Narrative power: how storytelling shapes East Asian international politics

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Narrative power: how storytelling shapes East Asian international politics

Linus Hagström & Karl Gustafsson

To cite this article: Linus Hagström & Karl Gustafsson (2019) Narrative power: how storytelling shapes East Asian international politics, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 32:4, 387-406, DOI: 10.1080/09557571.2019.1623498

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Narrative power: how storytelling shapes East Asian international politics

Linus Hagstr€om

Swedish Defence University

Karl Gustafsson Stockholm University

Abstract We are living at a time when people appear to have become more aware of the power of narratives in international politics. Understanding how narratives exercise power is therefore more pertinent than ever. This special issue develops the concept of narrative power for international relations research by focusing on East Asia—the region that has been at the centre of debates about international power shifts since the 1990s. This introduction seeks to elucidate and define four key binary distinctions: (a) narrative power as understood from the perspective of an individualist versus a narrative ontology; (b) narrative power as explanandum versus explanans; (c) narrative power as more prone to continuity or change; and (d) the scholar as a detached observer of narrative power versus the scholar as a narrative entrepreneur and a potential wielder of power. Informed by the individual contributions, the introduction demonstrates how and with what implications research on narrative power can negotiate and traverse these binary distinctions.

Introduction

Economically, politically and militarily, China is on the rise relative to other great powers. Since shifts in the balance of power tend to produce conflict, this does not bode well for regional and global peace (for example, Friedberg 1993; Mearsheimer2010; Layne 2012; Allison 2017). This , at least, is how a highly familiar story, or narrative, about ‘China’s rise’ and an East Asian or even global ‘power shift’ goes. Like other narratives, this story is not only sequential but typically ends with a lesson about what ‘we’, ‘the West’, must do to deal with China—either contain the threat or adopt engagement policies to reduce it. A few decades ago, policymakers, journalists and scholars were telling an eerily similar story about Japan’s rise (Campbell 1992, 223–243; Nymalm2017; and see, for example, Friedman and

The authors wish to acknowledge research funding from the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation (MMW 2013.0162 and MMW 2016.0036). We also wish to thank members of the Asia Programme at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs for their excellent feedback on a previous draft of this article, as well as all the reviewers and editors of Cambridge Review of International Affairs for all their constructive help in compiling this special issue.

# 2019 Department of Politics and International Studies

Vol. 32, No. 4, 387–406,https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2019.1623498

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Lebard 1991). These specific narratives about East Asian international politics are structured and empowered through their connections and overlaps with other, more general narratives—notably a realist story about the rise and fall of great powers and how states can rationally deal with such shifts in the distribution of material capabilities. This is the essence of

‘internarrativity’—discursive processes through which narratives implicitly or explicitly refer to, invoke and are empowered by other narratives.

The realist story is perhaps best characterized as a ‘master narrative’—a dominant storyline that permeates and structures knowledge, including lower- level narratives, on a certain broad topic. It is reflected in the preoccupation of international relations (IR) with shifts in the balance of power, where‘power’

is typically defined as the possession of tangible and countable capabilities and analysed through the aggregated measurement of military equipment and spending, economic productivity, population size and territory (Morgenthau 1948; Waltz1979). These ideas often claim the epistemic status of a theory but permeate influential narratives about what is occurring in East Asian international politics. In fact, several IR theories regard the distribution of power among the most powerful states as the main driver of change in the international system, and the main factor determining its propensity for war or peace. Power shifts, or major changes in the distribution of capabilities between the great powers, are again considered particularly prone to generat- ing conflicts (Organski and Kugler 1981; Mearsheimer2001; Allison2017).

This special issue sides with critical constructivist and poststructuralist IR research in positing that the material circumstances ascribed causality in realist accounts do not exercise any power independently of the stories that are told to make sense of them. This is not to deny the existence and importance of material factors. Events, processes and phenomena such as 9/11, climate change and the North Korean Kim dynasty have had tangible effects that are not just dependent on their narrative construction—not least the human suffer- ing that have resulted from them. Nonetheless, their meaning is not given, and nor is any particular strategy for handling them. Moreover, such narrative meaning-making has grave additional effects. Narratives are spun around these phenomena not just ex post facto, but as they unfold. If these instantly constructed narratives catch on, they are likely to structure and exercise power over the subsequent discussion of issues as well as the policies adopted to deal with them.

Despite its booming popularity and seeming usefulness, the narrative concept has often been employed in IR at ‘a very superficial level’. It has been used simply as a synonym for discourse, rhetoric or anything ‘said, written, viewed or heard’ (Spencer 2016, 2). Moreover, some of the most comprehensive research to date on the role of narratives in IR has focused primarily on the links between domestic narratives and foreign policy (Browning 2008; Krebs 2015; Spencer 2016). Such research has argued that narratives matter to IR because they are performative and enable certain foreign policies. While this suggests that narratives are indeed powerful, IR research has yet to conceptualize how and with what implications narrative power operates beyond national foreign-policymaking processes, that is, in the international realm.

