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National Interests in International Society

National Interests in International Society

Martha Finnemore
Series: Cornell Studies in Political Economy
Copyright Date: 1996
Published by: Cornell University Press
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt1rv61rh
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  • Book Info
    National Interests in International Society
    Book Description:

    How do states know what they want? Asking how interests are defined and how changes in them are accommodated, Martha Finnemore shows the fruitfulness of a constructivist approach to international politics. She draws on insights from sociological institutionalism to develop a systemic approach to state interests and state behavior by investigating an international structure not of power but of meaning and social value. An understanding of what states want, she argues, requires insight into the international social structure of which they are a part.

    States are embedded in dense networks of transnational and international social relations that shape their perceptions and their preferences in consistent ways. Finnemore focuses on international organizations as one important component of social structure and investigates the ways in which they redefine state preferences. She details three examples in different issue areas. In state structure, she discusses UNESCO and the changing international organization of science. In security, she analyzes the role of the Red Cross and the acceptance of the Geneva Convention rules of war. Finally, she focuses on the World Bank and explores the changing definitions of development in the Third World. Each case shows how international organizations socialize states to accept new political goals and new social values in ways that have lasting impact on the conduct of war, the workings of the international political economy, and the structure of states themselves.

    eISBN: 978-1-5017-0738-4
    Subjects: Political Science, Sociology

Table of Contents

  1. Front Matter
    (pp. i-vi)
  2. Table of Contents
    (pp. vii-viii)
  3. Preface
    (pp. ix-xiv)
    Martha Finnemore
  4. Chapter One Defining State Interests
    (pp. 1-33)

    How do states know what they want? One might think that this would be a central question for international relations scholars. After all, our major paradigms are all framed in terms of power and interest. The sources of state interests should matter to us. In fact, they have not—or not very much. Aspirations to develop a generalizable theory of international politics modeled on theories in the natural sciences and economics have led most international relations scholars in the United States since the 1960s to assume rather than problematize state interests. Interests across the states system had to be treated...

  5. Chapter Two Norms and State Structure: UNESCO and the Creation of State Science Bureaucracies
    (pp. 34-68)

    The structure of states is continually evolving. Since their establishment in Europe sorne five hundred years ago and, in particular, since World War I, states have grown both in terms of the variety of tasks they perform and in terms of the organizational apparatus with which they perform these tasks. International relations theory has had little to say about this process of state change, even though states are the unit of analysis in many, if not most, of these theories. Neorealists are explicit about having no theory of the state.¹ Neoliberal institutionalists who blackbox the state in order to engage...

  6. Chapter Three Norms and War: The International Red Cross and the Geneva Conventions
    (pp. 69-88)

    International relations scholars have tended to think of war as a Hobbesian state of nature. In war, above all other situations, we should be able to treat states and soldiers as self-interested utility-maximizers simply because in times of war the most basic survival interests are at stake. In fact, however, war is a highly regulated social institution whose rules have changed over time. Interstate war could not even be conducted if survival were the paramount concern of soldiers and other individuals because in war the requirements of state survival and personal survival directly conflict Soldiers may not fight without some...

  7. Chapter Four Norms and Development: The World Bank and Poverty
    (pp. 89-127)

    The notion of economic development as a goal of states is often treated as unproblematic in contemporary political discourse. Wealth is treated as a constant goal of states, and “development” in the twentieth century lexicon is the means to wealth. However, the concept of development leaves open questions about both the ends of the development process (develop into what? wealth for whom? wealth for what end?) and the means of the process (develop how?). States’ understandings of the ends and mean s of development have shifted over time. The focus on raising GNP as the preeminent development goal, which prevailed...

  8. Chapter Five Politics in International Society
    (pp. 128-150)

    States do not always know what they want. They and the people in them develop perceptions of interest and understandings of desirable behavior from social interactions with others in the world they inhabit. States are socialized to accept certain preferences and expectations by the international society in which they and the people who compose them live.

    What does it mean to say that we live in an international society? It certainly does not mean that we live in a Wilsonian or ideal world. To say that social norms are at work internationally is not to pass judgment on the ethics...

  9. Index
    (pp. 151-154)