ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Theorizing international security regimes:
a power-analytical approach
Nik Hynek1,2
Ó Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2017
Abstract This article seeks to develop alternative ways to conceptually grasp
international prohibition/regulatory regimes. It attempts to go beyond existing, and
piecemeal, analysis of regimes within the intellectual field of IR based on conventional
grand/mid-range theorization. It is argued that traditional theorization of
regimes fashioned as IR theory has hindered, rather than helped, to understand
regimes in their complexities, vagaries, and in terms of various forces simultaneously
involved. The article answers a question of how to strike a balance between
theoretical eclecticism, which is believed to be vital for a comprehensive analysis of
security regimes, and the need to have a uniting device to organize such research. It
is for these reasons that a power-analytical approach utilizing four types of powers—productive,
structural, institutional, and compulsory—is used, and its advantages
for regime analysis are flagged. The value added of such an advancement lies
in international security regimes being understood more plastically than through
conventional lenses. Specifically, they are approached as intertwined sets of normative
discourses, political structures (anarchies, hierarchies, and heterarchies), and
agencies through which power operates within a given security issue area with a
regulatory effect. Specific renderings of discourses and heterarchies establish
channels through which sociopolitical and economic privileges get distributed; they
create structural relations among actors with a possibility of their reversal or
rearticulation; and they build up, challenge, and relocate walls of legal obligations.
Keywords Security regimes Á Regime theory Á IR theory Á Power Á Eclecticism Á
Institutionalization Á Constructivism Á Post-structuralism Á Liberalism Á Realism Á
Revisionism
& Nik Hynek
hynek@mup.cz
1
Metropolitan University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
2
Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
Int Polit
DOI 10.1057/s41311-017-0084-2
Introduction
This theoretical article seeks to develop alternative ways to conceptually grasp
international prohibition/regulatory regimes. It attempts to go beyond existing, and
piecemeal, theorization of regimes within the intellectual field of IR. It serves as an
introductory piece for a series of following empirical studies. By doing so, it sets up
a theoretical agenda, reflects on, and outlines perspectives for comparative research.
While relying on the means of conceptual analysis rather than definitions,
international security regimes are understood here as sets of normative discourses,
political structures (anarchies, hierarchies, and heterarchies) and agencies through
which power operates within a given security issue area with a regulatory effect.
Specific renderings of discourses and heterarchies establish channels through which
sociopolitical and economic privileges get distributed; they create structural
relations among actors with a possibility of their reversal or rearticulation; and
they build up, challenge, and relocate walls of legal obligations—all of this within a
given security domain, with a systemic quality.
In IR, three ‘‘waves’’ of regimes theorization can be recognized and I have dealt
with them in detail elsewhere (Hynek 2017). These have been neo–neo
consequentialist regime theory; cognitivism; and radical constructivist/post-structuralist
understanding. The first generation of regime analysis can be linked to what
has been known as the theoretical convergence between neoliberal institutionalism
and neorealism (Andreatta and Koenig-Archibugi 2010; Baldwin 1993; Nye 1988;
Keohane 1986; Ruggie 1983). It newly emerged as a research venue linked to the
complex interdependency theory (Ruggie 1983, 1975; Keohane and Nye 1977;
Young 1982), which attempted to balance the focus on state-centric framework and
relative capabilities with the importance of international institutions (also vis-a`-vis
hegemons) and absolute gains. By the beginning of the 1990s, cognitivist, or
knowledge-based, theories of regimes rendered the previous assumption of
consequentialism and fixed, rationally determined state preferences flawed, and
out of touch with empirical domain (Smith 1987). It cautiously shifted the debate of
regimes from state-centrism to neo-functionally (Haas 1982), neo-institutionally
(March and Olsen 1998; Powell and DiMaggio 1991: 5–8), and knowledge-oriented
research, known (Hasenclever et al. 1997; the so-called Tu¨bingen School).
However, it took the third radical constructivist/post-structuralist wave to get
serious about the four ‘‘cooperation areas’’ flagged by the Tu¨bingen School: power
of legitimacy, narrative structures, identity-related binary separations, and conditions
of possibility for emergence and transformations of historical orders.
Specifically, they showed how liberal and realist—but by extension also
cognitivist—approaches were indeterminate, or outright mistaken, in their inability
to explain the de iure existing nonuse prohibition regimes (Price 1995, 1997;
Tannenwald 1999, 2007; Price and Tannenwald 1996).
