Publications by Author: Johnston%2C%20Alastair%20Iain

2009
Abdelal, Rawi E, Alastair Iain Johnston, Yoshiko Margaret Herrera, and Rose McDermott. 2009. Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientists. Cambridge University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract
The concept of identity has become increasingly prominent in the social sciences and humanities. Analysis of the development of social identities is an important focus of scholarly research, and scholars using social identities as the building blocks of social, political, and economic life have attempted to account for a number of discrete outcomes by treating identities as causal factors. The dominant implication of the vast literature on identity is that social identities are among the most important social facts of the world in which we live. Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston, and McDermott have brought together leading scholars from a variety of disciplines to consider the conceptual and methodological challenges associated with treating identity as a variable, offer a synthetic theoretical framework, and demonstrate the possibilities offered by various methods of measurement. The book represents a collection of empirically-grounded theoretical discussions of a range of methodological techniques for the study of identities.
2008
Acharya, Amitav, and Alastair Iain Johnston. 2008. Crafting Cooperation: Regional International Institutions in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract
Regional institutions are an increasingly prominent feature of world politics. Their characteristics and performance vary widely: some are highly legalistic and bureaucratic, while others are informal and flexible. They also differ in terms of inclusiveness, decision-making rules and commitment to the non-interference principle. This is the first book to offer a conceptual framework for comparing the design and effectiveness of regional international institutions, including the EU, NATO, ASEAN, OAS, AU and the Arab League. The case studies, by a group of leading scholars of regional institutions, offer a rigorous, historically informed analysis of the differences and similarities in institutions across Europe, Latin America, Asia, Middle East and Africa. The chapters provide a more theoretically and empirically diverse analysis of the design and efficacy of regional institutions than heretofore available.
2007
Johnston, Alastair Iain. 2007. Social States: China in International Institutions, 1980-2000. Princeton University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

"Constructive engagement" became a catchphrase under the Clinton administration for America's reinvigorated efforts to pull China firmly into the international community as a responsible player, one that abides by widely accepted norms. Skeptics questioned the effectiveness of this policy and those that followed. But how is such socialization supposed to work in the first place? This has never been all that clear, whether practiced by the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Japan, or the United States.

Social States is the first book to systematically test the effects of socialization in international relations—to help explain why players on the world stage may be moved to cooperate when doing so is not in their material power interests. Alastair Iain Johnston carries out his groundbreaking theoretical task through a richly detailed look at China's participation in international security institutions during two crucial decades of the "rise of China," from 1980 to 2000. Drawing on sociology and social psychology, this book examines three microprocesses of socialization—mimicking, social influence, and persuasion—as they have played out in the attitudes of Chinese diplomats active in the Conference on Disarmament, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban, the Convention on Conventional Weapons, and the ASEAN Regional Forum. Among the key conclusions: Chinese officials in the post-Mao era adopted more cooperative and more self-constraining commitments to arms control and disarmament treaties, thanks to their increasing social interactions in international security institutions.

Alastair Iain Johnston
Executive Committee; Faculty Associate; Governor James Noe and Linda Noe Laine Professor of China in World Affairs, Department of Government, Harvard University

Johnston, Alastair Iain. Social States: China in International Institutions, 1980-2000. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.
2006
Abdelal, Rawi E, Alastair Iain Johnston, Yoshiko Margaret Herrera, and Rose McDermott. 2006. “Identity as a Variable”. Abstract
As scholarly interest in the concept of identity continues to grow, social identities are proving to be crucially important for understanding contemporary life. Despite—or perhaps because of—the sprawl of different treatments of identity in the social sciences, the concept has remained too analytically loose to be as useful a tool as the literature’s early promise had suggested. We propose to solve this longstanding problem by developing the analytical rigor and methodological imagination that will make identity a more useful variable for the social sciences. This article offers more precision by defining collective identity as a social category that varies along two dimensions—content and contestation. Content describes the meaning of a collective identity. The content of social identities may take the form of four non-mutually-exclusive types: constitutive norms; social purposes; relational comparisons with other social categories; and cognitive models. Contestation refers to the degree of agreement within a group over the content of the shared category. Our conceptualization thus enables collective identities to be compared according to the agreement and disagreement about their meanings by the members of the group. The final section of the article looks at the methodology of identity scholarship. Addressing the wide array of methodological options on identity—including discourse analysis, surveys, and content analysis, as well as promising newer methods like experiments, agent-based modeling, and cognitive mapping—we hope to provide the kind of brush clearing that will enable the field to move forward methodologically as well.
Johnston, Alastair Iain, and Robert S Ross. 2006. New Directions in the Study of China's Foreign Policy. Stanford University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

