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Who’s in and who’s out: The international community as a (de)legitimization device

Mor Mitrani

The Department of Political Studies, Bar-Ilan University

This is a work in progress. Please don’t circulate or cite. Any comments, thoughts and suggestions will

be most welcome.

Abstract

The concept of the international community is widely used by scholars, practitioners and international

political leaders. The tendency of states to portray themselves either as a collective We of states, or as

legitimate members of this collective, stands at the core of this paper. It argues that the international

community is a discursive construct that is used by states as means to legitimize or delegitimize

political behavior. This discursive construction defines not only who is in and who is out of the

international community, but also points to the normative and practical standards upon which a

member’s conduct will be framed as legitimate or not. The main textual corpus for this research is an

original database of the annual speeches of heads of states at the general debate of the UN (1992-

2014; n=4,264 texts) that represents the array of voices that comprise the international community.

By applying methods of automated computerized text analysis, the paper surveys states’ tendencies to

name and construct the international community as well as to name and single out specific members

of the community.

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Introduction

The concept of international community implies to the ability of states to hold common values and

standards of conduct as well as the capacity to act in the international arena in a collective manner for

collective goals. Although the term is widely used by scholars, practitioners and international political

leaders, most uses of it either take its existence for granted or use it to understand other phenomena,

like peace or international law. Only a few have sought to explore the international community as a

subject on its own right, let alone define, identify its members, and characterize its ways of actions and

sources of legitimacy (see for example Abi-Saab 1998; Addis 2008; Bliesemann de Guevara and Kühn

2011; Danilenko 1991; Mitrani 2017a, 2017b; Tsagourias 2006; Warbrick and Tierney 2006).

However, the popularity of the concept in international discourse, and especially the tendency of

leaders to call upon it to act in certain situations, insinuates that the ability to discern what the

international community is, can shed light on its effects on contemporary interstate relations. Taking

a socio-discursive approach, I argue that the international community is essentially a discursive

construct that materializes only when political agents refer to it and attribute certain values, rules and

virtues to it. Focusing on discursive interactions among states, this project strives to explore how the

mechanism of naming, of the discursive reference to the community itself and to specific members of

it, can serve as a legitimizing and delegitimizing device. It suggests that by exploring the ways that

states refer to themselves as an international community, we can trace the construction processes of

the community itself, of the relations among its members and of the practical and normative building

blocks that set the standards for legitimate conduct in the international arena.

To this end, the paper presents a two-phase research design that applies automated text analysis on a

unique database of the UN member states’ speeches in the General Assembly (1992-2014, n=). The

first phase explores states’ tendency to name the international community itself and surveys the main

topics that are associated with the concept. The second phase explores states’ tendency to name,

specifically in negative references, other members of the community. Together, both phases,

illuminate the interactive processes through which the notion of the international community is used

to legitimize specific agendas as well as to delegitimize specific members.

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This paper proceeds as follows. The first section discusses the discursive construction of the

international community and premises that since the concept “the international community,” is both

a discursive choice and a discursive practice, the optimal way to understand it is to scrutinize how the

concept is perceived and constructed by states and through inter-state interactions. The second section

presents the theoretical connection between community and legitimacy, and portrays how naming the

international community and specific members of it can serve as a (de) legitimizing device for actors,

actions and the community itself. The third section provides the general guidelines of the research

design, in terms of methodology and database. The fourth and last section, based on automated text

analysis, indicates patterns of naming the international community versus patterns of naming within

the international community.

1. The discursive construction of the international community

According to the seminal distinction made by Ferdinand Tonnies (1963 [1887]) between a community

and a society, a community is a form of association that is established by will and is based on real and

organic kinship relationships. At the international level, the theoretical condition of real and organic

kinship relations seems infeasible. Thus, it is not surprising that conventional IR literature, confined

to premises on the anarchical international system, hardly refers to the idea of international community

and depicts it as extrinsic to mainstream assertions regarding the nature of international relations (for

a thorough review of the theorizations of the concept see Mitrani 2017a).

Explicit references to an international community – either to the possibility of its existence or to its

normative and practical modes of operation – reside mostly in theoretical accounts on international

law. Since law as a legal system essentially requires some sort of legal community that would be

committed to both formulate the law and comply with it, an international community is a theoretical

prerequisite to the operation of international law (Paulus 2003) and to compliance with it (Franck

1990, 1995). The existence and scope of operations of the international legal community depends on

the extent to which states conceive themselves as part of a rule-governed realm and thus as members

of a voluntary association of those who accept the rules (Mapel & Nardin 1999; Whelan 1999).

There are two main caveats to the discussion of international community in the context of

international law. First, it is somehow circular. International law is conceptualized as both the indicator

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and the originator of the international community (Simma & Paulus 1998) and the international

community is both setting the operating systems of international law (Diehl, Ku, and Zamora 2003)

and embodying them. Second, and not very surprisingly, it is highly normative. The international

community is cast as the framework of international law, but the literature rarely doubts the existence

of the international community or explores the processes through which it is constituted. While the

discussion is often situated in greater debates on states’ commitment and compliance with

international law (Franck 1995; Kumm 2004) or the legitimacy of international law (Koh 1997), it

essentially lacks a political angle (Koskenniemi 2004). Thus, while the international community is used

to suggest a socio-legal framework for international law, it is not envisaged as a political phenomenon

of its own.

From a political perspective, it seems natural to focus on the English school of international relations

as a framework for theorizing the international community as a political phenomenon. However,

despite the affinity between the theoretical concept of international society and the concept of the

international community, the latter is not very common among English School scholars, and only a

few accounts have attempted to theorize the commonalities between the international society and the

international community. Chris Brown (1995), for example, completely dismisses the possibility of an

international community, arguing that any conception of a community at the international level stands

in contradiction to the main ordering principle of the international society—sovereignty. On the other

hand, Buzan and Gonzales-Pelaez (2005) portray the international community as a specific type of

international society in its most solidarist form. For them, an international community can exist at the

sub-global level as smaller hubs within an international society in which one can find a “tighter net of

states within international society that share a higher degree of integration defined by a strong

common identity” (Buzan and Gonzalez-Pelaez 2005, 38). This net ties single actors via an external

environment in which they seek to act, serving thus as “a political function for those who act in its

name” (Buzan and Gonzalez-Pelaez 2005, 31).

