Contents

1 Introduction: Myth and Narrative in International Politics 1 Berit Bliesemann de Guevara

Part I Theoretical and Methodological Foundations 13

2 Myth in International Politics: Ideological Delusion

and Necessary Fiction 15

Berit Bliesemann de Guevara

3 Beyond National Policymaking: Conceptions of Myth

in Interpretive Policy Analysis and Their Value for IR 47 Sybille Münch

4 The Precipice of Myth: Mythology/Epistemology 67

Robert Cooke

5 Bringing Claude Levi-Strauss and Pierre Bourdieu Together for a Post-structuralist Methodology to Analyse Myths 87 Catherine Goetze

6 How to Study Myths: Methodological Demands and Discoveries

Franziska Müller

Part II Empirical Explorations

7 Warlords and States: A Contemporary Myth of the International System

Catherine Goetze

8 Afghanistan and the ‘Graveyard of Empires’: Blumenberg, Under-complex Analogy and Basic Myths in International Politics

Florian P.

9 Mutually Implicated Myths: The Democratic Control of the Armed Forces and Militarism

Katharine M. Millar

10 Tales and Images of the Battlefield in Contemporary Warfare

Alastair Finlan

11 The Powerful Myth of the International Community and the Imperative to Build States

Katarzyna Kaczmarska

12 Global Governance and the Myth of Civil Society Participation

Charlotte Dany and Katja Freistein

13 Myths of the Near Future: Paris, Busan, and Tales of Aid Effectiveness

Franziska Müller and Elena Sondermann

14 Organising Babylon: The Coordination of Intervention

and the Denial of Politics 267

Stephan Hensell

Part III Reflections 287

15 Mythography: No Exit, No Conclusion? 289

Michael Loriaux and Cecelia Lynch

Index 299