These critical insights are cardinal as all studied issues contained in this special
issue fall into the category of security regimes (cf. Jervis 1982). To structure them
further, thematics of those security regimes plays the key role (cf. Kratochwil 1993)
and the issues studied in this special issue are divided into three clusters: WMD
N. Hynek
cluster (nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons), ‘‘humanitarian’’ cluster of
weapons (antipersonnel landmines, cluster munitions, and small arms and light
weapons), and ‘‘unconventional’’ security cluster (drugs and cybersecurity). The
approach offered here is more than capable of analyzing variable configurations of
general, specific, and unique characteristics as present in each of the regimes, and
investigates them in a comparative manner. This is where existing waves of regime
theorization have fallen short of the task.
On the utility of the three waves for the project
The utility of the consequentialist regime theory for this project mainly lies in
highlighting structural (material) conditions and incentives for regime formation;
regime evolution and maintenance; and regime compliance. With regard to regime
formation, the following questions can be posed: Did the regime result from
particular interests of hegemonic powers, from a different ‘‘tier’’ of states, or
another type of actors? How precisely was the issue area specified and subsequently
institutionalized? What role did ‘‘norm entrepreneurship’’ play in a given regime
formation? Was it pursued through coercive diplomacy; What kind of reasoning
drove the other states when joining the regime (following rational interest,
specification of cost/benefit, coercion, bandwagoning, etc.)? As for regime
evolution, one’s attention is steered, inter alia, at the following questions. Did the
regime evolve along the lines of great power interests, and if not, why? How has the
evolutionary dynamic changed after the initial stage of formation (from power/
interest driven to path-dependency or even normative persistence; did the regime
become more coherent due to the substantial economy of transaction costs/
information sharing procedures? Finally yet importantly, questions related to
compliance relate to reasons why states complied with the regime. Has it been
bargaining for profit, procedural calculations, rewards, coercion, compellence, and/
or normative compliance? Have effective verification mechanisms been formed
within the regime, and why? What were outcomes of non-compliant behavior, and
impact on robustness of a regime? How, if at all, did the motivations among the
members to comply with a given regime change over time? More recent studies
drawing on this type of scholarship have further contributed by examination of
interplays of international regimes (Muzaka 2011; Stokke 2003), cross-scale
interactions (Young 2000), regime complexity (Go´mez-Mera 2015), and ontological
pluralization, especially incorporation of other types of actors (Biermann and
Pattberg 2008; Arts 2000).
To make a few remarks on the utility of the cognitivist wave of regime analysis,
it can be divided into three areas: actors and identities involved in regimes; regimerelated
processes and outcomes; and ideas through which knowledge is produced
and politically used. In regard of actors and their identities, it is to study primary and
secondary agents and their identities, push–pull dynamics vis-a`-vis IOs and their
politico-scientific justification, transnational dynamics, as well as links between
ideas and national interests. Too, role conceptions/playing is important objects of
examination for regime analysis, not the least because they render foreign policy
Theorizing international security regimes: a power-analytical…
analysis relevant by virtue of bridging domestic and international environments.
With respect to processes and outcomes, focus ought to be steered on cognitive and
communicative mechanisms such as persuasion, coercion, forms of legitimation;
network analysis related to workings of epistemic communities (and other types of
actors); and thematic analysis as well as research on formation and use of narrative
structures more generally. Finally, relationships between ideas and norms need to be
scrutinized their specific types (principled, causal, etc.) and codification (i.e., treaty
regimes, cf. Sitaraman 2009), as well as an interplay between cognitive, regulatory,
and behavioral components and how those contribute to identity formation and
reproduction. How do actors’ identities affect their stance on norm determinacy in
formation and recreation of regimes? What is the role ideas play in the best possible
achievement of a desired social and political purpose as far as regimes are
concerned? How is cognitional (and political) success influenced by a degree of
intersubjectively shared knowledge?
As for the third ‘‘wave,’’ i.e., radical constructivist/post-structuralist theorization
of regimes—the utility is manifold. Ontologically, it goes beyond the dichotomy, or
juxtaposition, of state-centered and transnational analytical frameworks (for these,
cf. Lipson 2005/6). It is capable of examining regime complexes, understood as a
plural mix comprising actors, networks, and artifacts: both material and ideational,
and their coproductions and hybrids. Deleuze and Guattari (1983, 1987) and
Foucault’s (1991) analyses are vital for studying assemblages and ways in which
they have been linked to state apparatuses and their rationalities, thereby creating
governmentalized assemblages (Hynek 2012: 31–34; Joseph 2012; Krause 2011).