This book brings together several generations of specialists in Chinese foreign policy to present readers with current research on both new and traditional topics. The authors draw on a wide range of new materials—archives, documents, memoirs, opinion polls, and interviews—to examine traditional issues such as China's use of force from 1959 to the present, and new issues such as China's response to globalization, its participation in several international economic institutions, and the role of domestic opinion in its foreign policy.

The book also offers a number of suggestions about the topics, methods, and sources that the Chinese foreign policy field needs to examine and address if it is to grow in richness, rigor, and relevance.

2005
Abdelal, Rawi E., Yoshiko Margaret Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston, and Rose McDermott. 2005. “Identity as a Variable”. Abstract

As scholarly interest in the concept of identity continues to grow, social identities are proving to be crucially important for understanding contemporary life. Despite—or perhaps because of—the sprawl of different treatments of identity in the social sciences, the concept has remained too analytically loose to be as useful a tool as the literature?s early promise had suggested. Our paper proposes to solve this longstanding problem by developing the analytical rigor and methodological imagination that will make identity a reliable variable for the social sciences. Such work is important and, indeed, long overdue.

Social identity scholarship suffers from two sets of problems: conceptual issues and coordination gaps. The conceptual problems include the question of how to compare and differentiate types of identities, as well as the question of how to exploit theoretical advances in operationalizing identity as a variable. The other weakness in identity scholarship concerns what we term “coordination” problems. These include a lack of consistency and clarity in defining and measuring identities, a lack of cross–disciplinary and cross–sub–field coordination of identity research, and missed opportunities to take advantage of expanded methodological options. The analytic framework developed in this paper addresses these problems and offers a way forward.

Our paper offers more rigor and precision by defining collective identity as a social category that varies along two dimensions—content and contestation. Content describes the meaning of a collective identity. The content of social identities may take the form of four, non–mutuallyexclusive types: constitutive norms; social purposes; relational comparisons with other social categories; and cognitive models. Contestation refers to the degree of agreement within a group over the content of the shared category. Our conceptualization thus enables collective identities to be compared according to the agreement and disagreement about their meanings by the members of the group.

The final section of the paper looks at the methodology of identity scholarship. Addressing the wide array of methodological options on identity—including discourse analysis, surveys, and content analysis, as well as promising newer methods like experiments, agent–based modeling, and cognitive mapping—we hope to provide the kind of brush–clearing that will enable the field to move forward methodologically as well.

Our paper thus offers two ways forward for social scientific work on identity—by developing a more rigorous, more precisely defined analytic framework, and by providing a methodological roadmap for further integrated progress in identity scholarship.

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2002
This article examines one facet—arms control—of a larger puzzle in US-China relations over the last decade, namely why are we seeing an increasing degree of politico-military friction in Sino-US relations as China becomes more, not less, integrated into global institutions? On the one hand China’s arms control performance on most issues improved over the 1990s, with participation rates increasing in various institutions, agreements and regimes, and with accession to a small number of commitments that could actually constrain China’s relative power to some degree. On the other, despite these trends Sino-US differences over arms control have remain acute and a source of friction in the relationship. What is going on? This article begins with a description of the changes in Chinese arms control behavior over the last decade or so and offers a range of possible explanations for these. It then examines the areas of disagreement and friction in the US-China relationship on arms control. In particular it focuses on the apparent differences in the preferences of US and Chinese decision-makers on arms control policy. Finally it offers a list of three major explanations for these differences.
Paper originally prepared for Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of American Studies Project on Issues in Sino-US Relations.
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This article examines one facet – arms control — of a larger puzzle in US–China relations over the last decade, namely why are we seeing an increasing degree of politico–military friction in Sino–US relations as China becomes more, not less, integrated into global institutions? On the one hand China?s arms control performance on most issues improved over the 1990s, with participation rates increasing in various institutions, agreements and regimes, and with accession to a small number of commitments that could actually constrain China?s relative power to some degree. On the other, despite these trends Sino–US differences over arms control have remain acute and a source of friction in the relationship. What is going on? This article begins with a description of the changes in Chinese arms control behavior over the last decade or so and offers a range of possible explanations for these. It then examines the areas of disagreement and friction in the US–China relationship on arms control. In particular it focuses on the apparent differences in the preferences of US and Chinese decision–makers on arms control policy. Finally it offers a list of three major explanations for these differences.