This linkage between identity and community at the international level, echoes Franck

Schimmelfennig’s rhetorical action framework (2001, 2003) in which he argues that a community at

the international level operates in an environment that is characterized by a common ethos and high

interaction density (Schimmelfennig 2003, 159). Similar to the argument of Buzan & Gonzalez-Pelaez,

Schimmelfennig’s work also remains at the regional level, assuming that this is where we expect a

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higher degree of interaction and hence of stronger collective identity.1 If so, then the ontological

possibility of an international community is conditioned by very specific circumstances that are quite

rare in international politics, and thus might justify the little attention the concept receives. On the

other hand, the frequent references to the concept “international community” in political, academic

and public discourse suggest that it plays a role in how we understand the world or at least in how we

present our understanding of the world. It thus further lays the groundwork to explore these rules

played by the international community through international discourse.

A discursive reading of the international community sees it as a construct that materializes only once

political agents refer to it and attribute to it certain values, rules and virtues (Mitrani 2017b). The

international community is constituted and sustained by the acknowledgment of various social actors

that associate it with specific conceptions of what the community should be and at how it should act.

As such, the concept of the international community is a conduit for states to present themselves as

a self in the everyday political sphere, and a discursive practice that agents embrace as a means to

perform and operate in the context of a specific self-collective relationship (Fairclough 1993; Hardy,

Lawrence, and Grant 2005). Actors use it as a reference point to demarcate right and wrong through

a moral beacon of universal values and solidarity (Ellis 2009; Kovach 2003) that arguably represents a

grand collective identity. Thus, normatively, it may supply guidance and boundaries of legitimate

actions through common institutions, as it transcends particular members and enables referring to and

establishing a collective “We” of states. Practically, it may be used for rationalizing action in general

and collective action in particular and for identifying the ‘audience of normals’ in stigmatization

processes (Adler-Nissen 2014) or in shaming actions. Furthermore, the international community is

often referred to as a pseudo-entity of its own that bears responsibility for either the general well-

being of the world or for the resolution of atrocities and wrongdoings, and which is called upon to

act or respond in specific situations.

In both instances, the international community serves as a socio-political construct that states are

aware of and minded to (whether they operate in its context or not). Its distinguishing feature is the

status of its members, the nation-states, and thus sovereignty as the main principle of ‘being a state’ is

both the basic entry criterion and the building-block of the community ethos that infuses it with

meaning and substances. These meanings are constructed through discursive interactions that not only

1 This is also the case in the literature on security communities (Adler and Barnett 1998; Deutsch 1957) that

depicts the ‘sense of community’ as both the generator and outcome of peaceful historical changes at the regional level.

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reflect the existence of an international community, but rather constitute it epistemologically as a

unique sphere for states’ conduct. It is thus not a question of whether states truly mean that there is

such a community or if they believe in the norms and rules it arguably represents, but rather of the

discursive choices agents make in constructing their common reality as collective and of framing their

norms and practices as legitimate in its context (Collins 1981, 999-1000).

2. The international community as (de)legitimization device

Legitimacy is a core feature of any kind of a community. Essentially, the community environment is

designated to maintain social order through legitimacy and therefore promotes compliance even in

lack of a formal authority or a specific consent (Kritsiotis 2002; Scobbie 2002). Legitimacy is

constructed, inter alia, by sets of rules that establish behavioral standards in terms of actors and actions

and the community itself. These rules enact membership criteria in a certain community and patterns

of accepted and expected behavior (Schimmelfennig 2001), as well as exercising the legitimate

authority of the community itself on its members. Moreover, since legitimacy is anchored to the

collective identity (Schimmelfennig 2001, 63), legitimacy is also maintained by the ability to adapt the

rules to changing circumstances through discursive and non-discursive practices . The course and

dynamic of change however are also contingent on "the extent that the change is generally approved

and applied by the international community” (Fairclough 2005) – namely, that it is being legitimized.

In this respect, the challenge is to account for the interactive processes that, on the one hand,

constitute the community as legitimate in itself, and on the other, enable the community to construct

legitimate rules of conduct.

Given the tight connection between notions of community and legitimacy of both the community

itself and its members, it is not surprising that the (limited) literature on ‘the international community’

suggests that legitimization is the main political function of the discursive international community

(Buzan and Gonzalez-Pelaez 2005). The international community is understood as a normative and

practical reference point for legitimizing members of the community, their actions and the social

structures that supposedly guide them. Agents, state and non-state alike, can make political use of the

international community in two main ways. First, to set the legitimate array of issues on the

international agenda. Second, to make the distinction between the in-group and the out-group and

mark who’s in and who’s out of the community. This has the power to legitimize those who wish to

portray themselves as acting in its name and in line with its normative frameworks. It can also be used

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to single out, (de)legitimize, and even exclude, those who fail to follow and fall short of the

standardized conduct (see Bliesemann de Guevara and Kühn 2011 for an extensive account on these

issues). These functions highly depend on the extent to which the international community itself is

conceived as legitimate, therefore, on the extent to which states affiliate themselves and their actions

in its context.