This wave takes seriously ethics and culture and examines them as socially
constructed, if contingent categories (Tannenwald 2013). Relevant scholarship
recognizes the necessity of flexible analytical toolboxes comprehending structures
as contingent, open, where seeds of resistance come from within: ‘‘Increasing
interdependence among issues and issues-areas may thus produce increasing strains
on regimes. In such circumstances, arguments that specific regimes order the entire
system become problematic even if some issue-areas, regimes, or instruments are
more significant than others. Theoretical approaches that rely on a grand unifying
order become particularly suspect. ‘The system’ may be a fragmented, illcoordinated
thing; it may be broken-legged and limp along accordingly’’ (Keeley
1990: 95–96). Importantly, such an analysis also avoids siren sings of prescription
and normativity, be it explicit or implicit kind (cf. Taylor 1985). Finally, collective
identities are taken seriously and get scrutiny: on the one hand, their conditions of
emergence, on the other, their structural and productive effects (see the next
session). Last but not least, this wave attempts to expose forms (e.g., informal
empires) and sources (e.g., use of knowledge) of international anarchy, hierarchy,
and heterarchy (Wendt and Friedheim 1995; Crumley 1995).
The rest of the article answers the question of how to strike a balance between
theoretical eclecticism, which is believed to be vital for a comprehensive and plastic
analysis of security regimes, and the need to have a uniting device to organize such
research. It is for these reasons that the most sophisticated existing conceptualization
of power available, i.e., Barnett and Duvall’s (2005) typology, is used as the
central conceptual vocabulary, interlinking various strands of the literature to a
N. Hynek
single analytical framework usable for this project. What is seen as notable value
added to the existing literature on regimes, the framework offered will reverse the
usual order of things. Rather than going from the material to ideational, as well as
from rational to reflectivist, it outlines the vision where constitutive power of the
discourse, the discourse in its materiality, cannot be side-lined, or made of
secondary importance.
A power-analytical approach to international security regimes
No one would probably dispute that when it comes to complexities of international
security regimes, robust ex post understandings, i.e., the thrust of work IR scholars
do everyday (except for their dealings with piles of bureaucracy and administration),
are the best way to comprehend the dynamics and cross-cutting effects (cf.
Drezner 2009). Theoretical robustness often involves the necessity to combine
different metatheoretical leanings, as well as relies on limited, contingent
generalizations of examined phenomena, i.e., ‘‘small-t(heory)-claims’’ (Price and
Reus-Smit 1998: 275). Evolution of IR field clearly shows the rise of theoretical and
analytical eclecticisms, what Reus-Smit (2013: 589) labeled ‘‘bracket metatheory
thesis,’’ thereby going beyond sweeping generalizations. However, there are still
different kinds of eclecticisms. This paper in particular and the Special Issue in
general shun ‘‘progressivist’’ theoretical eclecticism, which has usually been
associated with an examination of micro-foundations and production and testing of
mid-range theories (Lake 2013; Sil and Katzenstein 2010). Despite their cagey
aversion to the discussion—rather than absence—of metatheoretical assumptions,
research design and methods used by many of these mid-range studies have
replicated problems of conventional IR theorization, just one level of theoretical
ambition down.
Rather than mid-range progressivism, the type of eclecticism embraced here is
what Lake (2013: 574) dubbed as ‘‘open-ended eclecticism.’’ Arguably, not only
does such open-endedness allow for unique and specific features of various issueareas
under the microscope to be considered and theorized accordingly, but it too
underlines the primacy of ‘‘questions/concerns ‘in the world’,’’ thus staying away
from ‘‘pathological implications’’ of ‘‘current textbook configuration of multiple
‘isms’’’ (Lake 2011; cf. Krause 2002: 252–256). While regime analysis was being
formulated as a mid-range project from the beginning, it has not overcome those
pathologies, as was demonstrated in the previous part of the article. Simultaneously,
the identified three waves of regime theorization and featured assessment of their
metatheoretical leanings help to cushion what Reus-Smit (2013: 589) correctly
associated with this kind of theorization, a research project not being ‘‘structured by
epistemological and ontological assumptions, making it an exclusively empirical–
theoretical project with distinctive ontological content.’’
The metaorganising, and conceptual, device chosen here to order regime analysis
is what I term the power-analytical approach. It is the means to bring the previously
heeded theorizations and conceptualizations in, through considerations of multiplicity
of power relations. As Foucault (1980: 98) put it, power is relational rather
Theorizing international security regimes: a power-analytical…
than substantial, it is not perfectly possessed or controlled by anybody, it is not
property of anyone or anything, it passes through subjects and manifests its loci in
objects, and it constitutes and actuates networks and apparatuses. The position
embraced here begins with an acknowledgement of multiple types of dynamic
power structures getting intertwined (with)in regimes and among them (cf. Guzzini
1993). As Allen (1998: 178) held it, ‘‘the proper alternative to power is not defeat
but indifference.’’ In particular, as the following lines show, these are political
hierarchies, i.e., formal or informal, less or more rigid, tree-like structures, oriented
vertically and unitarily, what Deleuze and Guattari described as ‘‘arborescent
assemblages’’ (1987: 5; for an alternative conception, cf. Cooley 2005). Other
systems where power is located and through which it passes are heterarchies—what
Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 7–9) would call rhizomatic assemblages: these are
forming, maintaining, and reconfiguring security regimes in a flexible and
horizontal fashion, fleeing attempts of being overcoded and rendered arborescent,
thus allowing for reconstitution and resistance inside of formal organizations and
rigid spaces (for hierarchy–heterarchy nexus, cf. Crumley 1995).
