Framing National Interest

How Media Discourses Influence Western Policy

Agendas Towards Foreign Armed Conflicts

Patrice Wangen

Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to

obtaining the degree of Doctor of Political and Social Sciences
of the European University Institute

Florence, 23 April 2019.

European University Institute
Department of Political and Social Sciences

Framing National Interest

How Media Discourses Influence Western Policy Agendas Towards
Foreign Armed Conflicts

Patrice Wangen

Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to

obtaining the degree of Doctor of Political and Social Sciences
of the European University Institute

Examining Board
Prof. Jennifer Welsh, European University Institute (Supervisor)
Prof. Jutta Weldes, Bristol University
Prof. Hanspeter Kriesi, European University Institute
Prof. Keith Krause, The Garduate Institute Geneva

© Patrice Wangen, 2019

No part of this thesis may be copied, reproduced or transmitted without prior
permission of the author
Candidate’s Declaration
I, Patrice Wangen, hereby certify that I am the author of the work Framing National Interest:
How Media Discourses Influence Western Policy Agendas Towards Foreign Armed Conflicts,
which I have presented for examination for the Ph.D. thesis at the European University Insti-
tute. I also certify that this is solely my own original work, other than where I have clearly
indicated, in this declaration and in the thesis, that it is the work of others.

I warrant that I have obtained the permissions required for using any material from other
copyrighted publications.

I certify that this work complies with the Code of Ethics in Academic Research issued by the
European University Institute (IUE 332/2/10, CA 297).

The copyright of this work rests with its author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that
full acknowledgement is made. This work may not be reproduced without my prior written
consent. This authorization does not, to the best of my knowledge, infringe of any third party.

I declare that this work consists of approximately 74,201 words.

Signature and Date

1 April 2019
Abstract
To what extent and how do media discourses shape the sometimes erratic and often prob-
lematic responses of Western policymakers to armed conflicts around the globe? The thesis
examines this question from a variety of theoretical and empirical perspectives. It highlights
the contingency of the Western gaze and the ability of non-governmental political elites to in-
fluence processes of foreign policymaking by shaping public discourse on the national interest.
The thesis statistically analyses how much time and resources the United States, the United
Kingdom, France, and Germany spend on 20 of the most intense armed conflict between 1998
and 2010. Based on original data covering 42,000 newspaper articles and 4,200 foreign policy
events, the thesis shows that a conflict’s place on the foreign policy agenda is systematically re-
lated to media discourses that suggest doing something about a specific conflict. The analysis
demonstrates furthermore that much of the discursive patterns in media precede foreign policy
activity, which indicates that the media do not just report on foreign policy developments, but
also help to bring them about. In the second part, this thesis uses Western reactions to the civil
war in Darfur as a theory-developing case study to explore who is able to shape foreign policy
discourse and how. It problematizes wide-spread conceptions of the elite, the media, and the
public and develops an analytical framework that is based on discourse theoretical notions put
forward by Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Slavoj Žižek. In contrast to the widespread
top-down narratives in which governmental elites simply dictate a foreign policy consensus to
media and public, this thesis argues that the dividing line is rarely between ‘the government’
and ‘the people.’ Rather, political conflict revolves around competing ideological positions
that try to define the meaning of the national interest. Media discourses are a central forum for
the hegemonic struggle between these positions and societal actors other than governmental
officials can effectively intervene in this process.
Acknowledgements

It belongs to good academic manners to use this section to mention a long string of names
that contributed to the making of this document. It would not be difficult for me to fill these
pages with the names of people that deserve to be mentioned, most of which will know how
much I appreciated their help, support, and friendship throughout the last years. At the risk
of appearing ungrateful, however, I will not do so because the practice of acknowledgements,
to me, is reflective of some serious pathologies of contemporary academia. Mostly, it reifies
a certain elitist-bourgeois sentiment of what this document means and represents, which does
not fare well with my upbringings in a working class family and the political identity that this
inspired.
First, the professionals involved in honing this document to live up to contemporary aca-
demic requirements are paid to do so in financial terms, class privileges, and high levels of
societal recognition. Insofar as they went beyond what they are paid to do, thanking them in
this section would, in my opinion, make me complicit in normalizing the exploitative functions
of a neo-liberal academic reality that undermines its critical and emancipatory potential. Of
course, I am thankful for them doing their jobs. But I am not any more thankful to them than
to, for example, the cleaning staff of the institute, the bus drivers of the city, or administrative
aids across the universities I have been to.
Second, the friends and family members that usually feature in such acknowledgements
are there for life, not work. Featuring them in this text would, in my opinion, contribute to the
notion that you can only be a good academic if your entire life revolves around your passion
and commitment to your work. So much so that you have to thank your loved ones for their
patience and sacrifices. Insofar as I am obliged to do the latter, I would rather use this space to
accuse an unreasonably (and unproductively) stressful and toxic academic work environment
for the physical and mental exhaustion that forces so many of us to neglect what really matters.
Finally, thanking people for helping me to write a document worthy of the title of a Ph.D.
implies that title to be something extraordinary. The following document is certainly the out-
come of long years of hard work and cause for celebrating the achievement of a personal and
professional goal. But the practice of acknowledgements, in my opinion, also reinforces hi-
erarchical and classist aspects of academic identities. The Ph.D. title as a means to uphold
the notion that we are better, smarter, and worth being paid substantially more than the rest
of the ‘uneducated masses.’ Coming from a working-class family – and staying at an elitist

vii
 viii

academic institution in times of Trump, Brexit, and Gilets Jaunes – the sometimes implicit and
sometimes explicit classism in social practices amongst academics have left a bitter after-taste
that will leave a lasting mark on my optimism about what we are trying or supposed to do as
political scientists.
In that sense, I am not convinced that the following document is an extraordinary cause for
celebration, which would justify the writing of ceremonial acknowledgements. Rather, I see it
as the result of a bunch of qualified and well-trained people trying to do their job. Insofar as
they did, I would like to thank them and hope that my thesis does justice to their professional
commitment. More crucially, though, I would like to thank the tax-payers of several European
countries for enabling me to embark on this long journey of immense personal, intellectual,
and political growth. It is my sincere hope and decisive goal to give something back to these
societies – in whatever form that opportunity will present itself to me in the near and distant
future.
Contents

List of Figures xiii

List of Tables xv

1 Introduction 1
The Study of Foreign Policy Agendas: Beyond Military Intervention . . . . . . . . 5
The Political Nature of the National Interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
The Ideological Fragmentation of the Elite, the Media, and the Public . . . . . . . 12
Research Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Causality, Quantification, and Post-Structuralism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
The Structure of the Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

I A Structural Relationship 25

2 The Political Nature of the National Interest 27

The Limits of System-Level Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Domestic Politics I: Liberalism and Two-Level Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Domestic Politics II: Neoclassical Realism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Domestic Politics III: Psychological and Organisational Approaches . . . . . . . . 36
Domestic Politics IV: Social Constructivism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Discourse and Framing: National Interest as Floating Signifier . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Dissecting the Role of the Public: Cognition, Sociology, and Politics . . . . . . . . 44
Public Discourse is not Public Opinion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
The Agenda-Setting Power of Elite Media Discourses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

3 National Interest, Media Discourses, and Policy Agendas: A Statistical Analysis 53

Research Design and Case Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
The West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Foreign Armed Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Elite Media Discourses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Conceptualisation and Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

ix
 x

Foreign Policy Agendas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Framing the National Interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Modelling Time: Fading-Memory-Lag and Indexing-Hypothesis Lead . . . . 63
Control Variables: The Data Problem and Omitted Variable Bias . . . . . . . 65
Basic Patterns of Foreign Policy Agendas and National Interest Framing . . . . . . 67
Time-Series Cross-Section Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Comparing Model Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Afghanistan: What Would Have Been? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Implications and Limitations of the Statistical Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

II National Interest in the Making 81

4 An Analytical Framework 83
Methodological Reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Problematizing and Process-Oriented Theory Development . . . . . . . . . . 86
The Case of Darfur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Selecting the Most Active Foreign Policy Episodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Triangulating Primary and Secondary Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Political Communication: The Elite, the Media, and the Public . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Top-Down: Manufacturing Consent and the Indexing Hypothesis . . . . . . . 90
Bottom-Up: The CNN Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Cycle: The Cascading Activation Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Problematizing the Elite-Media-Public Triad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Structural Indeterminacy, Dislocation, and Political Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
The Hegemonic Struggle Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

5 The Darfur Crisis and the West 105

Western Reactions to the Darfur Crisis: A General Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Exploring the Most Active Foreign Policy Episodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
United States: July-August-September 2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Germany: October-November-December 2006 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
United Kingdom: July-August-September 2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
France: October-November-December 2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Implications and Limitations of the Qualitative Investigation . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

6 Conclusion 133

Notes 139

Bibliography 153
xi

Appendix A: Data Collection 169

Selection of Foreign Armed Conflicts for Statistical Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Guidelines for Coding of Foreign Policy Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Evaluation of Topic Model Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

Appendix B: Statistical Analysis 179

Basic Correlations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Time-Series Cross-Section Regression Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Random Intercept Variation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Marginal Effects for Control Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
xii
List of Figures

1.1 Number of Distinct Armed Conflicts 1989-2017 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

3.1 Average Correlation between National Interest Frames and Foreign Policy
Agendas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
3.2 Comparison of Fading-Memory-Lag and Indexing-Hypothesis-Lead Correla-
tions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.3 Model Predictions for Foreign Policy Agendas towards Afghanistan 1998-2001 76
3.4 Model Predictions for Foreign Policy Agendas towards Afghanistan 1998-
2001 (Hypothetical Scenarios) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

