Hristo Gyoshev

Emancipation games in International Relations

Introductory remarks

My first thesis is that there is a relation between International law's meaning of a neutral power

mediator and the unmediated power it creates through mediation, which is not accounted for by

impartial values and institutions, thus suspending the rhetoric of neutrality. My second thesis is that

contradictory emancipation claims result in current international political discourse from that

unmediated power, leading repeatedly to what I call 'emancipation games'. This two theses suggest

thinking neutrality anew. With 'neutral mediator' and 'neutral mediation' I designate the impersonal

symbolic meaning of law as normative authority capable of structuring human interactions without

promoting partial interests or values.

I begin with two large-scale accounts on IR. They concern the actual status quo after the WWII,

when principles of human rights and national sovereignty become schizophrenically both

paramount in post-war international law (Douzinas, The End of Human Rights, 118). The one

account deals with this condition by questioning the normative value of today's Human rights

movement putting it in a continuum with colonialism (Douzinas, Human Rights and Empire, 83).

This interpretation, which we might call instrumental, has destructive consequences for the human

rights notion of emancipation, since here emancipation means 'a label for the opposite, namely

global domination'. Through the other account Human Rights get substantive support by universal

philosophical projects, justifying neutral mediation in IR. Here belong Juergen Habermas's project

for local legal enactment of universal human rights and Rainer Forst's project for moral

constructivism of human rights. They are embedding neutrality within a strong intersubjective

framework, so that any normative principle would gain legitimacy by reflecting its own interactive

history. Although this speaks in favor of common understanding and language about rights, these

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universal projects set a firm boundary of discussion, which is set in the first case by the liberal

moral code as a condition for any viable political life. In the second case it is the implicit restriction

imposed by the context of moral justification that sets a firm moral value on the Human rights

movement, thus failing to reflect on conditions for discerning strategic power from neutral

mediation. So these justification strategies prevent neutrality.

Dynamic Neutrality

So far, if we insist on the impartial neutrality of the value framework as a precondition for the

Human rights regime, we can not tell apart moral content from strategic power; if we treat the value

network as instrumental by design, we can account for the impact of the mediator, but end up with a

picture of unmediated domination.

Despite the opposition of instrumental and universal interpretations , the neutrality of principles

puts them on the same side of the problem. First, because both imply that impartiality of mediation

is what is at stake in the debate about neutrality of human rights; and second, because both strive to

moral language defining political actors by stiff roles; Thus, on the instrumental view the political

West is in the role of oppressor opposed to the oppressed peoples and emancipation means

disempowering human rights. Universalism, on the other side, defines as oppressing every power

which does not meet the egalitarian form of society; then emancipation entails disempowering

national governmental institutions. Thus both positions can not dispense with a basic moral standard

a standard which is here to mediate and thus control the power which threatens autonomy. But, on

the other hand, it is precisely this moral judgment that prevents estimation of the impact of

mediation. In order to to such estimation, we have to reflect upon the meaning its usage creates in

the act of mediation, observing how this meaning operates within the reality to which it normatively

relates.

Such estimation requires analysis investigating normative notions not only in their function as a

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framework for political interaction in IR, but also as a tool in the process of interaction, which can

be defined as a 'tool-framework' analysis.

I will recall a consideration, pointed by David Hirsh (Law against genocide) and discussed last year

on this conference by Robert Fine. According to it, parties that oppose each other in a political

conflict involving international law can be disdainful of actually existing international law on the

grounds that it is controlled by their opponents, but still use its rhetoric to accuse the other of

hypocrisy (Fine, Dehumanizing, p.13). This hypocritical behavior finds most notably expression in

the selective appeal to law where one's own political interests are supported by it, while readily

slipping out of judgment when they are inhibited by this law. There can be different prognostic

suggestions about this problem. But there can be no doubt that law as a mediator can exist

simultaneously in the mode of a tool for interaction, where its symbolic power can weaken or

reinforce political action. So, if the instrumentalist argument suggests that neutral law is doomed to

fail in IR, and universal ideals envisage the future of impartial global authority, another important

possibility lies at hand. It requires shifting our focus from institutions to dispositions of political

action. Turning again to Robert Fine's argument, we should conceive of law not as a transcendent

authority, but rather as material resource, which we can use for constituting ourselves as

collectivity in a new way. The key to dealing with equivocations in international law lies,

according to this argument, in themselves. It is our reflection upon them that gives the hope for

developing a reasonable understanding of international law and a 'human rights culture' which

today still 'lags behind institutionalization of human rights' (Dehumanizers, 14). While I basically

agree with this argument, I will comment on two points. 1. Reflecting on equivocations helps

overcome one part of the problem namely undue idealization of international law and recognition

of its instrumental role in political actions; but it can not by itself contribute to the development of a

worldwide trust in law as a mediator, since these very equivocations hinder the more comprehensive

reconstituted human identity in view. 2. And reflecting on law as reliable 'material resource' for

