Weak Actors Research Articles

Can informal judicial norms protect against political pressure?

International tribunals are pulled between a commitment to judicial autonomy and the need to manage their members’ political expectations, lest these rein in the tribunal’s power. We argue that when the formal design of international institutions leaves them exposed to political control, institutional actors can respond by self-imposing constraints to protect themselves from excessive oversight. We examine this phenomenon in the context of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Appellate Body (AB), touted until recently as one of the most successful international tribunals in existence. We argue that the early insistence on collegiality and consensus opinions among WTO AB members had the effect of (i) deflecting political blame and (ii) providing cover for adjudicators who did not dissent when governments might have wished them to. As the informal norm of consensus opinion was weakened, political control by WTO members grew stronger, culminating in the United States’s move to paralyze the AB. Weaker actors can thus improve their position under formal rules, yet this requires a strong commitment to a set of informal norms, which comes with its own challenges.

The power of the “weak” and international organizations

By nearly every measure, power in the international system is concentrated, meaning that most states lack significant power resources. And yet international relations theory tends to focus on the behavior of great powers. This special issue instead explores the strategies that “weak” states use in the context of international organizations both to advance their interests and to resist pressure from stronger states. We define weakness as a relative lack of power across one or more dimensions. While the literature, to the extent it has focused on weak actors, has too often defined weakness solely in material terms, we adopt a broader conception that builds on the influential typology of power by Barnett and Duvall (Barnett and Duvall, 2005a, Barnett and Duvall, International Organization59, 39–75, 2005b). A multidimensional conceptualization of power allows analysts to show how actors that are weak in one dimension (often material power) may be stronger on other dimensions, giving them greater capacity for action than is often recognized. From this framework we create a typology of “strategies of the weak” that emphasizes the agency of weaker actors to make the most of their positions. The contributions to the special issue, summarized here, illuminate and substantiate many of these strategies across a diverse range of international organizations, understood as both forums and actors. As the articles show, these alternative theoretical mechanisms help explain how and why seemingly weak states sometimes fare better than a simplistic assessment of their material capabilities might suggest. By deepening our understanding of weakness and how it influences state behavior, the volume advances our theoretical understanding of how power is built, wielded, and resisted in and through international organization.

Power of the weak? Framing strategies in fiscal redistribution negotiations

ABSTRACT In fiscal redistribution negotiations, fiscally weaker sub-units aim to secure more funding but are disempowered by their dependency and lack of bargaining chips. What kind of negotiation strategies do fiscally weak actors rely on to maximize their bargaining positions in redistributive negotiations? The article puts forward a novel strategy of discursive framing whereby relatively powerless actors can reach successful agreements. Two strategies of framing, communitarian and coercive, are observed inductively through a comparative case study analysis of two instances of sub-federal redistribution negotiations in Canada. The findings reveal that ‘more is not always better’: more publicity and aggression can backfire, while communitarian strategies grounded in normative argumentation can prove effective despite their non-confrontational nature. Even a mixed communitarian-coercive strategy can prove effective given that sub-units remain consistent with their initial objectives and apply pressure incrementally. The lessons learned from these Canadian cases have broader implications for studying the dynamics of redistributive negotiations globally.

An Appraisal of the Challenges and Limitations of Developing African Countries in Negotiations with Multinational Entities and Developed Nations: Proposed Interventions