Foucault (1982: 216–222) identified several starting questions for poweranalysis:
‘‘How is power exercised? … By what means is it exercised? … What
constitutes specific nature of power? … What happens when individuals exert (as
they say) power over others? … How is one to analyse the power relationship?’’
Essentially, the power-analytical approach deals with an analysis of ‘‘economies of
power,’’ i.e., its various configurations (based on modalities of efficiency/effectiveness,
and informed by types of power involved, see below). In the process of
their excavation, a few guidelines (G1-5) were put forward by Foucault (1982: 223):
G1. The system of differentiation which features legal conditions, traditions of
status and privilege, economic disparities, transformations in production,
differences in culture and language, as well as in know-how and competence;
relations of power create differentiations; and these are its conditions and results
simultaneously. This guideline is particularly important for the analysis of
productive power.
G2. The types of objectives such as ‘‘the maintenance of privileges, the
accumulation of profits, the bringing into operation of statutory authority, the
exercise of a function or a trade’’ (Ibid: 223). This guideline helps to sharpen the
analysis of structural power.
G3. The means of bringing power relations into being—through coercion,
military means, and discourses; also by means of economic differences, of
control, by surveillance, with the help of archives, through informal rules, with/
without technological means. Compulsory power lends itself to be analyzed
through these means.
G4. Forms of institutionalization—can involve traditional predispositions with
customs/fashions and legal systems; expressed through (sometimes very complex
and elaborate) apparatuses with their loci, regulations, hierarchies, and
autonomies; also feature ‘‘the distribution of all power relations in a given
social ensemble’’ (Ibid: 223). How institutional power gets exercised can be
found out with the deployment of this guideline.
N. Hynek
G5. The degree of rationalization—can be understood ‘‘in relation to the
effectiveness of the instruments and the certainty of the results,’’ containing
different kinds of costs—economic, e.g., putting new instruments into practice, or
costs associated with reactive resistance (Ibid: 224). This principle ought to be
heeded, especially when operations of institutional and compulsory power get
examined.
These questions and guidelines may serve as the springboard for the following
conceptual analysis of types of power. For reasons of theoretical sophistication and
comprehensiveness, this article draws on the conceptualization of power offered by
Barnett and Duvall (2005). Their typology takes inspiration, inter alia, from Guzzini
(1993), who was the first to problematize uses of power-analysis inside IR and
offered conceptual remedy. Redistribution of power understood as capabilities was
enriched by the introduction of structural power and its different renderings, namely
indirect institutional power, non-intentional power, and impersonal power. He
proposed ‘‘that any power-analysis should necessarily include a pair or dyad of
concepts of power, linking agent power and impersonal governance’’ (Guzzini
1993: 443). Barnett and Duvall (2005) opted for two organizing dyads in their
conceptualization: first, in relation to expressions of power, one can make a
difference between interaction and constitution; and second, in connection to
specificity of social relations of power, direct and diffused relations can be identified
(Ibid: 45–48). When put together, four types of power can be rendered: compulsory,
institutional, structural, and productive. While utilizing Barnett and Duvall (2005), I
deliberately reverse the order of types of power in the subsequent lines. Indeed,
what takes theoretical and conceptual precedence in the beginning of an analysis has
important consequences (cf. Reinalda and Verbeek 2004: 27–28). Due to the fact
that theorization of wider normative considerations, general constitution of
subjectivities, and their historical and structural conditionings are seen as especially
relevant, I move from systemic to specific, and from diffused to direct. This should
not be read, however, as the preference for a structuralist approach to poweranalysis
but rather a counterbalance, as far as the research strategy is concerned, to a
conventional, state-centered regime analysis. The latter managed to tackle unit-level
interactions between and among (important) states and IOs, i.e., chiefly relying on
compulsory and institutional conceptions of power (Fig. 1).