Indeed, states tend to affiliate themselves with the international community and they do so through

text and talk. They publicly refer to their common lifeworld by discursive associations to a grander

notion of the collective We of states. This does not imply that the international community as a

common international lifeworld is necessarily thick, consolidated, or uniform. It rather serves as a

pluralistic, dynamic and discursively constructed social reference point through which states are agents

that “can move on to refer to common experiences, develop shared understandings of history, and,

thus, to develop a collective culture” (Risse 2000, 16). An analysis of the discursive construction of

the international community can thus shed light on discursive processes of legitimacy among states in

two aspects. First, in regard to the legitimacy of the collective - I argue that naming and referring to the

international community is a legitimizing device through which states both reinforce their collective

constituents and claim their own particular legitimacy. Moreover, the specific thematic contexts the

international community is associated with serve as the legitimate array of political issues for legitimizing

action in the international arena. Second, regarding the legitimacy of members of the collective, naming

specific states in the context of the international community is a delegitimizing device by which

specific agents are singled out as a negative element in the greater fabric of the international

community.

The next section will further elaborate on the research design and methodological framework the

research project is built upon, presenting the use of text-based analysis as a method to understand the

discursive construction of the international community.

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3. Database and Method

Textual Corpus

The text corpus for this research project is the database of the annual speeches of 195 states at the

UNGA general debate (1992-2014; n=4,246 texts).2 Since the research explores how states employ

the discursive mechanism of naming and shaming in international discourse, I searched for a discursive

arena in which states regularly interact and discuss world affairs on the basis of equal access. Under

Article 10 of the UN Charter, the UNGA is regarded as the widest participation forum on world

affairs. It is the all-inclusive core of the organization in which all member states, represented by their

delegations, convene on a regular basis and enjoy equal access in accordance with the “one state-one

vote” principle. It thus serves as the main forum for legitimation debates at the international level

(Claude 1966). Despite critics that depict the UNGA as a non-authoritative, ‘cheap talk’ hub of sterile

discussions in which states enflame problems rather than solve them (Franda 2006, 91), the UNGA

is a unique arena of political debate in an anarchic international system.

The virtues of the UNGA lie in its essence as an arena in which states present their positions before

multiple audiences, simultaneously at the domestic and inter-state levels. The UNGA serves as a formal

and broad public sphere where members who share statist features gather in order to communicate and

deliberate about the issues and matters that concern them as states and which they seek to govern. The

discourse in the UNGA environment is therefore based on tuning into the collective, to common

understandings and to the need to balance, at least at the discursive level, the interests and preferences

of the individual I and the constitutive elements of the collective We of states. It is also therefore the

discursive arena in which states aim to construct the standards of legitimacy, as it allows states to

interact regularly and in an institutional framework over accepted and expected international conduct.

The regular annual session of the UNGA begins every year in mid-September in the New York

headquarters with the traditional General Debate. This is a distinctive event outside of the regular

agenda of the UNGA and it does not bear any adoption of formal decisions (Peterson 1986, 267).

Despite its name, it is not actually a debate but rather a battery of states’ speeches, usually delivered

by heads of state or foreign ministers. The General Debate is an opportunity for every member state

2 Based on the premise that the general debate allows equal access to all of those who are considered members of the international community, I included all speeches by all states that were included in the general debate including micro states, failed states, and non-state members like the Palestinian Authority (see Voeten 2004 for a different approach ).

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to voice its views on the state of international politics. Although critics have pointed to the ritualized

and formalized features of the General Debate’s speeches (Luard 1994, 42), these texts can signify and

reflect states’ perceptions and experiences of world affairs, and thus serve as ‘a barometer’ (Smith

2006, 153) to trace the agenda of international politics (Mingst and Karns 2011). Therefore, while

states do not really talk to each other, they talk with themselves, about themselves, and in an

international context that has managed to become highly institutionalized since 1945. The database of

the states’ speeches from 1992 offers first-hand evidence of the dynamic processes of construction of

the international community since the end of the Cold War. These texts can expound both the array of

states’ experiences of certain phenomena and collective patterns with regard to them, and thus enable us

to extract what states are talking about in a discursive setting that constructs them, by definition, as a

specific I within a We.

Methods

The empirical research design is composed of two phases in which I apply methods of automated

computerized discourse and content-analysis using the QDA Miner and Wordstat software3. Phase I

is designed to assess the frequency and density of the concept international community and to map

the contexts and topics that are associated with it. First, it seeks to explore the presence and extent of

the international community as a discursive construct in inter-state discourse. It assumes that patterns

of naming and recognizing the international community construct both its existence and legitimacy,

and analyzes the frequency patterns of references to the international community in international

discursive interactions. Second, it surveys the topics that states give attention to in the context of the

international community and analyzes, using a topic-modeling method, states’ references to the

international community in order to map the various elements that construct the international

community. A topic modeling analysis is in fact an automated unsupervised factor analysis to deduce

patterns of co-occurrences of words in designated segments of texts in order to determine their relative

weight in constructing a specific topic. The result is therefore supposed to reflect not only which words

are mentioned but also take into consideration their relative role in constructing each topic. Phase II of

the research focuses on delegitimizing processes and assumes that naming of specific members in the

community reflects processes of singling out and shaming. It analyzes frequencies of reference to

3 http://provalisresearch.com/products/qualitative-data-analysis-software/

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specific members in the international community and in the context of the international community.4

Based on automated sentiment analysis, it explores the levels of negativity in these references, both in

terms of the states that are named, and in terms of the states that name their fellow states. It also

suggests a complimentary qualitative analysis of the case of Israel.

4. Findings

Phase 1: Naming the international community

The presence of the international community in the UNGA discourse and the curious case of the United States

The phrase international community is mentioned 15,122 times in state speeches in the UN general debate

between 1992 and 2014. It is the second most frequent phrase in these speeches (after “United Nations,”)

and it appears in 87.35% of the speeches (3709 out of 4246, average of 3.5 mentions in a speech). The

dominancy of the concept suggests that in general, states tend to refer to the idea of a collective We of

states and are attended to the notion of the international community. 5 There is only a slight variance in

the usage patterns across years (see Figure 1) and a more apparent but not substantive variance across

states (see Figure 2).

