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International Institutions and Socialization in Europe: Introduction and Framework

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2005

Jeffrey T. Checkel
Jeffrey T. Checkel
Affiliation:
University of Oslo, Norway and the ARENA Centre for European Studies jeffrey.checkel@stv.uio.no

Abstract

International institutions are a ubiquitous feature of daily life in many world regions, and nowhere more so than contemporary Europe. While virtually all would agree that such institutions matter, there is less agreement on exactly how they have effects. This special issue brings together European Union specialists and international relations theorists who address the latter issue. In particular, we explore the socializing role of institutions in Europe, with our central concern being to better specify the mechanisms of socialization and the conditions under which they are expected to lead to the internalization of new roles or interests. Drawing on a multifaceted understanding of human rationality, we consider three generic social mechanisms—strategic calculation, role playing, and normative suasion—and their ability to promote socialization outcomes within international institutions. This disaggregation exercise not only helps consolidate nascent socialization research programs in international relations theory and EU studies; it also highlights points of contact and potential synergies between rationalism and social constructivism.For comments on earlier versions, I am grateful to two anonymous referees, IO editors Lisa Martin and Thomas Risse, as well as to John Duffield, Alexandra Gheciu, Liesbet Hooghe, Peter Katzenstein, Ron Mitchell, Frank Schimmelfennig, Martha Snodgrass, and Michael Zürn. More generally, thanks are owed to all the project participants for numerous and valuable discussions on the themes addressed in this volume.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 59 , Issue 4 , October 2005 , pp. 801 - 826
Copyright
© 2005 The IO Foundation and Cambridge University Press

Is Europe different? For many theorists, policy analysts, and politicians, the answer is obvious: “Of course!” Europe's degree of integration, level of political community, and pooling of sovereignty far outstrip those seen anywhere else. If there is any place in the world where the nation-state would seem to be in retreat, it is in Europe. Moreover, recent years have witnessed a seeming acceleration of the continent's “specialness.” A common currency has been successfully introduced, a constitutional convention held, and a (supranational) constitution is now being discussed and debated. This all looks and sounds more like federalism and supranational polity building than the anarchy and Westphalian system that have so fascinated theorists of international politics over the centuries.

As with many headline stories, this one, which emphasizes Europe's sui generis nature, is overstated. Yet, as most would admit, there is something to it; Europe is different. Contributors to this volume do not so much disagree with this claim as approach it from a different angle. Leaving the scripting of headlines to others, we are—to continue the journalism metaphor—the investigative reporters, working down in the trenches, exploring the how and why.

Europe is thus our laboratory for getting at some bigger issues concerning the relation of institutions, states, and individuals. When do international institutions create senses of community and belonging? If and when this happens, what does it mean for individual and state allegiances, interests, and identities? What processes underlie such transformative dynamics? What happens to the national and domestic in such situations? These are big questions, ones to which we still have incomplete answers. The latter, to give away perhaps the central punch line of this volume, will only come when we more systematically explore the relation between states and institutions, between the national and supranational, and between rational choice and more sociological perspectives.

Contemporary Europe offers a wonderful opportunity and setting for exploring such relations. The past decade has seen the (already rich) alphabet soup of international institutions of Western Europe extended eastwards. In the early 1990s, organizations such as the Council of Europe (CE) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) moved quickly to expand, offering membership to numerous transition states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.1

More recently, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has done likewise, albeit on a more limited scale. Even for the European Union (EU), once a laggard in this race to expand, enlargement to the east became a reality in May 2004.

This institutional activity in post–Cold War Europe has not escaped the attention of social scientists. Students of what might be called the new comparative regional organizations have explored its effects.2

Likewise, EU scholars have begun to study how the EU's policies—notably, its application of conditionality—are promoting domestic change among the transition states of Eastern Europe.3

See Grabbe 1999 and 2001; and Kelley 2004.

Renewing and reinvigorating an earlier neofunctionalist line of reasoning, Western Europeanists are once again examining how participation in the institutional structures of the EU may affect the interests and identities of state agents.4

See Egeberg 1999 and 2004.

A common theme running throughout this work is the socializing potential of international institutions. This volume makes that theme explicit. We examine the conditions under which, and mechanisms through which, institutions in Europe socialize states and state agents, leading them to internalize new roles or group-community norms. To paraphrase Ruggie, the challenge for us is to ask—and begin to answer—“what makes Europe and its institutions hang together.”5

This disaggregation exercise is essential if we are to better explain the striking variation in socialization outcomes across contemporary Europe. Why is it that one can talk of the Europeanization of German national identity, but not British?6

Five decades after the European project began, how is it that prominent Europeanists can still vehemently disagree on the socializing power of the Brussels bureaucracy?7

Compare Wessels 1998; and Laffan 1998.

Why is it that some states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are quickly socialized into the dominant values of the West, while others are laggards?

In addressing such puzzles, our contribution is fourfold. Theoretically, this volume explores the mechanisms of state/agent socialization from a variety of analytic perspectives, including social constructivist, rational choice, and social psychology. We do not pretend to offer a single theory of socialization; rather, we emphasize the development of scope conditions. In theoretical terms, the volume's goal is to offer middle-range theories of socialization.

Empirically, this theoretical diversity helps us capture the complex reality of contemporary Europe, where a variety of mechanisms are socializing states and individuals/groups within them. The authors in this volume thus analyze the socialization potential and practices of several different European institutions (EU, NATO, CE, and OSCE), and do so in both Western and Eastern Europe and at the macro (state socialization by European institutions) and micro (individual agent socialization) levels.