While usually being dealt with marginally at best or completely ignored at its
worst, productive power is the crucial one for understanding the nature of regime
dynamics and conditions, or their lack of. This type of power allows for the
construction—or rather production (considering that their very physical makeups
are at stake)—of political subjects through diffuse social relations. While productive
power shares several features with other types (especially the focus on constitutive
sociopolitical processes, actors’ capacities, as well as their self-perception), it
notably differs in relational specificity. In their analysis of power, Barnett and
Duvall (Ibid: 55) therefore discussed a difference between structural power as
structural constitution, i.e., ‘‘the production and reproduction of internally related
positions of super- and subordination, or domination, that actors occupy’’ and
productive power as ‘‘the constitution of all social subjects with various social
Theorizing international security regimes: a power-analytical…
powers through systems of knowledge and discursive practices of broad and general
social scope.’’ Therefore, productive power permeates systems of meaning/knowledge
production and relates to general processes of signification. Following the first
guideline, that is to grasp productive power through systems of differentiation, this
advancement is predicated upon the constitutive role—and materiality—of the
discourse. To investigate productivity of power, its differentiating capacity needs to
be revealed: ‘‘Rather than analysing power from the point of view of its internal
rationality, it consists of analysing power relations through the antagonism of
strategies. For example to find out what our society means by sanity, perhaps we
should investigate what is happening in the field of insanity. And what we mean by
legality in the field of illegality’’ (Foucault 1982: 220).
With direct implications for seeing how productive power permeates, signifies,
and conditions international security regimes, the constitutive role of ethics and
culture is seen as cardinal. Produced moral and cultural discourses (Price 1995)
function as legitimizing ‘‘regimes of truth,’’ i.e., ‘‘the types of discourse which it
accepts and makes function as true, the mechanisms and instances which enable one
to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned’’
(Foucault 1980: 131). Thus, they play the role of ‘‘codes of intelligibility’’ (Weldes
et al. 1999: 16), serving both as conditions of possibility and horizons of the taken
for granted. It is through these that the constitutive differentiation between ‘‘the
civilized’’ and ‘‘the uncivilized,’’ what Price (1995: 95) called ‘‘the discipline of
civilization’’ in relation to prohibitionary chemical weapons regime, can be enacted.
Of course, those systems are ordered contingently, therefore succumbing to
Power
works
through
Relational Specificity
Diffuse Direct
Social
relations of
constitution
PRODUCTIVE
(G1)
Impersonal intersubjective power
(doxa, dispositif, episteme)
desiring-production
STRUCTURAL
(G2)
Impersonal positional power
(Cultural hegemony, transnational
historical bloc and its maintenance)
Interactions of
specific actors
INSTITUTIONAL
(G4, G5)
Indirect/unintended institutional
effects; lags and feedback between
power base and regime
COMPULSORY
(G3, G5)
Possessive (power as resources and
their shifts) and relational (direct
control over outcomes)
Fig. 1 Types of power and analytical guidelines. (Based on Barnett and Duvall 2005: 48; Guzzini 1993;
Deleuze and Guattari 1983; Foucault 1982: 223–224)
N. Hynek
numerous transformations and changes in/of intensities. How can we understand
possible relationships between prohibition/regulation and productive power? What
are the conditions for and effects of productive power’s perpetuation/neutralization
in and around security regimes? For instance, nuclear weapons being portrayed as
rich man’s bomb vs. chemical weapons being depicted as poor man’s bomb (Ibid:
98) with different expectations and courses of action, and involvement of other three
types of power mediating and moderating operations of productive power. History
of arms control and humanitarian disarmament is full of these separations and
differentiations (Cooper 2011; Hynek 2011) but also of their dialogical reversals
(e.g., the subversion of the dual standards through a complete subversion of what
was to be an integrative category of WMDs by ‘‘poor men,’’ cf. Price 1995: 99).
Contingent yet potent symbolic and legal differentiation between small arms and
light weapons, antipersonnel landmines (which used to be part of the former), and
cluster bombs (which had been separate but were later narratively linked to
antipersonnel landmines) can partially explain different fortunes when it comes to
their respective regulations and prohibitions.
Roles of productive power in stigmatization and tabooization politics (with its
principles of contingency, hierarchy/domination through civilizational discipline,
and resistance, cf. Price 1995: 89–93) help the analyst to expose how moral
opprobrium articulated in and around security regimes is being linked to more
general moral and cultural horizons. Moreover, productive power helps to constitute
seemingly noble discourses (e.g., many international security regimes greased by
narratives on humanitarianism), which in turn stimulate positive affects. Deleuze
and Guattari (1983: 11–11) called them micro-political ‘‘desiring production,’’ i.e.,
the investment of psychical energy into the production of what is taken as reality,
and ‘‘social-production’’ articulated as the utilization of corporeal energy, i.e., labor.