Figure 1 - International Community across years: The figure shows the percentage of speeches in the UN general debate in a given year, in which the phrase ‘international community’ was mentioned (N=4,264; 1992-2014).

4 The state references dictionary is composed of stemming words for states’ formal (or previous) names and adjectives, including specific rules in ambiguous cases (for example references to America as a continent or as the US) and was validated in terms or precision and recall. References to Korea (North and South) were coded manually.

5 The word ‘We’ is one of the most frequent words in the UNGA speeches, but it is problematic to distinguish between We the states and other references to We, although these references often do refer to a collective We of states.

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014

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Seventy percent of states (136 of 196), have mentioned the term in at least 87% of their speeches, and

thus met or exceeded the average value of references, 36 of which mentioned the phrase in all of their

UN speeches. Only seven states have referred to the phrase in less than 60% of their speeches (Brunei

Darussalam, 35%; Venezuela, 35%; Andorra, 48%; Singapore, 48%; Norway 57%; Tonga, 57%; and

USA, 57%).

Figure 2 - International Community across states: The figure shows the percentage of speeches in the UN general debate given by a specific state in which the phrase ‘international community’ was mentioned (N=4,264; 1992-2014).

The discursive construction of the international community: A topic modeling approach

Following the argument that the international community exists only by agents’ references to it, the fact

that states refer to the international community so frequently points to the presence and existence of the

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construct and to the potential roles it may play as a dominant reference point. However, what are the

discursive elements that it is constructed from? In an attempt to understand simply what are they talking

about when they refer to the international community, I have used the topic-modeling feature in

Wordstat, based on keyword co-occurrences and association patterns, to extract the ten main topics of

states’ references to the international community (see table 1 for the full list of topics and keywords).

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Table 1: International community - Topic models: The table presents the 10 most common topics in international community references based on keywords analysis by

case appearances and states’ usage (n=15,122; 1992-2014).

No. TOPIC KEYWORDS % VAR % CASES % STATES

1 UNITED NATIONS UNITED NATIONS; CHARTER; GENERAL ASSEMBLY; SESSION;

SECRETARY 1,73 22% 100%

2 SECURITY COUNCIL SECURITY COUNCIL; RESOLUTIONS; 1,55 5% 88%

3 DEVELOPMENT MILLENNIUM; GOALS; DEVELOPMENT; SUSTAINABLE; SMALL

ISLAND; DEVELOPING 1,6 12% 95%

4 SECURITY; PEACE &TERRORISM CONFLICT; TERROR*; SECURITY; PEACE; WEAPONS;

PROLIFERATION; NUCLEAR; DESTRUCTION; DISARMAMENT; ARMS 1,16 24% 100%

5 AFRICA AFRICA*; AFRICAN_UNION; SOUTH 1,34 8% 80%

6 HUMAN RIGHTS &DEMOCRACY HUMAN_RIGHTS; UNIVERSAL; DEMOCRA* 1,58 11% 97%

7 SOCIO-ECONOMIC ECONOM*; SOCIAL; SUPPORT; FINANCIAL 1,59 11% 95%

8 PALESTINIAN/

ISRAEL PALESTINI*; ISRAEL*; ARAB; MIDDLE EAST 1,59 5% 74%

9 CLIMATE CHANGE CLIMATE CHANGE 1,33 1.5% 60%

10 BOSNIA BOSNIA; HERZEGOVINA; YUGOSLAVIA 1,45 1.5% 46%

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The table clearly shows the salience of topics that construct the international community as well as the

distribution of attention across states. The ten topics can be divided to three sub-groups of topics that

reflect three aspects of the international community and its actions. First, organizational - the UN as an

institutional reference point. This includes the UN topic (with specific references to the General

Assembly and the secretary general) and the Security Council topic as representing how, where and by

whom actions are organized and decided. Second, thematic - references to five dominant themes of world

politics: development; socioeconomics; terror and weapons; human rights and democracy, and climate

change, as representing contexts of actions. Third, action spheres, geo-political reference to three specific

areas of political occurrence and action: Africa, Bosnia, and the Middle East (Palestine/Israel). Each of

these topics plays a different role in the discursive construction of the international community and its

relative weight varies across time.

The UN

The analysis shows that the core element in the construction of the international community is the UN

and its organs. All states associate, at some point or another, the international community to both the

UN in general and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in particular. Time effects (see figure 3)

are relatively insignificant, although while references to the UNSC are stable throughout the timespan,

there is a moderate decline in the general UN topic.

Figure 3: Reference to the UN and UNSC topics - The figure shows the percentage of international community references in a certain year whose subject was the UN or the UNSC (1992-2014).

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The strong link between the international community and the United Nations is not surprising. While it

might derive from the fact that the analyzed texts are carried out in the UNGA itself, the UN is over and

over perpetuated as an institutional framework for the collective We of states, in line with its initial design

and in the spirt of the UN Charter. Dominant phrases in this context depict the UN as the organizational

hub or medium of the international community, a conduit through which states are voiced as an

international community and can make collective decisions. The UNSC, and mainly the UNSC

resolutions, are often portrayed as an executive branch of the international community, thus as conduits

of governance through collective actions and commitments that states should conform with. In both

instances, states use the term international community to associate both the UN and the UNSC as

principals of a collective We of states that operate on its behalf and for collective purposes. However,

states do not necessarily portray the UN as the epiphany of the international community. The

international community is often depicted alongside the UN or the UNSC as a pseudo entity of its own

right. 11% of all references to the international community contain action verbs that attribute it with

agential capacities to support, acknowledge, respond, pressure, hold interest and to act in specific

situations. Only six states - Brunei Darussalam, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Montenegro,

Tonga, Turkmenistan, Venezuela refrain from using the International community action discourse.