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coping with our common task of living together depends itself on our belief that it is not such

resource for someone's interests, and not on the belief that we have no alternative way of

coexistence. That is why we must define what enables neutral interpretation of law. Instead of

attaching the symbolic power of neutral mediation to the partiality vs. impartiality debate about

institutions, I suggest that we can set it in a neutrality equilibrium. The notion of such equilibrium

can help us establish neutrality of mediation in political interactions, without grounding authority in

future or otherwise contra-factual assumptions. The symbolic equilibrium consists namely in the

fact that the symbolic power of the mediator is constituted through the reverse proportion between

neutrality and strategic action. This proportion enables not impartial but dynamic neutrality in

the current equivocal condition of international law: dynamic is the neutrality which decreases

symbolic power of the mediator to the extent that it promotes strategic action; and increases it to

the extent that it does not support such action. According to this correlation, anyone that uses the

mediator as a tool for interaction, can rely on its neutral power only to the extent that it does not

break the equilibrium which surely leaves a space for strategic usage, but it is a definite, and

limited space. Conversely, in order not to lose the benefits of mediation neutrality, any agent will

want to make investment in its neutrality, taking actions which either do not advance, or compensate

for partial interests.

Dynamic neutrality presupposes suspending priority of one's own strategic ends as inseparable part

of the mutual dispositions for adequate political action. It is not concerned with the stiff or

'global' - identities that today normally trigger allegedly legitimate international political actions,

but rather should describe relative positions occupied by these actions in the continuum of the

equilibrium. But because describing IR as system of interactions, based on such neutrality, depends

on the mutual dispositions and not on inherent neutrality of mediator, political action cannot be

meaningfully understood as simply as 'pursuing oneself's interests'. In this respect I would like to

refer to the somewhat cautious, but important attempt of Axel Honneth to apply the theory of

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recognition to IR (Honneth, Recognition between States. On the moral ground of International

Relations). Recognition is here similarly to the social theory of recognition a relation of

expectations, feelings, and needs of any national community, whose self-understanding can not be

grasped independently of its being accepted in one's own identity. The main tenets of this approach

to IR, namely the priority of the normative dimension of recognition to the strategic dimension of

self-actualization of states (, , 114 [Das Ich im Wir]), helps establishing the

conditions for dynamic neutrality, as it shows a side of shaping relations between states that remains

in the shadow of Realpolitik: namely, that a state cannot possess identity and accordingly actualize

itself independently, but only can have identity reflected from other states.

This view, which Axel Honneth explicitly opposes to Hegel's belief that only underdeveloped and

deprived of rights peoples need recognition, helps understand the dual structure of political action.

As far as identity is a reflected identity, not only the realization of political ends, but how they

reflect back from others (and in Honneth's model these are reflections between collective identities

mediated by international political actions of their representatives), form together the

self-understanding of any political agent.

[But, on the other hand, the notion of dynamic neutrality is difficult to unite with the concept of

'justifying narrative', through which Honneth, following Rainer Forst and Klaus Guenther,

defines normative continuity between the hypothetical 'we' and the course of political interpretation.

The difficulty stems from the 'affective dynamic' between different collective identities: on the

'positive' interactionist scenario it sets international balance to be dependent on recognition of

diversity, on the 'negative' scenario it approaches the 'clash of civilizations'. In both cases, if we are

seeking possibility of neutral mediation between given, self-referential, and historically divergent

identities, a separate, detached framework is indispensable, which will again turn us back to the

problem of its impact on the process of mediation. I will turn again to this problem later.]

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Emancipation games
Proceeding from the notions of 'neutrality equilibrium' and 'reflected identity', the most rational

course of political actions in the environment defined by human rights - and especially controversial

ones, which at the same time are most of all in need of neutrality is to keep on the 'edge' of the

equilibrium. This is so, because near that boundary is the proper correlation between pursued ends

and recognized identity in the international community. Thus the ultimate supposition of interaction

in the state of equilibrium, where the mediator can be simultaneously a framework and a tool for

interaction, is to get the best possible relative position.

The difference of estimating political action in relative, and not in global terms, lies in

(re)construction of a more adequate account for neutrality by means of the 'framework' and 'tool'

modes, thus possibly escaping the perils of idealizing international law. Since it is construction of

global identities which on the first place detaches mediator from the process, dealing with relative

terms, and thus placing identities in a complex relation context, aims at suspending global judgment

by tracing their relative positions.

