Academic Paper Writing Service http://StudyHub.vip/Actors-In-Global-Politics--When-Perform 👈

1. Théo Aiolfi
Actors in global politics: when Performance Studies
meet International Relations
Dissertation submitted in part-fulfillment of the Masters Course in Global
Governance and Ethics, University College London, September 2015
Supervised by Cathy Elliott, Senior Teaching Fellow in Qualitative Research
Methods and International Development - School of Public Policy, UCL

2. Abstract
The word ‘actor’ is one of these terms that are extremely common in International Relations
scholarship, which can be found in works by scholars of all theoretical inclinations, yet that
very few take time to define and conceptualize explicitly. Arguably, its metaphorical
accessibility and its apparent simplicity may account for its common-sensical character.
However, it is often simply used as a shortcut to describe the phenomenon of agency, leaving
the concept under-developed, especially regarding its dramaturgical roots. In this dissertation,
I engage with three mainstream approaches of International Relations Theory, realism,
liberalism and constructivism, by analyzing textually a ‘canonical’ book for each of these.
After a discussion on the way the word ‘actor’ is used and conceptualized in each of these
approaches, with a specific emphasis on their limits and shortcomings, I subsequently argue in
favor of an interdisciplinary framework combining Performance Studies and International
Relations. I then expose the reasons why such a framework would be the most appropriate to
explore fully the potential of the concept actor, by highlighting several ways in which it
would remedy the above mentioned shortcomings and by briefly exposing two prospective
avenues for empirical research showcasing this potential. I eventually conclude by a plea in
favor of an interdisciplinary collaboration between politics and performance.
1
The cover picture depicts a UN Human Rights Council Meeting in Geneva in May 2013.
(photo credit: UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré)

3. Table of Contents
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………1
Introduction…………………………………………………………………….3
Preliminary considerations on methods………………………………………6
Engaging with International Relations scholarship……………………….……..6
On the inclusion of Performance Studies………………………………………..8
I - Reconceptualizing actors in International Relations Theory…..……….11
Actors in a rationalist framework………………………………………………11
The constructivist critique and its limits………………………………….……17
II - A performative approach to actors in global politics……………….…..23
Performance and performativity………………………………………………..23
Goffman and strategic interaction……………………………….…..…………25
Analyzing actors in global politics as performers……………………….……..27
Avenues for prospective empirical research……………………………………27
Conclusion………………………………….…….……………………………31
Bibliography……………………………………………………..……………32
2

4. Introduction
In International Relations (IR) scholarship, the word ‘actor’ belongs to the taken-for-granted
and unproblematic vocabulary of political science, a concept that very few scholars take time
to detail and question when they use it. It is one of those common-sensical words that the
reader will undoubtedly find many times in any substantive piece of research, any
introductory textbook. Etymologically, the word ‘actor’ originates from latin and is derived
from the perfect passive principle of ‘ago’ (“make, do, lead”). Although there are alternative
synonyms, such as ‘agent’ which is derived from the same etymological root, ‘actor’ remains
more common in the vocabulary of IR. One could argue that this choice comes from the
metaphorical accessibility of the term, its dramatic connotations that make it easy for any
reader to grasp. It is one of the “metaphors of the stage” that Parkinson (2014: 19) claim are
commonplace in the vocabulary of political science. That being said, it would be going too far
to assume that scholars in IR use this word as something more than a mere useful metaphor to
describe the multi-faceted phenomenon of agency in global politics. By focusing on its
obvious meaning and leaving behind its theatrical and performative roots, International
Relations Theory (IRT) does not embrace fully the analytical potential of the term. As a result,
‘actor’, as both a word and a concept, has been overlooked.
In order to address this issue, this dissertation argues that the literature in IR could benefit
from a conception of ‘actor’ that goes way beyond a metaphorical use and embrace the
conceptual tools of performance studies. Indeed, “drawing on theories of actor production and
audience reception can bring a level of understanding and analysis to political actions that
would otherwise remain obscured” (Rowe 2013: 9). Conceiving ‘actor’ as a fundamental
inclusion of the “grammar of politics” (Rai & Reinelt 2014, Saward 2014), and not only as a
metaphorical shortcut, would open the way for a fruitful interdisciplinary discussion of
theoretical concepts that have not been adequately explored in the IR literature, but could yet
bring meaningful and substantive insights to our understanding of global politics.
3

5. Thus, these considerations can be clarified and reformulated into the following research
questions, which will be addressed throughout this dissertation :
“In which ways is the word ‘actor’used and conceptualized in International Relations Theory
and what are the limits of its use? How does a Performance Studies framework fix this and
which new insights can it bring?”
In order to answer these questions, the argument developed in this dissertation is twofold.
After a preliminary discussion of issues related to methods and epistemology, I will consider
in a first section the concept of ‘actors’ in global politics as it has been traditionally conceived
and used by different approaches in IR, aiming to specifically highlight the shortcomings of
these conceptions and the issues left under-developed or unaddressed by this use. Thus, I will
firstly develop the conventional view of IR approaches informed by rationalism, mainly
focusing on the two most prominent neopositivist approaches to IR: neorealism and neoliberal
institutionalism. Despite significant ontological differences, both of these approaches share a
substantive part of their theoretical premises in what Waever (1996) famously called the ‘neo-
neo synthesis’. This notably includes a statist conception of the actor in the international
setting as rational, self-interested and strategically acting to maximize its interests. Secondly, I
will examine the powerful critique of the rationalist conception of actors by scholars
belonging to social constructivism. Using notably Weber’s distinction between
Zweckrationalität, the logic of instrumental rationality, and Wertrationalität, the logic of
appropriateness, constructivists have criticized mainstream rationalist approaches in IR for
completely dismissing the latter in favor of the former, which they find do not represent
accurately the behaviors of actors in global politics. While the constructivist critique extended
significantly the meaning of the concept ‘actor’ beyond its rationalist use, it remains limited
by leaving aside the dramaturgical aspect of the concept and by turning the actors into
“cultural dupes” (Barnett 1999: 7) severely deprived of agency.
The second section of this dissertation will then draw the main lines of the above-mentioned
interdisciplinary approach to actors in global politics informed by both Performance Studies
and International Relations Theory, emphasizing its specific features and strengths. This
4

6. development will be fourfold: in a first time, I will discuss the concepts of performance and
performativity, highlighting the links differences between both theoretical concepts while
showcasing the relevance of the latter on how to conceptualize actors in global politics; in a
second time, this dissertation will engage with the work of Goffman (1959), an American
sociologist who developed in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life various fundamental
concepts of Performance Studies, like the extension of a dramaturgical frame of analysis to
social interactions. Following, Schimmelfennig (2002), who already argued for an inclusion
of Goffman’s approach in IR, we discuss how his insights can combine the strengths of both
Weberian logics of rationality; in a third time, I will wrap up many of the insights developed
above to highlight the main strengths and distinctive tools provided by a Performance Studies
framework, focusing particularly on its capacity to highlight understudied aspects of IR
scholarship; and in a final and fourth time, I mention two avenues for prospective research
which showcase the empirical potential of such an interdisciplinary framework.
5

