While every theoretical framework has merit, this author believes that many of the dominant theories-- realism (specifically neorealism, in contrast to “classical realism”), liberalism and neofunctionalism--are inadequate in their ability to properly describe the changes that have taken place in recent Turkish international relations. For the purposes of this study, the author has concluded that the most meritorious theories which can be applied towards Turkey are three main bodies of the “New Institutionalisms”: Rational-Choice Institutionalism, Sociological Institutionalism and Historical Institutionalism. These theoretical frameworks have been chosen because of their flexibility. A major drawback of most theoretical models is their inflexibility and their attempts at being predictive devices. There are many reasons why mainstream theoretical models tend to fall short when applied to Turkey, and the strengths and weaknessses of theoretical models is the objective of the current study. That said, t is a fool’s errand to generalize too greatly about these very divergent theories. Yet there are a few overarching reasons which can be said to contribute
The following sections offer a highly abridged explanation of five major international relations theories: realism, liberalism and neofunctionalism. Their main tenants are outlined and their weaknesses in application to the study of Turkish politics with a particular emphasis on Turkish foreign policy and international relations are discussed. Following the summary of these theories, a longer explanation is given describing Rational-Choice Institutionalism, Sociological Institutionalism and Historical Institutionalism, focusing specifically on why these theories are beneficial and what are some of their weaknesses. Application will be discussed with specific reference to foreign policy developments in Turkey.
Theoretical Standards
In order to grasp the full weight of New Institutionalist theories taken as a whole (and later we will divide three specific theories along certain parameter) it is quite helpful to understand the foundational theories dominating the intellectual climate and to which these theories each make their own response. Here we briefly discuss aspects of Realism and Liberalism in 20th century foreign affairs. Realism, to begin, is based on a number of assumptions. The root assumption of realists is that states are the primary actors within an inherently anarchic international state system. The survival of a state and its sovereignty is of the utmost importance, which puts states into constant Realists also operate on the assumption that states are unitary actors which act rationally to maximize their chances of future survival. States with the most economic and military power are best able to be decisive actors on the world stage. Cooperation between states can exist, but this only occurs to the extent that it can be enforced by the existence or threat of state power. There are merits to the realist argument in regards to Turkey’s behavior. Turkey has a long history of perceiving its neighbors as threatening, as reflected in the expression taught to Turkish schoolchildren during the Cold War (Gelvin, 2011). In its recent history, Turkey has had many political conflicts with neighboring states which have threatened to turn into violence: with Greece, Cyprus, Iran, Iraq, Israel and Syria to name a few. Yet, since the early 2000s many of these conflicts have disappeared due to a changing international system, Turkish international relations have, in general, moved from an aggressive and security-focused coercive approach to one that is based more substantively on cooperation and liberal benign power. The country has even built close relations with regimes which it formerly viewed with considerable suspicion, such as the Kurdistan Regional Government in Northern Iraq. Continuing to use realism as a primary descriptor of Turkish state behavior is feasible, but it would involve downplaying the massive changes the country has undergone politically since the early 2000s. While a realist can argue that this softening of power was designed to better serve the aim of gaining competitive edge over its neighbors, it does not conclusively explain why this shift took so long to occur (Gelvin 2011).
Liberalism is a much more multi-faceted theory than realism, and tends to be interpreted with greater breadth by the academic community. Its assumptions are much more complex than that of realism. Based on Andrew Moravcsik’s theoretical arguments, individuals and private groups are the fundamental actors in international politics (Moravcsik 1997). In this sense, liberalism differs greatly from realism which assumes that states are unitary actors – essentially, realism downplays the importance of society in influencing state behavior. This can be easily demonstrated in Turkey’s case, considering the major changes in Turkey’s approach to its neighborhood policy since the AKP’s coming to power. The second of Moravcsik’s assumptions is that for liberalists, states represent subsets of domestic society and act to represent these subsets (Moravcsik 1997). State preferences are therefore generated from domestic society, with institutions helping to transmit these preferences from the bottom up. In this sense, liberalist theory holds up when applied to Turkey’s behavior under the AKP government, as individuals and private groups have had great influence over state behavior when considering the interactions of key players in the business community and their influence. Different organizations of umbrella groups emerge from the shadows to have great influence behind the scenes.
The final major assumption of liberalism is that “the configuration of [state] preferences across the international system determines state behavior”(Moravcsik 1997). It is in this sense that liberalism has problems in describing the Turkish situation, due to the precedence state preferences are given over state capabilities. The desire to increase friendly relations with neighboring countries did not appear suddenly and without antecedents.
