My newest publication is now out at the Journal of Diplomatic Research . Here is a summary for “By Consent and Management: Aversion to war, innovative thinking and managerial coordination at Utrecht 1713 and Vienna 1815".
The existing literature on international order, and the establishment of norms and regimes that dampen the drive to war inherent in an anarchical and power-politics dominated international political system, has long argued for a connection between war and engagement by decision makers in practices with which they aim to decrease the likelihood of a new war erupting. One such practice is managerial coordination. The existing literature argues that decision makers are more likely to engage in managerial coordination if they come to fear war as a tool of politics, due to seeing it as a threat on their hold on power. This is called aversion to war. This can be caused by war-weariness, which is increasing societal opposition to the war and the decision makers pursuing it, due to the financial, psychological, and physical costs of war. It can also be caused by fear of the radical potential of war, which is the corrective effect societal effort for certain types of war to lead hitherto marginalized groups to challenge the domestic power structure.
Participation in wars that are likely to generate aversion to war, will lead decision makers to question the power-politics culture that leads them to take actions that make war more likely. However, absent the conceptualization of alternatives to the power-politics practices that permeate international politics, decision makers will be unable to conceive of ways to break out from extant practices. This is where innovative thinking becomes important. By this term, building on the work of Paul Schroeder and Jennifer Mitzen, I mean the ability of decision makers to conceptualize existing practices of international politics as problematic and unable to avert the onset of dangerous wars, and promote alternatives.
The combination of aversion to war and innovative thinking is noted by Paul Schroeder as explaining the decision of the major powers to engage in the Vienna Congress system after the Napoleonic Wars. Here I compare the attitudes of the decision makers at the Congress of Vienna with those that negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht. My goal is to discover if the main difference between the two cases, is associated with attitudes of aversion to war and innovative thinking among decision makers.
The case of Utrecht is a good comparison for Vienna because of the similarity and differences. Both come as a result of complex major power wars, of similar duration, and characterized by large causalities compared to previous wars. But whereas the Congress of Vienna is followed by a long period of peace among its participants, the Treaty of Utrecht fails to pacify European international relations. It is this incongruity that makes Utrecht a useful counter-case to Vienna. For my comparison, I marshal the secondary literature by historians, scholars of international relations, as well as published primary sources.
For the Congress of Vienna, I focus on tracking the attitudes of Lord Castlereagh (United Kingdom), the Liverpool Cabinet (United Kingdom), Prince Metternich (Austria), Prince Talleyrand (France), Prince Hardenberg and his assistant Humboldt (Prussia), King Frederick William III (Prussia), and Czar Alexander I (Russia). For Utrecht I focus on tracking the attitudes of Viscount St. John Bolingbroke (United Kingdom), Queen Anne (United Kingdom), King George I (United Kingdom), Harley Lord Oxford (United Kingdom), the Parliamentary Whigs (United Kingdom), the Parliamentary Tories (Untied Kingdom), King Louis XIV (France) and Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Marquis of Torcy (France).
The descriptive analysis of the two case studies, led to the discovery of several facts. First, in both cases decision makers exhibited aversion to war. In Utrecht the decision makers of the United Kingdom gave indicators of worry both about war weariness, and fear of the radical potential of the war. They saw a continuation of the war as likely to foster conditions that would permit the exiled Stuart dynasty to challenge the German succession to the British thrones. French decision makers on the other hand only exhibited war weariness. Importantly none of the decision makers exhibited any innovative thinking. They saw what they were doing in Utrecht as well within the existing power-politics structure. Finally, almost all of the decision makers were out of power within several years after 1715. In Vienna the decision makers exhibited more indicators of fear of the radical political potential of war compared to those at Utrecht. Four of the decision makers exhibited indicators of innovative thinking compared to none at Utrecht. More importantly, the duration of political relevance among the decision makers in Vienna was much longer than those of Utrecht.
Another key difference that was discovered was in the way the two negotiations were pursued. In Utrecht, two major powers forged a peace between their number and then coerced the other powers involved in the war to adhere to it. In Vienna on the other hand all the European major powers participated in the negotiations. This difference may be an additional reason that explains the lack of peace among the major powers after Utrecht, compared to after Vienna.
Based on the above descriptive comparative analysis I extracted a number of explanatory propositions that can be the basis for hypotheses to be evaluated according to the logic of confirmation. These are that increased engagement in managerial coordination is more likely to follow multilateral efforts at peace-making after complex wars among a group of states. That decision makers engaged in negotiations are more likely to foster increased post-war practice of managerial coordination when war-participation has generated among them a fear of the radical potential of war, compared to if only it generated war-weariness. That increased managerial coordination is more likely to follow war-termination negotiations were decision makers exhibit innovative thinking about international relations. That increased managerial coordination is more likely to follow war-termination negotiations if the decision makers that advocated for its practice remain in power in the post-war period.