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This special issue brings together the literatures on narrative and power specifically to develop the concept of narrative power for IR research. It aims to explore how and with what implications narratives exercise power in international politics. It does so by focusing on East Asia—the region at the centre of debates about international power shifts since the 1990s. Contributions analyse how narratives currently enable antagonisms in the region, and also inves- tigate how such problems are or might be mitigated through the dissemination of ‘counter-narratives’, or ‘small’ stories that seek to resist and challenge

‘bigger’ stories, or master narratives. By drawing on and expanding the key arguments and findings of the individual contributions, this introduction raises some more general conceptual and theoretical issues relating to narrative power that are crucial to IR research.

After theorizing narrative power in the next section, subsequent sections seek to elucidate and define four key binary distinctions: (a) narrative power as understood from an individualist or a narrative ontology; (b) narrative power as explanandum or explanans; (c) narrative power as more prone to continuity or change; and (d) the scholar as a detached observer of narrative power versus the scholar as a narrative entrepreneur and a potential wielder of power. Informed by the individual contributions, the sections demonstrate how and with what implications research on narrative power can negotiate and traverse these four binary distinctions. The article concludes by outlining a research agenda for the study of narrative power in IR.

Introducing the concept of narrative power

Narratology, or the study of narrative, has long been concerned with the form that stories take, emphasizing that they tend to follow similar basic plot lines (Propp 2015 [1928]; Todorov 1971) and contain similar elements (Burke 1945;

Frye 1957). The narrative concept has since travelled from literary theory to numerous other disciplines. Hayden White (1973), for example, has argued that not only literary texts but also academic history writing tends to adopt the narrative style by assembling scattered occurrences into meaningful stories with a plot. Nonetheless, the sociologist Margareth R Somers (1994) wrote that it took some time for narrative to become ‘assimilated into the social-science research agenda’. The social sciences often treated narrative as an

‘epistemological other’ (Somers1994, 606), which helped define its Self as positivist. In other words, it took some time before research on narratives began to be considered properly scientific by the social sciences. However, in recent decades, disciplines such as political science, psychology, legal theory, gender studies, social work, organizational theory, anthropology and medical sociology have all quietly appropriated narrative as a concept and theory. In the past ten years, IR scholars have also increasingly adopted the concept (Browning 2008; Suganami 2008; Wibben 2010; Gustafsson 2011; Hagstr€om 2012; Miskimmon et al 2014; Krebs 2015; Spencer 2016), although early adopt- ers had appeared already in the 1990s (Ringmar1996a;1996b; Suganami1999).

Political actors worldwide may always have relied on narratives for com- munications purposes but in recent years they seem to have become increasingly aware of the power of storytelling in international politics. For instance, the Chinese government stresses the need to ‘tell China’s story well’ (Lim and

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Bergin2018). In addition, the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group has successfully recruited adherents by persuading them that it is legitimate to commit atroc- ities, drawing in no small part on a narrative about humiliation that resonated with some Sunni Muslims. Indeed, the Obama White House believed it was engaged in a ‘narrative battle’ with IS, in addition to the military battle it was fighting in Syria and Iraq (Warren 2016). Similarly, there is currently much concern in Europe and the United States (US) that Russian ‘troll factories’ are disseminating false or largely flawed narratives around the world, seeking for example to influence elections. Yet this concern itself cannot be separated from influential narratives about a revanchist and increasingly dangerous Russia.

Whether advances in narrative battles are understood as ‘public diplomacy’,

‘soft power’, ‘propaganda’ or ‘information warfare’ largely depends on how well different narratives resonate with the hearts and minds of audiences around the world.

A very general definition of narrative is discourse ‘with a clear sequential order that connect[s] events in a meaningful way … thus offer[ing] insights about the world and/or people’s experiences of it’ (Hinchman and Hinchman 2001, xvi). Narrative is thus a subclass of discourse (Patterson and Monroe 1998), which is in turn defined as a constitutive structure of meaning (Howarth2010). A discourse comprises all the discussion on a topic, regardless of the form it takes, whereas narrative only refers to stories about the topic.

All discursive forms ascribe meaning and are intersubjective. A narrative, however, is characterized by a chronological storytelling structure (Elliott 2009).

Moreover, it typically ends in an evaluation (Labov and Waletzsky (1997) [1967]), which provides lessons for the future and suggestions on which policies it is reasonable and realistic to adopt and support (Jones and McBeth2010).

Not all texts take a narrative form. For example, annals list historical events chronologically without constructing a story around how the different occurrences fit together. Descriptions, moreover, are detailed accounts that often lack chronological structure and do not necessarily ascribe meaning. Arguments present reasons for and against a proposition and ‘have premises and conclusions’. Narratives, by contrast, contain ‘beginnings, middles, and ends’ (Roe 1992, 563). Scientific writing sometimes presents human experience in terms of abstract, generalizing statistics as if they could speak for themselves, while a narrative tells a story about concrete events and protagonists, which captures and exemplifies experiences that people can relate to and empathize with.

