The roles states play: a Meadian interactionist approach

Abstract

Constructivist scholars have largely limited their view of how state action is socially constructed to the concepts of norms and identity. As for individuals, however, roleplaying is also a core aspect of state activity. I demonstrate the potential of this concept for constructivists on the basis of a reconsideration of the roles states play in international politics -drawing on symbolic interactionism and in particular the thought of G.H. Mead. From a Meadian perspective, roles are sets of appropriate behaviours, not bundles of fixed duties; they emerge in interaction and give the actor a sense of its structure and the scope of possible action. Roles are thus the necessary social vehicle for action in its meaning-creating, identityaffirming sense. Using the illustration of the Suez Crisis of 1956, I develop a 'Meadian interactionist' conceptual approach that builds on previous attempts to harness the potential of the role concept in International Relations (IR) and sharpens constructivist understandings of the links between role, identity, norms, and action in IR.

Role Theory, Narratives, and Interpretation: The Domestic Contestation of Roles

“…Yet role behavior is not always consistent with the expectations given by the setting. This incongruity opens up space for the creativity and agency that is inherent in role theory when using a symbolic interactionist approach as opposed to more exclusively structural approaches; that is, by focusing on role‐making as process of learning in which the agent initiates action shaped and constrained not only by Others’ expectations, but also by its own judgment of the situation (Harnisch :49; McCourt :379). A symbolic interactionist approach to role theory therefore brings both a focus on the agency capacity of the actor and on the reification of structures in other versions of the theory.…”

“…This view contrasts with the interpretive approach as the interplay of material and social power and structures is also at least tacitly present within symbolic interaction accounts on role theory as the closest variant to the interpretive approach. As McCourt (:381) notes, “while not any role can be played by a state—a state's military and economic capabilities therefore place limits on these choices—crucially, where there are differing viewpoints, these should be clear from the arguments used by foreign policy‐makers and other parties to the debate.” However, a possible synthesis between role theory and the interpretive approach can build on the consensus of avoiding the reification of structures and the belief that agents are able to modify existing patterns by their contingent human activity (Bevir et al. :166).…”

“…Roles refer both to social positions in an organized group and to any socially recognized category of actors (Stryker and Statham :323). This theoretical approach has recently regained prominence in IR and foreign‐policy analysis scholarship (Harnisch, Frank, and Maull ; Cantir and Kaarbo ; Harnisch ; McCourt ; Thies ) after a previous resurgence in the 1980s–1990s (Walker ; Le Prestre ). These waves of role theory scholarship had their origins in the seminal contribution of Holsti () on national role conceptions (NRCs) and foreign‐policy analysis.…”

“…This is so even within interpretive works on role theory using symbolic interaction where discourse analysis could also be appropriately used. The principle of encouraging discourse analysis is not only a given because of the theoretical approach, but also because of the apparent similarity between discourses and some versions of content analysis and process tracing (McCourt :381). Whereas similarity in the treatment and analysis of data is often found in the different methods employed by role theorists, we still lack systematic and coherent ways of studying roles.…”

BRICS and the Evolution of a New Agenda Within Global Governance

“…this chapter will understand a role expectation to be a balance of the domestic expectations (ego expectations) and the implicit or explicit demands of others (alter expectations). The current self stabilizes both relevant to a current significant other and to its historical self (McCourt 2012). Both the historical self and the current self are conceptual through "ontological security" (Zarakol 2010), which can be defined as the situation in which "an actor has a consistent sense of self by performing actions in order to underwrite his or her notion of 'who they are'" (ibid: 3).…”