International Theory and German Foreign Policy

Jakub Eberle, Alister Miskimmon, Jakub Eberle, Alister Miskimmon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000607895
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The central aim of this book is to foster connections between scholarly discussions of German foreign policy and broader theoretical debates in International Relations and beyond. While there has been a lively discussion about 'new German foreign policy', this book argues that it has not engaged substantially with international and foreign policy theory, especially with respect to its more recent developments.

Reviewing the recent literature on German foreign policy, this book posits that the most discussed works are still largely provided by the 'Altmeister' (Maull, Szabo, Bulmer and Paterson) who were already dominating the field a quarter of a century ago. While there is a general decline in the academic study of German foreign policy, the chapters in this edited volume show that a range of novel, theoretically sophisticated but often disconnected scholarship has appeared on the margins. This book contributes to this emerging work by providing conceptual interrogations, which question the existing research and provide theoretically-grounded alternatives; initiating critical discussions and evaluations of the nature of Germany's actorness and the environment in which it operates and proposing applications of less familiar perspectives on German foreign policy.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of German Politics.

Germany as a Dividual Actor: Competing Social Logics and their Political Articulations

JAKUB EBERLE

This article introduces a ‘dividual actor’ approach as a novel way of explaining German foreign policy. It presents its main tenets and demonstrates its relevance – both theoretically and in an illustrative sketch of German arms’ exports policy. The article starts from the observation that mainstream approaches, exemplified here by civilian power and geo-economic power, struggle to explain the recurring inconsistencies and tensions in German foreign policy. I argue that this is rooted in problematic assumptions about actorness, which is seen as coherent and unfolding linearly over time. As an alternative, I construct the dividual actor framework and develop it via the concepts of social logics, which capture recurring patterns in foreign policy, and articulation, which grasps the contingent and political moment in decision making. The notion of a dividual actor with multiple identities provides a theoretical explanation for the recurring inconsistencies in Berlin’s actions. It also opens space for novel insights, by bridging the analysis of social patterns with the analysis of how these patterns are reshaped through political decision-making. Lastly, it offers a way of embracing some empirical insights of civilian and geo-economic power by incorporating them into a more open-ended and context-specific framework.

Introduction

Germany’s increased role in Europe and beyond is accompanied by a renewed interest in theorising Berlin’s foreign policy. Once again, there is a proliferation of concepts claiming to explain Germany’s behaviour: civilian power, normal(ised) power, shaping power, normative power, tamed power, geo-economic power, embedded hegemon, reluctant hegemon and servant leader are just some among the labels introduced in academic, policy and media discourses. Such accounts provide simple narratives that explain Germany’s actions as a function of a few underlying principles – norms, values, or interests – stemming from a certain notion of actorness (e.g. multilateral policies as functions of the values of a civilian power). However, Germany’s foreign policies seem to be constantly puzzling, frustrating and eluding these neat accounts. From the recurring measures to resolve the Eurozone crisis, through the crises in Libya and Syria, to relations with Russia and China, Berlin’s policies do not appear to follow coherent and unidirectional trajectories. Instead, they are often inconsistent and even contradictory, prompting recurring debates about the ‘continuities’ and ‘changes’ in what can be seen as an ever unfathomable German foreign policy (for a recent round see Hellmann, Jacobi, and Urrestarrazu 2015).

This article addresses the mismatch between the elusive practice of German foreign policy and the neat yet ultimately failing academic discourse about it. I believe that the explanatory difficulty that some of the most prominent accounts in the literature face, exemplified by the theories of civilian and geo-economic power, does not result merely from the observation that German foreign policy is changing. More importantly, this recurring failure is rooted in the theoretical choices of civilian and geo-economic power thinkers, as these are limited by problematic assumptions with respect to actorness and identity, which is seen as coherent and linearly unfolding in time. Consequently, they struggle to appreciate the omnipresent inconsistencies and contradictions in foreign policy, and do not have much to say about the messy politics of deciding and implementing foreign policy.