The paper takes a look at the limitations and challenges that negotiators of developing African countries encounter with multinational entities and developed nations. It identifies that negotiators of multinational and advanced economies appear to be very competitive and confrontational as against negotiators of developing African negotiators, who appear cooperative and collaborative, a soft-styled approach to negotiations, these disparities arise from power, network and resource imbalance. Some of the challenges encountered by African negotiators include aggressive demands, unilateralism and setting self-serving agendas, negative impact of demographic variables as well as intercultural challenges. Others include inadequate cultural intelligence, negotiating process fatigue, political interest and inadequate competent and experienced human resource and financial limitations among others. The Doha declaration points to the fact that weak nations such as African countries and partners, even though may appear as weaker actors can attain a successful negotiated outcome, when in strategic partnership and networks with identified mutual interest and benefits. The paper recommends the need for the establishment of a networked governance strategy, a more formidable one to the TRIPs network, which delivered a BATNA. Within the state and regional levels, African countries must consciously endeavor to provide their domestic institutions such as Foreign Ministries, Trade and Industry Ministries, national negotiation agencies, with the requisite capacities and expertise needed to be very effective and competitive. Good political well of governments is central in avoiding conflict of interest and corruption at the expense of the State for a BATNA. This would enable them to be better prepared with the requisite confidence, knowledge, and skills to negotiate for a better outcome with multinational corporations and nations.

R&D cooperation in collaborative consumption of research equipment: An ERGM approach

High-tech research infrastructure is essential for state-of-the-art research, but requires many resources. Relatively weak actors, such as SMEs, cannot secure enough of those. Applying the concept of collaborative consumption via digital platforms, we examine the cooperative behavior of Korean SMEs that share research equipment to overcome their lack of resources. Also, we analyze configurations of a collaborative consumption network using the Exponential Random Graph Model. Network structural factor analysis shows sufficient effects of network positive feedback through cooperative consumption with a variety of popular providers and attributes analysis shows that SMEs frequently engage in collaborative consumption with their counterparts in the same region. This new cooperative model can achieve a virtuous cycle of policies, as it increases the efficiency of research infrastructure, preventing the unnecessary building of new research equipment and enabling relocation of underutilized infrastructure and online reservation of equipment.

Combined differentiation in European defense: tailoring Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) to strategic and political complexity

ABSTRACT Sustaining meaningful defense cooperation in Europe is made difficult by defense-industrial fragmentation, a multiplicity of institutional frameworks, divergent strategic cultures and domestic opposition to integration. The European Union’s recent foray into defense integration incorporates multiple forms of differentiation to overcome these barriers, with Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) characterized by selective membership, external participation, and project-based clustering. Such “combined differentiation” offers an instructive example of how EU practices and principles can contribute to meaningful defense collaboration, even though Brussels is often thought a weak actor externally. It also illustrates how distinct forms of differentiation can be embodied within a single structure to accommodate complexity in strategic preferences. Using the example of PESCO, this article shows how “combined differentiation” has emerged as a response to the nature of the European defense landscape and how debates between member states about how to respond to specific challenges have brought about further differentiation over time.

AMBIGUITAS STRATEGI IDENTITAS CNN TERHADAP ISLAMOPHOBIA DAN ANTI-AMERIKA (KASUS: CNN.COM DAN CNNINDONESIA.COM)

This study analyzes the constructivist view of CNN's strategy on Islamophobia and Anti-American issues. Taking a case study of Islamophobia globally and Anti-Americanism in Indonesia, CNN provides two different identities regarding each issue that contradicts the assumptions of constructivism. Through descriptive qualitative research techniques and data collection documentation, the authors found that the strategy with two different identities for Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism is CNN's effort as a framing for the interests of the United States in the war on terror, as well as differentiating them from other news media. With news characteristics that are skeptical of the Middle East, CNN provides an identity as a supporter of Islamophobia and encourages the movement to grow. It's different if you switch to Indonesian news, CNN abandons its previous identity and builds a new identity with a narrative that supports Muslims from the point of view of Western countries. For constructivism, this dual identity strategy shows that CNN is a weak actor because they do not know who they really are and the ambiguity of the main interests they want to achieve

Material Scarcity, Mortality, and Violent Conflict

ABSTRACT Over the past decade, a growing literature has re-examined the relationship between material scarcity and conflict. Despite increasing policy salience and empirical interest, coherent theoretical accounts remain underdeveloped. This article develops microfoundations for a first-image rationalist explanation for war. It is shown that the basic physiological fact of necessary consumption induces context conditional risk preference, a feature that coherently explains empirical patterns of conflict. When applied to higher levels of analysis, the basic mechanism explains additional patterns such as the association between power preponderance and conflict and the oversized demands made by weak actors.

