Social Rules and the State as a Social Actor

Abstract

New interest in the domestic sources of foreign policy intersects the notion that arguments about a state's international role are, at one level, arguments about domestic meaning, prohibitions, and responsibility. Even claimed strategic imperatives are neither self-explanatory nor comprehensible only in view of the stringencies of the international arena. Instead, they project a domestic content, referring to (and often transparent in the light of) particular domestic ends, needs, images, or interests. A rule-guided conception of die relation between domestic society and foreign policy is developed, in an analogy widi language and forms of discourse, in which discernible social rules will constrain or constitute a state policy—delimiting conduct, or defining its domestic referents, usage, and social conformity or deviance. Looking beneath the rather disembodied plane of ends and means, explanation begins to resemble an excavation; the state is seen not through the lenses of national security and rational behavior, but in the model and role of a domestic social actor.

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