Methodologically, each contributor addresses a series of operational issues—how to recognize socialization; the development of empirical indicators; what counts as good data—and theorizes in terms of scope conditions (when and under what conditions a particular socialization outcome is more likely). Attention to such questions improves the validity of individual contributions, while also helping to place the nascent socialization literature in international relations (IR) and EU studies on a more systematic footing.8

See Johnston 2001; and Caporaso and Jupille 1999, respectively.

In policy terms, our findings speak to important debates among both European and international policymakers. For the EU's ten new member states, which joined the Union on 1 May 2004 and are highly protective of their sovereignty, a key question is whether membership will lead to a diminution or, worse yet, loss of national identity. Our results suggest this is unlikely. For an international community that has devoted much time and effort to helping the formerly communist states rejoin Europe, an important issue is whether conditionality and incentives, or diplomatic suasion, or some combination thereof best promotes domestic change. Our findings strongly endorse the use of mixed strategies that combine different policy instruments.9

See also Kelley 2004.

The remainder of this introductory essay is organized into five parts. In the first section, I introduce this volume's research questions and concepts. Second, I briefly survey the state of the art in the EU and IR socialization literature. Third, I highlight the particular causal mechanisms of socialization explored in this volume. Fourth, I address methodological and design issues. In the concluding—fifth—section, I preview the empirical studies and the critiques/extensions that make up the core of this special issue.

International Socialization: Questions and Definitions

The central question we explore is whether international institutions have the ability to socialize agents in contemporary Europe. Contributors view international institutions as both formal organizations (working groups of the EU's Council, for example) and specific intergovernmental organizations (such as NATO or the CE). Our agents—the targets of socialization—include both individual policymakers and states.

We adhere to a classical definition of socialization—one with deep roots in sociology and symbolic interactionism—whereby it is defined as a process of inducting actors into the norms and rules of a given community.10

Its outcome is sustained compliance based on the internalization of these new norms.11

See Siegel 1965, 1; and Johnston 2001; see also Ikenberry and Kupchan 1990, 287–92.

In adopting community rules, socialization implies that an agent switches from following a logic of consequences to a logic of appropriateness; this adoption is sustained over time and is quite independent from a particular structure of material incentives or sanctions.12

Yet there is more than one way in which agents may follow a logic of appropriateness.13

I thank the IO editors and Liesbet Hooghe for discussions on the following.

On the one hand, agents may behave appropriately by learning a role—acquiring the knowledge that enables them to act in accordance with expectations—irrespective of whether they like the role or agree with it. The key is the agents knowing what is socially accepted in a given setting or community. Following a logic of appropriateness, then, means simply that conscious instrumental calculation has been replaced by conscious role playing. We call this Type I internalization or socialization.

On the other hand, following a logic of appropriateness may go beyond role playing and imply that agents accept community or organizational norms as “the right thing to do.” We call this Type II internalization/socialization, and it implies that agents adopt the interests, or even possibly the identity, of the community of which they are a part. Conscious instrumental calculation has now been replaced by “taken-for-grantedness.”

It is important to keep the two different types of internalization in mind when analyzing socialization. Both represent a shift away from a logic of consequences; both require a logic of appropriateness; and both capture distinct aspects of the socialization dynamics observed in contemporary Europe.

If the purpose is to theorize socialization processes, however, we also need to ask when a shift to internalization occurs, and how. The former requires that one distinguish between situations in which change results from socialization and situations in which it is induced by a calculation of costs and benefits. When do actors switch from a logic of consequences to a logic of appropriateness? To ask “how” is to think about mechanisms, with three highlighted here: strategic calculation, role playing, and normative suasion. In turn, these suggest three modes of rationality that may contribute to socialization outcomes: instrumental, bounded, and communicative.

Some may be surprised by our inclusion of (instrumentally rational) strategic calculation because it invokes images of self-interest perceived as alien to a socialization model. In reality, though, this is a matter of dispute, with one recent review arguing that how “dispositions become anchored as part of an individual's identity [that is, internalized] and how they shape this person's preferences and behavior towards new objects or issues are matters of debate.”14

Given our problem-driven perspective and our concern for integrating diverse analytic traditions, we are thus open to the possible role of each form of rationality.

The purpose of this analytic disaggregation is to explore questions of scope and domains of application. When, and under what conditions, is a particular mechanism more likely to lead to Type I or Type II socialization and internalization? Table 1 summarizes this volume's analytic goals.

Analytic goals

Institutions, Socialization and Social Agents: The State of the Art

Until recently, scholars in both IR theory and EU studies have undertheorized socialization. Within IR, neorealists and neoliberals have had little to say about such dynamics. Neorealists invoke the term, but their usage is at odds with standard definitions.15

For example, Waltz 1979, 127–29.

They tend to conceive socialization as a process of selection and competition, whereby states are compelled to emulate the self-help balancing behavior of the most successful actors in the system. Over time, all actors thus come to share realist behavioral traits. However, the emergence of such commonalities has no connection to the social context within which these states operate, and is driven by no process of internalization.16

See also Johnston 2001, 489–90.

Neoliberals, from their side, rarely mention socialization. More generally, social interaction, internalization, and the study of preference change have not been a central focus in their research program.17

Socialization plays a much more important role in the work of the English School. Here, international society—and not international anarchy—is given top recognition; it is conceived as a highly social setting capable of socializing states.18

Unfortunately, scholars in this tradition—because of their holistic ontology and an avowedly nonpositivist epistemology—have paid little attention to theorizing either how socialization occurs (mechanisms) or its end point (internalization).19

See also Alderson 2001.