4.1 The Hegemonic Struggle Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

5.1 Juxtaposition of Developments in Darfur and its Position on Western Policy

Agendas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
5.2 Amount of Official Development Aid to Sudan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
5.3 Map of Temporal Dynamics of the Genocide-in-Darfur Debate (United States
2004) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.4 Map of Temporal Dynamics of the Debate over Increased Bundeswehr Partic-
ipation (Germany 2006) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
5.5 Illustrating the Hegemony of Humanitarian Interventionism (United Kingdom
2007) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
5.6 Map of Temporal Dynamics of the L’Arche de Zoé Case (France 2007) . . . 129

B.1 Basic Correlations (United States) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

B.2 Basic Correlations (United Kingdom) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
B.3 Basic Correlations (France) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
B.4 Basic Correlations (Germany) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
B.5 Random Intercept Variation (United States) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
B.6 Random Intercept Variation (United Kingdom) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
B.7 Random Intercept Variation (France) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
B.8 Random Intercept Variation (Germany) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
B.9 Marginal Effects for Control Variables (United States) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

xiii
 xiv

B.10 Marginal Effects for Control Variables (United Kingdom) . . . . . . . . . . . 192

B.11 Marginal Effects for Control Variables (France) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
B.12 Marginal Effects for Control Variables (Germany) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
List of Tables

3.1 Categories of Events for Measurement of Foreign Policy Activity . . . . . . . 59

3.2 Illustration of Word Distributions for Most Prevalent National Interest Frames 62
3.3 List of Control Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.4 Frequency of Foreign Policy Events for 20 Armed Conflicts 1998-2010 . . . 67
3.5 Comparing model performance by Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) . . . 74
3.6 Summary of Effect Direction for each Newspaper-Frame-Time Combination . 77

5.1 Frequency of Foreign Policy Events for Darfur 1998-2010 . . . . . . . . . . 108

A.1 Evaluation of Topic Model Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

B.2 Time-Series Cross-Section Regression Results (United States) . . . . . . . . 183
B.3 Time-Series Cross-Section Regression Results (United Kingdom) . . . . . . 184
B.4 Time-Series Cross-Section Regression Results (France) . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
B.5 Time-Series Cross-Section Regression Results (Germany) . . . . . . . . . . 186

xv
xvi
Chapter 1

Introduction

Between 1989 and 2017, a yearly average of 41 countries have been affected by armed con-
flicts. If we take into account that most of these situations involve a variety of conflicting
parties and that many countries have several distinct centres of conflict, the average rises to
125 wars. During that period, according to the rather conservative estimates of the Uppsala
Conflict Data Program (UCDP), an average of 18 armed conflicts resulted in the deaths of
more than 500 people each year. Distinguishing between wars that involve recognized govern-
ments (state-based conflict), those that involve only insurgent groups (non-state conflict), and
those in which the civilian population was specifically targeted (one-sided violence), Figure
1 illustrates that armed conflicts are a persistent and wide-spread phenomenon of contempo-
rary (international) politics. While there are a few that attentive readers of the news can name
in a heartbeat – Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, etcetera – most of the
conflicts captured in this figure remain local and receive attention by regional powers at best.
That Western governments want to engage with these conflicts in one way or another is com-
mon knowledge, but why do they focus on only a handful and largely ignore the rest? Why
do some foreign armed conflicts capture the attention of the West, while others are neglected,
disregarded, or simply forgotten? What guides the selective gaze of Western policymakers?
A most common and to many people intuitive answer is that “it’s a game played for na-
tional interests, and always was.”1 Yet, while such a reply seems intriguingly economical at
the surface, it does in fact raise more questions than it answers. What is really meant by the
term national interest? Who or what defines what it is? Is the national interest reducible to ‘ob-
jective’ facts about economic motives or security threats? Does it have a normative dimension
relating, for example, to humanitarian concerns? In retrospect, many academics, pundits, and
even casual observers of politics are apt in providing answers to these questions by narrating
the ‘national interest’ that motivated world leaders to either engage with or remain silent about
international events. Such narratives are reassuring insofar as they suggest that ‘nations’ have
clear interests and behave in predictable ways.
In this thesis, I argue that this wide-spread approach is a conceptually problematic, em-
pirically unconvincing, and politically restrictive act of post-hoc rationalization that obscures

1
 2

State−Based Conflict
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Number of Distinct Conflicts

Non−State Conflict
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

One−Sided Violence
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
9
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
More than 500 Casualties Less than 500 Casualties

Figure 1.1: Number of distinct armed conflicts with at least 25 battle-related casualties per year
according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP GED v.18.1; Sundberg and Melander 2013;
Croicu and Sundberg 2017).

political processes more than it illuminates them. Throughout the empirical analysis and con-
ceptual argumentation of this thesis, I demonstrate that whatever political leaders consider to
be the best for the country is never a direct reflection ‘objective facts’ or stable perspectives on
either the economy, security, or normative duties of a state. Rather, it is a function of a highly
dynamic political struggle over the interpretation of the national interest in a given situation,
which takes place in largely public discourses and often involves a broad variety of societal ac-
tors ranging from governmental officials, parliamentarians, experts, academics, intellectuals,
journalists, social movements, and more. If we want to understand why a particular interpre-
tation of the national interest was able to inform foreign policymaking, we need to understand
this often contentious political struggle rather than assign ‘fixed’ motives to states as unitary
actors.
This position builds upon a more dynamic and political understanding of the national in-
terest that has been articulated by foreign policy analysts (e.g., Rosenau, 1980), constructivists
(e.g., Adler, 1991; Finnemore, 1996; Kratochwil, 2011), and particularly by post-structuralist
(e.g., Hansen, 2006; Weldes, 1996) in the field of International Relations (IR). While not
adding new arguments to the deconstruction of the national interest as a presumably objec-
tively definable concept, this thesis explores what the related insights of post-structuralist
scholarship mean for the causal research question articulated above – why do some foreign
3

armed conflicts capture the attention of the West, while others are neglected, disregarded,
or simply forgotten? What guides the selective gaze of Western policymakers? – and what
quantitative-causal researchers in IR (e.g., Aubone, 2013; Choi, 2013; Choi and James, 2014;
Fortna, 2004; Fordham, 2008; Huth, 1998; Koga, 2011; Yoon, 1997) can learn from this re-
search tradition that they rarely engage with.
The central claim of this thesis is that media discourses are an important host to the dis-
cursive struggles over the definition of the national interest, and that they thereby influence
which foreign armed conflicts Western policymakers spend most time and resources on. This
argument relates to the so-called CNN-effect and the political communication literature on
media and foreign policy (e.g., Bennett, 1990; Entman, 2003, 2004; Herman and Chomsky,
1988; Robinson, 2011). However, this thesis shows that their current models fail to grasp
the complexity of the discursive power dynamics by unproductively reducing this issue to the
question whether the framing of the national interest is determined bottom-up by the people or
top-down by a formal political elite in charge of the decisions. Here too, a post-structuralists
perspective can help to develop a more nuanced and dynamic approach to the causal narratives
that link media discourses to foreign policymaking. More specifically, it enables us to con-
ceive of the constant ideological struggles that polarize foreign policy debates rather than on
a presumed cleavage between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite.’
The argument, in short, is that these media discourses gain their political significance from
their structural positioning at the heart of public discourse, with which foreign policymakers
are cognitively, sociologically, and politically interwoven and dependent upon. In particu-
lar, foreign policymaking is influenced by interpretations of the national interest that gain
a hegemonic status in those media discourses to which policymakers are most exposed and
sympathetic to. Rather than conceptualizing the influence of media discourses on foreign pol-
icy through its impact on mass public opinion, this thesis proposes to understand elite media
discourses as influential for the public perception of a given issue amongst a limited polit-
ical elite. The media’s influence on foreign policy, thus, should not be reduced to its role
in electoral competition, but should include reflections on its potential impact on the social
construction of the views espoused by decision makers themselves.
This is not to say that such discursive patterns on the national interest in elite media out-
lets always lead to specific policy outcomes. On the one hand, I argue that the most direct
impact of media discourses on foreign policy is an agenda setting effect. As Robert Grenier,
a former officer at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and key figure in the invasion of
both Afghanistan and Iraq puts it: “On any given morning, I could look at the papers to see
what would be on the minds of policymakers [...]” (Grenier, 2015, 24). That is, policymakers
are more likely to spend time and resources on an issue if relevant media discourses clearly
indicate a need to do so. On the other hand, if a specific ideological position gains hegemony
over the interpretation of the national interest in the relevant media discourses, it is bound to
have an impact on concrete policy developments conditional on, amongst others, institutional,
resource related, and geopolitical factors. To facilitate a large-scale assessment of the rele-
 4

vance of media discourses for foreign policy, this thesis focuses on its agenda setting impact.
This allows us to be less concerned about the various historical and contextual factors that
condition concrete foreign policy outcomes, and enables us to spend more time on recasting
our understanding of the interaction between the elite, the media, and the public.
One of the main objectives of this thesis is to problematize the way aforementioned po-
litical communication literature speaks about the elite, the media, and the public with regard
to foreign policymaking. Unsettling the presumed and politically connoted cleavage between
the government, the media, and the people, this thesis highlights the ideological fragmentation
and political alliances that cut across these entities. The real divide is ideological in the sense
that the formulation of foreign policy is based on contestable and often contested descriptions
of empirical evidence, perspectives on the normative duties of states, interpretations of mate-
rial interests, perceptions of strategic rationales, and formulations of national identities or role
conceptions. Very rarely do we see a homogeneous or stable stance on all of these by either
the elite, the media, or the public. Rather, disagreements structure the formulation of gov-
ernmental positions, fracture media landscapes, and certainly prevent a single-headed ‘public
opinion’ from manifesting itself as a real entity rather than as a political claim. While the elite,
the media, and the public are powerful political terms, they are analytically not very helpful
to understand the ideological dynamics and discursive struggles around foreign policymaking
and around its core concept of the national interest.
To substantiate these arguments, the thesis provides a range of conceptual elaborations, a
theory-guided quantitative analysis of media discourses and foreign policy agendas, as well
as a theory-developing qualitative case study on the dynamics of foreign policy debates. The
conceptual arguments of this thesis are grounded in a post-structuralist approach to Interna-
tional Relations (IR) and contribute to the theoretical literature on framing and agenda-setting
in foreign policy debates. The quantitative analysis investigates how the United States (US),
the United Kingdom (UK), France, and Germany reacted to 20 of the most intense armed con-
flicts between 1998 and 2010. The findings show that there is a structural relationship between
media discourses about the national interest and the time and resources policymakers spend
on addressing these conflicts, suggesting a timing that sees media discourses not just as the
outcome, but also as the driver of foreign policy developments. The qualitative analysis, on
the other hand, takes a closer look at mid-range episodes of US-American, British, French,
and German reactions to the civil war in Darfur in order to investigate how media discourses
come about and who is able to shape their content. The result of the theory-building exercise is
a problematization of top-down narratives which see the government as the sole master of for-
eign policy debates. Alternatively, I develop a mid-range analytical framework that highlights
the political dynamics and ideological fragmentation of foreign policy debates, incorporating
discourse theoretical understandings of power, structure, and agency.
Before doing so, this introduction provides an overview of the main empirical, conceptual,
and methodological arguments forwarded in this thesis. First, I clarify that the question about
how much time and resources Western policymakers spend on a foreign armed conflict is not
5