Previous research shows that narratives are more persuasive than analytical arguments because people become absorbed in them (Escalas2007).

A narrative thus ascribes meaning (Bruner 1991; Patterson and Monroe 1998). It does so by addressing what is happening, how, where, when and why it is happening and who the protagonists are (Burke 1945; Frye 1957).

Meaning is also constructed through: (a) inclusion and exclusion; (b) the lexical choices made when depicting settings, occurrences and characters (Elliott 2009); and (c) manipulation of the relational distinctions that ascribe identities.

This may involve labelling, or the use of passive and active verb forms, adjec- tives and other types of predication (Wodak and Meyer2009).

If power is defined as ‘the capacity to produce effects’ (Morriss 2002, 12), this special issue is concerned with the capacity of narratives to produce effects

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by ascribing meaning and mobilizing collective action. We treat a narrative as dominant, or powerful, if a critical mass of social actors accepts it as ‘common sense’ (Epstein 2008; Krebs 2015). In such situations, alternative narratives are relegated to obscurity. If the dominant narrative makes sense to and therefore resonates with most of a target audience, the exercise of power can be so effective that it goes largely unnoticed.

Given the earlier scepticism towards narrative in the social sciences, it is ironic that scientific articles that adopt a narrative style of writing have a greater impact than those that do not (Hillier et al2016). Similarly, the communication of science to non-experts is most effective when it takes a narrative form (Dahlstrom 2014). In fact, studies in various academic disciplines suggest that narratives produce greater effects than other forms of discourse. For example, they are more effective than non-stories at holding a reader’s atten- tion (Golding et al 1992) and persuading experimental subjects to comply with safety warnings (Ricketts 2007). Narratives are also more persuasive than statistics for convincing people that they could be at risk of being infected by sexually transmitted viruses (De Wit et al2008), and the instructions that most efficiently secure the participation of survey respondents also take a narrative form (Finucane and Satterfield2005).

Furthermore, one plausible reason for Donald Trump’s success in the 2016 US presidential election is that his rhetoric relied considerably more on the narrative form than that of his opponent. Trump told stories, which may have been factually erroneous and morally dubious, but nonetheless resonated with many voters and ended in explicit policy prescriptions. Hillary Clinton’s speeches, by contrast, were more akin to long descriptions that rarely reached any clear conclusions (Olson 2016). We argue that these are all good reasons for exploring how and with what effects narratives exercise power in international politics.

Individualist versus narrative ontology

The fact that there are diverse and contested understandings of the terms

‘narrative’ and ‘power’ means that the concept of narrative power can be conceptualized in different ways. Nonetheless, narrative scholars tend to have more in common with the ‘faces-of-power’ debate in the broader social sciences and humanities than with the materialist concept of power that predominates in IR. While the premise of the faces-of-power debate is that power is the capacity to produce effects, theorists disagree about whether agents or structures are more important in that production. The first face focuses on actors, their observable decisions on key issues and overt conflicts of interest (Dahl 1957; Keohane and Nye 1977; Baldwin 2016). The second face broadens the scope by including non-decisions, potential conflicts and agenda-setting (Bachrach and Baratz 1962; Nye 2004). The third face holds that the most fundamental form of power involves persuading actors to accept policies and norms that contradict their ‘real interests’ (Lukes 2005; Hagstr€om2005; Nabers 2010). The fourth face, finally, concentrates on how actors and interests that are taken for granted in the other faces are themselves the products of power (Foucault1980; Digeser1992; Hayward1998; Guzzini2013).

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Faces one to three are reflected in approaches to narrative in which actors—be they states, non-state actors or individual leaders—create, mobilize, diffuse and contest narratives (Mumby 1987; Miskimmon et al 2014; Krebs 2015; Subotic2016). If actor A uses narratives strategically to make actor B do something it would not otherwise have done, this is more in line with the first face of power. Here, narratives play a quasi-causal role that both narrator and target audience are quite aware of. If A uses narratives to set or restrict the political agenda in a way that is unfavourable to B, this is more in line with the second face. The third face focuses on how, after being exposed to narratives promoted by A, B begins to subscribe to a new understanding of reality that contradicts its‘real interests’. In the third face, narratives play a more constitutive role, the power of which actors may not necessarily be aware of.

However, research on narrative power that aligns itself with the first three faces can be criticized for overemphasizing the agency of narrators. In approaches that conceptualize narrative power more in accordance with the fourth face, actors operate and narrate within an existing narrative context, which fundamentally enables and constrains their identities and courses of action (Brown2006; Shepherd2015). Consequently,‘the authority to speak and act is constituted by the productive power of the discourse itself’ (Wilhelmsen 2016, 11). Deeply institutionalized master narratives thus condition the formu- lation and acceptance of less institutionalized narratives, including situations where A seemingly exercises narrative power over B.