A similar state of affairs has confronted students of the EU. While the early neofunctionalist work of Haas and others hinted at the EU's powerful socializing role, theoretical underspecification and methodological challenges hindered empirical research. The exact micro-mechanisms behind notions of spillover were never clearly specified. Difficult issues of self-selection—that is, that national officials heading to Brussels may already be highly pro-European—were never fully addressed.20

This was and is unfortunate, for the EU's densely institutionalized structure would seem an ideal laboratory and “social soil within which actors' preferences might be transformed.”21

Caporaso and Jupille 1999, 440. See also “The Brussels Consensus,” Economist, 7 December 2002; and “Cracks in the College,” Economist, 13 September 2003, 32.

Despite this background, the good news is that the past decade has seen a revitalization of socialization research by both IR theorists and Europeanists. This work has a strong focus on the role of institutions in socialization, but views them in two distinct ways: as promoters or sites of socialization.

Institutions as Promoters of Socialization

One strand of research views institutions as promoters of socialization in public arenas. In an important sense, this work by IR constructivists builds on the arguments of the English School regarding the socializing effects of international society; its added value comes in systematically explicating how and when such effects occur.

A volume edited by Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink represents the state of the art in this area. The book offers a five-stage model for explaining the process through which international norms have socializing effects at the national level. Empirically, the model traces the ways in which norms shape the politics of human rights change in a number of different settings.22

The editors' approach is strongly influenced by work on social movements, however, and this unintentionally limits the pathways through which socialization is theorized to occur. Its starting point need not always be the social protest mechanism emphasized by Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink, in which national elites react in a calculating, strategic manner to movement pressure. Socialization can also begin via a process of social learning, in which state agents learn new roles and interests from the start and in the absence of social mobilization. Though the Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink model hints at this pathway, with the role the model attributes to persuasion and arguing at certain points, it remains underdeveloped.23

Checkel 2000b for details.

Institutions as Sites of Socialization

Addressing the problems highlighted above is another strand of socialization research that views institutions as sites of socialization for individuals. Here, Europeanists and a smaller group of IR constructivists have taken the lead. They theorize how state elites, in insulated settings where social pressure is absent or deflected, adopt multiple roles. This builds on a long tradition of research in IR theory and negotiation analysis that emphasizes the socializing effects of international organizations and institutions on the individuals who participate in them.24

Several Europeanists have explored the socializing effect of repeated meetings over long periods within EU institutions.25

These studies often employ rigorous quantitative analysis. However, their tendency to operationalize socialization purely in terms of the duration of contact risks neglecting the qualitative context of these meetings. Indeed, prolonged contact in sessions marked by intense bargaining is likely to have quite different effects on actors than meetings devoted to puzzling and joint problem solving.

Responding to such criticisms, a second group of Europeanists addresses this qualitative dimension and its relation to (possible) agent socialization. Arguing that the small size and expert focus of many EU committees promotes deliberation and common puzzling, these scholars portray socialization as being driven by Habermasian dynamics of communicative rationality.26

However, a lack of attention to research methodology makes it hard for other scholars to ascertain deliberation's causal role.27

However, see Pollack 2003.

At this point, the EU literature intersects with the work of IR constructivists doing work on socialization within international institutions. With a strong focus on agency, these scholars explicitly theorize the mechanisms of socialization hinted at above. To accomplish this, some draw on Habermas,28

See Risse 2000; and Lynch 1999 and 2002.

others seek to operationalize social learning concepts,29 while still others emphasize dynamics of persuasion and social influence.30

See Johnston 2001 and forthcoming.

The Multiple Mechanisms of Socialization

Building on this research, the contributors to this volume seek to better specify the various mechanisms of socialization, viewing them generically as “a set of hypotheses that could be the explanation for some social phenomenon, the explanation being in terms of interactions between individuals and other individuals, or between individuals and some social aggregate.”31

Typically, mechanisms operate at an analytical level below that of a more encompassing theory; they increase the theory's credibility by rendering more fine-grained explanations.32

Johnson 2002, 230–31.

Mechanisms connect things; they are “recurrent processes linking specified initial conditions and a specific outcome.”33

Mayntz 2003, 4–5. More generally on social mechanisms, see Hovi 2004; Tilly 2001; and Mayntz 2003.

We thus seek to minimize the lag between international institutions and socializing outcomes—the adoption of new roles (Type I internalization) or changes in values and interests (Type II internalization)—at the individual or state level. As mechanism-based accounts are in principle “quite compatible with different social theories of action,”34

our starting point is to highlight three distinct mechanisms connecting institutions to socializing outcomes: strategic calculation, role playing, and normative suasion.

Strategic Calculation

Strategic calculation35

I present the hypotheses and scope conditions for each mechanism in abbreviated form; detailed discussions can be found in the individual contributions.

has deep roots in rationalist social theory. While incentives and rewards can be social (status, shaming) as well as material (financial assistance, trade opportunities), one might expect both to play some role in the socialization process. After all, if they are operative in other aspects of social life—as one knows to be the case—it would be odd if they were absent from socialization dynamics.36

See also Hooghe 2001b, chap. 1.

When this mechanism operates alone, there can—by definition—be no socialization and internalization. No switch from a logic of consequences to one of appropriateness has occurred. Agents are viewed as instrumentally rational. They carefully calculate and seek to maximize given interests, adapting their behavior to the norms and rules favored by the international community. However, as argued below, it is possible that what starts as behavioral adaptation, may—because of various cognitive and institutional lock-in effects—later be followed by sustained compliance that is strongly suggestive of internalization and preference change. Given the desire to disaggregate the socialization process, it is thus still important to include a role for this first mechanism.