Hierarchy, revisionism, and subordinate actors: The TPNW and the subversion of the nuclear order

Why and how do weak states challenge the status quo? This article builds on analyses of hierarchy in International Relations to develop a more comprehensive and inclusive understanding of the concept of revisionism. We argue that while weak actors cannot generally directly challenge their position in a stratified hierarchy, they may be able to undermine or subvert the discourses that constitute these hierarchies. This approach is likely to be attractive and feasible under two conditions: when other approaches to reform have been frustrated, and when social and political resources are available to facilitate such subversive challenges. We illustrate this argument by analyzing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a subversive revisionist project. Small states—frustrated by their inability to negotiate meaningful reform through the status quo framework—partnered with civil society and drew upon discursive resources developed during prior subversive revisionist projects in an effort to stigmatize nuclear weapons and subvert the discourses constituting the advantaged positions of those possessing them. While the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is unlikely to directly persuade nuclear weapon states to abandon their arsenals, it could have unpredictable consequences across a related range of hierarchic fields that constitute the status quo order.

From Moral Distress to Mutual Recognition: Diaries Kept by French Care Professionals During the Covid Crisis

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the experiences of social care workers during the first wave of the Covid pandemic. The method involved analyzing diaries kept by 65 professionals in 8 French regions during the first lockdown in France in the spring of 2020. As a form of non-binding, narrative expression, keeping diaries breaks with traditional models of reporting common in social care structures and allowed professionals to reflect on the experience as it was lived. In the diaries, professionals explored how the crisis disrupted and challenged their personal and professional values but also allowed innovation in care practices for vulnerable populations that will continue beyond the pandemic period. Five care values were put to forefront by professionals: (1) spontaneity/flexibility; (2) respect for persons; (3) team reflexivity; (4) innovation; (5) solidarity. Mobilizing philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s ideas on recognition, Payet and Laforgue’s analysis of weak actors, as well as research on moral distress, we discuss how these values were tested during the crisis and what effect they had on professionals’ and users’ vulnerabilities. We will also elaborate the interest of keeping account of social care work through narrative methods.

Facts of (Financial) life: Political power and re-visualization strategies

Digital visualizations have seen an exponential rise in use by politicians, candidates, and other political actors. Digital visualizations are an informative and engaging genre, but when applied by political candidates, they may also be used to persuade or mislead. However, the ways in which different actors utilize them have yet to receive systematic scholarly attention. Informed by a comprehensive theoretical framework related to political power, digital visualizations, and social media campaigns, I perform grounded qualitative content analysis of all cost-of-living visualizations posed to Facebook during the 2015 Israeli election period, by both peripheral and primary political actors. I define two main argumentation strategies ( Progress Makers & Hinderers and Re-Visualized Economy) reliant on different narrative, visual, and information-oriented strategies by different actors. An overview of the findings reveals digital visualizations as a meeting ground between the political power of actors, the rhetorical power of emotionality, and the cultural-political power of numbers. I conclude with a reflection on re-visualization as a means of expanding a fourth type of power, discursive power, wherein visualizations are used as a tool for resistance by weaker actors, against the narrative of reality promoted by stronger actors, relying on the rhetorical affordances of the digital political visualization genre to increase their political power. Digital visualizations thus offer a uniquely agile tool for political actors of all types to utilize in gaining discursive power in the competition over election narratives in the digital arena of social media.