These have been neglected if very important parts of the so-called political
rationalities, or governmentalities, functioning as wider discourses of rule that
structure socio-political orders and, within which grid subjects are constituted
(Foucault 1988: 161). What else can explain, apart from generous financing by
many actors, general reasons why NGOs and civil society in general have been
more and more involved in molding of many of international security regimes, from
agenda setting all the way to their verification, and why they have been increasingly
using humanitarian language even in agendas such as the push for nuclear
disarmament (cf. Hynek and Smetana 2016)? Positive inducement—and loop—
through affects is beyond any doubts linked to ‘‘ethics creep’’ (Slim 2013: 3).
The next type there is structural power. This type of power sheds light on the
creation of actors’ capacities. Such creation is based on mutual—and positionally
oriented—constitution and occurs through direct interactions between/among
actors. While structures constrain actors’ options in terms of who they are and
what they want, they are, simultaneously, the products of actors’ direct relations. In
words of Barnett and Duvall (Ibid: 52–53), this type of power ‘‘produces the very
social capacities of structural, or subject, positions in direct relation to one another,
and the associated interests, that underlie and dispose action … A, exists only by
virtue of its relation to structural position, B. The classical examples here are
master–slave and capital-labor relations.’’ Structural asymmetry has indeed
Theorizing international security regimes: a power-analytical…
consequences. That is, especially, different distribution of benefits, obligations, and
self-awareness (including one’s understanding concerning how much determined its
fate is). The key concept for structural power is the notion of hegemony, especially
in neo-Gramscian sense. As Cox (1987: 7) maintained, ‘‘hegemony is more than the
dominance of a single world power. It means the dominance of a particular kind
where the dominant state creates an order based ideologically on a broad measure of
consent, functioning according to general principles that in fact ensure the
continuing supremacy of the leading state or states and the leading social classes but
at the same time offer some measure or prospect of satisfaction to the less powerful.
In such an order, production in particular countries becomes connected through the
mechanisms of the world economy and linked into world systems of production.’’
Lukes (1975:24) queried about hegemony hiding itself behind the veil of false
conscience and thin legitimacy as follows: ‘‘is it not the supreme and most insidious
exercise of power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances
shaping their perceptions, cognitions, and preferences in such a way that they accept
their role in the existing order of things?’’
The importance for regime analysis can be understood in relation to the
(re)production of power hierarchies. This is where the notion of cultural hegemony
and neo-Marxist analysis in particular can help to reveal them (but also, cf. Wendt
and Friedheim 1995). Cultural production of actors’ political identities plays an
important role in this regard. When it comes to direct, functionally determined
power relations and capacities, sound regime analysis inquiries into the nature,
extent, and direction of contestation within a given regime. Of particular importance
for regime theorization is the ‘‘un-politics’’ of regimes, here understood as
hegemonic attempts to block initiatives concerning regime proposals through
exercises of structural power and reproduction of power asymmetries (Newell
2005, 2008; Crenson 1971). Strange (1994: 24–32) recognized four components of
structural power relevant for theorization of regimes, namely capacity to exercise
control over the sphere of security, knowledge production, finance and material
production. Explicitly from a regime-theoretical perspective, Gale (1998) analyzed
meso-level structures in this light and specifically strategies of contestation and
recreation of normative structures, privileges, and compliance mechanisms by
global civil society actors. To him, international regimes could be comprehended as
‘‘instances of institutionalized hegemony’’ (Ibid: 275), and with its focus on nonstate
actors, and their counter-hegemonic struggles, testify to the link between
political heterarchies and structural power (cf. Paterson et al. 2003). What is the
dominant character of such contestation, i.e., does it take place among actors who
subscribe to the hegemonic discourse (and can therefore be described as
‘‘technical’’); among those actors and designated ‘‘free-riders,’’ or among the above
and those who seek to more radically change, break, or break out of the regime and
establish alternative associations based on existing, temporarily subjugated types of
knowledge or on appropriation and subversive reinterpretation of existing norms?
What are, on the other hand, ideational and material reasons for nominally politicojuridically
independent actors to embrace norms and obligations associated with
dominant actors of a given period (Ikenberry and Kupchan 1990; Kennedy 1988)?