Under what conditions are incentives and rewards likely to promote behavioral adaptation? Contributors to this project theorize several possibilities, all of which emphasize the importance of political conditionality in the socialization process. Defined as the use of material incentives to bring about a desired change in the behavior of a target state, conditionality is the quintessential incentives-based policy. It has long been a favored instrument of international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).37

Checkel 2000a, 2–9.

More importantly for this volume's purposes, European regional institutions have used conditionality in the process of Eastern enlargement.

Conditionality's role can be explored more specifically by considering what Schimmelfennig calls intergovernmental reinforcement. Intergovernmental reinforcement by reward refers to a situation in which an international institution offers the government of a target state positive incentives—rewards such as aid or membership—on the condition that it adopts and complies with the institution's norms. This is a classic use of political conditionality. Transnational reinforcement by reward refers to the same process, but now directed at nongovernmental actors in target states. Given these definitions, behavioral adaptation in line with community norms is more likely under the following conditions:

  • Targeted governments expect the promised rewards to be greater than the costs of compliance (Intergovernmental Reinforcement).
  • Targeted societal actors expect the costs of putting pressure on the government to be lower than the benefits of conditional external rewards, and these actors are strong enough to force the government to comply with the international norms (Transnational Reinforcement).38

    Schimmelfennig, this volume. On the link between incentives/conditionality and domestic politics, see also Kelley 2004, chap. 2.

These propositions are clear, and fairly easy to operationalize, and they capture an important part of an international institution's domestic impact. At the same time, their social-theoretic foundation limits the analysis. As with all rational-choice scholarship, the ontology is individualist, and core properties of actors are taken as givens. While we agree with others that the ontological differences separating rationalism and constructivism are often overstated,39

the former is nonetheless ill-equipped to theorize those instances in which basic properties of agents are changing (Type I or II socialization).

Role Playing

This mechanism of socialization has roots in organization theory and cognitive/social psychology. Agents are viewed as boundedly rational. It is not possible for them to attend to everything simultaneously or to calculate carefully the costs and benefits of alternative courses of action; attention is a scarce resource. Organizational or group environments provide simplifying shortcuts, cues, and buffers that can lead to the enactment of particular role conceptions—role playing—among individuals.40

When role playing occurs, the shift from a logic of consequences toward a logic of appropriateness has begun, as it involves noncalculative behavioral adaptation. Organizational and group environments trigger roles, in which a degree of “automaticity” governs individual behaviour. Agents adopt certain roles because they are appropriate in that particular setting. However, no process of reflective internalization driven by communicative processes has occurred. In our terms, the socialization outcome is Type I internalization.41

We make no assumption that the adoption of new role conceptions necessarily leads to better outcomes. Indeed, there are interesting parallels between work emphasizing this mechanism and earlier research in social psychology on groupthink, which focused on suboptimal small-group dynamics. Checkel 2001, 563–64.

Drawing on a rich laboratory-experimental research program in social psychology,42

contributors to this volume advance a set of scope conditions emphasizing contact in small groups as a stimulus for Type I internalization. This allows them to provide carefully argued support for the old neofunctionalist claim that prolonged exposure and communication in European institutions promote a greater sense of “we-ness,” as well as socialization dynamics.

More specifically, contributors argue that the internalization of new role conceptions in line with community/group norms is more likely when the following conditions hold:

  • Agents are in settings where contact is long and sustained, and it has some significant duration.
  • Agents are in settings where the contact is intense.43

    Contributors operationalize intensity with some care—defining it, for example, as the number of committee meetings attended plus the number of informal contacts outside these formal sessions. They also design their research to distinguish the independent causal effects of duration versus intensity. Beyers, this volume.

However, such arguments must control for the fact that individuals entering a new institutional arena are in no sense free agents; they are embedded in multiple domestic and international contexts:

  • Those agents with extensive previous professional experiences in regional or international policymaking settings are more likely to internalize supranational role conceptions.
  • In contrast, agents with extensive domestic policy networks who are briefly “parachuted” into regional/international settings will be less likely to internalize new role conceptions.44

    One can also conceptualize embeddedness in organizational terms. See Egeberg 2004, in which organizational specialization and affiliation are used to develop additional hypotheses on the adoption of new role conceptions in European institutions.

These propositions begin to control for the self-selection and presocialization that bedeviled earlier work in this tradition.45

See Beyers, this volume; and Hooghe, this volume. See also Martin and Simmons 1998, 735–36.

The validity of these propositions is further bolstered by the degree to which they overlap with insights drawn from other research traditions. This is particularly true of symbolic interactionism, in which scholars have theorized multiple embeddedness in terms of role conflict.46

See Stryker 1980; Meyer and Strang 1993; and, for an important application to international institutions, Barnett 1993.

Olsen makes a similar point in regards to the Europeanization literature, which explores the impact of the EU on nation-states.47

This work on role playing not only marks an advance on earlier studies, it also captures an important, if understudied, dynamic in international politics—one different from the instrumental or normative ones. Individuals and states take on roles because it is easier socially, as opposed to only and always acting strategically and instrumentally. Yet these roles may later become taken-for-granted habits, without any conscious act of persuasion (see below).

This suggests a subtle, but important, difference with the normative suasion mechanism. If role playing is at work, agents will comply with group/community norms, but in a nonreflective manner. That is, if asked about the source of compliance, they—after conscious thought—might answer, “Well, I don't know whether it's right or wrong, it's simply what is done and, I guess, it's a habit of mine by now.”48

I thank an anonymous reviewer for pushing me to clarify these points. Methodologically, this has implications for the types of (process-oriented) questions we should be asking in socialization studies. Zürn and Checkel, this volume.

