Political leaders often engage in open fights for recognition, announcing that some crucial element of their state’s identity, status, or history, has not been properly acknowledged and respected in the conduct of diplomacy. Among international relations scholars, these instances are usually ascribed to the fact that states, like individuals, need recognition, but this intrinsic assumption neglects the extent to which recognition, and its absence, can also be manipulated and instrumentalized by elites for other ends. The dissertation explores the agency that so often lurks behind these struggles, motivating the question of why recognition, and its perceived absence, are so often made to matter by focusing on cases that reflect two competing attitudes: the incentives political leaders may have for promoting recognition conflicts, and the inclination others have for avoiding them. These cases cut across the security and cooperation spectrum: (a) Israel’s insistence, since 2007, that it be recognized by Palestinians as a ‘Jewish state’ as part of any final status negotiations; (b) the Armenian diaspora’s ongoing demand that the world, and Turkey, recognize the 1915 massacres as genocide; and (c) the decisions of British elites on both sides of the Brexit referendum to make status-loss, real or imagined, a central feature of their campaigns for and against EU membership. Employing discourse analysis across a range of textual data—from negotiations transcripts, court proceedings, elite memoirs, newspapers, and state archives—I trace how Israeli, Armenian, and British elites in each of these cases pushed for recognition, promoted the view that it was absent, and yet claimed it was vitally necessary. At the same time, each case also reveals the unintended consequences of mobilizing around recognition in this way, as the dependence on others’ views that recognition-seeking entails also binds the actor to its audience in fundamental ways.

Creator

• Freedman, Joshua

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-cmkh-pp75

Subject

• International relations
• International law
• Political science

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• etdadmin_upload_660729
• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:14591

Keyword

• Identity
• Recognition
• Israel-Palestine
• Status
• Armenia-Turkey
• Britain-EU

Date created

• 2019-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright