The Contributions in This Book

The book is organised into three parts. Part I—Theoretical and Methodological Foundations—explores different theories and methods for the study of myth in international politics.

Sybille Münch explores the insights that the ‘interpretive turn’ in policy analysis has provided into the study of myth. Interpretive policy analysis highlights how language and discourse shape our knowledge of the social world and influence policymaking. In challenging the traditional assump­tion that problems are part of a pre-given neutral reality to which policy­making responds, authors have started to pay attention to argumentation and persuasion and to those elements such as narratives and myths that structure discourse. Münch shows that advocates of this post-positivist kind of research, which includes interpretive-hermeneutic and poststruc­turalist approaches, have been very prolific in developing conceptions of myths.

Robert Cooke strives to comprehend both the possibilities and limits of the mythographical approach to knowledge production through an exploration of its meta-theoretical conditions of possibility. The chapter questions the understanding of myths in terms of the dichotomy mythos/ logos, in which myths have come to embody the creative fiction contrasted with the facticity of historical narratives or the immanent experience of reality, forming the ‘other’ of logos and logocentric metaphysics. Cooke employs the philosophical contributions of Jacques Derrida and Albert Camus to argue that ‘to know’ is itself a myth that silently haunts logos and logocentric discourse. The acknowledgement of the impossibility of logocentric discourse, however, enables the potential expansion of myth analysis to all forms of knowledge. In this sense, myths are not to be excluded but embraced, since they remind us of the necessity of constant suspicious reflexivity (Chap. 4).

Based on the works of Claude Levi-Strauss and Pierre Bourdieu, Catherine Goetze suggests a post-structuralist methodology to study myth and power in world politics. She introduces Levi-Strauss’ structuralist methodology to study myths and Bourdieu’s development of a sociologi­cal analysis of patterns of power and domination based on Levi-Strauss’ work. She suggests that this methodology can be used to analyse con­temporary myths of world politics. Goetze’s chapter retraces Levi-Strauss’ structuralist methodology and Bourdieu’s post-structuralist critique in order to show their contributions to the analysis of power and discourse in contemporary world politics (Chap. 5).

Franziska Müller discusses qualitative approaches adequate and prom­ising for empirical studies of myths with regard to their methodologi­cal potentials and possible caveats.

Part II—Empirical Explorations—assembles eight case studies of myths in contemporary international politics. The authors use different concep­tual approaches explored in the first part of the book and cover a range of different topics in international politics. In the first case study chapter, Catherine Goetze implements the post-structuralist methodology for the study of myth developed in Chap. 4. She starts with the observation that in many cases of armed conflict inside states, newspaper articles and schol­arly work will refer to armed actors as ‘warlords’. She then deconstructs this discourse as a contemporary myth of the international system by drawing on Claude Levi-Strauss’ analysis of the syntagmatic and paradig­matic structures of myths. Based on the structuralist analysis of newspaper articles as well as selected scholarly works, she shows that the warlord myth represents a strongly stereotyped narrative of violence in countries where international interventions take place (and fail to bring peace) in its syntagmatic (apparent) structure; and that it represents a strongly stereo­typed narrative of the orderly function of states in the international system in its paradigmatic structure (Chap. 7).

Florian Kühn provides a concise application of Hans Blumenberg’s work on myth to analyse Western interpretations of Afghanistan.

Katharine Millar explores the mutually implicated myths of the demo­cratic control of the armed forces (DCAF) and militarism in international security politics. She starts from the observation that, in the post-war era, international organisations have increasingly promoted the demo­cratic control of the armed forces in new and transitional states. As DCAF employs the language of accountability, rationality, and peace, the prin­ciple has an explicitly normative character. Utilising Foucauldian theory, Millar argues, however, that the purportedly pacific nature of DCAF is a potent policy myth, which is subtly dependent upon a secondary myth, namely militarism. The chapter examines the implication of academics and policymakers in the construction and reification of these mutually reinforcing myths. Overall, Millar argues that the discourse of militarism identifies the valorisation of violence by democratic societies as ‘deviant’ exceptions to the generally pacific nature of DCAF, thereby normalising the quotidian reliance of democracies upon the (potential for) political violence (Chap. 9).

Alastair Finlan explores the role of myth in contemporary warfare. Inspired by Barthes, he argues that myths are vital enabling narratives to democratic societies to legitimise and sustain military campaigns, veiling the horrors caused by war.

Katarzyna Kaczmarska’s chapter interrogates the production of the idea of ‘the international community’ in the context of international state­building. She argues that in the conundrum of discourse and practice of statebuilding, the international community works as a political myth. This myth enables, legitimises, and shapes statebuilding practices, which, in turn, reinforce the idea of the international community. The international community becomes both an imagined whole and an agential entity. It is agential when it is equated with donors, but discourse produced by donors upholds the vision of some universal international community, which should be valued and protected. Kaczmarska relies on discourse analysis of policy documents and illustrates the argument with localised examples of statebuilding practices in Central Asia with special reference to Kyrgyzstan (Chap. 11).

Charlotte Dany and Katja Freistein challenge the idea of civil society participation as a natural part of global governance. Pointing to the crucial role of political myths that make politics pervasive and even appealing to a broad public, the chapter shows how civil society participation has been politically legitimised. A narratological analysis of pertinent documents issued by global governance fora serves to reconstruct the mythical ele­ments of these narrations, such as the role of protagonists and the histo­ricity of civil society participation.

Franziska Müller and Elena Sondermann analyse myths in development cooperation and focus on the aid effectiveness discourse. Empirically, they begin with the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness of 2005 and criti­cally examine the developmental terminologies that have been brought up in the declaration and unfolded during the follow-up process. With a focus on the High-level Forum in Busan in November 2011, where emerg­ing (or ‘new’) donors played an important role, they ask to what extent the myths have been retold and diversified. For their analysis, the authors refer to Barthes’s structuralist understanding of myths bearing silencing, harmonising, depoliticising, or emancipatory functions as well as to the reception of political mythology in poststructuralist IR theory (Chap. 13).

Stephan Hensell analyses the coordination problem as a myth in inter­national intervention politics, starting from the question of why coordina­tion is widely supported but seldom implemented. Building on sociological institutionalism, he argues that the principle of coordination has become a rationalised ‘myth’ in the sense of an uncontested organisational formula. The chapter maps the multitude, or ‘Babylon’, of international and local organisations and agencies involved in international interventions, and explores their managerial difficulties in coordination. Hensell specifically draws attention to the political roots of the coordination problem and explores the ways of downplaying political conflicts through the adoption of the coordination principle in official statements and institutions. The chap­ter includes a case study on Albania, where donor-to-government coordi­nation is widely endorsed in the realm of public-sector reform (Chap. 14).

Part III—Reflections—offers more general thoughts on the mytho- graphical approach to the study of international politics suggested and explored in this book. Michael Loriaux and Cecelia Lynch revisit ‘myth’ as a word that inscribes a line of separation between the ‘provincial’ and the ‘universal’. The questions they explore are: Can that line be transcended? Can one exit the provincial and attain to the universal? In their conclusion, Loriaux and Lynch address these questions with the help of Ernst Cassirer, who answers in the affirmative; Jens Bartelson, who expresses scepticism; and R.B.J. Walker, who observes that the question itself has the effect of re-inscribing the line of separation in agonistic debate. With the aid of Stephen Toulmin, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricrcur, and Jacques Derrida, the authors then ask if that line of separation can be destabilised, moved, blurred, or otherwise rendered porous, and indicate strategies that can help pursue that end (Chap. 15).

Acknowledgements The idea for this book started with a conference panel on ‘Myths and IR’, co-organised by Dr Florian P. Kühn, at the International Studies

Association (ISA) Annual Convention 2013 in San Francisco, where first drafts of some of the chapters assembled in this book were presented and discussed. In the meantime, more ‘IR mythologists’ have joined the group of colleagues contribut­ing to this book, and a lot of work has gone into the chapters, which have all been peer-reviewed to ensure the highest quality. Thanks to all who have helped in the process from idea to ready-to-read product—it has been a fantastic experience!

Notes

1. There are too many of these books on the market to give a comprehensive account. Sotomayor’s (2013) book on ‘the myth of the democratic peace­keeper’ may serve as an example of a valuable contribution to the literature, but one which uses the term myth only in the sense of untruth and some­thing that needs to be debunked.

2. The question of how a researcher’s epistemological standpoint affects the study of myth is addressed in all case studies, where authors make their spe­cific epistemological position transparent, as well as more generally in the contributions in Part I of this book.

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PART I