7. Preliminary considerations on methods
Given the theoretical nature of this dissertation, a detailed methodological account is less
fundamental and necessary than in a more empirically oriented work. Indeed, although the
interdisciplinary Performance Studies framework developed below is leaning towards the side
of qualitative methods, the research questions guiding this dissertation do not require the use
of any specific methodological tool, such as discourse analysis or process tracing, but rather
imply a thorough and meticulous discussion of the theoretical issues at hand, as well as some
textual analysis to illustrate this discussion, especially in the first section. Neither would a
section on operationalization be relevant in this configuration, given that the answer to the
research questions does not imply any concept to be tested. However, that does not mean that
the research conducted for this dissertation was not systematical or worthwhile, and this
preliminary section will develop two important points concerning the way this study was
conducted.
Engaging with International Relations scholarship
Regarding the scholarship in International Relations Theory (IRT) about the concept of
‘actor’, the literature review for this dissertation was conducted with a paradigmatic lens.
Indeed, ever since its formal recognition as a distinctive academic discipline in the aftermath
of the World War I, IR has always been a ‘divided’ and ‘dividing’ field of enquiry (Holsti
1985). One of its notable features has been the segmentation of the literature in various
approaches, also called ‘paradigms’, ‘schools’ or ’traditions of thought’, around which most
scholars in IR base their research . These approaches, whose borders and actual
1
denominations remain very debated, have been prominent in structuring the field of
International Relations Theory and, for the purpose of this dissertation, they serve as stepping
stones to showcase the various ways scholars have used the word ‘actor’.
According to the 2012 survey of the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) Project, 78% of
1
scholars in IR engage in paradigmatic research (Malinia et. al 2012: 27).
6

8. Of course, this dissertation cannot cover exhaustively the immense variety of approaches
within the discipline, I have thus chosen to focus on the most mainstream traditions of
thought. As stated in the cross-national survey led by the Teaching, Research, and
International Policy (TRIP) Project in 2012, the three most widespread paradigms are realism,
liberalism and constructivism, which represent respectively 16, 15 and 22% of the scholars in
IR (Malinia et al. 2012: 27). These paradigms are the only ones in the survey whose
percentage reaches the 10% threshold and combined they represent more than half of the
totality of the scholars surveyed, which undoubtedly confirms their status as “mainstream”.
Hence, to come back to the central issue of this dissertation, analyzing the way prominent
scholars belonging to these three approaches use the word ‘actor’ would be a promising path
to sketch a relatively good portrayal of the IR scholarship on that question, especially given
the limited scope of my research.
However, because the purpose of this dissertation is very specific and requires a great level of
detail, I have also chosen to conduct an in-depth reading and partial textual analysis of several
prominent books to provide me with textual and numerical information on the use of the word
‘actor’ within IR scholarship and to support my arguments. Among the three approaches
mentioned above, I have focused on one prominent flagship scholar for each: John
Mearsheimer for realism, Robert Keohane for liberalism and Alexander Wendt for
constructivism . Furthermore, for each of these scholars, I have chosen to read and examine
2
comprehensively one major book : “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics” (Mearsheimer
2001), “After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political
Economy” (Keohane 2005 [1984]) and “Social Theory of International Politics” (Wendt
1999). All of these books are widely regarded as seminal texts in IRT, as well as being among
their most referenced and detailed works.
I am of course deeply aware that limiting an approach to one specific scholar is a very crude
simplification, and so is focusing on only one book for each of scholar, even if this book is
They also happen to be the three most quoted scholars in the TRIP survey, when the respondents were asked to
2
list “scholars who have produced the best work in the field of IR in the past 20 years” (Malinia et al. 2012: 48).
7

9. their most recognized work. However, the extent of the literature surveyed for this dissertation
goes way further these three authors, and the arguments developed throughout this work also
stem from the reading of IR scholars from various approaches, and from an engagement with
all kind of scholarly material, including notably introductory textbooks (like Burchill et al.
2013 or Baylis & Owens 2013) for the broad overview of the discipline they provide.
I also do recognize that this partial choice of ‘popular’ paradigms leaves behind other
important approaches such as marxism, feminism and many others, whose conceptualization
of ‘actor’ would have considerably varied , but by confronting the most mainstream schools
3
of thought in IRT, I wanted to mitigate any bias of selection that would have occurred if I had
selected differently the approaches studied. Furthermore, the main purpose of the in-depth
reading and textual analysis conducted on these three specific books, far from an aspiration
towards quantitative inference, is to ground my argument and observations within prominent
pieces of scholarship. Drawing numerical examples and in-text quotations from them provides
significant illustrations of the argument I aim to make in this dissertation, and the ‘canonical’
status of these books in IR scholarship can only enhance both the relevance and the particular
resonance of the points made.
On the inclusion of Performance Studies
The decision to use an interdisciplinary framework based on Performance Studies in order to
fix the shortcomings of the conventional view on ‘actors’ by the literature in IR scholarship
was not a choice made by convenience. Although I admit an important affinity and prior
engagement with approaches based on Performance Studies, there are at least two reasons
why this interdisciplinary framework is the most adequate choice to answer the questions
guiding this research. Firstly, stemming from their roots in dramatics and theatrical studies
(Schechner 2006: 2), Performance Studies have a natural affinity with the concept of ‘actor’.
Scholars from this field have thus developed a rich body of literature on the subject, as well as
The case of poststructuralism on that aspect deserves specific attention, it will be covered more precisely in the
3
second section of the dissertation.
8

10. the most appropriate and extensive tools to analyze and use the word ‘actor’ to its fullest
potential.
Secondly, there has been recently a surge in the number of scholarly works aiming to bridge
the gap between performance and politics, among which I may quote Rai & Reinelt (2014a),
Edkins & Kear (2013) and Rowe (2013). These promising cross-disciplinary initiatives have
even started to be institutionalized in the United Kingdom, with the Warwick Performance
and Politics Network (WPPN) established in 2011 at Warwick University and the
Performance and Politics International (PPi) Research Centre established in 2013 at
Aberystwyth University. This burgeoning literature has brought significant challenges and
complementing insights to IR, and this dissertation aims to be a contribution to this
interdisciplinary field of research that is particularly relevant and well equipped to fill the gap
in IR literature about the concept of ‘actor’.
Finally, on more epistemological grounds, the choice of an interdisciplinary framework arises
from two considerations: it is impossible to define an objectively ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer to
the research questions guiding this dissertation, neither it is possible to give an absolutely
exhaustive response. On the one hand, I embrace the tenets of mind-world monism, denying
the possibility of objectivity and acknowledging that “the production of knowledge is itself
also and simultaneously productive of the world” (Jackson 2010: 9). This implies practically
that a theoretical discussion like this one cannot be accurately examined through positivist
criteria like validity and reliability, but that it shall instead be intersubjectively judged by “the
wider community of social scientists as the ultimate tribunal of truth” (Howarth 2000: 142),
so that the argument is legitimate if it is deemed well-conceived, coherent, convincing and
consistent. On the other hand, I also fully endorse the normative claim made by Leira (2015)
when he argues that diversity and pluralism is fundamentally positive in academia, which
means that the choice to include scholarship beyond the disciplinary borders of IR does not
impact negatively the legitimacy of my argument. Although there could have been various
ways to answer the problematic at hand, both within the discipline and outside of it, the
9

11. framework developed below was chosen for its particular relevance to the question and with
the acknowledged objective to build bridges between IR and Performance Studies.
10

