Social cues : how the liberal community legitimizes humanitarian war / Jonathan A. Chu.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chu, Jonathan A., author.

Series:

Cambridge elements. Elements in international relations, 2515-706X.

Cambridge elements. Elements in international relations, 2515-706X

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Humanitarian intervention.

War--Moral and ethical aspects.

War.

War and society.

Conflict management.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (90 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2025.

Summary:

This Element advances a theory of social cues to explain how international institutions legitimize foreign policy. It reframes legitimization as a type of identity politics. Institutions confer legitimacy by sending social cues that exert pressures to conform and alleviate social-relational concerns regarding norm abidance, group participation, and status and image. Applied to the domain of humanitarian wars, the argument implies that liberal democracies vis-à-vis NATO can influence citizens and policymakers within their community, the primary participants of these military operations. Case studies, news media, a survey of policymakers, and survey experiments conducted in multiple countries validate the social cue theory while refuting alternative arguments relating to legality, material burden sharing, Western regionalism, and rational information transmission. The Element provides an understanding of institutional legitimacy that challenges existing perspectives and contributes to debates about multilateralism, humanitarian intervention, and identity. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Contents:

1 Institutions and Political Legitimacy, a Debate

1.1 Interpreting Legitimization as a Social Cue

2 A Theory of Social Cues

2.1 The General Argument

2.2 Social Cues by the Liberal Community and NATO

2.3 Caveats and Clarifications

2.4 Outline of Empirical Sections and Research Designs

3 Evidence from American Interventions

3.1 The Post-Cold War Historical Record

3.2 Experimental Evidence

4 Evidence of Social Cueing

4.1 Test #1: Examine Subgroups That View NATO as an Ingroup

4.2 Test #2: Directly Estimate Social Causal Mechanisms

4.3 Test #3: Ruling Out Non-Social Mechanisms

5 Foreign Audiences

5.1 Japanese Public Opinion on U.S. Intervention

5.2 Foreign Elites: A Survey of UK Parliamentarians

5.3 Egypt, Outside the Liberal Community

6 Reassessing the Literature

6.1 Reframing Existing Evidence

6.2 Reexamining Legal Theories

6.3 Reexamining Rational Information Transmission Theories

7 Implications

7.1 Where the Scholarship Now Stands

7.2 The Liberal Community and Humanitarian War

Acknowledgments

International Relations

Footnotes

References.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 07 Mar 2025).

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

1-009-55728-9

1-009-55732-7

1-009-55727-0

Access Restriction:

Open Access. Unrestricted online access