Normative Suasion

Recent work by IR constructivists adds a communicative understanding of rationality to the instrumental and bounded versions illustrated above. Drawing on Habermasian social theory as well as insights from social psychology, these researchers claim that communicatively rational social agents do not so much calculate costs and benefits, or seek cues from their environment. Rather, these agents present arguments and try to persuade and convince each other; their interests and preferences are open for redefinition.49

See Lynch 1999, chap. 1; Risse 2000, 6–11; and Checkel 2003.

Recall that role playing presupposes an agent's passive, noncalculative acceptance of new roles evoked by certain environmental triggers. When normative suasion takes place, agents actively and reflectively internalize new understandings of appropriateness. If asked about the source of compliance, agents—after conscious thought—might answer, “Well, this is the right thing to do even though I didn't used to think so.” The switch from a logic of consequences to one of appropriateness is complete, and the result is what we label Type II internalization.

These insights give new meaning to the idea of international institutions and organizations as “talk shops.” Arguments and attempts at persuasion—“talking,” in popular parlance—may change the most basic properties of agents. If the strategic calculation mechanism views language as a tool for self-interested actors to exchange information or engage in signaling games within institutions, then normative suasion embodies a much “thicker” role for it, as constitutive of agents and their interests.50

See also Adler 2002, 96–98.

Most would agree that persuasion operates in international institutions. Indeed, two practitioner-scholars with considerable experience in the world of diplomacy describe it as a “fundamental instrument” and “principal engine” of the interaction within institutions.51

While perhaps overstated, the real challenge has been to operationalize this common-sense insight in ways that allow for systematic empirical testing.52

Contributors to this volume address this gap, articulating a series of scope conditions under which persuasion-socialization dynamics occur. In particular, they suggest that arguing and persuasion are more likely to change the interests of social agents and lead to Type II internalization when the following conditions hold:53

See Lewis, this volume; and Gheciu, this volume. More generally, see Zimbardo and Leippe 1991; and Brody, Mutz, and Sniderman 1996.

  • The target of the socialization attempt is in a novel and uncertain environment and thus cognitively motivated to analyze new information.54

    Put differently, agents are viewed as communicatively and not boundedly rational. With the latter, they would be much more likely to filter or ignore new information.

  • The target has few prior, ingrained beliefs that are inconsistent with the socializing agency's message.
  • The socializing agency/individual is an authoritative member of the ingroup to which the target belongs or wants to belong.
  • The socializing agency/individual does not lecture or demand but, instead, acts out principles of serious deliberative argument.
  • The agency/target interaction occurs in less politicized and more insulated, in-camera settings.

The articles that follow provide significant empirical support for these propositions and scope conditions. Yet problems remain. Most importantly, there is typically an element of overdetermination in analyses testing for the effects of arguing and persuasion, with several interacting variables leading to socialization in a single or perhaps two cases. Greater attention to research design and use of cross-regional comparisons can mitigate this problem.55

See Zürn and Checkel, this volume; and Johnston, this volume.

Cautions and Caveats

There are three cautions for the reader. First, when highlighting the effects of these differing mechanisms, I have followed common practice by arguing that socialization becomes deeper and more stable as one moves from incentive-based (behavioral adaptation) to normative mechanisms (Type II internalization). Indeed, social theorists have argued that preference shifts promoted by suasion should be more enduring than those promoted by incentives and strategic calculation. With the latter, newly adopted behaviors can be discarded once incentive structures change; with the former, they will show greater stickiness, as actors have begun to internalize new values.56

Yet this hierarchy of effectiveness can be questioned. Research on self-persuasion and cognitive dissonance suggests that internalization can occur even in the absence of any attempts at persuasion. Consider individuals who, for purely strategic, incentive-based reasons, begin to act in a certain manner; at some point, they will likely need to justify these acts to themselves and others. As a result, a cognitive dissonance may arise between what is justified and argued for, and what is (secretly, privately) believed. Laboratory and experimental work suggests that human beings have a tendency to resolve such dissonance by adapting their preferences to the behavior; that is, they internalize the justification.57

Zürn and Checkel, this volume. This appears to be the implicit psychological dynamic behind Elster's oft-cited argument regarding the “civilizing force of hypocrisy.” Elster 1998. See also Fearon 1998, 54.

There is also growing empirical evidence to suggest that what starts as strategic, incentive-based cooperation within international institutions often leads at later points to preference shifts (Type II internalization) and, thus, to more enduring change. For example, Kelley finds precisely this pattern in her research on the Baltic states, European institutions, and minority rights. In several instances, she uncovers evidence of an initially highly strategic and instrumental process at work, as state elites carefully calculate how to change laws to ward off pressure from the EU, CE, and OSCE. Yet beyond the formal changing of laws, Kelley also finds evidence of changing practice and sustained compliance—patterns indicative of deeper socialization effects.58

It is therefore more useful to view the three socialization mechanisms as nominal rather than ordinal categories.59

That is, there is no assumption that they are in any particular order. Keohane, King, and Verba 1994, 151–55.

Many contributors to this volume implicitly adopt such a perspective, when they emphasize primarily one mechanism—role playing, say—to the exclusion of the others. This has clear benefits, for example, in allowing the analysis to flesh out and empirically test how a particular mechanism works in practice. Gheciu's study of NATO and normative suasion is exemplary in this regard.60

Gheciu, this volume. Of course, such an approach also has drawbacks—namely, in neglecting how the three mechanisms may work in combination to produce a socialization outcome.