The faces-of-power approaches share an understanding that narratives intervene in the world but subscribe to different ontologies. The agent-centred approach relies on an individualist ontology, which may align with scientific realism if actors are believed to use narratives to conceal or distract from more correct representations of reality. To this approach, events, actors and the world possess some meaning prior to being narrated, and narratives are viewed as an opportunity/risk that can either enhance or reduce an actor’s capacity to produce effects. This is how much of the scholarship on ‘strategic narratives’, ‘soft power’, ‘propaganda’ and ‘information warfare’ understands narratives (Bially Mattern 2005; Payne 2009; Miskimmon et al 2014; Thornton 2015). It is also implied in recent debates about ‘fake news’ (Khaldarova and Pantti2016).

To the second approach, by contrast, events, actors and the world are given meaning and come into existence through narration. Here,‘actors exist only in the narratives they tell about themselves or that are told about them’ (Ringmar 1996a, 75). Consequently, no one is ‘free to fabricate narratives at will’ (Somers 1994, 629). Rather, actors construct narratives within settings that are already narratively ordered. This approach is informed by a narrative ontology, which sees language not merely as a tool for representing the world, but as a force constitutive of it (Somers1994; Ringmar1996b; Berenskoetter2014).

Clearly, both agents and intersubjective ‘structures’ can be understood as producing narratives. At the same time, Hidemi Suganami (1999) persuasively argues that agents and structures are themselves produced through narratives.

Either way, narratives provide a pragmatic way of negotiating and traversing the agency/structure binary. While actors are inevitably the products of narrative power, they may still be able to exercise a limited form of agency within certain narrative boundaries. In the end, we see no convincing arguments

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against engaging simultaneously with the underlying question of how subjects are narratively constituted and the more applied question of how emergent actors use narratives to influence each other.

Most of the articles in this special issue operate with a narrative ontology to the extent that they posit that deeply institutionalized narratives fundamentally order international politics. Actors must mobilize such master narratives to make their own ‘strategic narratives’ resonate. Indeed, what is seen as

‘strategic’ is itself a narrative construction. For instance, Breuer and Johnston, and Turner and Nymalm argue that IR narratives on revisionism and the status quo structure the interpretation of ‘events’ and ‘actors’ in East Asian international politics, although the former pair of authors emphasize that ‘China’s rapid development of military bases on land features in the South China Sea’

also contributes to making the narrative of Chinese revisionism appear increasingly persuasive. Gustafsson, Hagstr€om and Hanssen, moreover, suggest that an underlying narrative about what is ‘normal’ (for example, balancing behav- iour) and ‘abnormal’ (for example, pacifism) in international politics has a similar ordering function. That these narratives, in turn, rely not only on a realist master narrative, but more fundamentally on a ‘Westphalian’ one, is highlighted in articles by Ling and Nakamura, and Chen and Shimizu. By dividing the world into separate sovereign states this narrative orders diverse understandings of international politics, including the belief that some states are status quo oriented and others revisionist, and that some courses of state action are more normal than others.

Other contributions adopt a thinner concept of narrative, implying that actors can narrate more or less strategically. For example, Gries and Jing use experiments to demonstrate that while a zero-sum understanding of the US–China power transition currently predominates, it is relatively easy to manipulate people’s understandings in favour of a positive-sum view. Winkler negotiates the relationship between agency and structure by theorizing how the concept of soft power and its adjacent narratives are actively promoted by a ‘concept coalition’, defined as a collective form of agency, which is enabled by a material structure. Several articles, moreover, demonstrate that there may be some room for agency even when a master narrative orders international politics. Actors can narrate in ways that draw heavily on a deeply sedimented narrative, as in the case of some early mover journalists whose memes about China’s alleged challenge to the ‘rules-based order’ quickly spread (Breuer and Johnston), and the Japanese politicians who contributed to pacifism’s marginal- ization (Gustafsson, Hagstr€om and Hanssen). However, actors—be they sub- state actors in the East China Sea (Chen and Shimizu), producers of popular culture (Ling and Nakamura) or scholars (Turner and Nymalm)—can also take steps to challenge master narratives by presenting counter-narratives. The next section discusses the relationship between dominant narratives and counter- narratives in detail, while we expand further on the role of scholars below.

Narrative power as explanandum versus explanans

Narrative power as explanandum involves addressing how narratives exercise power. Some narrative scholars rehearse the materialist focus on capabilities common in IR and emphasize the importance of the assets that actors possess,

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such as their access to technology, control of the mass media, or reputation (Miskimmon et al2014; Krebs2015; O’Shea 2018). While most agree that capabilities are indeed necessary for spreading a narrative, few see them as suffi- cient to get a narrative widely accepted (Gustafsson2014).

The existing literature argues that narratives must draw on deeply sedimented or institutionalized master narratives or discourses already accepted by the target audience in order to appear commonsensical and become dominant (Ewick and Silbey 1995; Spencer 2016). The term ‘master narrative’ (or

‘grand narrative’, ‘metanarrative’ and ‘big story’) is often associated with the philosopher Jean-Franc¸ois Lyotard. For him, the term refers to narratives that make sense not only of single events but of history as a whole. A Marxist master narrative, for example, understands history in terms of class struggle (Lyotard 1979). By contrast, this article uses ‘master narrative’ to refer to any underlying narrative at the most general level. A Westphalian master narrative, for example, portrays states as separate, sovereign and security-seeking, and structures nearly all discussion of international politics. Narratives at this level can therefore be seen as ontological, in the sense discussed above.