To overcome these problems, I offer a framework based on the notion of a dividual actor, which rejects the idea of a unified identity. Instead, it appreciates contradictions as inevitable features of social life that stem from the multiple identities that actors adopt and negotiate in their actions. The added value is that it brings a fresh perspective on German foreign policy, enabling us to address some crucial analytical questions. First, the notion of a dividual actor struggling with multiple identities provides a theoretical explication for the recurring inconsistencies in Berlin’s actions. Second, it opens space for novel insights, because it considers regularities and patterns in foreign policy as well as how these patterns are compromised and altered in the contingent politics of policymaking. Third, while rejecting the theoretical basis of the existing scholarship on civilian and geo-economic power, it offers a way of embracing some of their valuable empirical insights by incorporating them into the more open-ended and context-specific dividual actor framework.

The argument follows in three steps. First, I use the civilian and geo-economic power literatures to demonstrate some of the problems of the mainstream literature and show that these are rooted in problematic conceptions of actorness. Second, I introduce the notion of a dividual actor and develop it into an analytical framework based on the concepts of social logics and articulation. Third, I illustrate the utility of this approach by discussing Germany’s arms exports policy.

Problems with Actorness

Conventional accounts of German foreign policy typically focus on defining the type of actor that Germany is supposed to be. While using different vocabularies, these arguments are all interested in Germany’s identity, explicitly or implicitly. They explain what Germany does (foreign policy) on the basis of what type of actor they think Germany is (identity). In this section, I use two of these accounts – civilian power and geo-economic power – as representative of the literature to demonstrate how their theoretical assumptions limit their conclusions. There are multiple reasons for choosing these two. They have both been developed in considerable length, thanks to a series of books and articles. Both have attracted debates that range beyond academia and, as such, can claim to have impacted the practice of German foreign policy. Importantly, the two introduce starkly different arguments with respect to the direction and determinants of Berlin’s action and, as such, exist at opposite poles of a continuum. These differences notwithstanding, I will show that their understanding of actorness is similarly problematic and limits what can be said and understood within these frameworks.

Probably the most famous narrative of Germany’s foreign policy is built around civilian power, as coined by Hanns Maull (Maull 1990, 2000b, 2018) and used above all by German authors (Harnisch 2001; Tewes 2002; Risse 2004, 2007). Civilian power refers to a state that strives to contribute to the establishment of an international order based on liberal norms and cooperative arrangements. More specifically, civilian powers are committed to multilateralism, international law, anti-militarism and promotion of value-based agendas like human rights or democracy. With respect to post-Cold War developments, the civilian power thesis emphasises continuity with the Bonn Republic, arguing that Germany has largely stuck to its benign foreign policy identity. This is not to say that everything remained the same, as the participation of German soldiers in military operations demonstrates. However, these alterations are seen as exceptions resulting from the pressures from the international community. Rather than changes, they are merely ‘modifications’ (Maull 2000b, 2015; Harnisch 2001; Berenskoetter and Giegerich 2010; Wolff 2013), ‘evolutions’ (Maull 2000a), or ‘adjustments’ (Longhurst 2004) within the general pattern of continuity.

The civilian power model has been criticised by accounts that prioritise varying conceptions of IR realism, most provocatively the notion of Germany as a geo-economic power. Building on the conception of geo-economics as a replacement for traditional geopolitics (Luttwak 1998), the argument suggests that Germany has departed from its civilian power identity in favour of the pursuit of ‘commercial Realpolitik’ (Szabo 2015, 8), or ‘a realist foreign policy based on the pursuit of economic objectives’ (Kundnani 2014, 103). In this view, Germany has adapted to an environment that is still characterised by the realist assumption of zero-sum competition, but in which the ‘logic of conflict’ has now been translated into the ‘grammar of commerce’ and national interest is viewed in economic terms (Kundnani 2014, 103). Therefore, it is only logical for Germany to pursue an ‘economics über alles approach’ at the expense of value-based agendas in its foreign policy, as demonstrated for instance with reference to China and Russia (Szabo 2015, 10). Where civilian power envisages Germany as contributing to a post-realist world order, geo-economic power sees a selfish, economically interested actor following the same old rules, only this time through economic means.

