Practice turn marks an important advancement in International Relations theorizing. In challenging abstract meta-theoretical debates, practice theorizing in International Relations aims to get close to the lifeworld(s) of the actual practitioners of politics. Scholars from different positions such as constructivism, critical theory, and post-structuralism have critically interrogated the analytical framework of practices in international politics. Building upon these works, we are concerned with a question of how to examine the context of international practices that unfolds in multiple ways in practitioners’ performances. Our central thesis is that a distinct pragmatic methodology offers an opportunity to keep with the practice turn and avoid the problematic foundational moves of mainstream practice theorizing. This involves foregrounding three interrelated processes in examining practices: the role of exceptions in the normal stream of performances, normative uptake of the analysts, and the semantic field that actors navigate in political performances. We argue that this methodology is predicated on its usefulness to interpret practices through reflective social-science inquiry.

Although the recent advancements in critical constructivist IR on political rhetoric has greatly improved our understanding of linguistic mechanisms of political action, we need a sharp understanding of how rhetoric explains foreign policy change. Here we conceptualize a link between rhetoric and foreign policy change by foregrounding distinct dynamics at the regional and domestic institutional environments. Analytically, at the regional level, we suggest examining whether norms of foreign policy engagement are explicitly coded in treaties and agreements or implicit in conventions and practices of actors. And at the domestic level, we suggest examining whether a particular foreign policy issue area is concurrent or contested among interlocutors. In this constellation, we clarify how four different rhetorical strategies underwrites foreign policy change – persuasion, mediation, explication and reconstruction – how it operates, and the processes through which it unfolds in relation to multiple audiences. Our principal argument is that grand foreign policy change requires continuous rhetorical deployments with varieties of politics to preserve and stabilize the boundaries in the ongoing fluid relations of states. We illustrate our argument with an analysis of Brazil’s South-South grand strategy under the Lula administration and contrast it against the rhetoric of subsequent administrations. Our study has implications for advancing critical foreign policy analysis on foreign policy change and generally for exploring new ways of studying foreign policies of nonwestern postcolonial states in international relations.

What are the processes through which strategic political actors legitimize their preferred policy choice with multiple audiences in international politics? This article builds a conceptual framework of rhetorical dissociation where strategic actors present normative justifications hierarchically to gain acceptance among different audiences. Such hierarchizing works in three interconnected ways whereby strategic actors delineate audience types, create a rhetorical presence to resonate with sympathetic audiences, and establish a bounded dialogue in their legitimation politics to sideline the normative validity claims of other audiences. By engaging with International Relations (IR) theories of strategic legitimation, this article contributes to this field by showing how strategic actors use multiple audiences in the game to their advantage and wrestle a distinct normativity through rhetoric so that it fits their strategic goals. I illustrate the model by empirically examining India's strategic legitimation of intervention in the East Pakistan crisis in 1971. This article also sets the stage for further empirical examination of strategic legitimation, particularly in engaging with humanitarian crises abroad.

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How does rhetoric work in the pursuit of political projects in international relations? This article analyzes how rhetoric-wielding political actors engage in reasoning to bolster their position by drawing upon norms that underwrite interactions, and audiences as scorekeepers evaluate the reasoning by making a series of inferences. I call this mechanism rhetorical reasoning. Building on the existing classification of norms in constructivist international relations (IR) and utilizing three distinct norm types – instrumental, institutional, and moral – I show the different processes through which political actors deploy rhetoric to legitimize and justify political projects and the distinct logics through which scorekeepers make inferences and evaluate the project. This article contributes to IR theories of argumentation by providing a sharp conceptualization of political rhetoric and actor–audience relationships in the game. I illustrate the mechanism of rhetorical reasoning using Brazil's UN peace enforcement operation in Haiti in 2004 to give empirical evidence for the role of institutional norm type in patterns of rhetorical reasoning and contestations in international politics. Paying attention to political rhetoric in the actor–scorekeepers' relationships in this way clarifies important issues regarding the varieties of political projects and the different role of normativity in the game.