12. I - Reconceptualizing actors in International Relations Theory
Actors in a rationalist framework
Out of the three approaches studied in this section, realism and liberalism share a specific
status for several reasons. Firstly, because they are both the oldest schools of thought of IRT,
which have debated with each other throughout the history of the discipline, starting with the
so-called ‘First Great Debate’ between classical realists and idealists during the interwar
period . Both paradigms have been at the heart of many changes and internal debates, which
4
turned realism and liberalism into umbrella terms including a great variety of approaches.
During the last decades, the most popular and influent iterations of these two approaches have
respectively been neorealism, or structural realism, and neoliberalism, also called neoliberal
institutionalism. For the sake of clarity, these are the two specific approaches to which I will
refer whenever I mention realism and liberalism.
Secondly, neorealism and neoliberalism share many similar tenets, especially in terms of
epistemology. In spite of a disagreement on the extent to which cooperation in an anarchic
international system is possible, on the distinction between relative and absolute gains and on
the role of international institutions, their theoretical premises overlap significantly. After the
so-called “inter-paradigm debate” (Waever 1996) which opposed proponents of both
approaches, neorealism and neoliberalism agreed on the “neo-neo synthesis” (ibid.), forming
de facto what Keohane (1988) famously named rationalism, in opposition with reflectivism.
This synthesis includes notably a shared epistemological commitment to positivism and the
scientific methods, a systemic outlook on international politics , and a materialistic
5
perspective emphasizing exclusively the role of material factors, especially military
capabilities for realists and economic resources for liberals even if those are often intertwined.
The veracity of this mythical debate has been strongly questioned in recent years. See for example Schmidt
4
2002 and De Carvalho et al. 2011
This is what Waltz (1959: 238), largely recognized as the first scholar to popularize neorealism, called a “third
5
image analysis”, focused on the anarchical structure of the international system.
11

13. Regarding the way rationalist perspectives conceptualize the word ‘actor’, they also share an
important number of similarities. They are both heavily influenced by the “choice-theoretic
assumptions of microeconomic theory”, which implies that “political actors […] are assumed
to be atomistic, self-interested and rational” (Reus-Smit 2013: 220). For realists and liberals
alike, actors are strategically behaving to maximize their interests, to quote Mearsheimer,
main advocate of the so-called ‘offensive’ version of neorealism: “States are rational actors
who are reasonably effective at designing strategies that maximize their chances of
survival” (Mearsheimer 2001: 363). Keohane even openly acknowledges the realist origin of
this premise that informs his book: “I assume, with the Realists, that actors are rational
egoists” (Keohane 2005: 67).
As can be seen in the previous Mearsheimer’s quote, rationalist approaches are also
characterized by a state-centric bias, which means that rationalist scholars emphasize
immensely the role of states as actors in international politics. However, and this is one of the
main dividing lines between realists and liberals on their conceptualization of actors, the
former have a much more statist outlook and tend to disregard all of the other actors whereas
the latter are opened to a wider variety of actors in IR, while still firmly believing that states
remain the most important ones.
That line of divergence is very easy to distinguish when analyzing in detail Mearsheimer’s
Tragedy of Great Power Politics and Keohane’s After Hegemony. Indeed, in his seminal book,
Mearsheimer only uses the word ‘actor’ five times and its plural variant ‘actors’ ten times, a
total of 15 occurrences in a book of more than 500 pages. A very important point to be made
is that in none of these occurrences is the word ‘actor’ defined explicitly or conceptualized
sufficiently in-depth. With this very obvious absence of definition, Mearsheimer appears to be
using ‘actor’ as a taken-for-granted concept that every reader will undoubtedly understand
immediately and that does not even require a proper explanation. Mearsheimer thus
exemplifies the observation made in the introduction about the use of ‘actor’ as common-
sensical word in IR scholarship. Unsurprisingly either, there is no reference in Mearsheimer’s
12

14. book to the dramaturgical sense of the word, which remains used a metaphor to talk about
agency in the international system.
In accordance with the above mentioned statist bias characterizing realist approaches, this
agency is only granted to states and another notable observation emerging from a close
reading of Mearsheimer’s Tragedy of Great Power Politics is that most occurrences of the
word ‘actor’ happen in a sentence that also includes the word ‘state’. The word ‘actor’ is thus
used as a way to crystallize the uniqueness of states in the international system, which are for
him the only entities of the international system granted agency and worth being analyzed.
Among the sentences legitimizing the near-exclusive status of states as the only legitimate
bearers of agency in IR, this quote is the most emblematic: “States are the key actors in world
politics and they operate in an anarchic system” (Mearsheimer 2001: 362). Even if this
agency is heavily constrained by the structural features of the international system, in which
states are nothing more but “billiard balls that only vary in size” (ibid. 18) shaken by systemic
variations and whose internal features do not matter, Mearsheimer claims in his book that
states - and particularly the most powerful of them, the so-called ‘great powers’ - are able to
make the most out of the structural constraints and impact international politics.
The only exception where ‘actor’ is not used directly to endorse the agency of states is the
sentence “For some, the key actor in the market is the multinational corporation (MNC),
which is seen as threatening to overwhelm the state” (ibid. 412), followed by a paragraph
contradicting this position. Far from discarding the argument developed above, it does
reinforce it. Indeed, in this case the word ‘actor’ related to ‘MNC’ does not represent his
position on the topic, but rather a stance he criticizes strongly. Here, Mearsheimer does not
use the word ’actor’ to grant agency to another entity than states, but instead to prove that it is
absolutely irrelevant, or even wrong, to give the status of actor to this entity. This position
reflects the skepticism of scholars from a neorealist tradition which will, at best, not “deny
that these [non-state] actors exist [and] are currently engaged in governance of some sort” but
that “this web of formal and informal actors […] is contingent on the authority and legitimacy
13

15. of the state” (Charlette & Sterling-Folker 2014: 99), hence emphasizing their irrelevance for
IRT.
By contrast, liberals like Keohane have a much more mitigated position on the issue of non-
state actors. A close scrutiny of Keohane’s After Hegemony shows a much higher use of the
word ‘actor’, mentioned 33 times in its singular form and 119 times in its plural form, which
amounts to a total of 152 occurrences. This is in sharp contrast with Mearsheimer’s very
limited use of the word. A reasonable explanation for this realist reluctance to use the word
‘actor’ would be the redundancy of choosing it when the word ‘state’ covers the whole extent
of its meaning, by which one could assume that there are very few circumstances in
Mearsheimer’s book where he would prefer using ‘actor’ instead of ‘state’. Put differently,
because states are the only relevant actors in Mearsheimer’s perspective, it is preferable to
specify ‘states’ directly instead of using the word ‘actor’. He will hence only mention ‘actor’
whenever he needs to grant states the status of actor, but in any other circumstance, ‘state’ is
more intelligible to the reader.
In Keohane’s book, because the word ‘actor’ does not immediately refer to states, he also uses
it as a shortcut to mention a variety of other entities that would not be covered by the mere
use of the word ‘state’. That being said, Keohane remains very elusive on the exact nature and
number of these other entities. Indeed, he for example says: “Wealth and power are sought by
a variety of actors in world politics, including non state organizations such as multinational
business corporations.” (Keohane 2005: 25). In this example, which is one of the only two
quotes wherein he mentions explicitly another actor than states, Keohane mentions MNCs,
which puts him at odds with Mearsheimer given the analysis above, but the enumeration we
could have expected after the expression “such as” is cut abruptly by the end of the sentence.
In the second quote about other actors, the exact same wording occurs: “[…] and the behavior
of states and nonstate actors such as multinational corporations on the other hand […]” (ibid.
64). In all of the other quotes in which Keohane mentions “other actors”, he does not even
take time to detail what he means by that expression, such as in this one: “I believe that the
14

16. behavior of states, as well as of other actors, is strongly affected by the constraints and
incentives provided by the international environment” (ibid. 26).
Moreover, Keohane is much more insistent on his repeated statement that, although there are
various entities that qualify as actors, states remain the most relevant of them, especially the
most powerful: “Wealth and power are linked in international relations through the activities
of independent actors, the most important of which are states” (ibid. 18); “Wealth and power
are sought by a variety of actors in world politics […]. But states are crucial actors, not only
seeking wealth and power directly but striving to construct frameworks of rules and practices”
(ibid. 25); “Our analysis of international cooperation and regimes therefore focuses
principally on states” (ibid. 25). It is also worth mentioning that, very much like Mearsheimer
in his book, Keohane never precisely and explicitly defines what he means by ‘actor’. Once
again, the meaning of the word is implied, because of its common-sensical value and its
metaphorical accessibility which, for this author as well, seems to be sufficiently ‘speaking
for itself’.
On Keohane’s behalf, he nonetheless hints at a possibility to break through the realist ‘black
box’ of the unified state, by mentioning “governments” as an example of “collective
actors” (ibid. 110). In opposition with the bold statements in the first section of his book
where he aligns nearly completely his liberal position on the realist tenets, Keohane starts to
“relax the assumption that each actor has stable preferences and assess how leaders and
bureaucrats could seek to use international regimes to guard against changes in their own
governments' future preference” (ibid. 110). This is a significant step towards extending the
use of the word ‘actor’ because it goes beyond the reified state normally assumed in
rationalist approaches which takes decision on the long-run with a “farsighted self-
interest” (ibid. 123), and closer to “an individual […] made of human flesh and blood” (ibid.
111) which is less rational and much more shortsighted, what Keohane then calls a “myopic
actor” (ibid. 123)
15

17. This brief analysis thus offers a good illustration of the liberal perspective on actors: although
decidedly state-centric, Keohane’s increased use of the word ‘actor’ in comparison with
Mearsheimer’s showcases a deliberate step toward more openness to a plurality of meanings,
or at least entities, associated with this word. Indeed, choosing to use ‘actor’ instead of ‘state’
leaves open the door for a more inclusive definition of who are the actors at the international
level, however limited their influence might be. Although his attempts to extend the concept
of ‘actor’ beyond realism remain modest and limited, because of the rigid structure imposed
by his commitment to structuralism and rationalism, Keohane also makes bolder claims
regarding for instance the inclusion of economic actors, like MNCs, along political actors.
Another problem emerges from his digressions with rationalism: the ambiguity whenever he
refers to an actor like the United States as to whether he talks about the state, the government
or the individual decision-maker.
Despite these important nuances between the realist and the liberal position, as exemplified in
depth by the textual analysis of Mearsheimer’s and Keohane’s seminal books, both rationalist
approaches suffer from a consequent number of limitations in regard to their use and
conceptualization of the word actor. Most of them have already been mentioned above, but
they can be synthesized to some central points. Firstly, the absence of proper and explicit
definition is a very notable limit which showcases the unproblematic and taken-for-granted
nature of the term, but also its neglected status. Secondly, the state-centric bias, although
partly mitigated for liberalism, drastically limits the range of possible meanings and leaves
behind a significant number of phenomena which can only be analyzed if other actors than
states are accounted for . Thirdly, the focus on the structural nature of international relations
6
poses an important limitation on the capabilities of actors, which are in this perspective
extremely constrained by the system surrounding them. This eventually draws a very static
portrayal of global politics which overlooks many bottom-up and lower level political
activities that would be relevant to analyze within an extended conception of actors. Fourthly,
the essentially materialistic outlook of rationalist approaches forgoes an immense variety of
There are many lengthy and well-argued criticisms of a state-centric approach, which is a recurring issue of
6
debate in IRT. For a comprehensive summary, please see Lake 2008.
16

18. aspects of international relations, including all of the ideational factors that influence greatly
the actors, such as norms, reputation and other intangible aspects of politics. Another
fundamental omission left behind because of this materialism is the cultural and symbolic
nature of the environment in which actors operate. Fifthly, Keohane already hinted at this
issue but the axiom presupposing the rationality of the actors, and more specifically the form
of rationality influenced by microeconomics adopted by realists and liberals alike, is a very
problematic simplification which often does not explain accurately the behaviors of actors. It
is notably on the two last points that the third approach examined below offers a powerful, yet
incomplete, critique of the rationalist account of actors in IR.
The constructivist critique and its limits
Social constructivism, often shortened as simply constructivism, is another prominent
approach in IRT which, after rising to popularity in the 1990s, reached a mainstream status in
the discipline, especially through the work of Alexander Wendt (1992, 1999). According once
more to the cross-national TRIP survey, it even surpassed realism in terms of sheer numbers,
with more than a fifth of the scholars surveyed declaring themselves constructivists (Maliniak
et al. 2012: 27). Yet, its root as a tradition of thought are very far from this current mainstream
position: emerging from the ashes of the debate between rationalism and reflectivism
(Keohane 1988), social constructivism is heir to a variety of approaches often grouped as
critical international theory, including notably poststructuralism in IR (Price & Reus-Smit
1998), while also being heavily influenced by several sociological approaches beyond strictly
IR scholarship, such as symbolic interactionism (Wendt 1992: 394) and institutionalism
(Finnemore 1996). More empirically oriented and willing to dialogue and compromise with
rationalist approaches than traditional critical theory, constructivism has been described by its
own proponents as a “social theory of international politics”, rather than as a “substantive
theory” (Barnett 2013: 223).
This means that constructivism is closer to a vast umbrella term that welcomes a variety of
approaches and scholars, whose ontological and epistemological commitments may
17

19. sometimes conflict, rather than to a coherent and tightly united school of thought. Some
skeptics claim that it is no more than a trendy label given to “practically anyone who shows
interest in culture, identity, norms and accept the notion that ‘actors’ interests are not fixed but
change and arise out of a social context” (Palan 2000: 576). Very similarly to the situation of
realism and liberalism, constructivism is also split in several smaller approaches. The main
line of division distinguishes conventional (or soft) constructivism from critical (or hard)
constructivism (Hopf 1998: 181-185, Palan 2000: 576): scholars from the former approach,
among which Wendt is the most prominent representative, are at the vanguard of the dialogue
with rationalist approach and aspire to mainstream recognition, whereas scholars, like Onuf
(1989) or Weldes (1996), identifying to the latter are closer to critical international theory and
criticize Wendt and the other soft constructivists for “constructing a new
orthodoxy” (Kratochwil 2000).
For the purpose of this dissertation, I will focus on the conventional branch of constructivism,
and particularly on Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics. This choice stems from
practical constraints of space, but it was also made to account for the prominent importance
and impressive impact of Wendt’s work on the discipline, making an analysis of his work
specifically relevant to our research questions. That being said, this brief portrayal of
constructivism intended to show the great diversity of approaches within this paradigm as
well as to locate precisely the upcoming discussion, while acknowledging that the argument
made cannot cover the entire breadth of constructivism, yet remain pertinent.
In relation to the use and conceptualization of the word ‘actor’, there are two main aspects on
which constructivists like Wendt are criticizing the rationalist perspective. Firstly, they are
very skeptical of the materialistic perspective adopted by rationalists, and especially realists
for which only objectively ‘real’ elements should be studied and taken into account when
analyzing the IR. Constructivists argue for the inclusion of shared values, identities and norms
which are paramount in understanding how do actors behave. For instance, Wendt criticizes
the realist conception of fixed interests by distinguishing between identities, “what actors
are”, and interests,“what actors want” (Wendt 1999: 231) which are not static but may evolve
18

20. through time. To account for the discrepancy between the conduct of actors and their interests
that rationalist have difficulties explaining, he introduces another distinction between
subjective interests, informed by the “belief of the actors about what they want”, and
objective interests, the “needs or functional imperatives which must be fulfilled if an identity
is to be reproduced” (ibid. 232). These ideational factors also apply to the structure of the
international system, which is not devoid of cultural norms and values (Finnemore & Sikkink
1998). Constructivists for example analyze international law by focusing on its normative and
intersubjective aspect, thus extending the liberal conception of international regimes
(Keohane 1982) to include ideational elements. Further than that, these structural norms and
values are shaping the conduct of actors as much as they are shaped by them. Indeed, because
Wendt considers for instance states as “real actors”, he grants them “anthropomorphic
qualities like desires, beliefs and intentionality”(Wend 1999: 197), hence giving them the
capability to interact with the structures containing them.
Secondly, in the continuity of the precedent point, constructivists criticize the form of
rationality underpinning the realist and liberal perspectives. For these approaches, “rationality
is normally defined in instrumental terms as nothing more than having consistent desires and
beliefs, and choice involves nothing more profound than their automatic enactment in
behavior that maximizes expected utility.” (ibid. 126). To fully understand the point made by
constructivists, I will use the distinction developed by Max Weber (1978 [1925]) in Economy
and Society when he develops a typology of the different forms of social actions. Among
those, he mentions two forms of rationalities: Zweckrationalität, or goal-oriented rationality,
and Wertrationalität, or value-based rationality (Weber 1978: 24-25). In other word, he
distinguishes a ‘logic of instrumental rationality’ from a ‘logic of appropriateness’. The
former is the kind of rationality guiding the actors in rationalist approaches, implying a
meticulous calculation of the means necessary to reach one’s goals and behaving following
the best mean available and adapted to this goal. Zweckrationalität is however under much
criticism by constructivist scholars (Dessler 1999) for which this kind of reasoning is flawed,
especially at the scale of collective actors like states where full knowledge of the situation is
hardly possible for decision-makers and because actors are constrained by a quantity of
19

21. binding norms and other symbolic factors like reputation. Regarding this form of rationality
as too simplistic and inadequate, constructivists instead believe that actors in IR are behaving
according to the second Weberian type of rationality, the logic of appropriateness. This means
that actors take value-based decisions, behaving in order to fulfill the norms they are expected
to follow and in accordance with what is expected from them. Wertrationalität thus accounts
for the influence of both binding and customary international law, but also of many actors
relying on these symbolic resources whose power is underplayed by rationalist approaches
like transnational advocacy networks (Keck & Sikkink 1999) or epistemic communities of
experts (Haas 1989).
Although this powerful critique of the rationalist conceptualization of actors brought many
new insights in IR scholarship, constructivism, especially in its conventional form, remains
subject to many criticisms regarding the way the word ‘actor’ is used. This is particularly
obvious in Wendt’s seminal book, where there is still no detailed definition or
conceptualization of the word, despite an even higher number of occurrences than in
Mearhseimer’s and Keohane’s book combined: there are indeed 62 mentions of the word
‘actor’ and 146 for its plural variant of ‘actors’, which amounts in total to 208 occurrences for
a book of more than 300 pages. The quote that is closest to a definition is the following: “The
actors who make up social systems are animals with biologically constituted capacities, needs,
and dispositions not at all unlike their cousins lower down the food chain. These animals have
various tools (‘capabilities’) at their disposal.” (Wendt 1999: 189). However, it could hardly
be seen as a proper definition. One would have expected, especially considering this
widespread use of the term and the significant increases in the importance of the concept
evoked below, that Wendt would have at least defined the word, but just like Mearsheimer and
Keohane, he also appears to be using the word ‘actor’ as common-sensical. This reinforces
again the argument that the scholarship in IR does not address properly this word, in spite of
its significant presence throughout many canonical texts of the discipline.
Another notable critic that is common to Wendt and his rationalist counterparts, is the strong
state-centric bias characterizing his book. About a third of the occurrences where the word
20

22. ‘actor(s)’ is used in this book are located in two chapters, XXIV and XXV. In these two
chapters, Wendt’s main point is the defense of the anthropomorphic metaphor of state-as-
actor, a goal he mentions clearly in his introduction: “A key first step […] is to accept the
assumption that states are actors with more or less human qualities: intentionality, rationality,
interests, etc. This is a debatable assumption. Many scholars see talk of state “actors” as an
illegitimate reification or anthropomorphization of what are in fact structures or institutions.
On their view the idea of state agency is at most a useful fiction or metaphor. I shall argue that
states really are agents.” (ibid. 10). He first sums up the stance of the scholars he aims to
criticize: “What unites these otherwise disparate views is the proposition that state actor hood
is just a ‘useful fiction’ or ‘metaphor’ for what is ‘really’ something else. The state is not
really an actor at all, but merely a ‘theoretical construct’” (ibid. 196) and then begins a
vehement defense of the opposite stance, which he recapitulates in the conclusion: “The first
[objective] was to justify the practice of treating states as real, unitary actors to which we can
attribute intentionality. This practice is essential to both the explanatory and political aspects
of the states systemic project” (ibid. 243). This stance illustrates notably the structural and
statist orientation of Wendt’s scholarship, a particularity that he and fellow conventional
constructivist share with the ‘neo’ variants of realism and liberalism. One could argue that this
choice was made to facilitate the possibility of dialogue with rationalist approaches, but there
is no denying that by dedicating so much time to the state and to prove its status as a “real”
actor, Wendt neglects the great variety of non-state actors that would have emerged from a
broader constructivist reading. The complete absence of a mention of ‘non-governmental
organizations/NGO’, ‘international organizations/IO’ or ‘multinational corporation/MNC’
throughout the entire book is for instance particularly noticeable, especially when those terms
are well documented in many other constructivist and even liberal accounts of IR.
The penultimate criticism I make to the constructivist critique about their conceptualization of
actor is going back to the Weberian concept of Wertrationalität. Indeed, although a value-
based rationality is explaining a great number of phenomena that the classical logic of
instrumental rationality would not be able to assess, it also has its limits. The most important
of which is the complete absence of the strategical aspect of decision-taking, which deprives
21

23. significantly the actors of their agency and leaves them into a very passive situation of mere
receptacle for norms and values. Actors in a constructivist perspective only react in an
appropriate way, but it remains unclear whether they can act, by which I mean taking
initiatives or playing around the norms imposed on them. This criticism has already been
eloquently and succinctly phrased by Barnett in the following words:
“Constructivism has tended to operate with an over-socialized view of actors, treating
them as near bearers of structures and, at the extreme, as cultural dupes. The real
danger here is the failure to recognize that actors have agency, can be strategic, are
aware of the culture and social rules that presumably limit their practices, and as
knowledgeable actors are capable of appropriating those cultural taproots for various
ends.” (Barnett 1999: 7, emphasis added)
The previous criticism leads directly to the last one covered in this essay, which is the failure
for constructivism to take into account the dynamic aspect of global politics. Indeed, in spite
of a less rigid and static outlook than liberals and realists, actors appear to be more shaped by
norms than they are conversely shaping them. This directly results from the over-socialized
conception of actors which makes it “virtually impossible to conceive of social change as
engineered by them” (ibid. 7). The same kind of problematic occurs also when talking about
the formation of identity, such as the one of the state. Although constructivists have written in
length about how can a state’s identity can change in relations to the others - as Wendt dit it
when he mentioned the Hobbesian, Lockean and Kantian forms of anarchy, using his now
famous expression “Anarchy is what states make of it” (Wendt 1992) - the initial formation of
the state identity remains poorly documented, even by Wendt himself in the above mentioned
article. One of the most convincing explanations filling this gap has been the poststructuralist
account given by Campbell (1992) in Writing Security, which uses one of the major tools of
Performance Studies: the concept of performativity, which will be discussed in the following
section.
22

24. II - A performative approach to actors in global politics
In the first section of this dissertation, I have attempted to showcase many significant limits
and issues with the way IR scholars were using and conceptualizing the word ‘actor’. This
section’s goal is much more constructive, aiming to offer an alternative to mainstream
approaches in IR with an interdisciplinary framework combining IR with Performance
Studies. As it is impossible to draw an exhaustive picture of what such a framework would be
if it were fully developed, and would indeed be the topic of a much longer piece of research, I
have decided to focus on some specific issues, authors and concepts, to highlight various
ways in which this interdisciplinary framework complements and fills the gaps evoked below
in traditional IR scholarship.
Performance and performativity
This first sub-section builds on the conclusive remarks of the previous section, which
mentioned the concept of performativity as a way to address the predominantly fixed
conception of actors in global politics. However, prior to reviewing in detail this concept, it is
necessary to establish briefly some definitions about what is meant by performance,
performance studies and performativity. To put it simply, “performance implies any action
that is conducted with the intention of being to some degree witnessed by another” (Rowe
2013: 8), no matter if this ‘other’ refers to an individual, a group or any kind of institution. It
is what Richard Schechner, the pioneer of Performance Studies, called “showing
doing” (Schechner 2013: 28), implying by there the symbiotic link between the performer and
its audience created through the performance. Hence, Performance Studies is defined as the
academic discipline interested in the study and analysis of performances of all kind, following
Schechner’s logic, it can be roughly summed up as “explaining showing doing” (ibid. 8).
Although the word ‘performance’ in itself, similarly to the word ‘actor’, has historically been
linked to the notion of theatre and dramaturgy, its meaning can be expanded way further this
restricted meaning. Indeed, “performance is a very inclusive notion of action; theatre is only
23

25. one node on a continuum that reaches from ritualization in animal behaviour (including
humans) through performances in everyday life--greetings, displays of emotion, family scenes
and so on--to rites, ceremonies and performances: large-scale theatrical events” (Schechner
1977: 1). Similarly, Performance Studies emerged from Theatre Studies and Dramatics but
extended its reach and its subject of analysis way beyond the theatre stages. It reached an
autonomous status as an academic discipline in the last decades, and its tool can be applied
“anywhere an action is displayed to/for others, whereby meaning is made from collective
interaction” (Rowe 2013: 9).
Performativity is one of the concepts studied predominantly by scholars in Performance
Studies, but it has found significant use in many other disciplines, including gender studies,
sociology and IR. It was originally coined by philosopher of language John L. Austin (1962)
who developed his theory of speech acts, in which he theorized the power implied by the
utterance of words. “Where performance is an act […], performativity is the enactment based
on that act” (De Vries et al. 2014: 285). Put differently, “performativity is a discursive mode
through which ontological effects (the idea of the autonomous subject or the notion of the pre-
existing state) are established. Performativity thereby challenges the notion of the naturally
existing subject. But it does not eradicate the appearance of the subject or the idea of agency.
Performance presumes a subject and occurs within the conditions of possibility brought into
being by the infrastructure of performativity.” (Bialasiewicz et al.: 408). One of the most
famous examples of the use of performativity has been Judith Butler, a poststructuralist
scholar who analyzed gender from a performative angle. She criticized the essentialist
conceptions of gender by arguing that femininity and masculinity did not exist objectively but
were produced and reproduced performatively through the everyday acts of men and women
that behaved accordingly to gendered norms, thus re-establishing and perpetuating these
norms (Butler 1990).
For the scholarship in IR, performativity was notably introduced by David Campbell (1992),
which also comes from poststructuralism. Opening the conception of states beyond the inside/
outside dichotomy that informs rationalism and mainstream constructivism, he broke down
24

26. the realist conception of the state as unified a whole. He showcased the perpetual
reproduction of the state identity through the combination of the everyday claim by state
representatives to act ‘in the name of the state’, the intersubjective belief by citizens in the
existence of this state and the shared recognition by foreign citizens and states representatives
of this existence. In this perspective, the state is thus nothing more than a performative
creation without material existence beyond these everyday performance. That thought-
provoking argument fills the constructivist gap about the formation of the state identity, as
well as allowing for a multi-level understanding of what the state can be.
In a Performance Studies framework to actors in IR, the state can refer to various things
depending on the level of analysis and the performance examined, from the reified
construction used by rationalist approaches, to the government, or even a single representative
performing ‘in the name of’ the state. Further than that, this framework does not restrict the
definition of ‘actor’ to a statist frame. Actors can be any individual, group or institution whose
performance is guided by a political intent. This opens the list of subjects of enquiry to an
immense pool of types of actors, including non-governmental organizations, international
institutions, multi-national corporations, but also to a wider range of actors not usually
associated with mainstream IR scholarship, such as transnational criminal networks, religious
organizations, marginalized groups and even musicians or other professional performers, as
long as there is a political dimension to their performance. Furthermore, a performative
outlook is ontologically designed to account for processes and change, thus complementing
the static approach adopted by rationalists with a dynamic perspective on global politics.
Goffman and actors in strategic interaction
Another fundamental aspect of an interdisciplinary framework informed by Performance
Studies stems from the work of American anthropologist and sociologist Erving Goffman. In
his seminal book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, which contributed significantly to
the development of symbolic interactionism in sociology, Goffman developed an analysis of
social life as a theatrical performance in everyday interactions. In stark opposition with the
25

27. dominant structuralist theories of post-war sociology, like functionalism, the ontological
premises of his project allowed him to grasp various aspects of the social life, including the
notions of sincerity in one’s act, the reasons underlying the manipulation of social norms or
the difference between scripts and improvisation in society (Goffman 1959) . Basing my
7
argument on Schimmelfennig (2002) who advocated strongly for the inclusion of Goffman’s
insights in IRT, I argue that a Goffmanian perspective can solve the rationality dilemma posed
by the limits of both the rationalist’s Zweckrationalität and the constructivist’s
Wertrationalität (Weber 1978: 24-25).
Indeed, by applying Goffman’s dramaturgical frame to global politics, we can “conceptualize
actors in a cultural environment as performers engaged in manipulative presentations of self
and framing who are, at the same time, constrained by the script and the consistency
requirement of their roles” (Schimmelfennig 2002: 417). Such a Performance Studies
framework manages to combine both forms of rationality to form a more sophisticated logic
of strategic interaction within a culturally embedded context. On the one hand, the strategic
interaction characteristics of a goal-based rationality is preserved, while expanding the purely
material environment to ideational factors. On the other hand, it preserves the cultural and
normative aspect of the environment conceived for a value-based rationality, but also brings
back a form of agency to the actors. Hence these actors are not conceived as “cultural
dupes” (Barnett 1999: 7) mechanically conditioned by over-socializing norms, but rather as
proper ‘actors’ in a theatrical sense that do engage in strategic and manipulative presentations
of self and framing, using the relative autonomy at the disposal.
Similarly to Schechner’s conception on performance, a Goffmanian “conceptualization of
social interactions shifts between ‘rituals’, i.e. highly structured situations and outcomes, and
‘games’ in which the actors enjoy considerable freedom of action and the situation is mainly
structured by the distribution of capacities and information among the
actors.” (Schimmelfennig 2002: 421). A Performance Studies framework would thus shift the
focus of analysis on the distinction between these rituals and games, requiring specific
For an exhaustive discussion of Goffman’s scholarship see Jacobsen & Kristiansen (2014).
7
26