2001
Johnston, Alastair Iain, Rawi E Abdelal, and Yoshiko Margaret Herrera. 2001. “Treating Identity as a Variable”. Abstract
This paper outlines our initial thoughts on treating identity as a variable. It is part of a longer-term project to develop conceptualizations of identity and, more importantly, to develop technologies for observing identity and identity change that will have wide application in the social sciences. Heretofore the usual techniques for analyzing identity have consisted of non-replicable discourse analysis or lengthy individual interviews, at one extreme, or the use of large-N surveys at the other. Yet, much social science research relies on historical and contemporaneous texts. Specifically we hope to develop computer-aided quantitative and qualitative methods for analyzing a large number of textual sources in order to determine the content, intensity, and contestation of individual and collective identities at any particular point in time and space. These methods will allow researchers to use identity in a more rigorous and replicable way as an independent (and dependent) variable in a wide variety of research projects. They will also allow more rigorous testing among identity-based hypotheses—such as those drawing on social identity theory, role theory, or cognitive theories—along with other variables in explaining behavior. Researchers may also be able to develop early warning indicators that might be used to track growing intensity of out-group differentiation, a development which makes subjected groups more susceptible to identity-based mobilization for conflict. Perhaps most important, scholars will, using these methods, be able to observe more systematically the contestation and construction of identity over time.
Paper prepared for presentation at APSA, August 30–September 2, 2001, San Francisco.
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Johnston, Alastair Iain. 2001. “Treating Institutions as Social Environments”. Abstract

This article starts from a very simple (and unoriginal) premise: actors who enter into a social interaction rarely emerge the same. For mainstream international relations theories this is at one and the same time an uncontroversial statement and a rather radical one. It is uncontroversial because mainstream IR accepts that social interaction can change behavior through the imposition of exogenous constraints created by this interaction. Thus, for instance, neorealists claim that the imperatives of maximizing security in anarchical environment tends to compel most states most of the time to balance against rising power. Contractual institutionalists also accept that social interaction inside institutions can change behavior (strategies) in cooperative directions by altering cost–benefit analyses as different institutional rules act on fixed preferences.

1999
Johnston, Alastair Iain. 1999. “Sun Zi Studies in the United States”. Abstract

This paper discusses the recent rise in popularity of Chinese philosopher Sun Zi's writings in the U.S.

I want to take advantage of some of the gaps in the literature to propose an argument about realpolitik–as–ideology that explores variation in the intensity or hardness of realpolitik as a function of variation in the requirements for the legitimation of power inside a social group. Specifically, I want to make the following related arguments, moving from least to most controversial: ? Regime legitimation involves, among other things, the construction of a ?national identity? among the members of a society. ? Identity construction rests on establishing and perpetuating differences between the ingroup and all other outgroups. ? Foreign policy is a process in which differences between a sovereign nation–state ingroup and a sovereign nation state outgroup are (re)created. ? Foreign policy, therefore, is critical for identity construction and thus for legitimation. ? When state elites come to believe their legitimacy is declining or under challenge foreign policy will be a key tool/process used to intensify ingroup identity inside the nation state. ? Foreign policy strategies will be both positive (e.g. designed to cue pride and superiority in being a member of the ingroup) and negative (e.g. designed to cue fear and disdain towards outgroups). ? The specific content of these positive and negative strategies will depend on the specific, contingent contents of national identity.

1995
Johnston, Alastair Iain. 1995. “Solving The Taiwan Problem: A Modest Proposal”. Abstract

Proposal for avoiding conflict between China and Taiwan.