Neofunctionalism is a body of theory initially spearheaded by the work of Ernst B. Haas. At its root, its scope considers integration in terms of regions and areas rather than single unit counties. There are some positive, alluring features about this approach for its ability, for example, to account for role switching in regionally integrated policies and relations as has been the experience of Turkey with powerful neighbors over the past 15 years. A key tenant of neofunctionalism is “spillover”, typically into several categories. Political spillover is the creation and increased role of supranational government institutions. As these institutions gain more power, loyalty transference supposedly occurs as groups and elites shift their attention to the supranational level. Functional spillover is a description of the pressure for increasing integration which occurs between areas related by economic or issue-areas. In our political analysis test case of Turkey this idea seems to apply as well: Turkey has increased trade with its non-EU neighbors, pressure from the business community has encouraged the country to decrease or lift visa restrictions for travel and help ease tariffs and trade barriers. This in turn has encouraged regional and international business organizations to expand their membership base beyond those to which they were previously geographically constrained. Of course, “any comprehensive theory of integration should potentially be a theory of disintegration” and integration does not necessarily have to move forward.(Schmitter 2003, p. 47) Thus, the concept of “spillback” must be considered, in which integration may halt or retreat. As detailed by Catherine Macmillan, neofunctionalist theorists believe there are three causes of spillback: the role of leaders “wary to [hand over] sovereignty to supranational institutions (), the constraining effect on governments of domestic groups () and diversity between the Member States ()” which would may require states to depart from strongly-held beliefs about existing customs, policies or structures. (Macmillan 2009, 793).
While this theory helps to explain the near-halt of Turkey’s progress towards EU
accession, it does not adequately explain the behavior of Turkey in regards to its non-EU
neighbors. A plurality of Turks interviewed for Transatlantic Trends in 2013, 38 percent of respondents, stated the desire that their country should act alone in international affairs. This is nearly double the amount given to the second most popular response, that Turkey should cooperate most closely with the countries of the European Union (21 percent). Even as the desire of the Turkish public to cooperate on international matters with the EU and the Middle East has eroded, the Turkish government continues to invest its resources in attempting to accede
New Institutionalisms
While there are quite a number of different forms of institutionalism, this thesis will focus on three of the “New Institutionalisms”: Rational-Choice Institutionalism, Sociological Institutionalism and Historical Institutionalism. It is important to note that unlike theories such as realism, the institutionalisms do “not constitute a unified body of thought. Instead [they represent] at least three different analytical approaches” (Hall & Tayler 1996, p. 936). Rather than serving as a structure with which to categorize relations and attempt to predict future actions, these three theories can be better used as a lens of analysis through which one can observe the relationships between seemingly unrelated state behaviors. Institutionalism shares several assumptions about international relations with the realist school. For both institutionalists and realists, states are rational actors existing in an anarchic system laced with uncertainty. However, institutionalists believe that nations are not governed exclusively by security maximization and thus international cooperation is possible. With the establishment of reliable institutions, uncertainty can be greatly decreased. “Institution” in this sense is not limited to physical organizations, but can be applied much more broadly. Within these theories institutions also are sets which govern behaviors and how things are done e.g. rules. understanding the institutional structure within which the actor operates, including the actor’s expectations of the behavior of other actors, one can develop certain expectations about the range of potential behaviors of the actors.
Sociological Institutionalism
Sociological Institutionalism, in contrast to Rational-Choice Institutionalism, gives greater heed to the evolution of actor preferences. It assumes that, if actors have predetermined preferences, participation in institutions has a profound effect on these preferences and can alter them within this framework: in effect, preferences are not necessarily fixed. Thus institutions both limit options and have a role in the discovery of an actor’s preferences in the first place.
Sociological Institutionalism’s benefit to analysis is its ability to look at actors of varying sizes, from an individual’s behavior to a state’s behavior. For example, on an organizational level, initial organizational behaviors are determined from society at large. As an organization interacts with other similar organizations in its sector, it will adopt certain structures, beliefs, routines and procedures from this sector.(Miller and Banaszak-Holl, 2005, p. 195). For a macro-level example one can look to Turkey, which has noticeably increased its rhetoric on the importance of human rights as it interacts and attempts to join the European Union. This behavior, which seems to be a preference steeped in rationality is more plausibly regarded as socially generated. That is not to say that valuing human rights is not rational, but to emphasize the importance of the socialization of institutions and their effect on preferences.