Setting the international agenda

The second sub-category of topics refers to five specific themes that dominate the inter-state discourse

in the context of the international community. This, I would argue, represents the dynamic repertoire of

action contexts of the international community and its members, and the distribution of attention in

regard to issue matters. The analysis shows that states refer to these themes in various degrees, albeit in a

coherent way. The most salient topic is security and peace, and then in a descending order attention is

attributed to development, human rights and democracy, socio-economics and finally climate change. All

of these themes are portrayed as issues that pose challenges affecting the world as a whole (even if

unevenly) and require the attention of the international community. This is the array of issues in the

context of which states may operate and act on behalf of the international community. This list of issues

may seem intuitive and general. However, as the naming and distinction between the topics was produced

in an unsupervised manner, only based on keywords co-occurrences, it is a good example of how we can

learn from international texts on the collective agenda of states in a given time period and of the processes

of contextualizing the collective We of states in specific issues.

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The patterns of topic distribution are also evident in the longitudinal analysis (see figure 4). First, it

demonstrates the degree to which the topic of security is much more dominant than the other four topics.

Second, it shows that, except for the topic of climate change that penetrated into the interstate

construction of the international community only after 2006, the other four topics maintain a relatively

stable pattern through the years. One interesting exception is the high rise in the security topic between

2001-2006 (the UNGA general debate of 2001 began 10 days after the 9-11 attack in New York), that is

matched with a mirror decline (although not as significant) in the role of the human rights and democracy

topic. In that time period, states, therefore, chose to discursively reconstruct the international community

more around issues of security and less around issues of human rights and democracy, in a way that

reflected the political situation in those years.

Figure 4: Reference to policy and political issues- The figure shows the percentage of international community references in a certain year whose subject was either climate change, development, human rights, socioeconomics or terrorism (1992-2014).

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Where should We operate?

Three topics concern specific political spheres to which the international community is discursively

associated: Africa, the Middle East, and the former Yugoslavia. These are the three areas of the world

that drew the attention of the international community after 1992. As opposed to the other seven topics

that construct the international community discourse, the weight of each of these three topics changes

through the years (see figure 5). Not surprisingly, the role of the Bosnia topic declined significantly in the

mid-1990s and has become negligible ever since. The trajectories of the Africa and Middle East topics

show how until the early 2000s there was greater dominance for Africa but that ever since we can identify

a slight decline in the role of Africa and an upsurge of the role of the Middle East, that put them, more

or less, at the same level in terms of contribution to the discursive construction of the international

community. Moreover, the association of the international community with these three topics is uneven

and is highly determined by specific groups of states, as the lion’s share of the topic is eventually

constructed by states that are geographically located and operate in these areas. African states talk about

Africa, and the international community and Middle Eastern states talk about the Middle East.

Figure 5: Reference to the geo-political areas - The figure shows the percentage of international community references in a certain year whose subject was Africa, Bosnia or the Middle East (1992-2014).

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These patterns suggest that the international community discourse is not unified (static?) but rather

dynamic and contested. On the one hand, the vast majority of states constantly refer to the existence

and operation of the international community in general and on specific issues in particular, and

thereby legitimize and reinforce the notion of a collective ethos of states. On the other hand, the

content and substances that construct the ethos might be contingent on attempts of specific agents to

shape the discursive construction of the international community. This is however the focus of

another research project aimed at exploring how we can explain tendencies of specific states in specific

contexts to engage in various constructions of the international community.

Phase 2: Who’s in and Who’s out? Naming members of the international community

States repeatedly refer to their fellow states in their speeches. In about 97% of the speeches (4,121

texts) there is at least one reference to another state (74,027 references in total).6 On average, a speech

mentions 8.6 different states in 17.3 references to other states in general. While all the members of

the UNGA have named other states and have been named by other states, there is great variance in

the extent to which a state is named. On average in the analyzed period (1992-2014), a state is named

by other states 380 times, but the standard deviation is 785, indicating that most references are

attributed to a rather small group of states. Indeed, the 20-most named states in the UNGA receive

almost 60% of all references to other states in total. Conversely, when it comes to the naming

distribution, to the tendency to name other states, the standard deviation is much smaller, 198. Thus,

while states provide similar discursive attention to other states, they receive unequal discursive attention

from others and some states are exceptionally singled out by the collective of states (see Figure 6).

6 All self-references were subtracted from the data throughout the analysis.

19

Figure 1: A comparison between the tendency of states to be named and the tendency to name others (1992-2014, N-4,246)

The list of the 20-most named states in the UNGA general debate speeches (see table 1) ranks states

by their presence in other states’ speeches. The table is composed of two main sub-groups: (1) states

whose activities and affairs attracted the most international attention in this period (Palestine/Israel,

Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan for example) and (2) states that are considered major or regional powers

(USA, Russia, China and India for example).

20

No. Named states Frequency of

references No. of

speeches % of all states

references % of all speeches

1 PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY 5689 1935 7.69% 46.95%

2 ISRAEL 5292 1746 7.15% 42.37%

3 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 4532 1835 6.12% 44.53%

4 IRAQ 4046 1087 5.47% 26.38%

5 SOMALIA 2550 930 3.44% 22.57%

6 AFGHANISTAN 2514 810 3.40% 19.66%

7 SYRIA 2072 718 2.80% 17.42%

8 BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA 1674 701 2.26% 17.01%

9 CHINA 1633 825 2.21% 20.02%

10 SOUTH AFRICA 1543 711 2.08% 17.25%

11 RUSSIA 1299 631 1.75% 15.31%

12 IRAN 1264 450 1.71% 10.92%

13 HAITI 1213 463 1.64% 11.24%

14 SOUTH KOREA 1204 454 1.63% 11.02%

15 INDIA 1139 573 1.54% 13.90%

16 SUDAN 1115 559 1.51% 13.56%

17 LEBANON 1100 574 1.49% 13.93%

18 ANGOLA 1020 513 1.38% 12.45%

19 RWANDA 1018 496 1.38% 12.04%

20 LIBYA 965 436 1.30% 10.58%

Table 1: 20-most named states - The table presents the 20 most named states in the UNGA speeches (n=4,264; 1992-2014).

