Signaling and International Institutions
Yet, even as we recognize this interdependence, there is clear disagreement about what it means for the international system; the question of whether or not a semblance of order-governance-can be attained in this environment has been paramount. Scholars who embark on this path of research often have a normative project; they believe that international institutions hold the key to a better world and seek to demonstrate their power via research. I believe that it can be demonstrated that institutions do matter-they are not simply endogenous to the international system-but where security is concerned, not in the positive way that most institutionalists would like to think.
In this paper, I will attempt to show that contrary to received wisdom, international institutions can actually cause informational asymmetries at the international level, making signaling more difficult for states, and conflict, rather than cooperation, more likely. First, I will outline information-institutionalist theory. Then, I will employ Kenneth Schultz’s model, in which he shows that democracies’ signals are easier for rivals to interpret because of domestic transparency and accountability mechanisms, to critique institutionalism. Using the recent case of the US decision to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003, I will show that the same mechanisms at the international level (embodied in the United Nations) lead to an entirely different outcome because of their weakness. Lastly, I will explore the implications of this argument for policymakers.
Robert Keohane and Lisa Martin give a useful outline of institutional theory’s major assumptions and findings in their chapter, “Institutional Theory as a Research Paradigm, ” in Elman and Elman’s Progress in International Relations Theory. In differentiating institutionalism from realism, they point out that the two paradigms share all but one assumption: realists assume that states operate in an anarchic environment with imperfect information, and that there is nothing they can do to improve said environment’s informational quality. This situation dictates that states behave defensively and distrustfully, and thus the chances for cooperation are slim. (79) Institutionalists, however, do not treat the quality of information states can obtain as constant; instead, they say that the exchange of information can be improved, and that furthermore, it is in states’ interests to do so because of the mutual gains to be had through cooperation. This imperative is partly what leads them to create international institutions: they seek a structured environment in which to obtain and provide better information. (80)
Realists like John Mearsheimer have a field day with institutional theory because it is full of the same empirical anomalies for which the institutionalists, in turn, have criticized realism. In his article, “The False Promise of International Institutions,” Mearsheimer evaluates three variants of institutional theory in terms of their causal logic and historical evidence.
Unsurprisingly, he finds all three lacking in both. In particular, and of special relevance to this paper, he points to cases of failure of institutions to mitigate conflict: the League of Nations in preventing World War II, or NATO and the UN in Bosnia (49).
His criticisms, while systematic, are not particularly constructive, however. Instead of offering suggestions for more fruitful institutionalist research, he derides the entire research program as misguided (49). This kind of criticism seems petty and scientifically degenerative in and of itself. I believe instead that institutionalists have been led astray by their normative project; if they were more open to the possibility that institutions might have negative effects on the exchange of information, they might be more successful at showing that international institutions are not just endogenous to realist politics-and only then might be able to resume the normative project of improving institutions to have positive effects, instead.
Institutionalists have studied all manner of international agreements, structures, and norms to try and ascertain any independent effects on state behavior. They have had the most success in their study of economic and environmental agreements. As mentioned before, their program has been greatly influenced by the noble but undeniable normative goal of finding a more constructive way of thinking about the world than realism offers. Yet, in order to do this successfully, they must tackle international security and the problem of the ineffectiveness of the United Nations in conflict prevention. The same basic Hobbesian outlook and nationalist tendencies that have pushed today’s “global” citizens to cling to national sovereignty – despite internationalist rhetoric-has also inhibited their leaders from participating in the kind of reciprocal information-sharing that the designers of the United Nations envisioned.
This is why Robert Keohane advances an explicitly normative institutionalist vision in his 2000 address to the American Political Science Association. He believes that the properly designed institution can change incentives for cooperation sufficiently to overcome the Hobbesian tendency-or at least mitigate it-but that it must be quite different from the United Nations of today (1). In order for his vision to be convincing, however, we must find some evidence that institutions can be seen as independent variables.
Kenneth Schultz, in his book Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy, explores the effect that domestic democratic political institutions have upon the ability of states to read each other’s signals. He begins with the assertion that rationally, states always have incentive to settle conflict without going to war. To do so, they engage in a bargaining process, but because of informational asymmetries in each state’s evaluation of the costs of war versus the value each places on whatever is in dispute, they may misread each other’s signals and wind up in conflict. Democratic states have more transparent preferences, he says, making it more difficult for them to misrepresent their preferences in order to gain greater concessions from an opponent, and thus making it easier for the opponent to read their signals.
This transparency stems from the nature of their political institutions. Schultz argues that in a democracy, debate occurs in public between rival parties, who each have access to more or less the same quality of relevant information. Assuming that all politicians are motivated primarily by the desire to stay in office, opposition parties have incentive to call attention to mistakes by the ruling party. This means that when the ruling party issues a threat and the opposition party supports it, the threat carries more credibility; if, however, the threat is opposed by the opposition party, it creates uncertainty for observers as to how seriously the threat should be taken – because as mentioned before, opposition parties often have incentive to call out a ruling party’s bluff in order to increase their own prestige. In nondemocratic systems, Schultz says, the government can consult its “selectorate” privately, making it much more difficult for observing rival states to puzzle out its signals.
