Lacunae in the Study of Culture in International Security

Abstract

Two separate strands of political science literature have reinvigorated the study of culture in international security in recent years through their methodological rigor and empiric accuracy: constructivism and organizational theory. It is important to recognize, though, that these literatures speak to particular roles of culture in strategic studies – and not those roles studied in the strategic culture literature. Indeed, that literature has not been as successful as the other two, suffering from over-determined predictions, empirical failures, and an unresolved debate about epistemology. Thus, there is a perplexing lacuna in the centre of this field: a weak core of cultural analysis in international security coupled with stronger works at the periphery. There are two reasons for this. One the one hand, organizational cultures tend to be more unified than the myriad strains in all national cultures. On the other, constructivism looks primarily to explain – and less often to predict – identity. Traditional strategic culture work suffers the worst of both worlds, striving for explanatory power but having to grapple with multiple, competing cultures, and so is weaker than either of the other schools. While culturally aware scholarship of specific political institutions and social actors of specific cases should be encouraged, policymakers and scholars should not expect much distinctive predictive utility from the strategic culture literature per se.