equal to that of whether they intervened militarily or not. Second, I illustrate the political
nature of the ‘national interest’ and how its definition is contested and dynamic in order to
lay out the post-structuralist understanding of the term put forward in this thesis. Third, I
introduce the problematization of the presumed cleavage between the elite, the media, and
the public. Fourth, I elaborate on the methodological approaches employed to investigate
these arguments empirically. Fifth, I explain how and why this thesis manages to productively
combine post-structuralist theorizing with a quantitative and causally oriented analysis.

The Study of Foreign Policy Agendas: Beyond Military Interven-

tion

The public and academic discourse on Western reactions to foreign armed conflicts often
breaks down to the question of whether and why the West intervenes militarily (e.g., Aubone,
2013; Choi, 2013; Choi and James, 2014; Fortna, 2004; Fordham, 2008; Huth, 1998; Koga,
2011; Yoon, 1997). The topic of this thesis is closely linked to this concern, but it asks at the
same time less and more. It asks less in the sense that the focus on foreign policy agendas
rather than specific foreign policy tools or outcomes attempts to sideline the complex con-
textual factors that condition concrete foreign policy decisions. The argument of this thesis
should therefore be conceived as at most a partial and limited explanation of Western military
interventionism. At the same time, it asks more than the above question in that the study of
foreign policy agendas reveals the sole focus on military interventions to be myopic and lim-
iting. The extensive data collection of this thesis shows that military interventions form only a
small subset of the foreign policy tools that Western powers use in their attempts to influence
the dynamics of foreign armed conflicts.
In that sense, the question addressed in these pages is not whether and why the West sends
troops into foreign countries, but whether and why it spends time and resources to address a
specific armed conflict. On an analytical level, the reason for this re-specification of the ques-
tion is that military interventions depend on much more than the political will of a government
to resolve a given situation – that is, the ‘national interest.’ Amongst others, there are consid-
erations about international law, the preferences of allied countries, the will for cooperation
of the conflict countries and its neighbours, the geopolitical interests of rival powers, the de-
gree to which a country is already engaged militarily elsewhere, or the basic question whether
military intervention is seen to be an effective means to pacify a certain region. Given these
contextual complexities, even if policymakers consider the national interest to be at stake, they
might opt, for example, for diplomatic means, sanctions, the invocation of international crim-
inal law, the sponsoring and facilitation of mediation, supply of military material to conflict
parties, or increased contributions to humanitarian aid. Despite this plethora of meaningful
responses to armed conflicts, as the analysis of Western reactions to the case of Darfur shows,
both political and academic commentators often use the absence of a military intervention as
 6

an indication that policymakers do or did not care to do anything about the conflict at hand.
Such comments typically ignore a large chunk of empirical evidence to the contrary and
betray a strong normative predisposition favouring military force over alternative strategies.
In some ways, they are better understood as political interventions in foreign policy debates
rather than analytical statements about the actions of policymakers. On the one hand, (recent)
history is full of examples where military interventions did not lead to an unambiguous im-
provement of the situation, but rather complicated or exacerbated the conflict dynamics. From
Rwanda, to Kosovo, to Afghanistan, to Libya, to Syria – one does not need to consult general
critics of Western interventionism to acknowledge the difficulties in asserting the efficacy of
military action as a means to achieve either humanitarian, security driven, or even geopoliti-
cal goals (see, e.g., De Mesquita and Downs, 2006; Kuperman, 2008; Posen and Ross, 1997).
Analytically then, it is not obvious to claim that if policymakers would really want to address
a situation, they would send troops to influence the course of the conflict. In the light of this
ambiguity, I argue that confusing the question whether Western policymakers were committed
to do something about a specific conflict with the question whether they intervened militarily
would not just be analytically problematic, but would also discursively reify a militaristic bias.
While it would not prevent us from considering alternatives to military interventions, acknowl-
edging the broader range of already practised Western reactions to foreign armed conflicts – as
done in this thesis – facilitates and encourages a shift in our thinking. In particular, adapting
the notion of foreign policy agendas as our main focus, military intervention becomes but one
possible tool to address the problem of war, instability, and suffering – and a tool, which can
easily be conceived of as impractical or problematic.
Thus, even though this thesis’ question also concerns research on military interventions, I
conceive of its dependent variable as the amount of time and resources Western policymakers
spend on a foreign armed conflict – that is, how much a conflict figures on Western foreign
policy agendas. While the study of policy agendas has received a lot of attention in the general
field of political science and the study of domestic political issues (especially, Baumgartner
and Jones, 1993; Baumgartner, Green-Pedersen and Jones, 2006; Baumgartner, De Boef and
Boydstun, 2008; Kingdon, 1984; Jones and Baumgartner, 2005), IR and foreign policy schol-
arship has paid attention to the notion only at the fringes of the field and without applying it
to the issue of interventionism as described above (e.g., Edwards and Wood, 1999; Joachim,
2003; Livingston, 1992; Wood and Peake, 1998). My understanding of policy agendas closely
follows John Kingdon’s definition:

The agenda, as I conceive of it, is the list of subjects or problems to which govern-
mental officials, and people outside of government closely associated with those
officials, are paying some serious attention at any given time. [...] Out of the set of
all conceivable subjects or problems to which officials could be paying attention,
they do in fact seriously attend to some rather than others. So the agenda-setting
process narrows this set of conceivable subjects to the set that actually becomes
7

the focus of attention. (Kingdon, 1984, 3)

This shift from military interventions to the notion of foreign policy agendas entails a price
in that it is much more difficult to empirically pin down how much a conflict figured on the
agenda of policymakers than whether they had troops on the ground or not. As the empirical
analysis of this thesis reveals, however, this trade-off in operational clarity pays off because
an enormous amount of relevant foreign policy activity would have been ignored by the more
traditional focus on military interventions. Given that the latter are not always the most ra-
tional choice to address a situation, difficult to implement internationally, and often hard to
sell domestically, this thesis’ analysis highlights that Western policymakers have always been
much more creative at finding a variety of approaches in their attempts to influence the course
of foreign armed conflicts.

The Political Nature of the National Interest

A common verdict of public and academic discourse is that these Western reactions to foreign
armed conflicts are guided by the national interest of the reacting country (see, e.g., Power,
2002; Prunier, 2005). The thesis accepts this as a starting point for further research, but high-
lights the politically contested and ideologically dynamic nature of the term. Even though for-
eign policy analysts (e.g. Rosenau, 1980), constructivists (e.g., Adler, 1991; Finnemore, 1996;
Kratochwil, 2011), and post-structuralists (e.g., Hansen, 2006; Weldes, 1996, 1999a) have
long challenged static and universalistic conceptions of the national interest and related terms,
the prominence of such uses in both academic and political interventions has not suffered sig-
nificantly from these critiques. Rationalist-realist understandings of the national interest are
still alive (e.g., Glaser, 2010), and political commentators still hold on to the notion that, for
example, the ‘national interest of Russia’ simply exists as an independent and fixed entity –
as a chess piece to be moved and played off in a game with predictable and stable rules.2
Moreover, much of quantitative research in IR tends to reduce the motivations of states on the
international level to objectively identifiable and thus comparatively assessable indicators like
the amount of trade between two countries (e.g., Choi, 2013; Choi and James, 2014), which
effectively reifies a static and universalistic conception of the national interest. This thesis is
one more contribution to the field of IR that challenges and problematizes this perspective, but
also proposes a way to integrate these insights into quantitative-causal scholarship. Building
upon a post-structuralist reading of foreign policymaking and the evidence uncovered by the
quantitative and qualitative analysis of this thesis, I do so on a conceptual as well as empirical
level.
On a conceptual level, this thesis conceives of the national interest as a floating signifier
(Laclau, 1996c, 2005). Meaning, the national interest is a term that is crucial precisely because
it does not have a fixed and independent content. It is a term that can be occupied by various
ideological positions and that is defined in a fundamentally contested or contestable political
 8

