Understanding International Relations, Third Edition

Chapter 10
The International Politics 
of Identity
Introduction
The final three chapters of this edition of Understanding International
Relations offer a somewhat different approach to International Relations
theory from the first nine. The emphasis will remain on theory, on develop-
ing a conceptual understanding of the subject, but the context will no longer
be quite so dependent on the development of the discourse itself as in the
earlier chapters. From now on the driving force will come from events in
the world rather than the academy – arguably this has always been the case
with International Relations theory, but here the relationship between
theory and practice is much clearer. The agendas of these three chapters are
set by the international politics of the last decade and will be readily recog-
nizable by practitioners as well as scholars, by informed members of the
public as well as students of the social sciences.
The three aspects of contemporary international politics that these chapters
will focus on appear at first sight to point in different directions and to con-
tradict each other. First impressions may be correct here. There is an old joke
connected with unreliable television reception in the early days of the medium
that may be apposite here – do not adjust your sets, reality is at fault. There is
no guarantee that the most salient features of contemporary international
relations will hang together in a coherent way. On the one hand, we live in a
world undergoing change at an unprecedented rate, while on the other we live
in a world whose basic institutions are inherited from another age; in the
circumstances a certain amount of dissonance is to be expected. The three dis-
sonant features of contemporary international relations to be examined in
these chapters are: the rise of identity politics, that is, the increasing salience of
nationhood, ethnicity and religion; the increasing importance of the individual
as an international actor, as expressed through the international human rights
regime and changing conceptions of international law; and the concentration
of power in the hands of one actor, the United States, such that talk of an
emerging imperial system is not wholly far-fetched. Group, individual and
empire – these three notions do not gel easily to present one neatly packaged
account of how the world is, but they clearly are related one to another. Faced
with the occasionally unwelcome demands of group loyalty, and the dangers
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of unchecked power, it is not surprising that some individuals have looked
to strengthen their positions via the notion of universal human rights, while
the increasing salience of the group may, in turn, reflect a reaction to
the same processes that have created the overwhelming conventional power
of the United States. Again, that power may be welcomed by those fearful
of the consequences of a revived and sometimes violent politics of identity.
There are complicated dialectics at work here, and it is difficult to discern a
clear path through the various contradictions.
Chapter 11 will examine the rise of the individual as an international
actor, Chapter 12 the putative US hegemony and its consequences; this chapter
will focus on the new international politics of identity. One way of framing
this latter issue is to ask whether there is today a model of politics and the
political process that can reasonably be seen as universal, at least in the weak
sense that most countries over time will gravitate towards it? To ask this
question nowadays is to invite the immediate answer ‘no’; in spite of, or
perhaps because of, the spread of globalization and the emergence of a
‘human rights culture’, it is clear today that political forces driven by nation-
alism, ethnicity and religion are incredibly powerful and act as a powerful
counterpoint to these universal categories. A generation ago, however, it
would not have been unreasonable to assume that uniformity rather than
diversity would be the dominant motif of twenty-first century politics. The
shift from an assumption of uniformity to one of increasing diversity, and the
implications of this shift for international politics, is one way of looking at
the subject matter of this chapter. Before embarking on this discussion, it is
worth noting that this is not simply a forward-looking question – it also
relates to the origins of the contemporary international order. We live today
in a world in which nearly 200 states are members of the United Nations; the
international community of the twenty-first century must accommodate
Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Jews, as well as millions of
people with no religious affiliations. All races and ethnicities have a claim to
be part of this international community. And yet the core institutions and
practices of the international community, the sovereign state, diplomacy and
international law, are the product of one particular part of the world, one