiotis, 2002: 962). The question is whether and how we can apply the sociological depiction of a community to the supermacro level of the international. As the focus is inevitably on the interactions and relationships among the members of the community, in order to identify an international community, we ought to account for its members and assess whether they share, or at least see themselves as sharing, commonalities that establish an authentic sense of unity. Conventionally, two main answers can be found: those who conceive it as the community of states (and states only), and those who see it as a community of individual persons and thus as the community of humankind (Kritsiotis, 2002:968). The latter is an ideal-type construct infused by cosmopolitanism, that stands in contradiction with the idea of the international community of states, mainly since it cannot be realized in practice while world politics are still governed and managed by states and state-centered institutions that hinder the feasibility of a purist cosmopolitan community. Conversely, a conception of the international community as a community of communities in general and of states in particular (Addis, 2008; Mapel & Nardin, 1999), refers to a general sociological notion that groups of states (or other international actors) are capable of both sharing a certain level of communal feeling and acting on behalf of this shared feelings, hence bestows to the international community some agential capacities to either act or legitimate members actions (Buzan & Gonzalez-Pelaez, 2002: 32-33). 2

3 B. The international community A socio-historical ontology Socio-historical ontology of the international community discerns it as evolving throughout history as a result of the inter-state system formation and consolidation process that began in the Peace of Westphalia (1648). From a historicist perspective, the international community is not a new concept, and one can find multiple references dating back to the beginning of the 20 th century that allude the formulation or potential formulation of an international community, albeit not necessarily a cohesive one. These accounts are usually linked to the field of integration studies, striving to place the development of a community at the international level as part of the wider process of political communities formation. By applying a transaction-based conception, the main argument is that states over time establish nets of communication and social transactions that integrate them around common norms of peaceful state conduct that arguably mark states ripeness for an international community (e.g. Leo & Martin, 1943). The most notable work in this respect, is Deutsch s seminal work, The Political Community at the International Level (1957), which tracks historically the evolution of the polity and sets the criteria that allowed it - in different historical periods - to form a community, focusing on the prospects of establishing a supranational (security) community. Cobb and Elder (1970) also explore the linkage between integration, the concept of community and the absence of conflict, and points to the end of World War II as creating supranational regional communities in various areas of the world. Resonating with the Deutschian perspective, they call to focus on social interactions rather than on actor- or system- oriented perspectives. Using a communication-based lens they posit the requisites which produce greater cohesion among states. These are manifested in values congruence both at the level of international institutions and of states shared habits, producing in turn peaceful means of conflict resolution. These works discern the idea of community at the international level as a historical construct, and the sense of community as both the generator of (peaceful) historical change and the outcome of historical changes. When Deutsch s vision was revived in Adler and Barnet (1998) seminal book, Security Communities, the emphasis on the sense of community, got even deepened. In one of the book s chapters, Russet (1998) links the concept of security communities and the concept of the international community, and points to the peaceful end of the Cold War as an historical moment that realized the three components of the Kantian triangle at once: Consolidation of democracy; economic interdependence and transnational institutions, leading to a shift of the core of international politics from the idea of sovereignty to the Kantian triad. A shift, that both describes 3

4 and prescribes - from a neo-kantian perspective - a partial, uneven and nascent global security community sustained by democratic peace, affects in turn on the embedment of re-constructed notions of international law, in the spirit of Kant s perpetual peace thesis. The depiction of the international community as a historical construct especially via the concept of security communities tends however to focus more on the security aspect rather than on the community one. It thus portrays the community at the international level more as means to achieve peace than as a condition of its own. As such, it tends to take the existence of the international community almost for granted as a facilitator of peace or at least as an expected outcome of the historical evolution of polities and not as a subject of its own right, and thus it is insufficient in order to gauge what is the international community. C. From historical to legal The International Community as a legal ontology A second, and probably the most common and acceptable way to depict the international community is from a legal point view, envisaging it as the fundamental prism to understand and frame international law, by conceiving the international community as the sociological, some would say constitutional, context in which international law emerge. From a socio-legal angle as well, the concept of the international community is not new and the notion that international law is manifestation of the international community is evident through various legal texts that aim to define and set the scope of international law and entwine the essence of international law with the idea of the international community. Notable examples are the 1949 Draft Declaration on the Rights and Duties of States which contends that "the States of the world form a community governed by international law," and The 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law asserting that all states "are equal members of the international community."' The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties refers to the recognition and acceptance by "international community of States as a whole, of both the legal rules of international law and of violations of international law and international crime (see Danilenko, 1991). The rationale is straightforward, as law essentially requires some sort of legal community that would be committed to both formulate and comply with it. Based on this logic, the mere existence of international law insinuates the existence of an international (legal) community, exclusive to states at least while states are both the principle (if not sole) law-making authority of international law and the principle legal subjects of international law. Residing with the school of legal positivism, the international community is portrayed not only as regulated by international law but also as 4