process. This process is discursive in nature and largely takes place – or at least leaves traces
– in public discourses, which we can both study and challenge in meaningful ways. With
discursive, however, I do not mean the liberal interpretation of Jürgen Habermas’ idea of com-
municative action (e.g., Risse, 2000; Schimmelfennig, 1997), but rather the sometimes violent
and also material struggle over which voices are heard and which voices are excluded from
the process of defining the national interest. Thus, this thesis is rooted in a the discourse theo-
retical ontology developed in the work of Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Slavoj Žižek.
As such, the perspectives developed here bear resemblance to much of the post-structuralist
scholarship in IR (e.g., Der Derian, 1989; Edkins, 1999; Epstein, 2018; Hansen, 2006; Walker,
1993; Weldes, 1996; Zehfuss, 2002). Despite their family resemblance, however, there are im-
portant differences among post-structuralist thinkers both within and outside of the field of
IR. Rather than wholeheartedly embracing a generic (IR) post-structuralist stance then, this
thesis focuses on a limited set of discourse theoretical concepts that are useful in this con-
text and, in very precise ways, compatible with the framing theoretical notions as well as the
quantitative-causal methodology introduced later.
On an empirical level, this thesis does not engage in simple hypothesis testing of the above
argument concerning the structural relationship between media discourses and foreign pol-
icy agendas. This is partially due to the theory-developing and inductive orientation of the
underlying empirical research, partially due to epistemological doubts about the positivist un-
derpinnings of such an approach, and furthermore impossible because parts of the developed
arguments operate on a philosophical level that does not lend itself to Popperian empirical re-
search because they are arguably not falsifiable. And yet, this thesis’ core contributions to the
scholarship on international politics and political communication in foreign policy are empir-
ical in nature. The knowledge claims invested in this empirical evidence, however, should be
read with a Bayesian logic of inference in mind (see, e.g., Beach and Pedersen, 2012, 2016).
The latter asks not whether a study proves or disproves a certain claim, but whether its evi-
dence gives us reasons to be more or less confident in its legitimacy. Thus, my thesis provides
evidence that neither confirms nor falsifies these theoretical claims put forward in Chapter 2
and Chapter 4, but increases our confidence in them as interesting and insightful perspectives
on the topic of Western policy agendas towards foreign armed conflicts. On the one hand, the
quantitative analysis indicates that there is indeed a structural relationship between the way
certain media outlets talk about an armed conflict and how much time and resources Western
policymakers spend on it. On the other hand, the qualitative investigation into Western reac-
tions to the case of Darfur shows that conceptions of the national interest are fundamentally
contested, that there are continuous discursive struggles at the very heart of foreign policymak-
ing and thus international politics, and that societal actors other than governmental officials can
intervene in these struggles in meaningful ways.
While these empirical and theoretical claims might seem straightforward to scholars rooted
in the post-structuralist tradition, they do run counter to widely held beliefs on world politics
and rationalist perspectives from within the field of IR, which I will discuss in more details
9

later on. Foreshadowing the more stringent exegesis of the literature, let us illuminate and
introduce the basic arguments of this thesis by exploring the example of US President Barack
Obama’s reaction to chemical warfare in Syria. Though it remains but an example that is
interpreted through the lens of this thesis theoretical arguments, the 2013 episode during which
Obama threatened Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with a military response is illustrative of
the context-specific, dynamic, and political nature of national interest conceptions, as well as
of how common distinctions between interests, ideas, and norms miss the crucial point that
these notions are interdependent and inseparable. Thus, the following serves to introduce a
more dynamic and political understanding of the national interest to those readers without
background in the related post-structuralist literature in IR. On 10 September 2013, reacting to
the incident in Ghouta – one of the deadliest uses of chemical weapons during the Syrian war
– Obama addressed the nation explaining why the US government was considering measures
against Assad. His words are worth quoting at length:

Over the past two years, what began as a series of peaceful protests against the
repressive regime of Bashar al-Assad has turned into a brutal civil war. Over
100,000 people have been killed. Millions have fled the country. In that time,
America has worked with allies to provide humanitarian support, to help the mod-
erate opposition, and to shape a political settlement. But I have resisted calls for
military action, because we cannot resolve someone else’s civil war through force,
particularly after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The situation profoundly changed, though, on August 21st, when Assad’s govern-
ment gassed to death over a thousand people, including hundreds of children. The
images from this massacre are sickening: Men, women, children lying in rows,
killed by poison gas. Others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath. A father
clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk. On that terrible
night, the world saw in gruesome detail the terrible nature of chemical weapons,
and why the overwhelming majority of humanity has declared them off-limits – a
crime against humanity, and a violation of the laws of war.

[ ... ]

When dictators commit atrocities, they depend upon the world to look the other
way until those horrifying pictures fade from memory. But these things happened.
The facts cannot be denied. The question now is what the United States of Amer-
ica, and the international community, is prepared to do about it. Because what
happened to those people – to those children – is not only a violation of interna-
tional law, it’s also a danger to our security.

Let me explain why. If we fail to act, the Assad regime will see no reason to
stop using chemical weapons. As the ban against these weapons erodes, other
tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas, and using
 10

them. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of chemical warfare
on the battlefield. And it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these
weapons, and to use them to attack civilians.
If fighting spills beyond Syria’s borders, these weapons could threaten allies like
Turkey, Jordan, and Israel. And a failure to stand against the use of chemical
weapons would weaken prohibitions against other weapons of mass destruction,
and embolden Assad’s ally, Iran – which must decide whether to ignore interna-
tional law by building a nuclear weapon, or to take a more peaceful path.
This is not a world we should accept. This is what’s at stake. And that is why,
after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests
of the United States to respond to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons
through a targeted military strike. The purpose of this strike would be to deter
Assad from using chemical weapons, to degrade his regime’s ability to use them,
and to make clear to the world that we will not tolerate their use.3

Along the lines of the previous arguments about the myopic focus on military interven-
tions, let us briefly consider why Obama’s words were not just inconsequential talk to sooth
public outrage,4 but an integral part of US foreign policy towards Syria and the justification
thereof. It is of course true that the US did not launch a fully fledged military invasion when
the use of chemical weapons continued later on. One can also argue, as many do,5 that the
way the US – and the international community in general – reacted to the Syrian civil war
has not been very efficient at achieving peace, stability, or the end of human suffering. As a
political commentary, critiques of international responses as being insufficient are well-taken
since they had an at most ambiguous impact on the situation. However, to attribute this failure
to achieve certain goals to a lack of commitment to do something about the situation seems
analytically far fetched given the countless hours foreign policymakers spend in all sorts of
international bodies to coordinate and negotiate responses, given the billions in humanitar-
ian relief efforts, given the geopolitical tensions the West exacerbated by lobbying for Syrian
insurgents, or given the military investments it made to aid some sides to the conflict.
Thus, let us assume that Obama’s speech was not just rhetoric (as understood by, e.g.,
Schimmelfennig, 1997), but indicative of how he and the government understood the US na-
tional interest in light of the situation. There are at least three things his comments can tell us
about the national interest as an explanatory concept for foreign policy behaviour, all of which
return time and again throughout the chapters of this thesis. The first one is that conceptions
of the national interest are not exclusively linked to ‘hard facts’ or ‘material interests,’ but
are inevitably interlinked with ideational and normative aspects: How should we understand
the situation? What are our stakes in this? Why should we care? Obama’s answer to these
questions is multidimensional and it would be a stretch to ignore the (potentially contentious)
normative underpinning and empirical assumptions of his argumentation. While he starts his
intervention with the humanitarian perspective that potentially moves his liberal political con-
11

stituency, he spends a significant time arguing why the upholding of humanitarian norms is
intertwined with concerns of national security, terrorism, the well-being of US-American sol-
diers, and geopolitical considerations about threats to US allies posed by these attacks. Given
that he was seeking Congressional approval for targeted air-strikes against the Syrian regime,
the latter arguments were most likely meant for those who would disagree that the US has a
duty to defend humanitarian norms, but think in more openly self-interested ways about the
goals of US foreign policy. What is remarkable of this example and indicative of general
patterns in foreign policy debates, is that concrete conceptions of the national interest – i.e.,
answers to the question what should we do and why? – typically try to discursively create a
single-headed ‘nation’ by unifying different and potentially competing political perspectives
under the same roof. That is precisely the logic of a floating signifier, which I will expand
upon later on.
The second aspect that this example illustrates well is the historical specificity of the na-
tional interest and the need to constantly re-interpret its meaning in the light of new events.
On the one hand, Obama’s definition of the national interest is intrinsically linked to the idea
that chemical weapons should be banned and states that use them should be punished. While
some early forms of this norm can be traced back as far as the 17th century,6 it only became
widely shared with the Geneva Protocol in 1925 and reached its most universal acceptance in
1993 when 165 states signed the Chemical Weapons Convention. Today, 193 states are parties
to this convention, but with the continuous and unpunished usage of chemical weapons in the
Syrian civil war, one could argue that the norm faces serious threats of deterioration despite
its legal status. The point being that, if the norm against the use of chemical weapons is a his-
torically specific and evolving entity (see Price, 1995), so is Obama’s take on the US national
interest by implication. That being said, it is not just the general historical context that matters,
but also the practical difficulties of applying abstract ideas to concrete and ambiguous situa-
tions. While the humanitarian significance of the Ghouta incident was rather uncontroversial,
the very fact that Obama spent so much time elaborating the security and geopolitical dimen-
sions of this incident highlights that it was not common-sense what actually threatens national
security or how geopolitical dynamics are affected by this. Thus, in practice, policymakers and
other participants of foreign policy debates face the non-trivial and often challenging task of
interpreting how international events matter for their ‘nation’ and its abstract norms, interests,
and principles.
The final and most important aspect highlighted by Obama’s speech – or rather by the
fact that he needed to give it in the first place – is that conceptions of the national interest are
fundamentally political and contested or at least contestable. If we consider the heated public
debate within which these remarks were embedded, Obama did not just simply state what the
US national interest is. Rather, he asserted his interpretation within an ongoing discursive
struggle in an attempt to convince a broader political public of his position and align himself
with those voices that were calling for a reaction to the events in Syria.7 While there might
thus be one interpretation of the national interest that ends up informing a specific policy
 12

decision, we should not ignore that it only does so by winning a discursive contest against
competing interpretations. What we do then when we retrospectively rationalize the behaviour
of states as “a game played for national interests” is to partake in the silencing of opposing
voices by ‘naturalizing’ the winners of a political contest and portraying their interpretation of
the national interest as more or less inevitable rather than acknowledging the contingency of
their political success. Thus, when we use the national interest as an explanatory concept of
foreign policymaking or international politics, we should keep in mind that the national interest
is always only partially representative of views held in the respective country. Moreover,
given the constant need to re-interpret abstract conceptions of the national interest in the light
of new events, the political struggle about which voices get to represent the ‘nation’ is not
just something that takes place at the ballot boxes every few years, but rather something that
accompanies the everyday of foreign policymaking.
Of course, Obama’s speech is but one example among many and it merely serves to intro-
duce and illustrate the arguments of this thesis rather than prove them. The following chapters
provide a less anecdotal testimony based on a large-scale quantitative evaluation of Western
policy agendas towards foreign armed conflicts between 1998 and 2010, as well as a sys-
tematic qualitative investigation of Western reactions to the civil war in Darfur. While many
post-structuralists would agree with these arguments on theoretical grounds and based on their
extensive track-record at de-constructing notions of the national interest through various em-
pirical studies and methodologies (e.g., Campbell, 1992; Hansen, 2006; Weldes, 1996, 1999a),
this thesis additionally explores how quantitative-causal researchers in IR can build upon these
insights in order to improve the answers to their research questions.