The point that narratives about current events need to mobilize master narratives in order to produce effects and exercise power highlights the signifi- cance of internarrativity, intertextuality and interdiscursivity. Texts, narratives and discourses are not constructed in a vacuum but are intertwined with—and shaped and supported by—each other (Van Peer and Chatman 2001).

Moreover, the likelihood increases that new narratives spread and become popular if they explicitly or implicitly reference narratives that the audience accepts as common sense (for example, Kristeva1986). For example, the narrative on the rise of China, the Asia–Pacific power shift and the inevitability of future conflict arguably becomes plausible exactly by drawing on deeply institutionalized master narratives about power transitions and the rise and fall of great powers, which, moreover, draw legitimacy from their academic status.

Breuer and Johnston used plagiarism software to analyse the operation of narrative power through intertextuality. They demonstrate how a meme—

‘rules-based order’—underpins the dominant narrative on Chinese revisionism, and has spread rapidly by being repeated online and by referencing other popular memes, such as ‘an assertive China’. Winkler’s article also highlights the role of intertextuality by focusing on how the well-established soft power concept helps spread narratives about Japanese security, and how narratives about Japan as a soft power gain traction by mobilizing deep-rooted narratives about liberal democratic values as its primary source.

Even opposing narratives can be premised on the dominance of one underlying master narrative (see Waever2005). For example, as discussed by Turner and Nymalm, narratives about China as either a revisionist or a status quo power are both premised on the Westphalian and realist master narratives on international politics. The same goes for the debate about whether Japan is

‘normal’ or ‘abnormal’, as discussed by Gustafsson, Hagstr€om and Hanssen.

At the same time, receptivity to particular narratives is also influenced by pre- existing feelings towards the actors who appear in them.

Experimental psychological research, moreover, proposes that narratives can influence beliefs through the mechanism of ‘transportation’; that is, the story ‘transports’ the audience by evoking emotions and images so that it

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becomes caught up in the narrative (Green and Brock 2000; Murphy et al 2013). IR research also suggests that narratives produce effects when they appeal to collective emotions (Solomon 2014; Hagstr€om and Gustafsson 2015;

Hall and Ross 2015). To the extent that those emotions are intertwined with already dominant narratives, the concept of internarrativity once again becomes relevant. In the special issue, Gries and Jing find that the degree of prior trust in China influences the degree to which ordinary Americans accept zero-sum narratives about Sino-American relations as true.

Narrative power as explanans concerns the question of what influential narratives do. Existing research suggests that narratives are performative. By ascribing qualities, dispositions and intentions to actors, they construct their identities and, by extension, their interests (Ringmar 1996a; Spencer 2016). In these narratives, the identity of the Self typically emerges through its juxtapos- ition with spatial or temporal difference, or Others (Rumelili 2004; Gustafsson 2016; Hagstr€om and Hanssen 2016). For example, narratives produce effects by constituting some actors as powerful and others as less so (Breslin2009; Adler- Nissen and Pouliot 2014), and such characterizations also produce effects. The notion that Japan can only become powerful by remilitarizing is a case in point highlighted in the article by Gustafsson, Hagstr€om and Hanssen.

As noted above, narratives culminate ‘in a moral to the story’ (Jones and McBeth 2010, 329) or a lesson for the future that suggests a certain course of action (Gustafsson 2011). Once entrenched, narratives, and discourses more generally, make some actions appear legitimate, natural, normal and realistic, while others come to be regarded as the opposite (Bruner 1991; Doty 1993;

Ewick and Silbey 1995; Weldes and Saco 1996; Holland 2013). For instance, if those constructed as Others are depicted as threatening, narratives can play a key role in securitization processes (for example, Buzan et al 1998). Indeed, if the narrative form is as powerful and persuasive as previous research suggests, narrative attempts to securitize or de-securitize an issue or an actor may be more effective than those that only rely on arguments (see Gustafsson 2019). Previous research has shown how narrative and discursive constructions of Self and Other enabled and legitimized wars in, for example, the former Yugoslavia (1991–2001), Chechnya (1999–2001) and Iraq (2003–2011) (Krebs and Lobasz 2007; Wilhelmsen2016; Subotic2016).

Articles in this special issue show that China emerges as an Other in US narratives, and the opposite is also true (Hagstr€om and Nordin2019). US narratives thus portray China as the belligerent and revisionist Other and contrast it with the peaceful and status-quo-oriented US Self. This is the gist of the contributions by Breuer and Johnston, Gries and Jing, and Turner and Nymalm.

In this way, narratives that securitize the Other have begun to enable security dilemma dynamics in East Asia. Gustafsson, Hagstr€om and Hanssen, moreover, demonstrate how Japan’s past pacifism has been securitized, along with China and North Korea, in both Japan and the US. Winkler’s article suggests that the mobilization of narratives about soft power—a form of power that is widely regarded as benign—has helped to de-securitize security reforms in Japan. Counter-narratives, however, could also de-securitize relations between China and Japan and the US, as suggested by several of the contributions discussed in the next section (notably, Ling and Nakamura, and Chen and Shimizu).