Cambodia’s multifaceted foreign policy and agency in the making

Amidst the evolving multifaceted and decentralized world, weak state actors are compelled to regularly and robustly revisit and readjust their foreign policy policies to meet national interests. Although Cambodia has limited material resources and faces constant foreign intervention, it does not mean that Cambodia is not entirely without agency. Within the context of rising fluidity and multiplicity of the international system, weak states have certain strategic space to manoeuvre. Cambodia has been adjusting its foreign policy posture to adapt to and navigate the fast-changing geopolitical landscapes and trends to maintain its independence and strategic autonomy. By doing so, it can survive and thrive. The paper argues that Cambodia prioritizes its domestic agenda and interests, exercises a hedging strategy to mitigate risks, advances multilateralism and strengthens ASEAN-driven regional architecture.

Unpacking the dynamics of weak states’ agency

This introductory article provides rationales and contextual background for the special issue which examines how weak states in Asia actualise and exercise their agency in the twenty-first century regional or global environments. The article opens with a consideration of why attention is drawn to the agency of the weak. Weak states are often treated as ‘objects’ of international politics rather than ‘subjects’, and their foreign policy actions are commonly taken to be ‘reflexive’ of external constraints, such as fluctuations in the balance of power in the international system. We disagree with this view. We argue that weak actors can demonstrate varieties of agency regardless of their position in the international system in terms of material capabilities. To clarify this point, the article reflects on the changed and changing global and regional environments and order. Rather than seeing them through the lens of great power politics and its signature concept of ‘polarity’, the article offers an alternative notion, namely a ‘multiplex’ world, and identifies the key nature of order therein: multiplicity and fluidity. Both material and normative power have already and continue to become fragmented, decentralised, and dispersed within and across states. While emphasising that such a multifaceted and fluid world opens up a wide avenue of agency for weak actors, this article also notes that the weak has varieties of agency as potentials.

Reflection and implication: Methodology and theorising

This article elaborates on the following two questions and their implications. First, how can we as analysts offer compelling explanations for weak states’ agency and behaviours in the current global political and economic environments marked by multiplicity and fluidity? Second, what are the major causal factors that enable or influence weak actors’ agency, and under what conditions is their agency facilitated or constrained? Although an extensive literature in the discipline of International Relations (IR) confirms that today’s world is highly complex and diverse in terms of who or what matters in global politics, the subject of weak states and their agency is still not adequately discussed. Furthermore, the issues of methodology and theorising for the subject remain uncharted territory. By reflecting upon the main arguments and empirical findings of our special issue, this concluding article makes a case for ‘open-ended’ analytic eclecticism as an alternative methodological/analytical scheme, and lays preliminary ground for theorising weak states’ agency in the changed and changing global environments in the twenty-first century.

How does Indonesia exercise agency in the contested and complex regional environment?

Recent developments in the Asia-Pacific or Indo-Pacific region have illustrated the emergence of a contested region and unfolding regional order. Within the multiplicity, as argued in the introduction of the special issue, all stakeholders, including the weak state actors, not necessarily the superior ones, are participating in the process of order-building. This article looks at how Indonesia, the largest member country of ASEAN, pursues its agency amid the contested regional formulations between China and the US. The argument is that Indonesia promotes its concept of a rules-based interaction beyond the dominant great power politics, as a potential agency enabling the creation of a pluralised regional order. This agential position provides the basis to rethink the relevance of the established conceptual framework of hedging commonly used to understand small and middle powers’ foreign policies toward the major players. The author sees that Indonesia hedges in different ways, demonstrating a distinct conceptualisation which is likely to make a contribution to the project of Global IR.

