Identity as a Variable Abdelal, Rawi; Herrera, Yoshiko M.; Iain Johnston, Alastair ...
Measuring Identity,
04/2009
Book Chapter
For the past two decades, the attention given to the concept of “identity” – both in the social sciences and in the world at large – has continued to rise. Multiple disciplines and subfields are ...producing an expanding literature on the definition, meaning, and development of ethnic, national, linguistic, religious, gender, class, and other identities and their roles in political, social, and economic outcomes. The ubiquity of identity-based scholarship suggests an emerging realization that identities, as Rogers Smith (2002: 302) has observed, are “among the most normatively significant and behaviorally consequential aspects of politics,” yet the literature has remained diffuse. That is, despite this flurry of activity, the social sciences have not yet witnessed a commensurate rise in definitional consensus on the concept of identity.The intense interest in scholarship on identity, as well as the many kinds of studies this fascination has spawned, has unfortunately helped undermine the conceptual clarity of identity as a variable. The wide variety of conceptualizations and definitions of identity has led some to conclude that identity is so elusive, slippery, and amorphous that it will never prove to be a useful variable for the social sciences. Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper (2000) have even argued, in the most important critique of identity scholarship to date, that it is time to let go of the concept of identity altogether and to move beyond a scholarly language that they suggest is hopelessly vague and has obscured more than it has revealed.
All post-Soviet states were economically dependent on Russia during the 1990s. Some post-Soviet governments, such as Belarus's, decided that dependence was a good reason for economic reintegration ...with Russia. Other post-Soviet governments, such as Lithuania's, interpreted the very same dependence differently; they considered economic dependence on Russia a security threat and sought to reorient their economies. Still a third group of post-Soviet governments, represented by Ukraine, did not choose a coherent economic strategy and remained neither oriented away from nor oriented toward the Russian economy. Thus post-Soviet governments had contrasting preferences for the political-economic future of the region, particularly whether the Eurasian economy should disintegrate or reintegrate. This dissertation shows that differences in the national identities of post-Soviet societies have, in important part, caused these different government preferences and therefore led to the complex patterns of disintegration and reintegration of the regional economy. This dissertation also explains how nationalisms and national identities in general affect the economic relations among states. Such an explanation is important because the study of international relations currently lacks one. International political economy scholars have tended to conflate economic nationalism and economic statism, also known as mercantilism. This is an analytical mistake: nations are not equivalent to states; economic nationalism is not equivalent to mercantilism; and a Nationalist perspective on international political economy (which emphasizes the causal power of nationalism) cannot be equivalent to the Realist perspective (which emphasizes the causal power of statism). A Nationalist perspective on international political economy differs fundamentally from the field's dominant theoretical alternatives, Realism and Liberalism. Building upon distinct traditions in international relations theory, this dissertation outlines those fundamental arguments that must compose a framework linking nationalism and the economy. A core argument distinguishes each approach's understanding of the state: the Nationalist state is purposive, while the Realist state is self-interested, and the Liberal regulative. The empirical focus of the dissertation is the political economy of post-Soviet international relations. Case studies of Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian foreign economic policy-making since 1991 provide a means to test the dissertation's theoretical claims. While these three cases share a number of politically meaningful similarities, they also represent the full range of the dependent variable: economic relations with other states. In addition, this study puts the post-Soviet experience of political dissolution and economic reconstitution in the comparative context of post-Habsburg eastern Europe, thereby expanding the number of cases linking national identities and foreign economic policies. Nationalism also determined the reorganization of trade and currencies in post-Habsburg eastern Europe during the interwar years.
Not long ago, the expansion of free trade worldwide seemed inevitable. Over the last few years, however, economic barriers have started to rise once more. The forecast for the future looks mixed: ...some integration will probably continue even as a new economic nationalism takes hold. Managing this new, muddled world will take deft handling, in Washington, Brussels, and Beijing.
Introduction Rawi Abdelal; Mark Blyth; Craig Parsons
Constructing the International Economy,
05/2010
Book Chapter
The world is, as they say, complicated. The world economy is especially so. Unpredicted events often influence markets in improbable ways. Individuals and organizations—firms, governments—surprise ...observers by behaving in ways that appear contrary to their presumed material interests as events defy the categories and concepts we construct to contain them. Crises recur with worrisome frequency. As the world internationalizes, these complications become more profound. Yet it would be difficult to find evidence of these complications in much of the scholarly study of international political economy (IPE). Scholars of IPE have arrived at a comfortable certainty about how the
Re-constructing IPE Rawi Abdelal; Mark Blyth; Craig Parsons
Constructing the International Economy,
05/2010
Book Chapter
Though the world’s plunge into its deepest recession since the 1930s has been horrifyingly rapid, surely many people have experienced the crisis as a bit like Alice’s slow fall. While very little ...changed in 2008 in their capabilities to design, refine, produce, and sell, or in their desires to work and consume, somehow they found themselves drifting inexorably away from “normal” economic exchange and growth, wondering where they might be headed. As John Maynard Keynes might have observed, as he did in The Means to Prosperity (1933) during the Great Depression, “immaterial devices of the mind” have, in part, brought