28. attention to the cultural constraints of various social settings and the consistency requirements
of the actors’ roles. It would also imply a focus on uncovering the social rules and norms that
condition these social interactions between political actors. Such an enquiry could be linked to
the Foucauldian issue of the nexus combining knowledge and power (Foucault 1972) by
questioning who the rules benefit, who is excluded or silenced by them and how did these
rules came to existence.
Finally, there is a last parallel to make between Goffman’s social dramaturgy and Schechner’s
performance, in the issue of the active manipulation of self-presentation, which pushes actors
in IR to spend more time “showing doing” (Schechner 2013: 28), i.e. performing, a certain
norm rather than actually comforting to this norm (“doing”). This has great relevance in the
analysis of states behaviour for instance, and this example will be developed in the final and
fourth part of this second section.
Analyzing actors in global politics as performers
Before turning to empirical examples, I wanted to explore more in-depth several other
dimensions of using a performative interdisciplinary framework in conceptualizing actors in
IR. As was mentioned above, the relevance of adopting Performance Studies for an analysis
of global politics stems from the fact that “politics is a social necessity that is evident at all
levels of society, [it is] a brand of “showing doing” with some degree of political intent
behind both the act and (potentially) the witnessing.” (Rowe 2013: 11). Defining actor to the
fullest extent of its meaning, by embracing its dramaturgical and performative nature, extends
tremendously the range of potential research.
I have already argued above that ‘actors’ in a performance framework can range from ‘flesh
and bones’ individuals, like state representatives or a military soldiers, to groups and
27

29. organizations engaging in a collective performance, which would be closer to the traditional
statist perspective dominating IR scholarship. This conception of actor could change the focus
of IR back from a global, structural and very wide-ranging analysis to study political
performances at the individual level, ‘embodying’ in some way abstract concepts like states or
international organizations. Focusing for example on the specific members of a diplomatic
delegation during a treaty negotiation, paying attention to the difference between speakers
representing the same country, considering individual factors like personality, eloquence or
even weariness would bring new insights on the conclusion of an agreement. These
conclusions, far from invalidating the points made by systemic top-down approaches, would
be bringing complementary elements that only this kind of “thick description”, to use Geertz’s
(1973) famous expression, could uncover.
Of course, some would argue that this is not the scope of IR scholarship, and that such a focus
on the micro-level of politics would obscure broader trends and phenomena. However a
Performance Studies framework is a multi-level perspective that can grasp under-explored
aspects of phenomena at all levels of political activity. As was developed in the previous sub-
section, one can consider states as performers as well, because the concept of performance
transcends the individual level and has the potential to reach any level of politics. On the
macro-level and on the meso-level, this interdisciplinary framework would also analyze
phenomena traditionally reserved to IR scholars from a very different angle and mindset.
Focusing on taken-for-granted situations, like routine or daily conversations, and on the
superficiality of the relations between a multiplicity of actors at all levels would enhance
significantly the reach and the mere definition of international relations.
Furthermore, a performative approach to global politics has not only the potential to bring
new insights on phenomena traditionally studied by IR scholarship, it can also apply its
theoretical tools to a plethora of phenomena underplayed or even considered irrelevant by
traditional approaches, very much like feminism in IR. As a performance can happen
anywhere and anyone can be an ‘actor’, “this extends our definition of the political to so-
called everyday interactions, those that happen on streets or in homes, between family
28

30. members, friends, or schoolchildren, and places this on equal footing with the kind of politics
that happen between world leaders, in large auditoriums equipped with microphones and
podiums, translated and rebroadcast around the world to countless other audiences.” (Rowe
2013: 9). By ontologically breaking down the barrier between the inside and the outside of the
state, in a similar way to the poststructuralist approaches, but also by emphasizing the “basic
functional similarity” (ibid. 10) between elite and non-elite politics, such a framework would
also be fit to include marginalized and silenced actors, hence complementing the research of
many critical approaches in IR.
Avenues for prospective empirical research
Despite the fact that the argument developed throughout this dissertation is mostly theoretical,
I wanted to emphasize the significant potential of this interdisciplinary framework by
mentioning two examples of practical situations in which this framework would bring
distinctive insights from the approaches in IR discussed above.
In the field of human rights, a Performance Studies framework could find many cases of
strategic manipulations of norms. The case of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR)
mechanism of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) would be interesting to
analyze from a performance perspective. Such an analysis would for instance be based on a
case study on one state, or even on a comparative study involving various states, and then use
Schechner’s insights on the ten stages of a performance process (Schechner 2013: 221) to
collect data about the various stages of the UPR. This kind of study would compare the
resources dedicated to build and present the entire performance and then contrast it with the
policies taken to improve domestically the respect of human rights. This would exemplify
whether the government spends more time “showing doing” to the UN audience rather than
“doing”, i.e. acting to improve the situation, domestically, and to which extent. A
comprehensive study would even go beyond this preliminary manipulation of norms to
analyze the actual performance made by the state representative during the oral defense of the
29

31. report, considering the way she was trained to perform, the expressions she was taught to use
in public and possibly estimating through interviews her level of sincerity.
In the field of diplomacy, a research project based on this framework could find worthwhile
insights on the negotiations between several states to sign a treaty. An upcoming example
could be the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP21, which will be held in
Paris in late 2015, and where hopeful observers are expecting for a global agreement on
greenhouse gas emission to be concluded. A performance-based analysis could draw from
many angles to approach this conference, the first of which would be an ethnographic analysis
of the behavior of the individuals representing the various states and international institutions,
even if securing access to the Conference may be problematic. Focusing for instance on one
specific national delegation and taking notes on the routine interactions with other delegates
would draw an interesting pictures of the state of diplomatic relations for this country and
how they compare to more ‘tangible data’ on the foreign policy of the country studied.
Another kind of study would be a longitudinal one, comparing the process and outcome of
this conference to the previous and upcoming environmental conferences, isolating the
performance of the most influential individuals, the dynamics occurring between the various
stakeholders and would then aim to isolate the favorable and adverse conditions leading to a
successful or unsuccessful agreement.
30

32. Conclusion
Throughout this dissertation, my entire argument has been based on the word ‘actor’.
Although this semantic consideration may appear like an odd choice, some would even say
irrelevant, especially given the common-sensical character of this word, I am firmly
convinced that it is by questioning the taken-for-granted that one comes across many
unexpected insights. After engaging critically with three mainstream approaches in IRT,
realism, liberalism and constructivism, and examining various ways for IR scholars to use and
conceptualize this word, I have focused my reflexion on the shortcomings and gaps left by
these approaches. Unable to find suitable answers within the discipline, this problematic
opened the way for an excursion beyond my disciplinary borders.
The discovery I made by approaching, timidly first then more boldly, the literature in
Performance Studies has been a thrilling experience. Even if the scope, methods and even
angles adopted in this discipline were extremely different from what a thorough education in
IR had taught me, many arguments started to connect and the further I engaged with major
thinkers of Performance Studies, the more I was convinced that there was a tremendous
potential for an interdisciplinary dialogue between performance and politics, which would
strengthen and complement both disciplines. Although the portrayal of the collaborative
framework I aimed to sketch in this dissertation remains very limited and necessarily
incomplete, I do hope it has provided a good overview of the potential that such an
interdisciplinary approach would bring to IR scholarship regarding the concept of actor.
Indeed, I hope my argument has been convincing enough in demonstrating that while ‘actor’
certainly belongs to the grammar of performance, it can also play a major part as an inclusion
to the grammar of politics, to borrow Rai and Reinelt’s (2014a) expression. Even if this word
is already part of the everyday vocabulary of IR scholars, it deserves more than being
mentioned hundreds of time without ever being defined. Moreover, extending its meaning and
application to embrace its dramaturgical meaning would even further its tremendous potential
as a tool to enhance our understanding of global politics.
31