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Continuity versus change in narrative power

Ontological assumptions may influence whether narratives and narrative power are seen as more prone to continuity or change. Those who adopt an individualist ontology will be more likely to assume that agents can alter narratives at will, and hence that narrative change is possible and can occur quickly. Gries and Jing’s article examines how a television audience’s policy preferences can be altered simply by tampering with the narratives presented in news coverage. The view that narratives can change quickly is further supported by Breuer and Johnston’s article, which demonstrates how new narratives spread rapidly online.

Those who adhere to a narrative ontology, by contrast, are more likely to view narratives as resilient and more prone to sedimentation or institutionalization. For example, Turner and Nymalm show that, in significant ways, narratives about revisionism in international politics have remained stable for many decades. However, mirroring the understanding of power as

‘productive’, mentioned above, narratives never become completely dominant (Digeser 1992). Even the most powerful narratives can be doubted, contested and rejected. Narrative power, in other words, is accompanied by a degree of narrative resistance, and the construction and dissemination of counter-narratives that challenge ‘dominant and hegemonic narratives’ (Bamberg2004, 351).

In fact, by challenging common sense, such narrative resistance may expose powerful narratives both as narratives, rather than pure descriptions, and as powerful.

If they are not part of mainstream public discourse, counter-narratives can be identified by focusing, inter alia, on civil society groups and artists, as well as personal narratives about the everyday experiences of those who are affected by influential narratives but rarely listened to (Wibben 2010; Currie 2010). Narrative resistance can also appear in the form of gossip, folktales, songs, jokes and theatre (Lukes2005, 125). Several contributions to this special issue highlight that such counter-narratives might enable broader narrative change. For example, by focusing on the margins of the Japanese and Taiwanese nation states, Chen and Shimizu give voice to local groups in the southernmost parts of the Japanese Okinawa prefecture and communities in the eastern coastal areas of Taiwan. These locals challenge the Westphalian master narrative, which underpins interstate tension over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, by presenting a non-state-centric, non-confrontational counter-narrative about cross-border community-building. They may not be able to supplant or surpass the Westphalian master narrative, but Chen and Shimizu’s analysis shows at least that the latter has failed to become completely dominant. Ling and Nakamura, in turn, draw on popular culture to identify a counter-narrative. They show how television dramas and anime films construct hybrid identities that challenge clear-cut distinctions between Self and Other. They also suggest that Japan and China may not necessarily be as separate and antithet- ical as the Westphalian master narrative implies. If China and Japan could embrace hybridity, they might learn to recognize their commonalities (see also Hagstr€om and Nordin2019).

There may be more fertile ground for counter-narratives when currently powerful narratives appear insufficient to make sense of what is happening

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and how to proceed (Howarth 2010). In such a situation, an existing narrative may be reinterpreted or even ridiculed (Kristeva 1986). Gustafsson, Hagstr€om and Hanssen’s contribution exemplifies this, showing how pacifism—once considered a source of national pride—has become re-narrated as an abnormal source of shame. The narrative about Japan’s ‘abnormality’ started to make more sense following the 1990–1991 Gulf War. Japan’s contribution was widely narrated as inadequate both within and outside the country. The episode even came to be understood as a ‘trauma’ and as indicative of how obsolete Japan’s security policy was—a disruption within a discursive field that poststructural- ists often refer to as ‘dislocation’ (Nabers 2017). In this way, less institutionalized narratives made it possible to alter more institutionalized ones.

When a narrative begins to appear obsolete, ‘traditional power-holders will try to reaffirm, or reinterpret, the old narratives that have kept them in power, while challengers will try to recode the established metaphors to suit their new purposes’ (Ringmar 1996b, 456). Such narrative power battles revolve around how to activate and deactivate elements of the ‘broader narrative tem- plate’ (Subotic2016, 614). This is arguably why US narratives portray the country as ‘status quo oriented’ even though it has often been a revisionist force, as discussed by Turner and Nymalm. Hence, even a narrative that appears con- tinuous and consistent may change over time so that it starts to enable or constrain identities and courses of action differently (Krebs 2015; Hagstr€om and Hanssen 2016). A case in point is the Abe government’s notion of ‘proactive pacifism’. While it seems to reaffirm Japan’s post-war pacifism, Gustafsson, Hagstr€om and Hanssen demonstrate that its content has changed significantly (see Gustafsson et al2018).

A pragmatic way of dealing with the continuity/change binary is to conceptualize narratives, and narrative power, as existing at several layers of

‘sedimentation’ or ‘institutionalization’. Some layers are more ‘fundamental’ in that they are ‘more solidly sedimented and more difficult to politicise and change’ (Waever2002, 31). This is where we find the most general master narratives or discourses on which even seemingly conflicting articulations are premised. More specific master narratives exist in a slightly less sedimented layer.

