Strategic Narratives and Alliances: The Cases of Intervention in Libya (2011) and Economic Sanctions against Russia (2014)

Scholars of international communication recognize that strategic narratives are important for policymaking (Miskimmon, O’Loughlin, & Roselle, 2013) and scholars studying alliances suggest that communication is central to the formation and maintenance of alliances (Weitsman, 2010). This essay addresses how strategic narratives affect US alliance behavior - and hence international order - in two specific ways. First, alliance behavior can be affected by other allies’ narratives as demonstrated in the case of military intervention in Libya in 2011. Here the evidence suggests that the UK and France were able to use strategic narratives to influence the decision of the US to agree to military intervention in Libya by using narratives that could evoke a fear of abandonment. Second, alliance cohesion can be affected by narrative contestation by non-allies as demonstrated in the case of the Ukrainian crisis in 2014. Russia has used strategic narratives in a new media environment in an attempt to elicit a fear of entrapment to counter the US attempts to coordinate alliance support for economic sanctions. In both cases, distinguishing between system, identity, and policy narratives give us a deeper understanding of narrative contestation today. This analysis adds to our understanding of the factors that affect alliances set within a new media environment characterized by a proliferation of sources and outlets and thus a more horizontal structure of information exchange

Narrating Global Order and Disorder (Editorial)

This thematic issue addresses how strategic narratives affect international order. Strategic narratives are conceived of as stories with a political purpose or narratives used by political actors to affect the behavior of others. The articles in this issue address two significant areas important to the study of international relations: how strategic narratives support or undermine alliances, and how they affect norm formation and contestation. Within a post-Cold War world and in the midst of a changing media environment, strategic narratives affect how the world and its complex issues are understood. This special issue speaks to the difficulties associated with creating creative and committed international cooperation by noting how strategic narratives are working to shape the Post-Cold War international context

Are They Ready for Their Close-Up? Civil Servants and their Portrayal in Contemporary American Cinema

Norma Desmond famously says in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd. (1950), “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my closeup.”1 Since then, this phrase has been uttered countless times to ensure the camera does not start rolling until everyone is ready. But all are not afforded the opportunity to get ready and civil servants fall squarely into this category. We know that government bureaucrats are among those individuals that Americans love to hate and attacks on the civil service come from a plethora of sources.2 And because of the ability of film (as well as other narrative forms) to influence perceptions and stereotypes about government (c.f. McCurdy 1995; Holzer and Slater 1995; Lichter, Lichter, and Amundson 2000; Holley and Lutte 2000), it is important to understand how civil servants are portrayed in American film. Unfortunately, the empirical exploration of civil servants in film remains understudied. The existing research on the portrayal of government in film is inadequate for several reasons. First, a large scale examination of a wide range of films has not been conducted to ascertain how films portray government, and specifically, bureaucrats. In addition, most of the scholarship focuses on small samples or employs case study methodology that looks at a handful of predetermined films to examine the different views of government offered by Hollywood. Finally, often the films that are profiled are rather obscure and one would have difficulty finding many individuals who have actually heard of the films examined, let alone seen them. Thus, the question that arises is how is government, and more specifically civil servants, portrayed in the most popular films in the United States? In an effort to more fully explore the depictions that contemporary American film presents of government and civil servants, this paper endeavors to address many of the omissions of the existing literature. The films selected for study are the top ten domestic box office grossing films in the United States from 1992 through 2006. These 150 films are the films most likely to have been seen by the majority of Americans. As a result of this large sample, the films included are the ones that have the greatest exposure to the movie-going public in the United States; accordingly, a holistic assessment of how Hollywood routinely portrays civil servants is possible. In the end, we find that the U.S. government is frequently depicted in a negative light, but that civil servants are a different story, especially in the last five years. Civil servants are, more often than not, presented as intelligent, well-trained, and efficient. This paper first presents an overview of perceptions and how they are informed by various narrative forms, particularly film. Then it turns to the treatment of fiction and film in the public administration literature and considers the sparse research to date that explores how government is portrayed in film. After establishing the context for our research, the methods are presented and the findings from 150 films that depict more than 300 civil servants are summarized. Finally, it concludes with a discussion of our findings and their implications

STRATEEGILINE NARRATIIV: PEHME JÕU UUS KÄSITLUS: STRATEGIC NARRATIVE: A NEW MEANS TO UNDERSTAND SOFT POWER

Soft power in its current, widely understood form has become a straitjacket for those trying to understand power and communication in international affairs. Analyses of soft power overwhelmingly focus on soft power ‘assets’ or capabilities and on ways to wield them, not the ways how influence does or does not take place. It has become a catch-all term that has lost explanatory power, just as hard power once did. The authors argue that the concept of strategic narrative gives us intellectual purchase on the complexities of international politics today, especially with regard to how influence works in a new media environment. They believe that media and war studies would benefit if more attention was being paid to strategic narratives