Avoiding global identities replaces notions such as 'oppressors and oppressed', 'colonists and

colonies', 'victims and tyrants', with more systematic relations. Similar deconstruction of stiff

identities finds expression in the drama triangle, developed by transactional analyst Stephen

Karpman, giving a possible solution to the task to define flexible yet formal relations using three

positions: 1. persecutor, 2. victim, and 3. rescuer. Originally developed for analysis of individual

'transactions' (a technical name for the simplest singular form of social interaction), this model is

applicable to international identities, which can be named international transactions as well. The

usefulness of the drama triangle for a tool-framework approach I see in the following. 1. It enables

reconstructing dimensions of the tool and framework modes inside the system of transactions. 2. It

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thus helps scrutinize responsibility, rendering manipulative usage of the framework more

observable than through global identities. 3. It helps to articulate the three essential identity

positions using interactive language, instead of language of discrete identification. This last point is

decisive for the way we identify moral causal relations while global thinking places identities on a

causal line, that is, assume that persecutor 'creates' the victim and rescuer reacts to the persecutor in

order to release the victim, in the interactive language the three positions are 'active' positions (that

is they are by default ready to take share in causal responsibility).

Now, assuming that the neutral mediator partakes in interactive relations, there should be a

conceptual place accounting for its dynamic neutrality. But the threefold relation implies that any

added position tends to merge with one of the three positions. In the linear model, we can express

neutrality by placing the mediator on the rescuer position thus mediating the victim and the

persecutor positions. And that is what we do, when we believe that law is there to mediate the

unmediated power between victim and persecutor, and believe that it is neutral to the extent that

mediation operates from the rescuer position. But in the interactive model, a triple mediation is

necessary to describe any process of the system of interactions. [(V) mediates the relation of (P) and

(R); (P) mediates (V) and (R); and (R) mediates (P) and (V)] This systematic meaning determines

first that it is untenable to preserve the mediating role exclusively to the neutral mediator itself; and

that if a mediator is moving away from a position, it tends toward one of the other two positions.

This triple mediation helps us describe the unmediated power created by the mediator in the

particular political context, marked by intertwined relation between Westphalian and Human rights

principles. Such power owes its existence on the fact that symbolic meaning of emancipation and

domination can equally well offer normative defense for both frameworks, thus enabling multiple

mediation leading to 'emancipation games'. Their meaning involves the normative context of the

notions of autonomy, emancipation and mediation in a rational way, but this rationality is based on

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shifting between the 'framework' and the 'tool' mode of neutral mediation so that the last is

functioning against its own neutrality. Describing such games involves E. Berne's game analysis,

also a part of transactional analysis, which aims at describing particular social interactions

involving ongoing series of complementary ulterior transactions progressing to a well-defined,

predictable outcome [definition of Game] (Berne, Games people play, 19). So, what appears as

separate operations, reveals only in the end of the game the meaning of 'moves' in it, directed

toward a strategic end. Essential in the structure of games is the double perspective, which offers

possibility for the ulterior behavior. The intertwined international framework, created by

introducing the human rights principle, opens similar possibility for advancing strategic ends

'behind' the neutral rhetoric of defense against domination, on which both the imperialist and the

universal rights interpretations rest, because of the contradicting content of the values of autonomy,

emancipation and mediation. According to Human rights regime 'autonomy's subject is the

individual; for the Westphalian status quo it is the state. In the first case international institutions

mediate the relation of the individual to the state; and in the second the state is a mediator between

the individual and other authorities. This is how 'emancipation', which ultimately grounds on the

basic value of autonomy, can and do legitimate conflicting global claims; so far as we operate with

global terms, freedom in the one sense implies dependency (or intervention) in the other. So it

seems that until national identities exist along with international structures, there will lie at hand the

mutual emancipatory rhetoric between rights empire and moral utopia, allowing also for more

complex games such as 'emancipation from the emancipators', or 'partial recognition of a system of

rules'. But if it is controversial that description of such emancipation games may contribute to

enhancing autonomy in human interactions at least this requires further arguments then it can

give us a more concrete understanding about the neutrality equilibrium in international relations.

And since it is not the formal meaning of drama positions but the development of transactions

around the drama triangle, that is essential for reconstructing relations between participants

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(including the mediator), then only the payoff [which in the transactional game formula marks the

end of a game] defines final result and meaning of the entire set of transaction exchanges. Thus if

we define a set of interrelated positions as 'Ruthless dictator', 'oppressed people' and 'democratic

public', the game 'democracy' is approaching. And if we define roles such as 'dedicated leader',

'rabble of criminals', and 'neo-colonists', the game 'self-sacrifice' is about to start. But it is not

before the unfolding of further transactions that the proper kind of the game and its potential for

dealing with the neutrality equilibrium could be estimated. So whether immigrant waves resulting

from the heat of democratic action are responded to by closing national boundaries, or by respecting

the basic Rights of Man [Arendt], will result in different games, (or maybe different kinds of the

same game), but surely with a different degree of neutrality.

As a conclusion I want to point at the significance of games for an 'extended' understanding of

ourselves [~ Fine's point]. On the one side they are derogatory to the possibility for a neutral

mediation. On the other side however they can create a transactional field in which common

language grows more important than cultural or historical divergence thus gradually outweighing

the 'clash of civilizations' effect of 'justifying narratives' and supporting strategies for investment in

neutrality.