The Power of Legitimacy: Assessing the Role of Norms in Crisis Bargaining.

By Christopher Gelpi. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 232p. $39.50.

International Norms and Decision Making: A Punctuated Equilibrium Model.

By Gary Goertz. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. 192p. $75.00 cloth, $29.95 paper.

Gary Goertz's approach to international norms is conceptual, treating their relation to organizational decision processes, whereas Christopher Gelpi measures their importance by testing whether they have altered the course of military crises away from what pure realism would predict.

In Goertz's account, organizations make decisions not by choosing the optimal action in each instance but by setting up a continuing policy. We usually think that moral decisions are made by general rules while instrumental ones use case-by-case utility maximization, but Goertz argues that organizations treat both kinds with general rules. One might expect that policies evolve in increments, with organizations modifying them little by little according to acquired experience. His thesis is that policies stay fixed for long periods and then change suddenly, that is, stable phases punctuated by shifts. An example of a long stable phase was Canada's role in UN peacekeeping: Since the Suez Crisis, Canada has not once declined a request to send its troops, and even though elements of the elite have been unhappy with it, this policy has not been seriously reconsidered within the government or in public.

The reference in the subtitle of International Norms and Decision Making to punctuated equilibrium borrows from the modern theory of evolution. In 1972, Niles Eldridge and Stephen Jay Gould published their claim that Darwin's picture of gradual development was wrong, that natural species typically stay constant for a long period and then suddenly shift. The older theory had hung on partly because of a bias against publishing cases that violate accepted doctrine, plus a tendency to blame the lack of examples of smooth evolution on gaps in the fossil record. Paleontologists have suggested a mechanism behind this lingering and leaping, that small subpopulations become genetically separated and evolve quickly, then reconnect with the larger group and take over. For Goertz's claim about international norms to be more than a description, he also must outline a mechanism. One of the reasons is functional, that an institution must allow expectations to “converge,” and this calls for overall stability in its policies. Another reason is internal: A hierarchical organization continues its policy until some political shock puts the question on the desk of a high-enough decision maker.

Theories of decision making based on general rules must prescribe what to do when the rules conflict. (Theories of maximizing behavior avoid this problem, since trade-offs are implied by the function to be maximized.) Goertz suggests the use of fuzzy logic, the probability-like system from computer sciences, in which set membership is a matter of degree, rather than dichotomous. A choice situation is covered by conflicting norms to different degrees, and fuzzy logic aggregates these degrees to choose a course of action.

Gelpi's goal in The Power of Legitimacy is a bold one: detecting the influence of norms on international crises. He analyzes instances where two states entered a crisis, settled it, and later entered a second crisis. Sometimes the second crisis was over a new issue, and sometimes the issue was covered by the earlier settlement, that is, was under a governing norm. Then, in the former cases, without a norm in the second crisis the challenged party would tend to offer a partial compromise; however, with a norm it could stand firm with more confidence that the challenger would back down, at least if norms matter. The reasons are that the norm from the first settlement provides a focal point to settle at the status quo, and it also isolates the crisis as a special case, and so the challenger need not worry that giving in would harm its broader reputation. Thus, if norms are important, one should observe firmer defenders and more compliant challengers in those repeated crises covered by a previous settlement. Under realist theory, the two crises would not interact and a defender would be as hesitant to stand firm, with or without a previous settlement.

The International Crisis Behavior data set yielded 122 cases between 1929 and 1979 of a pair of states entering two crises. In 67 of these, the second crisis involved an issue that had been settled in the first, and in the other 55 it did not. Gelpi found that in the face of a moderately firm defender, a challenger tended to be as intransigent when violating a previous settlement as when not; in the face of a very firm defender, a challenger was much more compromising when violating a previous settlement than when not. It is more striking that norms made a difference in these issues of national security, he notes, where they are usually held to be less relevant.

Gelpi tests various subsidiary hypotheses, and he also provides two case studies, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis followed by the 1970 Cienfuegos crisis in which the Soviet Union was apparently building a base in Cuba to support its missile-launching submarines, and the 1956 Suez Crisis followed by Nasser's 1967 blockading of the Gulf of Aqaba and closing of the Straits of Tiran. The Soviet Union complied over Cienfuegos and the crisis ended quickly, but Nasser's stance led to the Six Day War. Commendably, Gelpi includes the Nasser case just because it violates his theory, to see what it reveals about the mechanism at work. (He attributes the exception to diplomatic bungling by Secretary General U Thant, plus Nasser's non-state-centric desire to lead the Arab World.)

The use of natural data always makes it difficult to attribute causation. While Gelpi takes steps to make a matched comparison and attributes the difference to norms, one must wonder why so many challengers provoked a second crisis then backed down. Did they not foresee the same considerations that he is raising, of focal points and inability to use reputation to tie one's hands? Challengers entered the data set by virtue of their own decision, and this fact may bring in some unknown bias that may explain the differential behavior without introducing norms. Gelpi suggests that these challengers were especially motivated to undo the settlement, but there are other possibilities. If these represent political blunders or inadvertence, it would be expected that the challenger would back down quickly. One way to pursue this question of a state's motive in challenging and reversing would be statistical techniques for strategically biased data where the decision to enter the database is modeled (Curtis Signorino, “Strategic Interaction and the Statistical Analysis of International Conflict,” American Political Science Review 93 [June 1999]: 279–97). Another way would be to look more deeply at some of the cases.

Of course, one can find flaws in Gelpi's analysis as in any other, and subsequent writers will and should, but his arguments are cleverly conceived and his study very carefully conducted. The book is a fine example of the recent movement to test ideas that had been seen as too intangible to allow measurement. It is also especially clearly written.

Gelpi's book takes issue with realist theory and Goertz's with utility maximization, and so both authors take positions on how norms relate to self-interest. For different reasons, both reject the idea that a norm is an equilibrium of a game. Gelpi holds that the equilibrium approach precludes the important question of how norms change. However, a refined game treatment can avoid their objections (Barry O'Neill, Honor, Symbols and War, 1999). For one, a norm should not be seen as a strategy in a specific game; it is a kind of strategy in a kind of game. A norm might say that in general, when you have the opportunity to exploit someone by telling him or her an untruth, do not. It involves a game form, which can be instantiated in the world as different games, in different contexts, and with different utilities attached to the outcomes. Although normative behavior may be an equilibrium for most of the actual games, it might not be for the less typical ones. If the environment changes so that the atypical ones become more common, there will be pressure on the norm to shift. A developed equilibrium account can deal with norm violation and change.

Goertz's objection to an equilibrium-based definition is that it trivializes norms. If parties act normatively from self-interest, norms add nothing to an expected utility approach. However, a theory of norms goes beyond equilibria because not all equilibria are instances of norms. Equilibria supported by mutual expectations, like two people meeting at an agreed place, should not be included. To count as a social norm, the behavior must be supported by rewards or punishments deliberately applied by other parties. The enforcement behavior is itself a norm binding these other parties, and the whole system—basic norms, supporting norms, their supporting norms—stays in place because it is an equilibrium. (Simple examples can be constructed to show how the account does not lead to an infinite regress.) The overall approach of Gelpi and Goertz to norms is compatible with game theory, and their arguments can be more easily made with an equilibrium definition. Both books deal with a central theme in international relations theory and are likely to be widely read.