21

These findings identify the states which received the largest volume of direct discursive attention in

the community but cannot indicate whether these states are only publicly named or are also targeted

or shamed for misconduct. To this end, I used the Wordstat sentiment dictionary to filter references

to states with a negative tone at the sentence level.7 Throughout the speeches, 33% of all states

references contained a negative tone, cumulating in a total of 24,270 negative references in 3,645

speeches (86% of all cases). The list of 20 most negatively named states (see Table 2) is quite similar

to that of most named states, with the relative positions of individual states revised. Israel is now

ranked first as the most negatively-named state, followed by Iraq, the Palestinian Authority, the United

States of America, Syria and Somalia. China and France are no longer part of the list. For purposes

of robustness, I calculated the ‘negativity index,’ (right-end column in Table 2). The index measures

the share of negative references to a state out of all references to it showing the extent to which the

discursive attention a state receives is negative. According to this measurement, there are six states:

Syria, Serbia, Iraq, Iran, Cuba, Rwanda and Israel, to whom more than 40% of references contain a

negative tone.

7 Negative reference is a sentence that includes a negative tone; note that it may also include a positive tone.

22

No.8 Named states Frequency of negative references

No. of speeches

% of all states’ negative references

% of all speeches

Negativity Index

1 (2) ISRAEL 2228 938 9.18% 25.73% 42%

2 (4) IRAQ 1881 802 7.75% 22.00% 46%

3 (1) PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY

1822 913 7.51% 25.05% 32%

4 (3) UNITED STATES

OF AMERICA 1374 740 5.66% 20.30% 30%

5 (7) SYRIA 1276 472 5.26% 12.95% 62%

6 (5) SOMALIA 992 536 4.09% 14.71% 39%

7 (6) AFGHANISTAN 897 465 3.70% 12.76% 36%

8 (8) BOSNIA AND

HERZEGOVINA 629 382 2.59% 10.48% 38%

9 (12) IRAN 558 254 2.30% 6.97% 44%

10 (11) RUSSIA 489 246 2.01% 6.75% 38%

11 (17) LEBANON 434 277 1.79% 7.60% 39%

12 (19) RWANDA 430 263 1.77% 7.22% 42%

13 (23) CUBA 397 274 1.64% 7.52% 43%

14 (14) SOUTH KOREA 390 174 1.61% 4.77% 32%

15 (20) LIBYA 369 241 1.52% 6.61% 38%

16 (28) SERBIA 362 168 1.49% 4.61% 53%

17 (13) HAITI 357 214 1.47% 5.87% 29%

18 (15) INDIA 346 159 1.43% 4.36% 30%

19 (16) SUDAN 340 230 1.40% 6.31% 30%

20 (10) SOUTH AFRICA 312 212 1.29% 5.82% 20%

Table 2: 20-most named states – Negative references: The table presents the 20 most named states in the UNGA speeches (n=4,264; 1992-2014).

8 Brackets indicate the position of the states on the list of the most named states before filtering the negative tone subset.

23

What can we learn from these findings?

Analyzing the patterns of naming in the UNGA General Debate speeches tells us about whom states

are talking. This is valuable information if we acknowledge that one of the main subjects in

international discourse is states. As states frequently talk with each other about each other and about

the international community, the analysis above sheds light on the specific states that attract discursive

attention and whose international conduct plays a dominant part in the international discourse. Two

main questions stem from the analysis. First, why are these particular states targeted? Second, what

can this list of states tell us about the interplay between the practice of naming and shaming and the

notion of the collective We of states?

The simplest answer to the first question is that states are talking about things that happen in the

world. Hence attention is given to states which are characterized as being in a crisis or in a situation

of conflict, i.e., Israel, Syria, Iraq; and those who serve as dominant players as superpowers or regional

powers, i.e., USA, Russia, China and India. Whereas this explanation makes much sense, it doesn’t

explain why some states receive more attention than others. Why does a state like Israel receive more

negative attention than states like Syria or Rwanda that have arguably hosted much greater atrocities,

surely in terms of the number of victims and the extent of destruction? The answer lies in the second

question and in the role of the We in constructing naming and shaming discursive practices.

For the targeting actors, engaging in a shaming discourse provides an opportunity to participate in a

community dialogue. A state can use such discourse for self-positing, namely, as means to both

reinforce its own status as a member and to shape the normative vocabulary and standards for

behavior based on its own interests. Shaming discourse is largely an attempt to determine the

boundaries of legitimacy, of what it means to be a state and act as a state. This might be the reason

that North Korea, a rogue state, is not ranked among the most 20-named states, simply since it does

not even claim to be part of the international community or to take part in the construction of the

collective We. On the other hand, while the concept of the We is constant, its conception is dynamic.

In other words, the normative and practical substances that are attributed to the concept are

24

everchanging, contested and are contingent upon states’ power positions and their ability to shape the

dominant discourse.

This might explain the notable negative spotlight on Israel. A review of the list of negatively named

states, shows that much of the negative attention is directed towards failed states or those in great

crisis. Israel, as opposed to states like Somalia, Haiti and Congo, is not only a functioning state but

also defines itself as a liberal-democratic polity that holds values that are compatible with the collective

ethos. This might explain why the gap between its self-performance as part of the community and its

international conduct makes it an easy target for shaming. From a community perspective, it makes

more sense to name and target Israel than a state like Syria or Rwanda whose status as a state can be

disputed, and even more so, their ability to conform with the normative components of the collective

ethos. It also makes sense for Israel's rivals and opponents to utilize this gap and shame Israel for its

misconduct as a legitimate member of the community (even if they themselves fail to meet this

criterion) in order to establish political claims and to publicly single Israel out, based on norms and

values. The next section establishes a content-based link between the tendency to name a state, and

shaming discourse, and offers a qualitative analysis of the negative references to Israel and explores if

and on what grounds Israel is publicly singled out and shamed.