33. Bibliography
• Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words, Clarendon Press, Oxford
• Barnett M. (2013). “Social Constructivism” in Baylis John, Smith Steve, & Owens Patricia
(Eds.). The globalization of world politics: An introduction to international relations (6th
ed.). Oxford University Press, 156-168
• Barnett, M. (1999). “Culture, strategy and foreign policy change: Israel's road to Oslo”.
European Journal of International Relations, 5(1), 5-36.
• Baylis, J., Smith, S., & Owens, P. (2013). The Globalization of World Politics: an
Introduction to International Relations (6th Ed.). Oxford University Press.
• Bialasiewicz, L., Campbell, D., Elden, S., Graham, S., Jeffrey, A., & Williams, A. J. (2007).
“Performing security: The imaginative geographies of current US strategy”. Political
Geography, 26(4), 405-422
• Burchill, S. (Ed.), Linklater, A. (Ed.), Devetak, R., Donnelly, J., Nardin, T., Paterson, M.,
Reus-Smit C. & True, J. (2013). Theories of International Relations (5th Ed.). Palgrave
Macmillan.
• Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble and the subversion of identity. New York and London:
Routledge.
• Campbell, D. (1992). Writing security: United States foreign policy and the politics of
identity. U of Minnesota Press.
• Charrette J. & Sterling-Folker J. “Realism”, in Weiss, T. G., & Wilkinson, R. (Eds.). (2014).
International Organizations and Global Governance. Routledge.
• De Carvalho, B., Leira, H., & Hobson, J. M. (2011). “The Big Bangs of IR: the myths that
your teachers still tell you about 1648 and 1919”. Millennium-Journal of International
Studies, 39(3), 735-758.
• De Vries, J. R., Roodbol-Mekkes, P., Beunen, R., Lokhorst, A. M., & Aarts, N. (2014).
“Faking and forcing trust: The performance of trust and distrust in public policy.” Land Use
Policy, 38, 282-289.
• Dessler, D. (1999). “Constructivism within a positivist social science”. Review of
International Studies, 25(01), 123-137.
32

34. • Edkins, J., & Kear, A. (Eds.). (2013). International Politics and Performance: Critical
Aesthetics and Creative Practice. Routledge.
• Finnemore M. (1996). “Norms, culture, and world politics: insights from sociology's
institutionalism”, in International Organization, 50(02), 325-347.
• Finnemore, M., & Sikkink, K. (1998). “International norm dynamics and political change”.
International Organization, 52(04), 887-917.
• Foucault, M. (1972). The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. (New
York: Pantheon)
• Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays (Vol. 5019). Basic books.
• Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday
Anchor Books.
• Haas, P. M. (1989). “Do regimes matter? Epistemic communities and Mediterranean
pollution control”. International Organization, 43(03), 377-403.
• Holsti, K. J. (1985). The dividing discipline: hegemony and diversity in international
theory. Taylor & Francis.
• Hopf, T. (1998). “The promise of constructivism in international relations theory”, in
International Security, 23(1), 171-200.
• Howarth, D. (2000). Discourse. Buckingham, England: Open University Press.
• Jackson, P. (2010). “The Road Not Taken: Analyticism and Configurational Analysis in IR”
in APSA 2010 Annual Meeting Paper.
• Jacobsen, M. H., & Kristiansen, S. (2014). The Social Thought of Erving Goffman. SAGE
Publications.
• Keck, M. E., & Sikkink, K. (1999). “Transnational advocacy networks in international and
regional politics”. International Social Science Journal, 51(159), 89-101.
• Keohane, R. O. (2005 [1984]). After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World
Political Economy. Princeton University Press.
• Keohane, R. O. (1988). “International Institutions: Two Approaches”, International Studies
Quarterly, 32(4), 379-396.
• Keohane, R. O. (1982). “The demand for international regimes”. International
Organization, 36(02), 325-355.
33

35. • Kratochwil, F. (2000) “Constructing a New Orthodoxy? Wendt's "Social Theory of
International Politics" and the Constructivist Challenge”, Millennium: Journal of
International Studies 29(1):73-101.
• Lake D. (2008) “The State and International Relations” in Reus-Smit, C. & Snidal, D. (Eds)
The Oxford Handbook of International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 41-61
• Leira, H. (2015). “International Relations Pluralism and History - Embracing Amateurism
to Strengthen the Profession”. International Studies Perspectives, 16(1), 23-31.
• Maliniak, D., Peterson S. & Tierney, M.J. (2012). TRIP Around the World: Teaching,
Research, and Policy Views of International Relations Faculty in 20 Countries.
Williamsburg, VA: Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations at The
College of William and Mary.
• Mearsheimer, J. J. (2001). The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. WW Norton & Company.
• Onuf, N. (1989). World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International
Relations. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
• Palan R. (2000). “A world of their making: an evaluation of the constructivist critique in
International Relations”. Review of International Studies, 26, 575-598
• Parkinson, J. (2014). “Performing democracy. Roles, stages, scripts” in Rai, S. M. &
Reinelt, J. (Eds.). (2014). The Grammar of Politics and Performance. Routledge, 19-33.
• Price R. & Reus-Smit C. (1998). “Dangerous liaisons? Critical international theory and
constructivism”, in European Journal of International Relations, 4(3), 259-294.
• Rai, S. M. (2014). “Political Performance: A Framework for Analysing Democratic
Politics”. Political Studies.
• Rai, S. M. (2012) “Political Performance: Reading Parliamentary Politics”. Working Paper
Series, Warwick Performance and Politics Network
• Rai, S. M., & Reinelt, J. (Eds.). (2014a). The Grammar of Politics and Performance.
Routledge.
• Rai, S. M. & Reinelt, J. (2014b). “Introduction” in Rai, S. M. & Reinelt, J. (Eds.). (2014).
The Grammar of Politics and Performance. Routledge, 1-18
• Reus-Smit C. (2013). “Constructivism”, in Scott Burchill et al (Eds.), Theories of
International Relations (5th Ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 217-240.
34

36. • Rowe, C. (2013). The Politics of Protest and US Foreign Policy: Performative Construction
of the War on Terror. Routledge.
• Saward, M. (2014). “Afterword - Sovereign and Critical Grammars” in Rai, S. M. &
Reinelt, J. (Eds.). (2014). The Grammar of Politics and Performance. Routledge, 217-225
• Schechner, R. (2013). Performance studies: An introduction (3rd ed.). Routledge.
• Schechner, R. (1977). Essays on Performance Theory: 1970-1976. New York: Drama Book
Specialists.
• Schimmelfennig, F. (2002). “Goffman meets IR: dramaturgical action in international
community”. International Review of Sociology, 12(3), 417-437.
• Schmidt Brian C. (2002). “On the History and Historiography of International Relations”,
in Walter Carlsnaes et al. (Eds.), Handbook of International Relations. London, Sage, 3-22.
• Waever, O. (1996). “The rise and fall of the inter-paradigm debate” in Smith, S., Booth, K.
& Zalewski M. (Eds.) International theory: positivism and beyond, 149-86.
• Waltz, K. (1959). Man, the State and War. New York.
• Weber, M. (1978 [1925]). Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. Univ
of California Press.
• Weldes, J. (1996). Constructing National Interests: The United States and the Cuban
Missile Crisis. Minneapolis: Univ. Minn. Press
• Wendt, A. (1999). Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge University Press.
• Wendt A. (1992). “Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power
politics”, in International Organization, 46(02), 391-425.
35