They have often become sedimented by invoking general master narratives.

The least institutionalized layer is where particular narratives seek to make sense of current events and concrete political issues, and to suggest policies— and where there may be more room for agency and resistance. This is where counter-narratives, at least initially, may seek to challenge master narratives. A power struggle in a less institutionalized layer can be enabled and supported by master narratives in more institutionalized layers. At the same time, strug- gles in the surface layer can also enable changes in deeper ones (Waever2002;

Wullweber 2016). It may be that the narratives in the articles by Johnston and Breuer, and Gries and Jing, where change appeared to be taking place quickly, are located in the least institutionalized layer, while those which are the focus of some of the other contributions, which suggest greater narrative continuity, belong to the category of specific master narratives and appear in a more deeply institutionalized layer. The advantage of this layered model ‘is that it can specify change within continuity’ (Waever2005, 36). How many layers it is fruitful to operate with and what kinds of narratives reside in each layer are questions that we believe must be settled empirically.

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The scholar as analyst versus narrator

Narrative IR research often suggests that the narrator is a state, a policymaker or some other explicit practitioner of international politics. As scholars, by contrast, we typically reduce our own role to that of detached observers, whether of narratives, the distribution of material capabilities or something else that exists‘out there’ and that we consider crucial to making sense of what is happening in the world. At the same time, scholars are experts with a capacity, and perhaps even a duty, to provide policymakers with advice based on research findings (for example, Walt2005). Nonetheless, we see the idea of the

‘scholar-as-expert’ as an extension of the ‘scholar-as-detached-observer’ ideal.

In this understanding, the scholar is recognized not as a narrator but as a con- veyor of neutral and balanced information and analysis. The scholar may thus regard his/her own research as mere objective descriptions or explanations of reality and does not always admit that research is complicit in constructing, repeating and disseminating narratives.

Foucault problematized the notion that there can be knowledge free of power relations (Foucault 1980). In line with this insight, we believe that it is fruitful to recognize that scholars—like all social actors—are narrative products as well as narrative producers. To begin with, their identity as scholars—both the particular theoretical and methodological paradigms that they align with, and the claim to objectivity and neutrality—is intimately connected with the operation of narrative power. Narratives make scholars more inclined to use certain concepts, such as soft power in Winkler’s article, or theories, such as the realism or power transition theory discussed in several articles. Moreover, such concepts and theories are performative in that they become building blocks in narratives and contribute to the construction of both the narrator of and the protagonists in the narratives. Moreover, narratives help to conceal the fact that scholars are not just detached observers, but also narrators.

Hence, while scholars can be conceptualized as narrative products they also act as narrative entrepreneurs. In that capacity, they can either support dominant narratives or seek to construct counter-narratives, which can be but are not necessarily amenable to more peaceful international politics. They can do the latter either by highlighting or giving voice to alternative, potential, latent and marginalized narratives. In this it must be recognized that scholars do not merely analyse narratives but also participate actively in their construction.

Especially in the latter case, the power of the scholar-as-narrator will be limited if policymakers do not listen. However, if a counter-narrative spreads among academics, it may eventually reach policymakers and other practi- tioners and thereby influence policy.

There is an explicitly autobiographical genre in IR, in which scholars use narrative to explore how their own experiences relate to international politics (L€owenheim 2010; Inayatullah 2010; Ravecca and Dauphinee 2018). None of the articles in this special issue is autobiographical in this sense, but in a broader sense we believe that scholarship is almost necessarily autobiographical, as it is the product of the scholar’s unique experiences and serves to pos- ition her/his work in relation to other scholarship. Several articles challenge the apparent naturalness of dominant narratives and seek to highlight their contingency and political nature. For example, Breuer and Johnston trace the

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emergence in the US of new narratives about China which characterize it as a revisionist challenger to the rules-based order. They show how these narratives have spread between governments, the media and think tanks. In other words, these contributions primarily highlight the contingency and power of political narratives.

Gries and Jing’s article engages critically with the ‘Thucydides trap’ argument, which has been promoted by academics and referenced by policymakers (for example, Allison 2017) and according to which power shifts are likely to cause conflict between rising and incumbent powers. Ultimately, Gries and Jing’s findings reveal the Thucydides trap argument to be a potentially self-ful- filling narrative, and hence powerful. They suggest that conflict is not inevitable. Moreover, the article submits that academics, as television interviewees, can play a key role in constructing narratives and counter-narratives about international politics. The point is that audiences are greatly affected by whether these scholars narrate in a more zero-sum or positive-sum way.

Similarly, Turner and Nymalm show that depictions of states as revisionist or status quo actors are constructed by academics who typically present themselves as detached observers but can be understood as narrators who do not merely describe the world but actually participate in its construction. By labelling certain states ‘revisionist’, describing them as more aggressive than ‘status quo’ actors and advancing balancing policies to handle revisionism, such scholars clearly wish to provide sound policy advice and help to promote ‘our’

security. When they are revealed as narrators, however, it is clear that such advice is political and may risk contributing to a more conflictual world.

