Counterpublic spheres and emancipatory change in world politics
Primarily because of the discipline’s “constructivist turn,” scholars of international
relations (IR) have in recent years focused a significant amount of attention on the form and
function of political communication. Put simply, discursive acts and processes seem fundamental
to the construction of shared understandings and social facts, which constructivists view as the
basic “building-blocks of international reality” (Ruggie 1998: 33). As Thomas Risse (2004: 288)
explains, constructivists understand communicative acts and practices as “the micro-mechanisms
by which ideas get diffused and new ways of thinking are learned.” Empirically, the study of
communication allows for the employment of process-tracing methodologies (Klotz 1995: 33) in
order to explain centrally important concerns, such as the construction and evolution of
international norms. As Martha Finnemore (2003: 15) recently argued, public justification in
respect of international norms “speaks directly to, and reveals something about, normative
context and shared social purpose….Justification is literally an attempt to connect one’s
actions…with standards of appropriate and acceptable behavior. Thus,” she concludes, “through
an examination of justifications, we can begin to piece together what those internationally held
standards are and how they change over time.”
Many constructivist scholars have been especially interested in the way ideas and rhetoric
are framed by political actors so as to have maximum persuasive appeal (Keck and Sikkink
1998; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998). Given that frames are thought to provide a singular
interpretation of a particular situation and to indicate the appropriate behavior for that situation,
it is quite understandable why persuasion and public rhetoric have “emerged as the coins of the
constructivist realm” (Jackson and Krebs forthcoming: 7). Resonant frames share some
ideational affinity with previously accepted normative structures, thereby allowing those who
employ them to make their appeals seem more convincing. For that reason, frames can
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Convention