Now, what happens when we transpose this process onto international politics? There are, admittedly, problems with directly applying Schultz’s framework because it is intended to work with a two-party democratic system, which the United Nations certainly is not. I believe, however, that we can use Schultz’s logic to structure our thinking about the uncertainty generated within the context of the United Nations, and I would like to briefly focus on the recent case of the United States’ decision to invade Iraq even after the UN withheld its support for that action in order to illustrate my argument.
One of the puzzles of this case was Saddam Hussein’s actions in the lead-up to war. If we make the common-sense assumption that his primary goal was to remain in power of his country, his weak cooperation with weapons inspectors in the face of American threats to take military action against him seems illogical. First, on a purely domestic level, the American threat was very clear according to Schultz’s model: not only did President Bush make repeated public statements threatening force against Iraq were it not to come into compliance with UN Resolution 1441, but the Democrats helped pass a Congressional authorization for the use of force against Iraq (October 11, 2002). Shortly thereafter, hammering home the message of impending doom, the United States began to deploy additional troops to the Gulf. Saddam Hussein allowed weapons inspectors back into Iraq on November 18, 2002, however, their report of the country’s cooperation with their inspections was highly critical, and on January 13, 2003, inspectors discovered 11 undeclared chemical warheads in Iraq.
In reality, the credibility of the American threat to Saddam Hussein was hampered because American domestic political processes were not the only factors in the equation; a similar process was also occurring at the United Nations. Here is where the American signal got muddled.
There are no political parties in the UN, and countries do not seek office. In international relations, however, there is a growing body of literature that seems to indicate that the United States in particular seeks legitimacy in world politics. Many have rightly criticized the Bush administration’s efforts to go through the UN as superficial, but the fact remains that they did make an attempt when they clearly did not need to do so. Moreover, authors like Robert Kagan have noted the growing rivalry between the United States and not-so-great powers (namely European ones) in questions of international politics. In this sense, in the context of the United Nations it might be logical to consider countries that opposed America’s preemptive use of force against Iraq (Germany, France, and Russia, for example) as a kind of opposition party at the international level. They perceived a weakness (lack of legitimacy) on the part of the majority party (the US and its “coalition of the willing”) and sought to exploit it for their own benefit. When the US, Britain, and Spain submitted a resolution to authorize the use of military force against Iraq on February 24, 2003, Germany, France and Russia submitted a counter-resolution urging more time for the weapons inspectors. This, coupled with the massive peace demonstrations that took place worldwide, decreased the credibility of the American threat.
One could certainly make the argument that the UN could not possibly have confused the signaling process too much, for it lacks any real authority in international politics beyond what the United States allows it. Yet, from Saddam Hussein’s perspective, the UN certainly may have seemed to possess a modicum of clout-he had, after all, been testing its authority for quite some time. Moreover, the United States, in making its case before the UN and attempting to get that body’s support in its efforts against Iraq, seemed to place some importance on its decisions as well. In this light, it does not seem quite so unreasonable of Saddam Hussein to have tested the credibility of the US threat to the extent that he did.
Ultimately, the reason that Kenneth Schultz’s framework does not work in the same way for international institutions is the necessary mistrust of other states. One of the key assumptions of Schultz’s argument is that majority and opposition parties each have reasonably similar information because of power-sharing arrangements built into the political system. The international system has no such power-sharing guarantee, and contrary to institutionalists’ vision, member states of the United Nations have been shown to habitually misrepresent information in that forum in order to get what they want. That is not to say that valuable and substantive international information-sharing does not occur; intelligence cooperation with allies occurs everyday, but it is in no way transparent, a requisite for Schultz’s model to work. Thus, the fact remains that in this particular case, where security is concerned the United Nations was not just ineffective at keeping the peace, but perhaps even detrimental to that goal.
Does this mean that the United Nations should be scrapped altogether? On the contrary, in other respects institutionalists have shown that the UN has facilitated cooperation quite handily. Yet this is because countries generally find it easy to provide such information as how many fish live in a particular stream, or how many children have a preventable disease in a particular town. When it comes to security matters, however, it seems that we have reached a paradox: it may in fact be true, as Robert Keohane suggests, that the right institutions could change the world’s Hobbesian anarchy into a Kantian paradise, but it is the very Hobbesian instinct that is preventing us from ever allowing those institutions to come into being.
The United States needs allies and it should actively seek multilateral support whenever it threatens the use of force; but much as it pains me to say it, with respect to the United Nations, the Bush administration may in fact be correct (only partially and in a very small way though): eschewing the path through the UN in matters of security might in fact be better for the United States and the world. As it stands now, the UN only adds another layer onto an already incredibly complicated signaling puzzle.