Second, a focus on social mechanisms raises a micro/macro problem. To explore mechanisms often implies an emphasis on the micro level—in our case, of specific agents operating in institutionalized environments in Europe.61

Yet some, including many IR theorists, would be more interested in micro-macro linkages. When does individual attitudinal or role change result in a shift in state policy? Do state policies and practices change in ways consistent with newly learned roles or preferences?

We address this issue in two ways. Some contributors establish positive correlations between socialization at the individual level and later changes in state policy. Others go a step further, advancing a causal, process-tracing argument that connects socialization mechanisms to changes in policy.62

See Gheciu, this volume; and Lewis, this volume, respectively. See also Zürn and Checkel, this volume.

Third, readers should view our discussion of scope conditions as preliminary. In some cases, this is because they are inductively derived from our work. In others, they are deductively derived but are tested with qualitative and quantitative methods that differ from the laboratory-experimental orientation of the original research. In his contribution, Johnston suggests specific research-design strategies for addressing these problems.63

Johnston, this volume.

Summary

The starting point of this volume is as simple as it is straightforward. International institutions are social environments; participating in them may socialize states and state agents.64

Our stress on the multiple mechanisms leading to this endpoint marks a new analytic turn for work on European institutions, on which most research to date has emphasized either their constraining65 or constitutive effects.66 We see both at play.67

See also Zürn and Checkel, this volume, on dynamic approaches to the study of European integration/socialization; and Hooghe 2001b.

Our focus on causal mechanisms and the embeddedness of social agents in multiple contexts—national, subnational, as well as international—marks an advance over earlier neofunctionalist and social constructivist theorizing. Rather than employing vague neofunctionalist notions of spillover, we theorize specific socialization mechanisms (strategic calculation, role playing, normative suasion) and examine them empirically. In addition, and again in contrast with neofunctionalism, there is no normative agenda driving the analysis.68

Caporaso 1998, 6–7.

The empirical studies demonstrate that the socializing effects of European institutions are uneven and often surprisingly weak, and in no way can be construed as shaping a new, postnational identity.69

It is surprising because contemporary Europe is a most likely case for such dynamics. See next section.

The micro-level perspective we offer complements recent constructivist work that examines socialization from a macro perspective. In addition, this volume develops arguments that better specify the international learning or social learning often stressed by constructivists to capture the constitutive impact of international institutions.70

More generally, by stressing mechanisms and scope conditions, we contribute to the development of middle-range socialization approaches.71

See Johnston, this volume; see also Alderson 2001, 429.

Ever since Merton's pioneering work in the late 1940s, social theorists have argued that such theories can only be constructed by elaborating mechanisms that shrink the gap between input and output.72

See Merton 1968, chap. 2; see also Mayntz 2003, 3–4.

In turn, this requires one to minimize use of the “as if” assumptions that play such important roles in many studies of socialization and of international institutions.73

See Checkel 2000b; Sterling-Folker 2000; and Wendt 2001, 1028–29. Our stress on mechanisms and a commitment to reducing reliance on “as if” assumptions in theory development can furthermore be viewed as a substantive contribution to the scientific realist research agenda. See Wendt 1999, chap. 2; and Wight 2002, 34–36, 43.

Methods, Design, and Approach

The five empirical articles in this volume offer detailed studies of particular instances of attempted socialization in both Eastern and Western Europe. All follow a similar template, beginning with an introduction in which authors highlight their socialization puzzle and provide background and context for the European institution(s) on which they focus. Next, the theoretical argument linking institutions to state/agent socialization is briefly summarized. In a third section, authors spell out their particular mechanism(s) of socialization and suggest conditions under which they expect it to operate. A fourth section introduces the data and justifies the methods employed. In a fifth and most important section, contributors relate their socialization account. These accounts make up the heart of each essay and of the volume as a whole.

In telling their socialization stories, authors address a threefold analytic challenge: (1) to establish the presence of socialization mechanisms and the conditions of their operation; (2) to assess whether internalization (Type I or II) actually occurred; and (3) to ask whether socialized actors behave differently than either they did before they were socialized, or than nonsocialized actors do. Put differently, the authors examine whether a shift has occurred away from a logic of consequences and toward a logic of appropriateness.74

I thank an anonymous reviewer for discussion on these points.

Regarding the methods used in this volume, several points should be stressed. For one, many contributors employ the case-study technique because it is especially well-suited to establishing scope conditions and examining causal mechanisms.75

In addition, each author uses a number of tools and techniques to enhance the reliability and (internal) validity of his/her study. These include: reviewing and justifying the data or data set; discussing the proxies for operationalizing and measuring key variables; explaining the qualitative or quantitative methods (or combination thereof) employed to draw inferences about socialization processes or effects; and considering alternative explanations or using counterfactual analysis, where appropriate.

A number of contributors use process tracing as their main method. This means that they examine “whether the intervening variables between a hypothesized cause and observed effect move as predicted…. Put another way, process tracing looks at the causal mechanisms in operation in a case.”76

In executing this method, authors triangulate across multiple data streams, including interviews, surveys, secondary literature (newspaper reports, scholarly analyses), and primary sources (archival materials or confidential meeting summaries).

Recall that our dependent variable (DV) and socialization outcome is the degree of internalization. Depending on the author and socialization mechanism at work, this is measured in slightly different ways. For those stressing the strategic calculation mechanism, the DV is sustained compliance with the norms and rules favored by the larger (Western European) community, where it is this consistency—regardless of rewards or sanctions—that is taken as an indicator of socialization and internalization. Authors who examine cognitive role playing operationalize the DV as the adoption of new roles consistent with group norms. In our terms, such adoption is an indicator of Type I internalization. Finally, contributors exploring the normative suasion mechanism define their DV as the adoption of new values and interests consistent with those of the international community; such change is taken as an indicator of Type II internalization.