5 constituted by it, and especially by customary international law. This is a sociological assertion in essence since the existence of the legal community is contingent upon the extent to which states conceive themselves as subjects of common rules, members in a voluntary association of those who accept the rules (Mapel & Nardin, 1999; Whelan, 1999). Rightful membership in the international community therefore entails sovereign states to conform to the common standards of political behavior that set the legitimate and rightful conduct of states in the international arena. Diehl, Ku, & Zamora (2003) argue that the international community, through international institutions, set the normative framework of the acceptable and expectable standards in various issue areas for behavior and operation in the international system. This is though a somehow circular conceptualization as international law is both the indicator and the originator of the international community (Simma & Paulus, 1998), as the international community is both setting the operating systems and embodying them, and thus questions regarding who is the international community or what are its exogenic characteristics, namely the normative structure and substance that infuse the international community, still remain elusive. The constitutional strand of International Law suggests the UN and the UN charter as the constitutions of the international community. According to this, the international community was constituted with the establishment of the UN and the articulation of the charter as a binding covenant of existing and normatively desired international community (Abi-saab, 1998; Cassese, 1989; Dupuy, 1997; Fassbender, 2009), manifesting, practically and discursively, a degree of unity that has deepened areas of cooperation, and radically shifted the structure and substance of international law (see Dupuy, 1997). The entrenchment of the concept of the international community to the UN charter is more than a socio-legal depiction but rather a political declaration, as the charter itself is a state-centric political project that emphasizes the notion that the international community is exclusive to sovereign states. Conversely though, Addis (2008) expounds the concept of universal jurisdiction as the constitutive function through which the international community as a collective (legal) identity is being enacted. Universal jurisdiction is a process through which the international community imagines its identity, since it both constitutes the international community and regulate the legal behavior of its members (Addis, 2008: 133). Nevertheless, the international community Addis points to is genuinely different the one that is associated with the international community of states, as he portrays a community of humankind as a whole, constituted from the bottom-up, through the participation of its individual constituents. 5

6 The legal ontology interweaves the concept of international community with concepts of change and continuity as changes in the normative structure and substance of the international community are accounted as explaining changes in international law. More specifically, according to Abi-Saab (1998), the degree of community shared by members of a certain international society denotes to the legal position a certain international society will ascribe to, ranging from a core of law of coexistence to a core of law of cooperation. In this regard the degree of community is treated as a dynamic variable that once changes, in relation to a given subject, at a given moment, affects the socio-legal position of states regarding world politics. As such, and corresponding with Tonnies, the international community could be reckoned as a specific type states association in which the degree of unity responds to political changes and in return would change international law infrastructure. In this regard, the end of the Cold War and the dissolve of the Eastern bloc in the early 1990s are seen as drivers of change in the structure of the international community, manifested in ever-growing scope of international law. The argument here is that the political changes created a gap between the normative frameworks of the international community and the existing international legal order and necessitated adapting central international law measures to be compatible with the changes in the international community (Abi-saab, 1998; Danilenko, 1991). The end of the Cold War is thus portrayed as promoting the international community by the transformation from a framework designated at maintaining states sovereignty to an an emerging normative order of a nascent international community (Warbrick & Tierney, 2006). This depiction combines to a great extent both historicist and legal ontologies, as on the one hand, the international community is seen as a historical construct that is shaped in light of historical political changes and on the other hand as the normative framework that subscribes the contexts in which practices of international law will be re-constructed in light of the historical processes. In this respect, Ruggie (1983) conceives the international community as embodying a matrix of constraints and opportunities for state action, (Ruggie, 1983: 94) and as composed of social, normative and institutional elements. Therefore, changes in any of these components and their interplay, as he demonstrates through the case-study of human rights, potentially require adapting the communities norms in order to ensure their adequacy to the changing political contexts. The depiction of the international community as a matrix accentuates though the main peril in both the historicist and legal ontologies, that lack a concrete political perspective as they both pay less attention both to the political settings that establishes the international community and to the implications the concept has on political behavior. In this regard, neither the socio-legal perspective 6