Picking the easy target? – The case of Israel

The reading of the negative references to Israel (1992-2014, total of 1057 references) provides an

interesting focal point into the process by which the I-We discourse is constructed and a state is judged

against the collective ethos. All of negative references to Israel refer to the conflicts in which it is

engaged, and the great majority of the references focus specifically on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

There are no references to Israel's domestic politics, economic policies, involvement in international

institutions or relations with allies. In other words, there are no references to Israel as a "normal" state.

Overall, the references to Israel emphasize the protracted nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and

the hardships and obstacles that hinder its resolution. References can be categorized into four main

themes: occupation; settlements; indiscriminate violence and aggression; and international attempts to

resolve or manage the conflict – all of which portray Israel as an aggressor which violates both the

25

rights of other states (mainly Lebanon and Syria) and the human rights of Palestinians. Above all,

Israel is depicted as violating its commitments as a state. Although some of the references

acknowledge Israel's right to exist in security and sovereignty, the bulk of references stress the

illegitimacy of Israel's practices and repeatedly call on Israel to mend its ways and commit to a

resolution process. States reiterate what would be considered conducive conduct on the part of Israel:

Co-operation with international endeavors for reconciliation, advancing reciprocity with the

Palestinians, withdrawal from occupied territories (including removing settlements) and accepting a

two-state solution.

Indeed, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict draws much international attention. It is a long, complex and

enduring situation and repeated attempts to resolve it in the past 25 years have resulted, rather, in

radicalization and increased violence. It is an asymmetrical conflict rooted in deep ethnic, religious

and cultural divides. Yet, in comparison with the conflicts in the Balkans, the wars in Iraq and

Afghanistan, and the on-going armed conflicts in Syria, Sinai, Darfur or with Boko Haram, it has been

much more limited in the scope of resultant fatalities and external ramifications for neighboring states.

And yet the international discourse on any of these conflicts has been much more constrained, as has

international intervention efforts.

Israel is an "easy target" for shaming for two main reasons. First, Israel views and presents itself as a

legitimate member of the family of nations. Thus, it is easier to discredit Israel’s practices for not

meeting the collective standards that it aspires to and claims to meet. Shaming Israel by pointing to its

divergence from the path of the We thus simultaneously also reinforces the conceptions of the We.

Israel is shamed for non-conducive behavior that disrupts efforts towards conflict-resolution and is

accused of disrespecting human rights and holding territories contrary to intentional law. Furthermore,

it is condemned, mainly by the Arab states of the region, for not following international treaties, mainly

in the context of disarmament, and for its refusal to ratify the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

Treaty. Following the framing of Israel as an outlier, many states call on the international community

or specific international actors (the UN, USA or the European Union) to act and pressure Israel to

conform to collective norms, thus granting responsibility to the We to realign Israel’s conduct.

26

Second, and related, the costs of potential international intervention in the case of Israel/Palestine are

much more limited than in conflicts in areas of limited statehood. Israel is a rich, stable, functioning

state. There is no genuine fear that the government will collapse and chaos will erupt, and there is no

need (or desire) to fill in for the state. Calls for action may thus be limited to standard diplomatic

actions.

Indeed, Israel is pressured – mainly discursively - to change its conduct, but this pressure also assumes

that it is capable of doing so (if only it chooses to). Moreover, shaming Israel fits into a David and

Goliath narrative in which the international community is called upon to restrain Israel and protect

the weaker side – the Palestinians. Such discourse enables a shaming state to appear to support and

stand in solidarity with the Palestinians without actually doing anything to improve their

circumstances, while at the same time solidifying legitimacy for their own position in the international

community by claiming to speak on behalf of its shared values. States engage in a discourse that

basically revolves around the question of how a state should behave. And even if they themselves fail

to live up to the practices they preach, they are still able to still use this discourse in order to

normatively distance themselves from Israel. For example, in the 2009 debate, only a year before the

Syrian civil war erupted, the Syrian Minister for Foreign affairs stated:

"Israel defies the policies of its friends and allies and undermines their will. Israel also challenges

the will of the overwhelming majority — if not the entirety — of the international community.

Perhaps more than ever before, Israel has now revealed its true colours: an entity that has

enshrined racism, aggression and tension-building while balking at peace and repudiating the

advocates of peace."

27

Discussion

International politics occur through talk and discursive interactions. At the end of the day,

international relations, in their most literal manifestation, are constituted when states interact with

each other and express positions about other states. Focusing on discursive interactions among states,

this project strives to portray how the political agents themselves understand, experience and express

the role played by the collective We of states. It analyzes both how states discursively construct the

international community and how they refer and name other states in the collective forum of the

UNGA. I argue that since the international community is constituted by discourse, we can understand

it through the ways in which agents produce and reproduce it as well as locate it (discursively) in social

reality. The focus is on how discursive interactions create the community and the way discursive

interactions among its members construct the sense of community. Specifically, I contend that these

processes serve as a prism to understand how states legitimize the We and set the issue areas of

legitimate action, individually and collectively, and how they single out and delegitimize those who

arguably jeopardize the normative order. Naming therefore is a mechanism to constitute the collective

We, the international community and define its criteria for membership and rules of conduct.

As the community is discursive, the social effects of publicly naming states are discursive. The

community itself cannot exclude states and in practice, even measures like sanctions are part of the

prerogative of the UN Security Council whose decision-making is in the hands of the permanent Five.