N. Hynek
Still more, there is institutional power. While its operations through specific
interactions among actors are what it shares with the next in the line, i.e.,
compulsory power, its relational quality is diffuse, or indirect. As Barnett and
Duvall (2005: 51) maintained in this context, ‘‘the conceptual focus here is on the
formal and informal institutions that mediate between A and B, as A, working
through the rules and procedures that define those institutions, guides, steers, and
constraints the actions (or non-actions) and conditions of existence of others.’’ Thus,
where it differs from compulsory power is particularly in the mediatory,
international-institutional locus of power workings. Therefore, A and B do not
enter into direct interaction here as temporal, bureaucratic and/or social distance
kicks in. Indeed, temporal and bureaucratic distances require the use of historical
institutionalist and rational-choice institutionalist accounts. Forms of institutionalization
and degrees of rationalization, i.e., Foucault’ fourth and fifth guidelines,
highlight significance of institutional power and its particular workings. As
Hanrieder (2015) showed, complex political, legal, and bureaucratic relations
between states and IOs account for design of IOs often being ‘‘circumscribed by
path-dependent power dynamics,’’ leading to rationally explicable inertia and
preferences for certain type of policy/norm diffusion (Ibid: 215). Here, an analysis
of institutional programs, themselves derived from wider political rationalities
effectuated by productive power, should be stressed as one of their most important
functions is its regulatory function: ‘‘practices of bureaucratic hierarchism and
proceduralism spread from state institutions into ‘non-state’ realms … This
dispersal of the … regulation and government throughout society also illustrates the
governmentalization of society’’ (Sharma and Gupta 2006: 17).
When it comes to relevance for regime analysis, operations of power such as
decisional rules (either hegemonically or collectively established), formal/informal
lines of responsibility and its division, configurations of linear path dependence—or
on the other hand shifts through critical junctures, as well as diffused reciprocity, are
being investigated. With theoretical and empirical focus on international regulatory
regimes, manipulation of power configuration through collective institutional
entrepreneurship becomes crucial for understanding the fashion in which institutional
power operates on/through those regimes (Wijen and Ansari 2007). As the
authors put it, there is ‘‘agency-structure paradox or the ability of institutional
entrepreneurs to spearhead change despite constraints. In many complex fields,
however, change also needs cooperation from numerous dispersed actors. This
presents the additional paradox of ensuring that these actors engage in collective
action when individual interests favor lack of cooperation’’ (Ibid: 1079). How has an
established regime subsequently evolved, in relation to original hegemonic interests
and calculations? Also, importantly for regime analysis, it is a question of
durability, intensity, and evolutionary trajectories related to the formation/application
of institutional rules. As Barnett and Duvall (Ibid: 52) argued, while
‘‘institutions … are established to help actors achieve mutually acceptable, even
Pareto-superior, outcomes also create ‘winners’ and ‘losers,’ to the extent that the
ability to use the institution and accordingly, collective rewards—material and
normative—are unevenly distributed into the future and beyond the intentions of the
creators.’’ Therefore, an integral part of analyzing the institutional power is focus on
Theorizing international security regimes: a power-analytical…
indirect (and often unintended) consequences, such as institutional effects of
particular agenda setting, facilitating/mediating conditions, forms of interdependence,
as well as nesting and/or path-dependency pathologies (cf. Clegg et al. 2006;
Barnett and Finnemore 1999; Finnemore 1993). Indeed, such an analysis also needs
to consider the institutional mediation form the position of the subaltern, or weak
actors. Sometimes, and perhaps surprisingly, it may be linked, in terms of indirect
effects, to the institutional limits of hegemonic power (consider the subversive
discourse of the weak states on chemical weapons enabled by the previously
established Western legal and political connection between those weapons and
hegemonic possession of nuclear weapons).
Finally, there is compulsory power. It is based on a series of unit-based
interactions through which actors get into relations with each other directly. As
Barnett and Duvall (2005: 48) maintain, ‘‘compulsory power exists in the direct
control of one actor over the conditions of existence and/or the actions of another.’’
It is here where Dahl’s (1957: 202–3) classical definition of power, defined as the
ability A to get B to do what B what B otherwise would not do, applies. In this
context, one can think about one’s direct influence over other actors exercised
through practices and discourses. Both material and ideational resources are thus
being utilized and put into workings. The important feature, which goes beyond
Dahl’s formulation and is noted by Barnett and Duvall (Ibid: 50), is the possibility
of compulsory power operating in an unintentional fashion. It is for this reason that
‘‘compulsory power is best understood from the perspective of the recipient, not the
deliverer, of the direct action’’ (Ibid: 50). Indeed, this does not square readily with
existing IR scholarship which has—both generally and in regime analysis,
traditionally focused on deliverers, especially wielding of compulsory power by
dominant states in the system.
When it comes to significance of compulsory power for theorization of regimes,
three points are highlighted in particular. First, great power politics and diplomacy
needs to be examined. Specifically, that is to focus on how, and for what reasons,
great powers form and maintain international regimes. Systemically, hegemony and
its specific manifestations need to be studied. Can we identify a specific hegemon in
a given regime? What has been the nature of legitimization of regime formation?
