Determinants of security and insecurity in international relations: A cross-national experimental analysis of symbolic and material gains and losses

What are the fundamental determinants of security and insecurity in international affairs? International relations (IR) theorists are remarkably divided on this basic issue. Neorealists such as Ken Waltz have argued that threat is perceived solely as a function of material factors such as the balance of military power.1 Many liberal and constructivist theorists have countered that ideational, nonmaterial factors also drive threat perception. Traditionally, the IR subfield of security studies focused solely on military force: its maintenance, threat of use, and actual use. The core assumption of mainstream scholarship in the subfield was that states are concerned primarily with the protection of their territory. The initial broadening of security studies to include topics such as economic, environmental, and energy securities shared the assumption that security is fundamentally about state survival or at least material well-being. What Bill McSweeney variously calls "objectivist" or "materialist" security studies parallels what John Ruggie has labeled "neo-utilitarian" IR theory: Mainstream structuralist (both neorealist and neoliberal) approaches assume that states are self-regarding, instrumental units that respond only to pregiven material interests.2 In contrast to these materialist, objectivist, and rationalist conceptions of security are ideational determinants of (in)security rooted in either psychology or various forms of constructivism. The last decade has witnessed the proliferation of new types of securities (from "societal security" to "human security" to "ontological security")3 and types of security studies (from "constructivist" to "poststructural" to "critical" to "feminist").4 While this new scholarship has pointed the subfield in very different directions, it has largely shared a desire to combat the mainstream view of security as mere animal survival. "Security is not synonymous with survival," Ken Booth contends, noting that "one can survive without being secure."5 Most in this camp are concerned with symbolic politics. For example, Jennifer Mitzen defines ontological security as "security not of the body but of the self, the subjective sense of who one is."6 While there has been much theorizing and some debate between the materialist and symbolic security studies camps, for the most part they operate in separate worlds with little interaction. Even determined attempts at dialogue have fallen flat. For example, a 2003 Review of International Studies forum that sought to bring American realism and the English school into dialogue produced excellent papers, but they largely failed to move beyond well-worn critiques of the other side. Dale Copeland complained that the English school lacks a theory and even causal argumentation.7 Richard Little lamented American realism's reduction of classical realism to mere power politics, noting the failure of American realism to explain the post-Cold War persistence of unipolarity.8 Theoretic debate, in short, has become largely stagnant and stale. Rather than plunge into the theoretic quagmire, this chapter approaches the debate from the bottom up, using experimental methods to seek a better empirical understanding of when, whether, and how material and symbolic politics matter for security and insecurity in international relations. As such, we join David Rousseau in using empirical research rather than pure theory to advance scholarly debate in this area.9 Providing experimental evidence rather than a new grand theory, this chapter lays an empirical foundation for the reintegration of the two currently polarized security studies camps. In addition to addressing the material versus symbolic politics debate, our attention to symbolic politics addresses concepts shared by constructivism and political psychology. Each of these perspectives grants primacy to subjectivist rather than objectivist approaches to threat perception and affords an important place to ideational variables such as those that we examine in this study. Our empirical examination of feelings of anxiety and pride speaks to identity politics, the purview of constructivism and psychology. We also explore the role of reputations and framing of domains of gain/loss, both of which are traditional domains of political psychology. By studying the role of anxiety and pride and highlighting the emotional states that psychological IR has deemed important determinants of decision making, we join constructivists critical of rationalist approaches to international relations.10 One goal of this study, then, is to show the complementary nature of ideational or symbolic variables theoretically amenable to both psychology and constructivism. This study also demonstrates the possibility and desirability of employing experimental designs to study both material and symbolic variables. We also offer an underutilized research design of cross-national experimentation for the study of ideational variables. Constructivist and social psychological concern with the cultural dimension of IR begs for cross-cultural study, yet it is rarely conducted. We demonstrate its utility within a rigorous empirical framework, permitting scholars to see just how much culture matters in affecting perceptions and behavior in the realm of international politics. We begin with study design and then turn to the results and a discussion of their implications for material and ideational IR theory alike.