Several of the other contributors also illustrate what scholars-as-narrators might do. Winkler, most importantly, demonstrates how the concept of soft power is embedded in several narratives that have been spread by scholars— Joseph S Nye in particular. Through her own critical account of the success of soft power in Japan, Winkler herself constructs a counter-narrative about soft power. Gustafsson, Hagstr€om and Hanssen also argue that both US and Japanese scholars have participated in the narrative undermining of Japanese pacifism and thereby ensured that it did not develop into a model for other states to emulate. They accept the role of scholars-as-narrators by explicitly presenting a counter-narrative that discusses how pacifism might be empowered and turned into a more viable model in international politics.

Finally, Ling and Nakamura explicitly use the narrative templates they find in popular culture to construct a counter-narrative about the Sino-Japanese ter- ritorial dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. By emphasizing similarity and hybridity, instead of difference, their counter-narrative highlights the possibility of less conflictual relations. Chen and Shimizu make similar points by focusing on the concrete experiences and counter-narratives of people who live at the margins of the Westphalian order. In this way, both articles challenge the state-centric master narrative that has long been dominant in IR.

Conclusion

We live at a time when more and more people appear to be aware of the power of narratives in international politics. For instance, each time a European state holds an election, there are widespread fears that Russian

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‘trolls’ will influence the outcome by spreading false narratives in social media.

In addition, following the election of Donald J Trump as US president in 2016, political actors have increasingly begun to label criticism from their adversaries

‘fake news’. In such a situation, it appears more pertinent than ever to under- stand the ways in which narratives exercise power.

This introduction to the special issue has sought to lay the groundwork for research on narrative power in IR. It has discussed several important distinctions, showing that it is possible to theorize narrative power as the capacity of actors to produce effects by disseminating strategic narratives, or as the capacity of narratives to enable and constrain actors in the first place. In practice, of course, it is not necessary to choose one of these options over the other, and most of the articles in the special issue show how actors exercise some narrative power, albeit power that is partly enabled and constrained by master narratives. This is linked to the distinction between continuity and change, in the sense that those who rely on a narrative ontology tend to see a greater likelihood for narrative continuity while those who espouse an individualist ontology tend to believe that narratives are more likely to change. The introduction also makes a distinction between narrative power as explanandum and explanans. The articles in the special issue primarily explore narrative power as explanandum, and findings highlight the importance of internarrativity, or how narratives draw on other narratives to become dominant. Future research should explore further both theoretically and empirically how different types of narratives, such as master narratives, less general and sedimented narratives, as well as counter-narratives, relate to one another. For instance, even though counter-narratives clearly exist, the extent to which and exactly how they can challenge master narratives remains unclear. Under what conditions are counter-narratives more likely to emerge and exercise power?

The special issue deals with narrative power as explanans mostly by show- casing how narratives exercise power by making some courses of action seem logical, commonsensical and perhaps even inevitable. However, there may be more than this to the question of narrative power as explanans. Realist theory treats the distribution of material capabilities as an independent variable in explanations of international politics. Constructivist and poststructuralist scholarship has challenged this understanding, either by proposing alternative independent variables—most notably norms, culture and identity (Katzenstein 1996; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Hopf and Allan 2016)—or by focusing on how power operates in the construction of single state identities (Campbell 1992; Doty1996; Neumann1999). This scholarship has also challenged the realist concept of power (Hagstr€om2005,2012; Guzzini2013). However, it has not gone very far in addressing the question of how power is distributed and exer- cised internationally, and with what implications. We believe that narrative power can play an analytical role akin to that of material power in realism.

Hence, we suggest that the international distribution of narratives is deeply intertwined with the evolution of matters of war and peace in international politics. In this sense we agree with Weldes and Saco’s (1996, 372) 20-year-old observation: ‘An important but largely unrecognised consequence of the inequality of states in the international system is the asymmetric capacity to define or to be defined.’ Future research should continue to explore this question.

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The last distinction highlighted in this introduction is really a call to recognize that as scholars we are also narrators. The challenge for all of us is to refrain from reproducing narratives unreflexively and to seek, as far as possible, to problematize dominant narratives—especially those that depict conflicts and rearmament as inevitable.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Linus Hagstr€om is Professor of Political Science at the Swedish Defence University and a senior research fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. He has recently published articles in Journal of Japanese Studies, Survival, European Political Science, Washington Quarterly, Review of International Studies and European Journal of International Relations, and edited special issues for Asian Perspective and the Pacific Review. Email:

linus.hagstrom@fhs.se

Karl Gustafsson is a senior lecturer in international relations at Stockholm University and senior research fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. He has recently published articles in Journal of International Relations and Development, Survival, European Political Science, Memory Studies, Review of International Studies, Cooperation and Conflict and China: An International Journal.

He won the Wang Gungwu Prize for best article in Asian Studies Review in 2014. Email:karl.gustafsson@ui.se

ORCID

Linus Hagstr€om http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7495-055X Karl Gustafsson http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9897-9891

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