The Ideological Fragmentation of the Elite, the Media, and the Pub-
lic

The other substantive contribution of this thesis is more specifically targeted towards a subset
of the political communication literature that deals with foreign policy debates, including var-
ious interventions on the so-called CNN effect (e.g., Baum and Potter, 2008; Bennett, 1988,
1990; De Franco, 2012; Entman, 2003, 2004; Gilboa, 2005b,a; Hawkins, 2002, 2011; Herman
and Chomsky, 1988; Jakobsen, 1996, 2000; Livingston and Eachus, 1995; Livingston, 2011;
Olmastroni, 2014; Robinson, 1999, 2001, 2005, 2011). What characterizes this scholarship is
not the side-lining of domestic political dynamics around conceptions of the national interest,
but the analytical focus on a presumed cleavage between the elite, the media, and the pub-
lic. Being rooted in debates on American democracy, the political communication literature
focuses on the question whether it is the government who defines foreign policy discourse,
whether the public has a say in this, and what role the media plays in this relationship (for
an overview, see Baum and Potter, 2008). As such, this scholarship speaks to a normatively
salient topic and is reflective of many political debates that pit the government against the
13

media against the people when it comes to foreign policy and issues of war. While scholars
writing on this topic are, of course, not ignorant of intra-governmental disagreements, frac-
tured media landscapes, and the political polarization of the public, these issues are rarely
systematically included in their analytical models. Based on the outlined post-structuralist
perspective and the empirical evidence uncovered in the qualitative cases study on Western re-
actions to the civil war in Darfur, this thesis problematizes this scholarly practice and develops
an alternative analytical framework for the study of the dynamics of foreign policy debates.
While this exercise involves an in-depth conceptual and empirical critique outlined in de-
tail in the following chapters, at the most basic level, the argument boils down to the following.
With regard to Obama’s above-quoted speech, the foreign policy communication scholarship
would encourage us to ask whether the President was reacting to fast-paced media reports on
the victims of chemical weapons – the CNN effect (see, e.g., Robinson, 2011) – or whether the
media, on the contrary, just copy-pasted the perspectives that (governmental) elites told them
to print – i.e., whether the elite is ‘manufacturing consent’ (e.g., Herman and Chomsky, 1988).
Of course, after decades of related scholarship, the most widely accepted answer is a kind of
middle-ground that acknowledges the interaction between the elite, the media, and the public,
while nevertheless seeing the elite as the most powerful actor in this constellation (Entman,
2003, 2004). These scholars have contributed significantly to our empirical understanding of
foreign policy debates by providing valuable conceptual and often normatively informed in-
sights on the role of democratic institutions in foreign policymaking (e.g., Bennett, 1990). And
yet, I argue in this thesis that the way this literature approaches notions of the elite, the media,
and the public is too simplistic and underestimates the analytical implications of the ideolog-
ical fragmentation that cuts across these entities. The question is not whether the government
is able to guide foreign policy debates, but which governmental actors are able to establish
their vision as the official one. The question is not whether the media is able to push the gov-
ernment in certain directions, but which media discourses have an influence on the thinking
of policymakers and why. The question is not just whether public opinion on foreign issues
is coherent or relevant, but who is able to shape public discourses on the national interest and
why.
Let us further explore the example of the US reactions to the Ghouta attacks in 2013,
which is indicative of the intra-governmental politics that accompanies the formulation of
the ‘official’ national interest. As Jeffrey Goldberg points out in his insightful piece on the
episode, Obama entered office with an explicit wish to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq and
not to get lost in interventionist hopes to change the world by military force. According to
Goldberg, “Obama would say privately that the first task of an American president in the post-
Bush international arena was ‘Don’t do stupid shit.”’8 By September 2013, the government
seemed far away from this cautious stance given that it supported the intervention in Libya
two years earlier and was now threatening another one in Syria. What happened was that the
interventionist members of cabinet overruled the President’s opposing disposition, empowered
by a wide-spread public conviction that Assad had passed the ‘red line’ that Obama specified
 14

a year earlier.9 Pushed to do more by Samantha Power, US Ambassador to the United Nations
(UN) and author of the interventionist manifesto “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age
of Genocide (2002), Obama reportedly snapped and said: “Samantha, enough, I’ve already
read your book.” Not necessarily being convinced himself then, Obama was nevertheless
pushed into a corner by his own statements a year earlier10 and how they resonated in that
specific moment.
This episode illustrates the argument that, often, there is no singular government position
that could be used to guide public perceptions of foreign policy issues, and that formally
powerful actors like the President of the United States do not always have the last say, despite
their formal powers to simply overrule and ignore the public’s understanding of the situation.
Rather, governmental officials work within broader public discourses, which they can and do
try to influence, but which they can ignore only with great difficulties and under the condition
that all members of the government are on board. As much as there is no the government, this
thesis also reminds us that there is no the media or the public. On the question whether or
not to intervene in Syria, the US American media and public were at least as divided as the
government.11 Analytically, we should therefore acknowledge that there are different media
outlets that cater to different subsets of the public, not all of which matter in the same way
for the incumbent governmental individuals. Beyond this specific example, also the notion
of social media echo chambers (Bakshy, Messing and Adamic, 2015; Colleoni, Rozza and
Arvidsson, 2014) and US President Donald Trump’s reported affinity for Fox News further
emphasize the point that ‘the media’ rarely profess a unitary stance on political issues.12
Thus, we have to take these ideological divides seriously as they prevent the simple juxta-
position of the elite, the media, and the public from being analytically useful. In response to
this critique, which is elaborated in more detail later, the thesis develops a mid-range analyt-
ical framework that further combines the discourse theoretical understanding of the national
interest with concepts from the academic literature on framing. The success of certain frames
specifying conceptions of the national interest is understood to be influenced by a combination
of the proponents’ discursive power – i.e., their ability to authoritatively and credibly intervene
in public discourses – as well as the meaning fixation of a frame in discursive structures – i.e.,
how much people recognize the ideas as commonsensical. Notably, the framework allows for
more variation in terms of the actors that can effectively intervene in foreign policy debates,
granting political agency to societal actors like experts, academics, intellectuals, journalists,
social movements, and more – irrespective of whether their stances are progressive or regres-
sive. Assuming the floating nature of the national interest signifier, this analytical framework
aims to make sense of the short-term dynamics of foreign policy debates and to provide some
understanding of why certain conceptions of the national interest are more successful than
others. At the same time, being rooted in a post-structuralist understanding of discourse, it
avoids being overly deterministic.
A vital point to clarify is such a perspective’s relation to notions of public opinion, media,
and political conflict as used in more positivist approaches to political science (e.g., Clare,
15

2010; Kaarbo, 2012; Kriesi et al., 2008, 2012; Lipset and Rokkan, 1967, 1990; Mello, 2012,
2014; Schattschneider, 1960). This thesis is not necessarily a fundamental critique of this liter-
ature, but goes beyond its focus on electoral competition or party politics as the only realm of
political contestation.13 Of course, it matters which political actors are institutionally empow-
ered to make foreign policy decisions. However, based on the more dynamic understanding of
political ideologies inherent in the discourse theoretical perspective of this thesis, the goal is to
analyse the day-to-day dynamics of how policymakers and the broader political elite interpret
foreign policy situations and how they matter for the nation. Analytically, this necessitates a
shift from the study of public opinion to the study of public discourses as different phenomena
with different political functions (for a related discussion see, e.g., Blumer, 1948). The most
obvious difference is that surveys attempting to judge public opinion give equal weight to each
citizen and indeed go a long way to achieve a balanced representation of the average opinion
held by the population. As regards the study of electoral behaviour, this approach makes sense
insofar as voting rights are given out equally as well, but the political role of public discourses
is not just tied to their impact on public opinion and thereby on electoral outcomes. Rather, a
post-structuralist perspective on discourse sees it as constitutive of the identities and interests
of political actors (and nations) as well as host to the struggle over the interpretation of polit-
ical issues in general (see, e.g., Laclau, 1994). Instead of being egalitarian, the very logic of
public discourses is linked to the exclusion of certain views in order to achieve the hegemony
of your own.
Such an understanding of public discourses also implies that we have to rethink the signif-
icance of the media in these political processes. Its role in the constitution of public opinion
has been studied extensively (e.g., Bennett, 1988; Chong and Druckman, 2007a,b; McCombs
and Shaw, 1972; McCombs, 2004; Scheufele and Tewksbury, 2007; Zaller, 1992), implying
that media discourses matter for the electoral calculus of politicians. The goal of this thesis,
on the other hand, is to improve our understanding of how media discourses influence – on
a cognitive, sociological, and political level – the perspectives adapted by policymakers and
the bureaucrats they interact with on a daily basis. While this thesis provides only a tentative
appreciation of all these dimensions based on insights from secondary literatures, it hints at
avenues for further research. At the beginning of the argument that these actors are not exempt
from media effects stands the observation that elite newspapers like The New York Times,
Le Monde, or Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung have a distribution that hardly surpasses
one percent of the population. There is evidence in the literature suggesting that the people
planning, deciding, and implementing foreign policy are exactly among those avid and daily
readers of such outlets. Thus, this thesis conceives of the political significance of these media
discourses as being rooted in their structural position in the daily life of political elites, includ-
ing policymakers, bureaucrats, and diplomats. While this position is much more difficult to
defend methodologically because of endogeneity concerns, we should not easily dismiss the
possibility of a direct impact of media discourses on the cognition of policymakers consider-
ing the growing evidence from psychological approaches to IR that suggest policymakers to
 16

