A discursive institutionalist approach to American foreign policy – principled and cognitive interpretations of Bosnia
View/ Open
File version
Accepted Manuscript (AM)
Author(s)
Rees, MT
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2020
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991 was a pivotal challenge in U.S. foreign policy during the early 1990s. Specifically, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia proved to be a particularly contentious issue across two presidential administrations. Even as both Presidents Bush and Clinton recognised the humanitarian atrocities - initially, neither was willing to use military force in response, fearing any U.S. intervention would lead to a Vietnam-like quagmire. Yet, following the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995, Clinton's position changed, favouring decisive action. Given that during this time, the U.S. remained a great power and ...
View more >The disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991 was a pivotal challenge in U.S. foreign policy during the early 1990s. Specifically, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia proved to be a particularly contentious issue across two presidential administrations. Even as both Presidents Bush and Clinton recognised the humanitarian atrocities - initially, neither was willing to use military force in response, fearing any U.S. intervention would lead to a Vietnam-like quagmire. Yet, following the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995, Clinton's position changed, favouring decisive action. Given that during this time, the U.S. remained a great power and enjoyed relative stability in coalitional arrangements - what explains this variation in policy? To explain this variation, I build on discursive institutionalist approaches, which distinguish between different types of ideas, offering two mechanisms - normative displacement and cognitive repression - by which agents come to interpret interests in more principled, or cognitively-laden ways, leading to variation absent systemic or ideational shifts.
View less >
View more >The disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991 was a pivotal challenge in U.S. foreign policy during the early 1990s. Specifically, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia proved to be a particularly contentious issue across two presidential administrations. Even as both Presidents Bush and Clinton recognised the humanitarian atrocities - initially, neither was willing to use military force in response, fearing any U.S. intervention would lead to a Vietnam-like quagmire. Yet, following the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995, Clinton's position changed, favouring decisive action. Given that during this time, the U.S. remained a great power and enjoyed relative stability in coalitional arrangements - what explains this variation in policy? To explain this variation, I build on discursive institutionalist approaches, which distinguish between different types of ideas, offering two mechanisms - normative displacement and cognitive repression - by which agents come to interpret interests in more principled, or cognitively-laden ways, leading to variation absent systemic or ideational shifts.
View less >
Journal Title
Contemporary Politics
Copyright Statement
This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Contemporary Politics, 20 Jan 2020, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13569775.2020.1715579
Note
This publication has been entered into Griffith Research Online as an Advanced Online Version.
Subject
Political science