While the two accounts offer different views of the determinants and directions of Germany’s foreign policy, they are very similar in their theoretical assumptions and analytical strategies. From the complexity of the innumerable elements that compose foreign policy, both pick only a few aspects – e.g. civilian norms on the one side, and economic interests on the other side – and elevate them to defining features of Germany’s supposedly coherent and singular actorness. It is little surprise that the elegant concepts often fail to account for the complex and often contradictory foreign policy.

Interestingly, some of the leading authors of the two traditions actually acknowledge that their concepts do not really hold when confronted with empirical observations. However, they still prefer to stick to their neat academic constructions, regardless of their explanatory failures. Maull deals with the mismatch between his concepts and the events they should be able to explain by arguing that Germany’s civilian identity is still present and has merely lost its influence on foreign policy (Maull 2003, 2015, 2018). Analytically, this amounts to raising a white flag. The concept is salvaged, but it does not help us any more with the task it was constructed for: explaining foreign policy. With respect to geo-economic power, Szabo evaluates Germany’s policies towards Russia – supposedly a perfect case for his argument – with the help of five criteria that should define geo-economic powers. Interestingly, he sees merely a single one as fully applicable (Szabo 2015, 137–38). I would not consider this a particularly positive result of hypothesis-testing, but Szabo still summarises that ‘[o]ver all the German approach to Russia has fit this geo-economic model’ (Szabo 2015, 138). Szabo is keen to stick to his explanation regardless of Germany’s failure to conform to his criteria.

In the remainder of this section, I show that this failure is neither accidental, nor can it be ascribed only to the changing practices of German foreign policy. Instead, it results from problematic theoretical assumptions, which limit the conclusions that can be reached and leave important questions outside of their analytical lenses. In particular, they do not provide conceptual tools to grasp inconsistency and contradiction, as they see actorness as more or less coherent in space and time. I develop my criticism around two problems: (1) the tendency to view identities as singular and coherent and (2) the reliance on linear and even teleological historical narratives. Together, these two issues lead to totalising accounts that have little space for the contingent politics of decision-making, as foreign policies are seen as resulting from the structural pressures of homogeneous, linearly developing identities.

The first problem is the assumption that there is a coherent and stable state identity. As Urrestarazu (2015) demonstrates in the context of the German foreign policy debate, this is an essentialist position that is out of touch with most scholarship on identity in sociology and cultural studies, which sees identities as multiple and constantly being renegotiated. A number of examples can be cited to further this argument. Performativity theory points out that identities are constituted only through repetitive actions (Butler 1993; in IR e.g. Campbell 1998a; Adler and Pouliot 2011). Discourse theory suggests that both collective and individual identities are split between multiple subject positions (Laclau and Mouffe 2001; in IR e.g. Diez 2001). Psychoanalytical theory argues that identities are inherently incomplete and unstable,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: International Theory and German Foreign Policy
• 1 Germany as a Dividual Actor: Competing Social Logics and their Political Articulations
• 2 Welche Macht darf es denn sein? Tracing ‘Power’ in German Foreign Policy Discourse
• 3 Beyond Culture and Power: The Role of Party Ideologies in German Foreign and Security Policy
• 4 Leader of the ‘Free World’? Studying German Foreign Policy by Means of External Attributions
• 5 The Enduring Culture of Restraint in Modern Germany: German Mentalités on the Use of Force as Portrayed in Contemporary Television Narratives
• 6 Poliheuristic Theory and Germany’s (Non-)Participation in Multinational Military Interventions. The Non-compensatory Principle, Coalition Politics and Political Survival
• 7 The Challenge of Creating an Adaptive Bundeswehr
• Conclusion: German Foreign Policy in the (post-)Corona World
• Index