FACTS OF (FINANCIAL) LIFE: POLITICAL POWER AND RE-VISUALIZATION STRATEGIES ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Digital visualizations have seen an exponential rise in use by politicians, candidates and other political actors. Digital visualizations may be informative and engaging as well as potentially, persuasive or misleading when applied by political candidates. However, the ways in which different actors utilize them has yet to receive systematic scholarly attention. Informed by a comprehensive theoretical framework related to political power, digital visualizations and social media campaigns, I performed grounded qualitative content-analysis of all "cost-of-living" visualizations posted to Facebook during the 2015 Israeli election period, by both peripheral and primary political actors. I define two main argumentation strategies (Progress Makers & Hinderers and Re-visualized Economy), reliant on different narrative, visual, and information-oriented choices by different actors. An overview of my findings reveals digital visualizations as a meeting ground between the political power of actors, the rhetorical power of emotionality and the cultural power of numbers. I conclude with a reflection on revisualization as a means of expanding a fourth type of power, discursive power, wherein visualizations are used as an act of resistance by weaker actors against the narrative of reality promoted by stronger actors, relying on the rhetorical affordances of the digital political visualization genre toincrease their rhetorical power. Digital visualizations thus offer a uniquely agile tool for political actors of all types to utilize in gaining discursive power in the competition over election narratives in the digital arena of social media.

Rising to a Challenge? Ten Years of Parliamentary Accountability of the European Semester

As a result of the euro crisis, EU economic governance has been reformed and EU institutions have gained new competences regarding national budgets, with the European Semester (the annual cycle of economic surveillance of the member states) being the most prominent example. With the Commission and the Council being the main actors, and the European Parliament playing only a minor role, a debate about the democratic legitimacy of the Semester and the role of national parliaments (NPs) in this regard has unfolded. This thematic issue, therefore, addresses the question of how parliamentary accountability of the European Semester has evolved: Have NPs met the challenge by adapting to the new situation in a way that allows them to hold the executive accountable? While the contributions to this thematic issue show significant variation across NPs, overall they reveal a rather pessimistic picture: Despite several institutional innovations concerning the reforms of internal rules and procedures, the rise of independent fiscal institutions, inter-parliamentary cooperation, and hearings with the European Commissioners, NPs have remained rather weak actors in EU economic governance also ten years after the Semester’s introduction. Whether recent changes linked to the establishment of the Recovery and Resilience Facility introduced in response to the Covid-19 crisis will change the picture significantly remains to be examined.

Some Remarks on the Dynamics of Strong Actor / Weak Actor Interaction

Abstract The emergence of weak actors on global scale is one among the many undesired consequences of the post Cold War period. In a globalized world, weak actors increasingly possess the capability and will to challenge the existing status quo set earlier by strong actors. The complexity of the international theatre provides weak actors with an abundance of opportunities to become successful over a long period. From a military point of view strong actor / weak actor interaction becomes manifest when the latter prosecutes a special type of war. This war is asymmetric, irregular and of low intensity. It poses a significant challenge to the strong actor and can bog him down into confusing and ambiguous military actions. In these actions the strong actor often finds himself in messy situations he can mostly master by improvisation. To better understand the strong actor / weak actor interaction and the resulting special type of war the authors suggest to reject the classical theorizing of war and advocate a different sort of thinking instead.

Holding Up a Mirror to the World Trade Organization: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

Holding Up a Mirror to the World Trade Organization: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

To feel is to believe: China, United States, and the emotional beliefs of Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte

ABSTRACT The ongoing shifts in the global distribution of material and normative powers, particularly between the United States and China, have significant repercussions on the foreign policy strategies of smaller, weaker actors in the international system. Due to their limited capacity for dictating international politics in ways that could guarantee their survival, many in IR have argued that they usually prefer to operate within the prevailing status quo rather than attempting to revise it. Nevertheless, the Philippines, under the leadership of President Rodrigo Duterte, seems to disprove this observation by dramatically pivoting towards Beijing and away from Washington, at least rhetorically. This paper moves beyond the commonly cited systemic factors and domestic intervening variables affecting the states’ foreign policies by examining the neglected emotions and emotional beliefs that help shape these instruments. My investigation of these unseen, albeit existing mechanisms, reveals the centrality of Duterte’s emotionally constituted and strengthened beliefs in providing a more complete and realistic explanation to his China-centric (as opposed to US-centric) foreign policy stance. As I argue and demonstrate throughout the paper, because emotions and emotional beliefs are powerful engines of human behaviour, they exert enormous influence on any state leader’s foreign policy motivations, decisions, and actions.