Interests VS Ideas – Building on Hobbes


              Though not as stylishly pedantic about their definitions as Hobbes; Laffey, Weldes, Goldstein, and Keohane bring to the fore an important question. In what way do personal ideas shape politics and policy?
                To address that question, they attempt to explain the reasoning behind their concept of ‘ideas’. Goldstein and Keohane focus more directly on interests versus ideas. They conceptualize ideas as a personally held conviction that may or may not drive interests. By that standard, an idea is more of an ideal, particularly as applied to politicians. The politician may have their own ideals, but those do not always correspond directly with their expressed interests. Particularly in today’s age of lobbyists and practical considerations like re-elections. Which so often depend on lobbyists.
                Laffey and Weldes take a slightly different approach, exploring the concept of communal ideas. This was an appealing theory, as it allows for the human tendency to build upon the ideas of those who came before us. For instance, many modern social science theorists whose work contains trace influences from Hobbes and the many other writers who came before them. In particular, Laffey and Weldes’ structure with ideas stylized as ‘symbolic technologies’ or ‘commodities’, was especially reminiscent of the current US patent system which very literally counts ideas as objects and allows for the application of monetary value to those ideas.
                Both papers go on to suggest experiments designed to test the truth behind their theories. As I have written previously, it is notoriously difficult to structure unbiased social science experiments. An average lab setting isn’t possible because you can’t pull a bunch of college students in for five dollars and expect them to realistically re-create situations similar to those found in the world of international policy. For one, they lack the experience of power and the heavy weight of responsibility. Secondly, they come laden with their own biases based upon their social and political beliefs.
                Beliefs, of course, are part of the core definition of an idea, bringing us back around full circle to where we began, attempting to construct an unbiased experiment to test the effect of ideas. There is also the option to take a longer view of this problem, as Weber does when examining the compounding of ideas that led to western society as we know it. Perhaps history truly is our greatest teacher. Though Weber’s seemingly firm convictions in western societies superiority over all others does leave the reader feeling faintly sticky.

Sources
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism. Boston University. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. Chicago, IL. 2001.

Laffey, Mark; Weldes, Jutta. Beyond Belief: Ideas and Symbolic Technologies in the Study of international Relations. European Journal of International Relations. 1997.

Goldstein, Judith; Keohane, Robert O. Ideas and Foreign Policy. Cornell University Press. 1993.

Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 21, 2018 at 6:53 PM

    I am interested to know if you sympathized with Lakffey and Weldes's critique of Goldsteine and Keohane? Do you think ideas can so easily be typified as commodities as former accuse the latter?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. EHMay 23, 2018 at 8:54 PM

      This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    2. EHMay 23, 2018 at 8:55 PM

      I thought this was worth exploring in depth, so I wrote my post-class blog with this question in mind.

      Delete

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