7 nor the socio-historical one, provide the theoretical tools to envisage the international community, mainly since both acknowledge its role in the international political arena but fail to portray it as a political phenomenon of its own. Thus, both perspectives use the concept of international community as theoretical conduit to explain certain political outcomes but rather evade the need to explain the international community itself as a political outcome, as a political construct on its own. D. The international community as a socio-political construct From a political perspective, it seems natural to focus on the English School of international relations as a framework for the political concept of the international community. To a great extent the English school allows bridging the socio-historicist and the socio-legal depictions, as it is infused both by the Grotian thought regarding international law and recognizes the role of historical context in the evolvement of states patterns of conduct. This agglomeration is the basis for one of the main theoretical notions of the English School, that states are capable of sharing common interests, rules and values in the framework of the international society (Bull, 1977). The affinity between the theoretical concept of the international society and the concept of the international community clearly invites an attempt to use the former as an effective leverage to portray the international community as a political construct. Interestingly though, the concept of the international community is not very common among English School scholars, and only few accounts attempted to theorize the commonalities and linkages between the theoretical framework of the international society and the concept of the international community as it is being used in the political arena (Buzan & Gonzalez-Pelaez, 2002: 34). The conventional conceptualization of the international society supposedly refers to an association of states that lacks (or at least does not necessarily hold) a degree of unity, and therefore cannot be automatically equated with the concept of the international community. Brown (1995), for example, argues that the international community is not a feasible political construct as it stands in contradiction to the main ordering principle of the international society sovereignty. Nonetheless, the English School conceptualization of the international society does not necessarily render the international society and the international community as mutually exclusive. The common premise that the international society is not confined to particular substantial features does not preclude an identity or a We-ness feature, and thus does not stand in contradiction to a possibility that members of the international society would collectively unite around a certain issue area or norm in processes that formulate at least nascent (international) community. 7

8 The concept of the international society can therefore be seen, at least theoretically, as the political framework that enables a certain international community, as a specific - a thicker and denser; maybe even solidarist - type of international society (Buzan & Gonzalez-Pelaez, 2002:35). Buzan and Gonzales (2002) recognize the possibility of multiple international communit(ies), at the sub-global level, and depict international communities as smaller hubs within the international society in which one can find tighter net of states within international society that share a higher degree of integration defined by a strong common identity, In this respect, a political ontology of the international community depicts it as tying single actors among themselves and via a greater (not necessarily global) external environment in which they seeks to act in, serving thus as a political function for those who act in its name. (Buzan & Gonzalez-Pelaez, 2002) (31). As such, the community is more than the sum of its members actions, but rather a pseudo-entity of its own that serves as the source that supplies guidance and boundaries of legitimate actions through common institutions, and transcends particular members and enables referring and establishing a collective We of states. It therefore allows adding a third component to the discussion of the linkage between international community and international law international political legitimacy that is for itself constructed via common interactions between and among states (Clark, 2005; Coicaud, 2002; Pauly & Grande, 2005). The emphasis - added by the English School - on international legitimacy contributes a political dimension by highlighting mutual recognition as a key component of a collective We of states. The international community thereby is a political construct that states are aware and minded to, whether they operate in its context or not. Its distinguishing feature is the status of its members: nationstates, and thus sovereignty (even when its substances change along the years) is both the basic entry criteria and the general reference point of operation in the international realm.. Ontologically, this political perspective provides a structural framework to understand the international community as a political construct but fail to shed light on its agential features, namely on the processes that construct it and its actions (or more accurately actions on behalf of it) as a pseudo-political entity. In this regard, the political ontology gives extra leverage to answer how the international community can be recognized, but again the question what is the international community remains open. We should thus take one step further from the sociological notion that states are capable of constructing an international community, a political construct that its mere existence can account for historical changes and of socio-legal developments and face the challenge of developing tools to understand the contents and patterns of states political behavior that constitute the international community. 8

