Conclusions: Myth and Power

The chapter has argued that the idea of the international community works as a political myth and as such influences behaviour and endows it with meaning. This myth enables, legitimises, and shapes international statebuilding practices; these, in turn, justify and constitute the idea of the international community.

Bottici refers to political myths as ‘mapping devices through which we look at the world, feel about it and also act within it as a social group’ (Bottici and Challand 2010: 20). The myth of the international com­munity performs these functions for two groups of actors. On the more general level, it may be seen as performing this work among societies of capitalist liberal states. Primarily, however, it is a powerful idea for prac­titioners of statebuilding, those who are the principal authors of interna­tional community discourse. As members of a specific transnational social group bound by and co-producing a specific set of practices, they employ and work on the narrative of the international community. Specific condi­tions of the narrative’s construction, such as the transnationality of the task of ‘assisting others’ and the assumed responsibility and good-doing, turn the narrative into a political myth (see Bottici 2007: 179). Yet neither from the perspective of liberal states nor from the point of view of state­building practitioners can the political myth be claimed to be conveying truth. No fruitful discussion can take place of the international commu­nity’s essence or its adequate definition.

A more rewarding way forward, and one enabled by a mythographical analysis, is to ask questions about the continued work on and work of the myth of international community, to enquire about ways in which the myth as a process of continual work creates tangible effects. Among other things, such analysis exposes that discursive construction of the interna­tional community is intertwined with questions of power. Bottici argues that the work on myth is a forceful way of influencing people’s imagina­tion and constructing a successful version of reality. As such, a political myth is the embodiment of symbolic power which may be as important as the control over the means for physical coercion (Bottici and Challand 2006: 330). These processes do not happen in and of themselves. Agency is equally important. The very fact that a particular group of actors claims the inalienable right to imagine and represent the international is, ulti­mately, the exposition of power. Those who claim the right to define the international community assert the privilege at defining what is universal. This activity is fused with the feeling of righteousness. With concrete poli­cies supported by budgets, these actors also claim to be contributing to the maintenance of the international community as it is imagined by them.

Similarly, the relation of power permeates the process of standard set­ting, itself tightly bound with a specific representation of the international community. Defining what constitutes international standards of the right kind of state and who is expected to meet these standards is part and parcel of the ongoing process of significance creation for a specific group of actors. In this process, the term international community operates as a neutral descriptor and takes on the aura of self-evidence.

The myth of international community has far-reaching consequences, for it structures the way things are done in contemporary international politics. It shapes expectations with regard to the state and legitimizes intervention aimed at adjusting certain polities to the expected model. The myth of the international community allows for presenting activities of statebuilding as intrinsically good and actors undertaking them as those working for the benefit of all.

What emerges out of this analysis is a preliminary suggestion that inter­national actors need the embodiment of the idea of the international com­munity. Donors act on the assumption that the international community exists, but through their activities and discourse they build and maintain societal ties between states. Statebuilding activities are an indispensable— though not the only—bonding element, a tangible form of ‘cooperation’, allowing liberal states to be driven by a joint, elevating purpose, which additionally reinforces their pulling power.

This analysis has been focused on specific actors—those engaged in statebuilding—but could be extended. The myth of the international community is an important part of how the West sees and constructs itself to itself and projects this image to the outside world.

Notes

1. The use of a definite article in this case is an attempt to retain grammatical correctness rather than to suggest an essence may be distilled out of the many different meanings attributed to the international community in policy discourse.

2. By donors I mean agencies of capitalist democratic states, organisations, and institutions engaged in international statebuilding but which are not necessarily limited to the geographical West; the analysed discourse also draws on examples from Japan, South Korea, and the Asian Development Bank.

3. Interview, senior official at UN Kyrgyzstan, December 2014.

4. OECD webpage, http://www.oecd.org/dac/post-2015.htm (last accessed 20 July 2015).

5. This logic is also common in scholarly literature (Caplan 2005; Chesterman 2004; Chesterman et al. 2005).

6. The introduction of the word ‘partner’ has done little in terms of altering the prevalent vocabulary or masking power relations underpinning policies of statebuilding. A simple textual analysis reveals that donors describe their relations with ‘partners’ using words with positive connotations such as cooperate, engage, secure, improve, enable, maximize, philanthropic, col­laborative. All these contrast starkly with vocabulary describing states receiving assistance as least developed, poorest, weakest, failing, and/or vulnerable. In addition, as observed by Rita Abrahamsen in the context of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, even when language changed to ‘part­nerships’, the content of donor-recipient relations remained largely untouched: power is exercised through simultaneous incorporation and exclusion (Abrahamsen 2004).

7. World Bank in Kyrgyzstan, http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/kyr- gyzrepublic (last accessed 10 August 2015), italics added.

8. For a critique of measuring fragility, see e.g. Naude et al. (2011).

9. New Deal. Building Peaceful States, http://www.newdeal4peace.org (last accessed 10 August 2015).

10. Retrieved from: http://fsi.fundforpeace.org/ (last accessed 5 July 2015).

11. For example, ‘the government was in discussions with various parts of the international community—diplomatic, peacekeeping, and development— on pressing institutional transformations’ (World Bank 2011: 110); ‘the international community, encompassing both the neighboring countries, and bilateral and multilateral partners’ (UNDP 2005: 3).

12. Interviews with experts working for GIZ, UNDP, and Swiss Aid; Bishkek, September-October 2012.

13. Interview, senior official at Swiss Aid, October 2014.

14. The Mission of the Hanns Seidel Foundation, http://www.hss.de/eng- lish.html (last accessed 13 August 2013).

15. KOICA. 2014. Korean International Cooperation Agency official web­page, http://www.koica.go.kr (last accessed 10 August 2015).

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