be subject to cognitive biases as much as the rest of us (see, e.g., International Organization
Special Issue, Hafner-Burton et al., 2017). While this thesis cannot provide a strict proof of
this argument, it provides validating evidence that underpins the necessity to further investi-
gate how policymakers consume (and produce) media discourses in their daily life. Such a
study, however, would require a more sociologically or anthropologically informed methodol-
ogy (see, e.g., Adler-Nissen, 2013), which goes beyond the scope of this thesis.
Finally, I should clarify what I mean by my use of the terms ideological fragmentation
and political conflict since my understanding of these notions differs slightly from that found
in political science in general (e.g., Kriesi et al., 2008, 2012; Lipset and Rokkan, 1967, 1990;
Schattschneider, 1960) and political science approaches to foreign policymaking more specif-
ically (e.g., Clare, 2010; Kaarbo, 2012; Mello, 2012, 2014). First, while these approaches
would focus on institutionalized forms of larger societal cleavages, often being reflected in
party political dynamics, this thesis is more interested in the situation-specific debates that
structure the day-to-day of foreign policymaking. Although institutionalized political rivalries
like those between Republicans and Democrats in the US might play a role in this, this the-
sis does not want to a priori privilege party political dynamics over other forms of political
conflict. As the afore-mentioned example illustrates, ideological fragmentation also happens
within established political camps and ideological alliances can be established that cut across
such boundaries. Thus, I understand political conflict not just as fought out through the strate-
gic manoeuvring of political institutions, but through a continuous discursive struggle around
the formulation and answering of political questions. Second, while this thesis is not about
specifying a theory of ideology, it is worth clarifying that the usage of the term in these pages
follows a more post-structuralist understanding as promoted in the works of Laclau, Mouffe,
and particularly Žižek (especially, Žižek, 1989). Such sees ideology as a pervasive feature of
society that does not have to be part of a coherent and explicit political programme. Rather, it
is rooted in constant discursive struggles about the interpretation of the world and its meaning
for who we are and what we want (for a thorough discussion of the various understandings of
the term ideology, see Gerring, 1997; Maynard, 2013).

Research Design
As is evident from these elaborations, this thesis has a strong interest in improving the way
causally oriented IR scholarship conceptualizes the role of the national interest, and the way
the political communication literature conceptualizes its political contestation. Yet, these the-
oretical arguments stand in a symbiotic relationship with extensive and multi-dimensional
empirical research efforts that aim to both increase the confidence we have in the validity of
these arguments and refine their formulation where it is necessary. Thus, the quantitative and
qualitative evidence presented in this thesis were gathered in a constant back and forth be-
tween theory, literature, and the empirical realm. Rather than testing deductively formulated
hypothesis, this thesis should be read as an attempt to improve our general understanding of
17

the relationship between media discourses, foreign policy, and armed conflicts. To this end, I
proceed in two subsequent parts that address different aspects of the topic from complementary
methodological angles.
Part I asks whether there is indeed a structural relationship between the hegemony of na-
tional interest frames in specific media discourses, and the place an armed conflict takes on
Western foreign policy agendas. That is, do foreign policymakers spend more time and re-
sources on an armed conflict if elite media discourses suggest that there is a national interest
in addressing the situation? To address this question, this part first develops a causal narrative
to explain such a potential connection by reviewing the IR literature and further integrating
discourse and framing theoretical concepts. Then, covering the foreign policy agendas of the
US, the UK, France, and Germany towards 20 of the most intense foreign armed conflicts
between 1998 and 2010, this thesis provides a quantitative evaluation of the framing of these
conflicts in 42,000 newspaper articles in relation to the occurrence of 4,200 foreign policy
events, which are taken to constitute Western policy agendas. The time-series cross-section
analysis uses monthly observations and pays close attention to the respective timing of media
discourses and foreign policy developments, investigating whether the former just report on
foreign policy or whether they have an independent agenda-setting function. The analysis also
investigates whether media discursive variables are better able to explain – in statistical terms
– the variation of foreign policy agendas than the more orthodox rationalist variables typi-
cally used in quantitative IR scholarhsip. The findings from Part I strongly confirms the latter,
providing a strong incentive for rationalist scholars to take discourse theoretical arguments se-
riously. In terms of the timing, the analysis suggests that there is indeed a significant amount of
national interest media discourses that precede foreign policy developments, which indicates
that media discourses are not just epiphenomenal or a post-hoc appreciation of governmental
activities, but that they play a political role of their own.
Part II of this thesis addresses doubts about this conclusion that stem from methodolog-
ical limitations associated with the quantitative approach to the topic. As with the majority
of social science research, the findings of Part I are suggestive rather than proof of a certain
explanatory story and their interpretation remains closely tied to the cogency of the theoreti-
cal arguments provided to make sense of a given correlation. In particular, sceptics from the
political communication literature who see the government as being in control of foreign pol-
icy debates might object that my analysis cannot exclude this possibility because of the way
I operationalize foreign policy agendas, which is not able to take into account non-public for-
eign policy activity as well as interactions between policymakers and journalists. Thus, even
though my quantitative analysis suggests that a significant part of media discourses precede
foreign policy activity as measured here, it cannot say with certainty that the measurement
is sufficiently accurate to draw unqualified affirmative conclusions for the arguments of this
thesis.
With this challenge in mind, the second part of this thesis engages in a theory-developing
process-tracing of US-American, British, French, and German reactions to the civil war in
 18

Darfur to further investigate this objection and the related theoretical perspectives from the
political communication literature. Using the data from the first part, this qualitative investi-
gation selects the most active foreign policy episodes of these Western countries in order to
analyse what national interest conceptions were dominant in public discourses and to whom
they can be attributed. In doing so, the analysis problematizes several core assumptions of the
political communication literature on foreign policy debates – particularly those relating to the
ideological homogeneity of the elite, the media, and the public. The evidence highlights that
governmental officials are not the only ones trying to influence media discourses, that these
officials are rarely all on the same page, that not all of them are equally powerful, and that
they do not always succeed in shaping the way the media talk about foreign armed conflicts.
Building on these insights as well as the post-structuralist perspective of this thesis, I develop
a mid-range analytical framework that addresses these problems and apply the framework to
the selected foreign policy debates about Darfur.
In combination, these two complementary research efforts strongly suggest that we should
further investigate exactly how and why media discourses are able to influence foreign policy
agendas. This thesis provides systematic evidence in favour of such an assertion, but aspects
of the arguments remain theoretical in nature and would benefit from further empirical re-
search. In particular, there is the question of the actual cognitive and sociological relationship
policymakers, bureaucrats, and other political elites have with the news. This thesis provides
provisional arguments that are based on insights from research in cognitive psychology and
anecdotal evidence suggesting that these actors are consumers of media discourse at least as
much they are producers of such. However, this relationship merits a more systematic em-
pirical and conceptual analysis that is beyond what I can achieve in this thesis. For example,
in order to get a more empirically grounded picture, it would be helpful to take a more an-
thropological approach to studying the political elite’s daily interactions with newspapers and
journalists, or to investigate systematically how their media consumption differs from that of
the average citizen. The elaboration of such a research effort goes beyond the scope of this
thesis because of time constraints, but also because it would potentially inspire the inclusion
of practice theoretical notions (e.g., Adler and Pouliot, 2011; Hopf, 2010; Neumann, 2002;
Pouliot, 2008), which would further complicate the already eclectic nature of this thesis’ the-
oretical apparatus.

Causality, Quantification, and Post-Structuralism

The combination of theories and methods adopted in this thesis might strike some as curi-
ous given that quantitative and causally oriented method rarely appear together with post-
structuralist reasoning on discourse in the field of IR. On the one hand, this separation builds
upon a historically antagonistic relationship between the advent of constructivist IR theories,
and the critique they received from rationalist and positivist scholars for not being ’scien-
tific’ enough (see, e.g., Jackson, 2010; Keohane, 1988; Hansen, 2006; Hollis and Smith, 1990;
19