In all cases, the DV is then measured through quantitative techniques, qualitative techniques, or a combination of both. Two examples highlight how this is carried out in practice. In his study of socialization in Eastern/Central Europe, Frank Schimmelfennig begins with a correlational analysis of party systems and norm compliance, establishing a temporal connection between norms and policies favored by European institutions and their domestic adoption. Next, he switches to a qualitative process-tracing technique to establish causality, demonstrating that cost/benefit calculations by domestic actors were a key force in the early stages of the socialization dynamic.77

Schimmelfennig, this volume.

Hooghe, in her examination of socialization within the European Commission, constructs a data set consisting of surveys of Commission officials, as well as nearly 150 follow-up interviews. In addition, she uses Eurobarometer polling data to control for preexisting national-level attitudes. After introducing a number of carefully constructed control variables, Hooghe uses quantitative techniques to test for evidence of socialization and internalization in the Commission.78

Hooghe, this volume. An arm of the EU's statistical service, Eurobarometer conducts surveys on a regular basis in all member states.

Regarding design, one important point needs to be addressed. Readers familiar with the comparative regionalisms literature79

or work exploring the IR/institutions nexus80

See Weber 1994; Risse-Kappen 1995b, chap. 1; and Pevehouse 2002, 529–30.

will immediately recognize that Europe is a most likely case for socialization. Why did we make this choice? Simply put, we do not yet have a good sense of how, and under what conditions, socialization occurs.81

See Alderson 2001, 416; and Johnston 2001, 492–93.

Thus our most-likely-case design is justifiable. It allows us to map and identify the various causal paths leading to socialization.82

Indeed, if the goal is to establish a roster of socialization mechanisms, such a strategy would seem indispensable at this point. At the same time, our selection of cases allows for significant variation in terms of both institutions (NATO, EU, and so on) and the value of the DV (the degree of internalization). Moreover, we further contextualize the latter by exploring instances in which socialization appears weak (articles by Beyers, Hooghe, and Schimmelfennig), exploring instances in which it produces not an either/or replacement of roles and interests, but a more complicated layering of them (contribution by Lewis), and by drawing on socialization research in other regional contexts in which very different types of institutions are at work (discussion of Asia in Johnston's essay).

A final, more general point concerns this volume's basic approach, which is problem-driven. This leads to a pragmatic understanding of ontologies, in which they are not viewed as “manifest truths … [but as] tentative empirical assumptions about actors, taken for purposes of pursuing a particular set of theoretical questions about political behavior.”83

Put differently, our goal is to develop substantive middle-range frameworks, and not to engage in arguments at the level of social theory. The volume's strong emphasis on scope conditions can be read as an endorsement of the former at the expense of the latter. We well appreciate that there are big and (possibly) unresolvable issues dividing proponents of choice-theoretic, rational choice, and economic approaches from scholars who favor sociological and social constructivist perspectives.

Yet we are also aware that from a problem-driven, empirical perspective, such divides rapidly begin to melt away. The starting point of the analysis moves from “either/or” to “both/and,” with the latter pushing questions of scope and domains-of-application to the fore. Since we observe calculative, role-playing, and persuasive mechanisms at work in the process of socialization in contemporary Europe, intellectual honesty demands that we capture these facts in our theories.

This common-sense perspective is gaining adherents within both subfields to which this volume speaks. In IR theory, one now sees a growing number of calls for “both/and” theorizing. Much more importantly, these scholars are beginning to develop arguments for how one can integrate the ideational and the material, game theory and social constructivism, strategic-choice and cognitive perspectives, other-regarding and self-interested behavior, and the like.84

Students of the EU also now recognize that the way forward is not to revisit the decades-old battle between intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism. Rather, the challenge is to develop more complex approaches that capture both the constraining and constitutive aspects of the European project.85

This stance of ontological pragmatism, and the (attempts at) theoretical bridge building it inspires, have practical implications for the way in which authors deal with alternative explanations in the empirical essays. Most importantly, they spend less time engaged in the standard practice of demonstrating that other, alternative accounts are inconsistent with their data, and more time thinking about bridge building consistent with the empirical evidence.

Consider two examples. In her account of socialization dynamics in the EU Commission, Hooghe connects consequentialist and appropriateness logics via what one might term a domain-of-application approach, in which one theorizes conditions under which particular processes and dynamics are more likely.86

In particular, she argues that socialization and internalization are more likely to shape preferences on international norms when these are general and close to individuals' core beliefs, while strategic calculation and utility maximization will influence preferences on international norms that materially affect career chances.87

Hooghe, this volume.

In contrast, Gheciu's essay on NATO and socialization dynamics offers what might be called a temporal-sequencing argument, in which different mechanisms and logics are fitted together over time to more fully explain a particular outcome.88

For example, while she stresses the ability of NATO to normatively persuade policymakers in applicant countries, this ability is premised on a (temporally) prior calculation by these same countries that NATO is central for managing their relations with the United States.89

Gheciu, this volume.

These empirical efforts at bridge building are later complemented by a conceptual analysis undertaken by Zürn and Checkel. Engaging in what they call a double interpretation, the authors take each empirical contribution, deconstruct it (identifying its causal mechanisms and scope conditions), and then reconstruct and reinterpret it from the point of view of both rationalism and constructivism. This exercise not only allows them to offer reflections on the right places to build bridges, but also to tease out the finer differences between rationalist and constructivist frameworks.90

Zürn and Checkel, this volume.