9 E. The international community as a discursive construct This challenge requires, I argue, to push the ontological questions aside and focus on the notion that the international community is to a great extent a discursive construct, namely that it exists only once a political agent refers to its existence and attributes to it certain values, rules and virtues. Therefore, by exploring the way political agents refer and narrate namely talk about the international community we can learn what it is, and how it is being perceived by the agents that arguably act in its context. The main premise in this regard is that words shape concepts and concepts construct shared knowledge and reality (Kritsiotis, 2002: 992), and therefore construct concrete practices and institutions. The discursive epistemology of the international community as a construct that is constituted through agents dialogue is not necessarily unique, and we can specifically identify similar notions with regards to international law for example (Goodman & Jinks, 2004; Koh, 1997), and of course the idea of diplomacy per se. the great interest however lay in my opinion not merely in understating the discursive construct but even further that by exploring these dialogues and how they portray the interplay between such discursive construct e.g. international community and international law - we can gain a unique point of view on the patterns of states transactions and patterns of relations and further understand how states themselves conceive, experience and narrate inter-state relations and practices of inter-state relations. As such, the international community is rendered as both notional and practical - something that is created and sustained by the acknowledgment of various social actors but is also acquired with agential capacities, and is when in need is called to action or assigned responsibility (Erskine 2008: ), and therefore is more than setting the framework of legitimate and rightful conduct, but also serves as a legitimizing device used by political leaders and practitioners in international discourse in order to claim legitimacy or render other s actions as illegitimate (Bliesemann de Guevara & Kühn, 2011; Ellis, 2009). The concept thus can as a discursive vessel that is opened to manipulation and used based on self-interest, for one s political needs. Consequently, the international community is often associated with western norms of rightful conduct in world politics, and thus in practice represents collective values, norms and practices not of all states but rather of the relatively small but powerful club of western-developed states. As a result, it may be seen as rhetorical means of euphemism aimed at enforcing their power and interests in a disguise of an overarching international community, by strategically framing and embedding an international community doctrine (see Blair 1999) in the normative vocabulary of international discourse. 9

10 Nonetheless, even if this is indeed the case and the concept of the international community is merely a rhetorical device that is used as a political clone to either legitimize the actions of hegemonic powers or even to substitute for the absence of an organic community with shared sense of unity at the international level (Tsagourias, 2006: ), there might be great significance in understanding its role as a discursive practice. At the end of the day, the mere fact that it is used in day-to-day international politics, let alone as mean to legitimize (of delegitimize) political behavior suggests that states not only adhere significance to the idea of community at the international level but also calculate and frame their actions in light of it. States therefore individually and collectively both portray themselves and judge their fellow states based on their rightful conduct in the framework of the international community. Given these premises, the concept of the international community, is understood as a discursive expression of collective and communal existing and desired constituents of international relations, hence as a conceptualization of a collective we composed only of states and constructed only due to their unique statist features and virtues. Furthermore, I suggest that the discursive references to this collective we of states such as the international community, essentially reflect a discursive choice that renders a conception of an inter-state club of states, implying on the rules and practices of membership and conduct that the members of the club share. The underlying hypothesis thus suggests that mapping the discursive use of these discursive references and especially by tracing and exploring the textual and institutional contexts, within which they are used in inter-state political discourse, can further explain dynamics of inter-state practices in general and thus in international law in particular. REFERENCES Abi-saab, G. (1998). Whither the International Community? European Journal of International Law, 9(2), Addis, A. (2008). Imagining the International Community: The Constitutive Dimension of Universal Jurisdiction. Human Rights Quarterly, 31(1), doi: /hrq Adler, E., & Barnett, M. (1998). Security Communities. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bliesemann de Guevara, B., & Kühn, F. P. (2011). The International Community Needs to Act : Loose Use and Empty Signalling of a Hackneyed Concept. International Peacekeeping, 18(2), doi: /

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