Wendt, 1998, 1999). While some constructivists have since proposed methods with which
one can probe causal questions within a constructivist framework (especially Bennett and
Checkel, 2014), and others have not shied away from attempting to quantifying constructivist
concepts (e.g., Hopf and Allan, 2016), it is generally perceived that, along with others, the
post-structuralist variants of IR constructivism do not want to engage with either causality or
quantification. This perception is often substantiated with a reference to Lene Hansen’s seem-
ingly categorical statement on the ‘impossibility of causality’ within a post-structuralist mode
of thinking (Hansen, 2006, 25ff). Even though this thesis could be read as a challenge of this
position, I argue that this is only so if one ignores the context and target audience of Hansen’s
and other post-structuralist interventions on the matter. What is rejected is not the notion that
discourse has a social and political impact of some sort, which we can study. Rather, she crit-
icizes specific ontological and epistemological positions on the nature and study of causality
espoused by positivist critics of constructivism and by some constructivists who, perhaps too
easily, gave in to related demands. Below, I elaborate why the methods applied in this thesis
can and maybe should be used and interpreted without making such concessions. Thereby, this
thesis opens the possibility not of a quantification of the post-structuralist research tradition,
but of an explicitly post-structuralist, post-positivist, and interpretive approach to quantitative-
causal research.
Before doing so, however, let me clarify that claiming to explore compatibilities between
quantitative-causal methods and post-structuralist thinking is not the same as claiming that
post-structuralist thinking needs to become quantitative-causal. To put it simply, the vari-
ous discourse analytical, genealogical, and de-constructive methodologies that have informed
highly insightful post-structuralist research efforts in IR (e.g., Der Derian, 1987; Hansen, 2006;
Wæver, 1993; Walker, 1993; Weldes, 1999a; Zehfuss, 2002) do not stand in competition with
the critical quantitative methodology proposed here. The thesis is post-structuralist in that it
builds upon an ontology and epistemology that is similar in kind to those used in the aforemen-
tioned literature. Yet, by focusing on a causal question, it tries to achieve a different research
goal and therefore needs different methods. While the substantive target audience of this thesis
is the quantitative-causal IR and the political communication literature discussed above, some
post-structuralist and critical constructivist might find it methodologically interesting because
it explores more critical and explicitly discourse theoretical modes of quantitatively studying
causality, as well as interpretive and context-aware approaches to quantitatively analysing dis-
course (see also Banta, 2013; Bleiker, 2014, 2015; Guzzini, 2011, 2017; Kurki, 2006, 2008;
Patomäki, 1996, 2003; Patomäki and Wight, 2000; Suganami, 2008, 2013, 2017). In this
sense, it should be made clear that the intention of this thesis is not to propose a narrow
methodological turn for post-structuralism, but rather to expand the methodological tool-kit
at the disposal of the post-structuralist and critical constructivist research tradition (see also
Aradau and Huysmans, 2014; Aradau et al., 2014).
Given that my thesis core focus is, nevertheless, not on these methodological questions,
the following can only form the beginning of a more extensive debate, which is bound to be
 20

controversial given the historically and, to a certain extent, sociologically antagonistic rela-
tionship between the quantitative-causal and post-structuralist scholarship (see also Aradau
et al. 2014, 11; Bleiker 2015, 78). However, four methodological clarifications are in order for
this thesis’ synergistic proposal to make sense and be fruitful: First, causality, as understood
in this thesis, is historically specific and evolving rather than universalistic. Second, it is prob-
abilistic on an ontological level rather than deterministic. Third, it is composite and complex
rather than uni-dimensional or uni-directional. Finally, quantitative approaches to studying
(discursive) causality are understood as fundamentally interpretative rather than objective. Let
me elaborate briefly on each of these points.
First, this thesis does not have the ambition to uncover universal laws or general patterns in
foreign policy conduct that are context-independent. Though the idea of the national interest
as a floating signifier is meant to apply more generically to forms of human organizations in
which the notions of ‘nation’ and ‘interest’ have any meaning, the ideological content that fills
the discursive void left by the signifier is understood as fluctuating and historically specific.
In that sense, when I use the terms humanitarianism, security, geopolitics, and economics,
I understand them in the context of the time-period and societies studied in this thesis, not
as universal features of the national interest as an analytically precise concept. Similarly,
which combination of such national interest conceptions is effective in shaping foreign policy
agendas will vary across historical periods and societies, and to a certain extent also from case
to case.
Second, causality is understood as probabilistic rather than deterministic. The hegemony
of national interest media discourses regarding a specific armed conflict makes the conflict
more likely to appear on the foreign policy agenda, but does not preclude policymakers from
ignoring it. Positivists often attribute this uncertainty in an observed causal relationship to
our inability to properly model the ‘true data-creating process’ (see, e.g., the technique of
Monte-Carlo simulations). However, this is a philosophically informed choice to interpret
the mathematical foundations of regression analysis as being aimed at uncovering the truth
about an ultimately deterministic reality. There is nothing inherent in the math, however, that
prevents us from understanding estimates of uncertainty about a causal relationship as being
rooted in an ontological incompleteness rather than epistemological imperfections. That is,
reality is never completely determined ontologically and only manifests itself in the moment
of observation and from the perspective of the observing gaze. This notion of ontological
incompleteness, in turn, is at the very heart of this thesis’ post-structuralist understanding of
discourse and conditions both the floating nature of the national interest signifier, the absence
of structural over-determination of foreign policymaking, and the political agency that results
from these. In that sense, this thesis’ understanding of causality is closer to that found in
quantum mechanical theories. Though the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics
are contested, I am not the first to point out that this approach to physics stands in an interesting
relationship to constructivist approaches to social science (Der Derian, 2013; Wendt, 2015;
Žižek, 2012). It does so because, despite being rooted in a ‘hard science’ paradigm, it allows
21

for and incorporates a radically indeterministic or ‘incomplete’ ontology. As Žižek points out,
this bears resemblance to his Hegelian-Lacanian theory of the subject, which is a crucial part
of particularly Laclau’s later work. I would add to this that exploring this resemblance also
implies that constructivists and post-structuralist should experiment more with quantitative
and causally oriented methods as used in quantum mechanical research to see how far they
can be used without compromising ontological positions.
Third, there are two aspects of quantitative scholarship that are often criticised, but also
easily misunderstood. On the one hand, the practice of isolating and illustrating the causal
effect of one variable while keeping everything else constant (see, e.g., King, Tomz and Wit-
tenberg, 2000) sometimes misleads people to think that the purpose of quantitative scholarship
is to promote uni-causal explanations. There are certainly social scientific publications that are
less reflective of this, but multivariate regression analysis by design implies that a phenomenon
is explained by a complex and individually varying combination of different causal factors.
Therefore, this thesis attempts to pay more attention to the composite nature of causality in
the presentation and discussion of the findings. On the other hand, the notion of ‘indepen-
dent’ variables sometimes misleads people to think that quantitative social science scholarship
assumes these variables to be fully independent of either the explained phenomenon or other
explanatory variables. There is some truth to this statement, but it is worth adding some nu-
ance and differentiation. Foremost, these assumptions are based in pragmatic necessities of
regression analytical approaches to identifying causal relationships, but they rarely reflect a
broader theoretical commitment of the researcher to the idea that two social phenomena are
fully independent of each other. The goal of this thesis, for example, is not to say that me-
dia discourses are independent of foreign policymakers, but to identify and isolate moments
in which the latter were influenced by media discourses rather than the other way around.
Furthermore, independence is understood as a matter of degree rather than as a binary. That
is, media discourses are not assumed to be standing in complete isolation of the activities
of foreign policymakers, but to be sufficiently independent to be understood as a (partially)
autonomous political phenomenon.
Finally, in their instructive book on interpretative research design, Peregrine Schwartz-
Shea and Dvora Yanow distinguish between quantitative-positivist, qualitative-positivist, and
qualitative-interpretive approaches (Schwartz-Shea and Yanow, 2013, 6). This thesis claims
the logically implied fourth place in this taxonomy as being quantitative-interpretive. That is,
rather than being rooted in realist-objectivist presuppositions, this thesis is explicitly based on
a constructivist-interpretive understanding of social scientific practice. That is not to say that
a quantitative-interpretive approach can provide the same insights as qualitative-interpretive
approaches since both have their respective advantages and disadvantages. Rather, I argue that
quantitative approaches do not have to be based in a positivist understanding of social science
(for a related argument, see Hopf, 2007).
I conceive of this thesis’ quantitative analysis as being interpretive on at least two levels.
First, the quantitative data on discursive patterns on national interest frames is based on a qual-
 22

itative interpretation of textual data, which requires a human understanding of the context in
which the text was formulated. The so-called structured topic models employed in Chapter 3
do not simply count the frequency of words, but try to replicate the qualitative coding of news-
paper articles. This coding was done according to a human understanding of text in relation
to the idea of the national interest and in a specific historical and linguistic context. While the
appreciation of the latter can certainly not compete with the breadth and depth of a qualitative
interpretation of textual data, the coding procedure nevertheless remains interpretive in nature.
Second, the technical decisions involved in working with either machine-learning based clas-
sification algorithms or complex regression analytical techniques are not objective but rather
based on convention and a significant degree of gut-feeling. While social scientists tend to
aim for simplified and presumably more objective interpretations of statistical research – for
example by putting the chase for statistical significance at the centre of quantitative research
– this often comes at the price of ignoring the large interpretive margins left by complex sta-
tistical techniques and their relation to theoretical considerations. A quantitative-interpretive
approach, by contrast aims to be more transparent about these issues, and more pro-active
at approximating statistical modelling to, for example, the temporal logic of the theoretical
arguments – even if it means transcending methodological conventions. Thus, it should be
stated clearly that this thesis’ ambition is not to promote a positivist approach to probing post-
structuralist reasoning, but rather to re-interpret and re-appropriate quantitative methods for a
more critical and reflexive purpose.