Organization

The remainder of this special issue is structured as follows. The core is five empirical studies that examine the socialization policies and practices of various European institutions. These are followed by two essays that extend and critically assess our arguments along theoretical, methodological, and cross-regional dimensions.

Empirical Studies

The volume begins with an article emphasizing the strategic calculation pathway; next comes an article that combines the strategic calculation and role-playing mechanisms. A third article explores the role-playing mechanism, while two articles examining normative suasion come last. This order is not only consistent with how the mechanisms were introduced above, it also proceeds from the least to the most complex understanding of socialization (and rationality). Given this structure, scholars and students reading across the articles can thus more easily evaluate the utility of our disaggregation exercise, with its emphasis on multiple socialization mechanisms and their conditions of operation. The following are descriptions of each empirical study.

Frank Schimmelfennig, Strategic Calculation and International Socialization: Membership Incentives, Party Constellations, and Sustained Compliance in Central and Eastern Europe

Schimmelfennig articulates a rationalist starting point for understanding key aspects of socialization in the transition states of postcommunist Europe. In particular, he theorizes strategic calculation as an initial and crucially important socialization mechanism, in which international organizations offer material and political rewards in return for the adoption of norms and policies, but do not coerce noncompliant governments. Empirically, Schimmelfennig substantiates these propositions with aggregate data on the development of liberal democracy in the states of Central and Eastern Europe, and with process-tracing case studies on Slovakia and Latvia.

Liesbet Hooghe, Several Roads Lead to International Norms, but Few Via International Socialization: A Case Study of the European Commission

There have been numerous claims regarding the power of the European Commission—that “engine of Europe”—to socialize individuals. Yet in a striking finding, Hooghe finds little evidence of such dynamics at work. Based on two surveys of senior Commission officials and controlling for a host of possible confounding factors, her central conclusion is unambiguous. While support for the European project is extraordinarily high in the Commission, this has little, if anything, to do with preference shifts or the internalization of new values in it. Instead, top officials sustain Commission norms because national experiences motivate them to do so.

Jan Beyers, Multiple Embeddedness and Socialization in Europe: The Case of Council Officials

Early neofunctional, as well as contemporary, studies argue that social interaction and contact crosscutting national borders should lead to a shift of allegiance toward the European level. Yet most studies have ignored the multiple embeddedness of the actors involved and have failed to control for recruitment bias and presocialization in the domestic political sphere. Addressing these gaps, Beyers argues that this so-called contact hypothesis for socialization is in fact seriously underspecified, and must be supplemented with additional national-level factors. Utilizing quantitative interview data and factor analysis, he investigates the particular conditions under which new supranational role conceptions are adopted and internalized in working groups of the EU Council.

Jeffrey Lewis, The Janus Face of Brussels: Socialization and Everyday Decision Making in the European Union

Lewis examines the Committee of Permanent Representatives, or COREPER, a grouping composed of the EU permanent representatives. At the heart of everyday decision making, COREPER is thus a key laboratory to test whether and how national officials become socialized into the Brussels-based collective culture. Based on extensive interview data and a case study of negotiations for a controversial EU citizenship directive, Lewis documents a process in COREPER that includes elements of all three socialization mechanisms—strategic calculation, role enactment, and normative suasion. Equally importantly, he advances scope conditions—focusing on high issue density/intensity and insulation from domestic politics—for disentangling them.

Alexandra Gheciu, Security Institutions as Agents of Socialization? NATO and the ‘New Europe.’

Gheciu examines the dynamics and implications of NATO's socialization of Czech and Romanian actors after the end of the Cold War, arguing that the organization's involvement in Central/Eastern Europe has been more complex than rationalist analyses might lead one to expect. In addition to instrumental incentives, NATO has relied extensively on mechanisms of normative suasion. A close empirical study of the Czech and Romanian cases reveals that international socialization—under certain conditions theorized by the author—affected not just the socializees' strategies, but also their definitions of identity and interests.

Theoretical/Methodological Critiques and Regional Extensions

The following are descriptions of each critique.

Alastair Iain Johnston, Conclusions and Extensions: Toward Mid-Range Theorizing and Beyond Europe

In the first of two concluding essays, Johnston reflects on four issues raised by the research in this special issue. First, he summarizes and critiques the core analytic claims and main socialization scope conditions advanced by various authors. Second, and consistent with the volume's “both/and,” bridge-building aspirations, Johnston explores how a critical socialization micro-process—persuasion—fits with a thin rationalist argument. Third, he critically assesses the volume's understanding of identity change, arguing that the latter needs further specification if we are to more fully explore the relation between it and socialization. Finally, Johnston looks at how the findings in the European case might be extended to, and compared with, empirical evidence from other parts of the world—in particular, Asia.

Michael Zürn and Jeffrey T. Checkel, Getting Socialized to Build Bridges: Constructivism and Rationalism, Europe and the Nation-State

In this concluding essay, Michael Zürn and Jeffrey Checkel advance three arguments, all captured by a “both/and” logic. For one, the volume's emphasis on mechanisms and scope conditions reveals that both rational choice and constructivism have much to contribute to the study of international socialization. Furthermore, they argue that theories of European integration and socialization will advance only if scholars systematically move to combine the supranational and the national in their frameworks. Finally, future research on socialization should supplement empirical theorizing—the focus here—with normative and critical perspectives. This matters—and all the more so in a Europe marked by supranational constitution- and polity building.

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Figure 0

Analytic goals