How has it been accepted internationally? In terms of mechanisms of power, can we
recognize coercion, peer-pressure, normative compliance, bandwagoning, bribing,
etc. in this context? What has been their specific configuration, both in terms of
spatiality and temporality? What have been directly produced unintended consequences,
especially in light of resistance and subversion from other actors, and their
coalitions? Second, the role of IOs needs to be studied when it comes to compulsory
power and regime analysis. When it comes to this type of power operation,
especially the use of their specific targeting needs to be systematized. What have
been ways in which IOs have put into use their sources of authority? What kinds of
authority, and/or their configuration (e.g., expert, moral, delegated, political/legal),
have been deployed to alter behavior of specific actors? What have been the specific
mechanisms and technologies of power (e.g., teaching, persuasion, and sanctions)
used for this alteration? Last but not least, the compulsory power of non-state actors
needs to be scrutinized. When it comes to regime analysis, especially the role of
N. Hynek
NGOs and broader transnational advocacy networks has been well documented
(Risse et al. 2013; Arts 2000; Price 1998; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Risse 1995).
What have been their sources of compulsory power (e.g., moral authority, field
knowledge and recognized history of practice, informal/formal standing and/or
status)? What specific technologies and mechanisms of power did they utilize to
alter other actors’ interests and identities (e.g., naming, shaming, tabooization,
whistle-blowing)? However, while those actors are usually perceived positively,
their possible blocking and/or disruptive potential needs to be factored in, too (e.g.,
actors representing business/legal interests which clash with international prohibitive/regulatory
attempts, and targeting directly other actors; actors physically
fighting against such attempts and their proponents).
Conclusion
Theorization of regimes—and that includes international security regimes—is not
dead, albeit significant theoretical criticism has been swirling around theoretical
grounds from the very start. Judged by the number of regime analysis publications
in academic journals and books, theorization of regimes has seen its peak, with more
recent contributions having focused on refinements and new venues of limited
ambition, such as regimes interplay, complexity. Therefore, theorization of regimes
has had many features of an explicit, progressive scientific research program—to
invoke Lakatos’ (1970) understanding of scientific work—for much of it life. The
move from neorealism and hegemonic stability theory to neoliberal institutionalist
regime theory, and from there to theorization of cognitivism and stronger
incorporation of the role of ideas and norms, can be understood as ‘‘progressive
problem shifts,’’ both theoretically and empirically. That is, however, within an
image of the IR field remaining intact when it comes to the nature of its general
paradigm (Kuhn’s ‘‘normal science’’) and ‘‘disciplinary’’ standards. As was shown,
the development in and around the field of IR experienced two trends which
coincided with the existence and refinement of normal-scientific regimes
theorization.
The trends—i.e., the opening the disciplinary boundaries (since the Third Great
Debate) and the rise of theoretical and analytical eclecticism, which are still visible
and even stronger today, have synergistically—and irreversibly—worked to change
the IR landscape. For some, this has been for the better, for others, the perception
has not been so positive, as the special issue of EJIR on the end of IR theory showed
(Dunne et al. 2013; Reus-Smit 2013; Lake 2013). Be as it may, it could be argued
that the development of regime-theoretical research program has displayed signs of
what Lakatos would have called ‘‘negative heuristics,’’ i.e., certain propositions of a
research program that are non-revisable. Here, it was regime theorization based on
‘‘ism’’ of one sort or another, just with a more limited range, state-centralism, and
marginalization of insights from radical constructivism and post-structuralism. For
these reasons, this article, and the entire special issue, embrace a cautiously openended,
eclectic position that puts into the center the discussion conceptualization of
power, its exercises, multiplicities, as well as general outline of relevance for
Theorizing international security regimes: a power-analytical…
theorization of international security regimes. From Lakatosian ‘‘hard-core’’
research programmatic perspective, this looks as an example of epistemological
pluralism, but for reasons driven by plastic understanding of workings of those
regimes vis-a`-vis operations of power. Including productive power, for many
reasons the most underdeveloped one when it comes to normal science of regime
theorization, which cannot be ignored for the sake of its constitutive effects.
Acknowledgements Nik Hynek gratefully acknowledges financial support from the MUP C4SS VVZ
34-04 and 54-04 and research on Human/Machine Nexus in Security Arena and Implications for
Resilience of Socio-Political Order.
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Nik Hynek PhD (Bradford) is Associate Professor in Theory of Politics and Chair of the Department of
Security Studies at the Metropolitan University Prague. He has also worked for the Department of
Security Studies at the Charles University in Prague. His articles have appeared in many top-ranked
scientific journals. His last two monographs have been Human Security as Statecraft (Routledge, 2012),
and Fringe Players and the Diplomatic Order (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, with Jozef Batora). He can be
contacted at hynek@mup.cz.
Theorizing international security regimes: a power-analytical…