However, this does not mean that the discursive processes in general and in the UNGA in particular

are meaningless. Identifying the patterns through which states name other states can reflect the

international zeitgeist. Naming might not be a mere exclusion or a practical measure but it is a

‘barometer’ to the basic elements that inform international relations, namely, the relations between

states. It can thus illuminate specific patterns of power and political relations and therefore the

components that construct the status that a state holds as an I within a We.

Indeed, one might argue that limiting the international community to its discursive features eventually

renders it as nothing more than a rhetorical device; a “code word” that is used ubiquitously as an

instinctive answer in international crises, and as such, it is open for political manipulation by hegemons

28

or powerful states (Tsagourias 2006). At the political level, the notion of the international community

is conducive for translating and articulating particular political preferences into universal normative

and legal claims (Koskenniemi 2004). This might be a significant feature in adaptation to various

phenomena that entail change and thus require redefining the We and its missions, like, for example,

the end of the Cold War or in the context of globalization. The international community is also seen

as a means to push responsibility away and to legitimize inaction by loosely attributing power to a

non-existent international community (Bliesemann de Guevara and Kühn 2011, 148). In terms of

power, the international community may reflect the community only of the like-minded Western

nations, united around liberal values (Buchan 2007; Buzan and Gonzalez-Pelaez 2005). Indeed, the

international community is often associated with Western norms of rightful conduct in world politics,

and thus, one might argue, represents collective values, norms and practices not of all states but rather

of the relatively small but powerful club of Western developed states. As a result, it may be seen as

rhetorical means of euphemism aimed at enforcing their power and interests in a disguise of an

overarching international community, by strategically framing and embedding an ‘international

community doctrine’ (see Fairclough 2005 on Tony Balir’s international community doctrine) in the

normative vocabulary of international discourse.

Nonetheless, reducing the international community as some sort of hegemonic strategy simply

disregards its constraining effects and discursive power. The usage of the international community as

a rhetorical device cannot be selective and it is contingent upon constant discussion and cooperation

among all types of states. The international community cannot exist in a vacuum. While it may be in

the eyes of the beholder, the beholder is a social agent that is tied within a greater net of structures

and relations. Therefore, it might not represent a whole We but it is also not the sum of the diverse

Is. It must correspond with other narratives, with shared narratives of the past and with the political

reality. As such, it is both the result and the generator of communicative and rhetorical actions that

are designed to stimulate specific political effects but also to reflect power and political relations. Thus,

as much as the international community is framed by hegemons, hegemons need it in order to frame

their actions as legitimate (Byers 2003). The establishment of the notion of the collective We of states,

entitles any state to make claims in its name and participate in its discursive construction.

29

This project strives to provide more than merely rhetorical analysis. The first phase of the research

showed that, even if the concept of the international community is purely a rhetorical device used by

international political leaders, there is still great significance in understanding its role as a discursive

choice and practice. At the end of the day, the mere fact that it is used in day-to-day international

politics by all states, and moreover, that it is used as a means to legitimize (or delegitimize) political

behavior, suggests that states not only discern a community of states at the international level, but also

calculate and frame their actions in light of it. The second phase of the analysis demonstrated both

the centrality of naming in the international discourse at the UNGA and the tendency to use arguments

that focus on legitimate membership and conduct in the context of an international community.

Consequently, I argue that a scrutiny of shaming as an inter-state practice can serve as a prism to

further understand the social fabric that international relations are weaved into. In this respect,

engagement in a naming and shaming discourse manifests states' awareness and acknowledgement of

the set of rules that prescribe what is an expected and accepted behavior in certain circumstances.

Shaming discourse is thus a leverage to reaffirm and redefine the set of rules as well as to push states

to amend their behavior. Two reservations might be made in this respect.

The first regards the "real" motives and intentions of the actors that engage in the negative discourse.

Israel, for example, often blames other states for being hypocritical either for accusing it of not

meeting normative standards that they themselves don't adhere to or for spotlighting it while in other

areas of the world, more excruciating atrocities occur. Indeed, we cannot tell if the reason that naming

and shaming is employed is because states truly believe in the need to single out a specific behavior or

that it serves only as political leverage in wider contexts. However, we can – quite easily - observe that

states use this discourse and engage with it. The most apparent insight here is the role that the notion

of the international community plays in constructing international relations, especially in the

interaction between targeting and targeted states. For targeted states, a shaming discourse is an

opportunity to engage with and respond to the normative contestations that arguably questions not

only specific actions but also whether its overall conduct is compatible with the collective norms and

practices. Thus, a targeted state is required to certify that it is indeed entitled to its membership in the

international community. In this respect, Israel's tendency to defend itself through the "hypocrisy"

30

argument might actually aggravate its position. Rather than contest the terms of the debate as being

about whether or not it behaves “like a state”, it accepts them and further fuels and perpetuates the

discourse by investing itself in constantly defending the validity of its membership in the community

and the compatibility of its actions with collective norms. Challenging the terms of the debate, or

rather, directing the discourse elsewhere, for instance, towards its active participation in international

efforts in fields of development, environment protection or education, might prove more conducive.

The second reservation one might raise is that naming and targeting states in the international

community discourse has no “real” consequences, as the excluded members are only demoralized

discursively but are still part of the legal and structural arrangements of the international system

(Bliesemann de Guevara and Kühn 2011, 45–46). Nonetheless, we shouldn’t be interested solely in

asking who’s in and who’s out, but rather in learning what the discursive patterns analyzed above can

tell us about who wants to be included in the community and to participate in its on-going

construction. At the end of the day, in the institutional environment of an international community,

the self meets the collective, and so the interaction depends on presenting a credible and legitimate I

in the context of a greater We. Note, there is no expectation to find cohesive and uniform tendencies

but rather inconsistencies and contestations. Therefore, the background discursive processes – like

naming, targeting and shaming - that construct political relations offer a prism into the forces that

shape the social sphere of the international and illuminate the processes through which international

relations come into being.

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