Setting Boundaries: Can International Society Exclude "Rogue States"?1

Abstract

This essay addresses a prominent post-Cold War issue to which political scientists have paid relatively little attention: the status of so-called rogue states in international politics. The war in Iraq crystallized transatlantic disagreement over whether “rogue states” exist and how they should be treated, but the debate raged throughout the 1990s. This essay brings international relations theory to bear on the issue of “rogue states,” but it does so with a theoretical twist. It argues that we must first identify the entity from which these states are allegedly excluded as well as who gets to set the membership criteria. If we stipulate that the international system includes all states, then international society can be defined according to various shared ideas and many realizations of international society are possible. Powerful states may try to act as “norm entrepreneurs,” promoting their ideas as the basis of international society. But states, including great powers , may genuinely disagree over the basis and boundaries of this society. It is thus vital not only to take both power and shared ideas seriously, but also to describe the origins and limits of shared ideas. The limits to shared ideas can be termed “bounded intersubjectivity.” This essay uses the debate over “rogue states” and the transatlantic crisis over confronting Iraq to underscore these theoretical issues.