Historical Institutionalism
Out of the three New Institutionalisms, Historical Institutionalism has the greatest emphasis on formal organization. Since institutions both provide the framework in which references are formed and give structure to how calculated behaviors are rewarded or punished, institutions themselves resist change.
This concept is known as “path dependency”. As states, organizations or individuals move forward over time, every choice made and every action taken generates unintended consequences which often continue through history. A common (but overly simplistic and deterministic) example given is the popularity of the QWERTY keyboard. QWERTY is not the most efficient keyboard layout, but its early adoption propagated greatly over time. As more and more devices began to use QWERTY, the alternatives faded to the point that QWERTY is nearly universal for English-language devices. The path has become “locked in”. Institutional pathways are altered in two ways: “critical junctures” and “developmental pathways”. Critical junctures are foundational moments: moments of great change which offer departure from prior paths. Atatürk’s reform period is a perfect example of this: moments in history in which existing institutions were altered to the extent that they drastically changed the course of a state. Developmental pathways, on the other hand, are less drastic. Institutions change over time as a response to changing environmental conditions, yet they are constrained by their previous iterations. This helps to explain why Turkey has not completely given up on membership in the European Union, even though its current prospects of accession are slim. Turkey is institutionally locked-in with its centuries’ old Europeanization project: sans critical juncture-inducing events, a few years of slow progress are not enough to cause an abandonment of this path. (Müftüler-Baç, 2000, p. 28)
Turkey has been attempting to accede to the European Union since its recognition as a candidate for membership on 12 December 1999.(Erhan, 2011) Turkey has undergone massive changes in its journey towards EU membership. Its economy, population and political power are at the highest levels that Turkey has experienced since the founding of the Republic in 1923. The argument will be made that Turkey has finally ‘come into its own’ as a state, and accession to the European Union is no longer the only way for Turkey to secure a prosperous future for itself both domestically and in the international arena; this can be seen as one of the major reasons as to why Turkey has significantly increased its focus on its non-EU neighbors in recent years (Bonner, 2005), p. 45).
Regardless of the mild amount of myth-making that surrounds Turkey’s process of accession to the European Union, the fact remains that the Republic of Turkey has been creating close diplomatic relations and linkages with supranational European organizations for decades. (Bonner, 2005). This has come at great expense, both in direct economic costs and massive opportunity costs. Turkey has had to alter significant amounts of its own domestic legislation and reduce the level of sovereignty it once held over its own internal policies. Public and official opinions have greatly vacillated over the previous decades on Turkish membership in European organizations..(Bonner 2005) Yet, the Republic continues slowly to draw itself closer to Europe, even if it does so in a staccato fashion.
Addressing first the Rational-Choice perspective, there are numerous reasons as to why both Turkey and the European community have sought to increase their ties with one another. It is important to emphasize that both Turkey and the European Union have been courting one another: it is not a one-sided affair. The Rational-Choice emphasis on cost/benefit analysis can explain many of the historical interactions between the two parties.
Further cooperation with the West was due to increasing economic ties. These economic ties were not so much a result of a functionalist “spill-over”, but were created by deliberate decision-making and diplomacy. (Andres, Cooper, Best, Voigt, 2008). The ties were seen as being mutually beneficial to both the European Economic Community and Turkey, and further support the Rational-Choice model argument. This institutionalization of economic relations accelerated the growth of trade through decreasing transaction costs and providing a framework to facilitate economic planning.
Continuing into the present day, these economic ties to Europe have greatly boosted the Turkish economy, enabling Turkish foreign policy to have greater weight in relations with its neighbors. The Sociological Institutional approach helps to elaborate why Turkey has been seeking to affiliate itself so strongly with Western Europe rather than other surrounding countries in the The goal of accession to the European Union is therefore a continuation of this construction of identity according to the Sociological Institutionalist Approach.(Miller and Banaszak-Holl, 2005, p. 195). In actually becoming a member of the European Union, Turkey would finally be recognized as a true European state, rather than a non-European “other”. (Miller and Banaszak-Holl, 2005, p. 195). From the lens of Historical Institutionalism, the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I as well as Turkey’s abandonment of political neutrality in 1945 are the critical junctures when Turkey decided to go beyond simply modeling its institutions after the West, to having a full political and military alliance with the West. These decisions were reinforced by Turkey’s receipt of Marshall Plan aid to modernize its economy after the war, even though Turkey’s participation in the war only began very late in the conflict.(Gelvin 2011) With ever-increasing positive interactions, this new diplomatic orientation was repeatedly strengthened, beginning with Turkey’s joining the Organization for European Economic Development (predecessor to the OECD) in 1948.(Gelvin 2011)
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