The Structure of the Thesis

Following this introductory Chapter 1, the thesis is split into two parts following the method-
ological logic explained above. Part I addresses the structural relationship between media dis-
courses and foreign policy agendas. Chapter 2 provides an exegesis of the IR literature with
regard to the research question stated in the beginning. It investigates different approaches to
the notion of the national interest, situating this thesis in the broadly constructivist, and more
specifically post-structuralist camp of IR scholarship. It develops the notion of the national
interest as a floating signifier, explicates the role of public and media discourses in the process
of defining the term, and concludes with a broad hypothesis about the agenda-setting power of
media discourses that invoke the national interest regrading a specific armed conflict. Chap-
ter 3 provides a systematic quantitative analysis of this claim, elaborating on methodological
details regarding operationalization, measurement, and data analysis. The analysis provides
evidence that broadly supports the afore-mentioned hypothesis within the methodological lim-
its of the quantitative analysis.
Part II addresses the counter-argument that media discourses might nevertheless be domi-
nated and shaped by the official message governmental officials impose on journalists. Chapter
4 provides a critical analysis of the related contributions from the political communication lit-
erature that deal with foreign policy debates, problematizes some of its key assumptions, and
23

develops an alternative mid-range analytical framework. It also specifies on some method-

ological details specifying the goals of the qualitative analysis and the process that informed
the theory-developing empirical analysis. Chapter 5 elaborates on the empirical details about
US-American, British, French, and German reactions to the civil war in Darfur and applies
the proposed analytical framework to the selected foreign policy debates. Finally, Chapter 6
concludes by reflecting on the conceptual and empirical achievements (and limitations) of this
thesis, specifying its contribution to our understanding of foreign policymaking and interna-
tional politics, and elaborating on potential avenues for further research.
24
 Part I

A Structural Relationship

25
Chapter 2

The Political Nature of the National

Interest

Throughout this thesis, the idea that foreign policy is a game played for the national interest
functions as an axiomatic starting point for the analysis. Based on this, the following chapter
investigates which understandings of the national interest we can find in some of the most
influential IR approaches, as well as whether they would concede an explanatory role to media
discourses with regard to international politics. The assumption is not that they should do the
latter for the sake of a generic IR theory, but that media discourses do play a role and that
we should acquire a theoretically informed understanding of the why and how. To this end,
I further develop a post-structuralist understanding of the national interest as a fundamentally
political phenomenon and explain why related public discourse, and elite media discourses in
particular, would matter for foreign policymakers. Thus, the chapter elaborates the theoretical
underpinning of the argument that media discourses are a central forum for the discursive
struggle over defining the national interest and therefore important for understanding why
Western policymakers focus their gaze on some foreign armed conflicts and not on others.
A review of IR approaches, such as provided in this chapter, necessarily has to be selective
and focused without being able to pay tribute to the broader intellectual history of the field
in a way that would do it justice. Rather than attempting to be exhaustive at the cost of be-
ing redundant, the following review therefore focuses on those approaches and contributions
that are both widely acknowledged in the field and provide a useful foundation for or contrast
to the arguments forwarded in this thesis. Concretely, I will discuss system-level IR theo-
ries, rational-liberal takes on domestic politics, neoclassical realist arguments about skewed
perceptions of the national interest, psychological and organizational approaches to foreign
policy, as well as social constructivist understandings of the national interest. With the excep-
tion of system-level theories, all of them provide some analytical potential to make sense of
the role of media discourses in foreign policymaking, but I argue that the intersection of social
constructivist with cognitive psychological arguments is the most promising to understand the
political dynamics of national interest conceptions. Thus, the argument of this thesis builds

27
 28

upon these two clusters of IR scholarship, elaborating on how their perspectives can analyti-
cally illuminate and inform empirical research on the interactions between media discourses
and foreign policymaking.
After this review, I develop the notion that the national interest is a floating signifier, which
is rooted in the post-structuralist understandings of discursive struggles as a foundational as-
pect of politics. Furthermore, we can use the notion of national interest frames as a means to
grasp the empirical units that compete in these discursive struggles. While post-structuralist
discourse and cognitive psychological framing theory are rooted in different research tradi-
tions, I argue that they are complementary and can be combined in productive ways that con-
tribute both to our broader understanding of discursive processes and to our empirical tool
kit for analyzing concrete discursive dynamics (see also Mortensgaard, 2018). The second
part of my argument specifies the cognitive, sociological, and political dimensions of how
public discourse matters for foreign policymaking and the struggle over the definition of the
national interest. Here, I elaborate on the structural power of specific media discourses within
a broader public discourse, as well as on the difference between public opinion and public dis-
course. Based on this, I introduce the thesis’ main argument about the agenda-setting power of
elite media discourses with regard to Western foreign policies toward foreign armed conflicts.

The Limits of System-Level Theory

If we accept the centrality of the national interest as an explanatory concept of international
politics, most if not all IR theories would have something to say on the matter given that they
typically imply or explicitly propose an understanding of what the national interest is or how it
comes about. Sidelining the formulation of the original discourse and framing theoretical ar-
gument, let us first explore what the most prominent schools of IR theory have to say about the
definition of the national interest and what analytical problems they entail. The most concise
but accordingly problematic proposal comes from system-level theories, which consist of var-
ious forms of realism, neoliberal institutionalism, and system-level constructivism. In a sense,
it is unfair to demand from such theories to provide convincing arguments about the nature
of the national interest. Kenneth Waltz argues that the purpose of system-level approaches is
to “tell us about the forces the units [i.e., the states] are subject to” (Waltz, 1979, 72) and not
how the units are constituted from within. He further speaks out against the appropriation of
his structural realism for the analysis of foreign policy on the grounds that international poli-
tics is not the same as foreign policy (Waltz, 1996). I agree with that statement insofar as the
explanation of concrete foreign policies is not the strength of system-level theories. However,
in practice, an application of these theories to empirical cases necessarily needs to assume
a baseline definition of the motivations of states in order to proceed analytically (see, e.g.,
Powell, 1994), and these do influence contemporary thinking about foreign policy.
For realists, the national interest of states can be summarised in one word: survival. Be it
classical realism (e.g., Morgenthau, 1948), structural realism (e.g., Waltz, 1979), or neoclas-
29

sical realism (e.g., Rose, 1998), the most fundamental interest such theories attribute to states
is their physical survival.1 While some realists concede that there is room for ‘second-order’
concerns to shape parts of their behaviour (e.g., Hyde-Price, 2006), they generally hold that
the anarchic nature of the international system forces states to focus on surviving in the ad-
verse international environment. This definition was extended by neoliberal institutionalists to
include economic welfare (Keohane, 1984) and found its widest form in Alexander Wendt’s
constructivist take on system-level IR theory:

“I define the national interest as the objective interests of state-society complexes,

consisting of four needs: physical survival, autonomy, economic well-being, and
collective self-esteem” (Wendt, 1999, 198)

Keeping the nuances of neoclassical realism aside for a moment, such an essentialist view
of the national interest has the merit of allowing theorists to proceed in a relatively parsi-
monious way to explore dynamics of world politics that originate from the relations between
states rather than those rooted in domestic politics. The latter is essentially inconsequential
in system-level theorizing and hence are media discourses. Of course, approaching interna-
tional politics from such a perspective can prove to be a useful heuristic for understanding
system-level mechanisms, but it does not suffice for understanding the national interest in
concrete cases of foreign policymaking. This is because system-level theories imply the four
mentioned categories to be objectively identifiable or self-evident, isolated from other norma-
tive concerns, and stable across time and space. In contrast, this thesis considers the national
interest to be politically contested, multidimensional and value-laden, as well as historically
specific to a certain society. To illustrate why these assumptions are problematic for the goal
of this thesis, let us consider some brief examples in addition to the related discussion of the
US reactions to chemical attacks in Syria in the introduction.
First, if we agree that Wendt’s four concepts are fundamental for the definition of the
national interest, we – and foreign policymakers – are left with the task to identify those trends
that are endangering the physical survival of a state, its autonomy, economic well-being, and
collective self-esteem. This is not a trivial task and people are bound to disagree what these
abstract concepts mean in practice. For example, in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris and
San Bernardino in 2015, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump called for banning
all Muslims from entering the country to guarantee national security.2 While a majority of
Republicans were sympathetic to the idea, the Democratic candidates opposed the sweeping
generalization of all Muslims as a threat to the nation.3 During this heated public debate,
incumbent President Barack Obama needed to make the decision and came out on his party’s
side as was to be expected. That is, in 2015, the US did not consider it to be in the national
interest to implement a generalized ban on Muslim immigration. After being inaugurated as
US President in January 2017, however, Trump signed his executive order named “Protecting
the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States” claiming that it is in the US
national interest to stop Muslims from entering the country. While the legal text was more
 30

specifically targeted towards seven Muslim-majority countries, we cannot avoid concluding

that the conceptions of the national interest that guided foreign policy had changed within a
short period of time.4 It would be a stretch to ascribe this change of mind to a change in
the objective threat that Muslim immigrants pose to the national security of the US. Rather,
domestic political developments empowered a political camp that had a different ideological
understanding of what the national interest means. The point is that defining what constitutes
a threat to the national interest is a political process in which the ‘objective situation’ plays a
secondary role. One does not have to dismiss the idea of objectivity as such to acknowledge
that ‘facts’ on the level of abstraction implied in national interest debates are loaded with
uncertainties and their appreciation typically coloured by ideological predispositions. That is,
even if we could agree that the national interest would strictly equate to, e.g., national security,
there are few if any situations where the practical application of the concept would not involve
difficult and typically contentious political assessments of ambiguous situations.
Second, the national interest is rarely a linear reflection of a singular principle, but typically
accommodates a variety of ideological positions, many of which go beyond the four concepts
mentioned by Wendt. Defining the national interest necessarily involves value-judgements
about the fundamental interests of a state, which can include ‘soft’ humanitarian in addition
to ‘hard’ economic ideas. For example, during the European refugee crisis in 2015, Ger-
man Chancellor Angela Merkel adopted a welcoming policy towards refugees, declaring with
an unusual panache: “We can do it!”5 In the press conference, she justified this stance by
appealing her audience to be proud of the humanitarianism inscribed in the German constitu-
tion, arguing that a non-welcoming policy would endanger the European integration project
as we know it, and that there might even be some economic benefits to immigration. She
mentioned the latter only in passing, but the theme was picked up by other public voices to
justify a humanitarian stance toward the refugee situation from a more utilitarian perspective.6
Thus, when Merkel held her politically divisive speech,7 she defined Germany’s national inter-
est based on humanitarian principles, an investment in the ideals of the European integration
project, and the assertion that Germany would not suffer economically or socially from al-
lowing more refugee immigration. That is, her version of Germany’s national interest was
multidimensional and included aspects that cannot be reduced to objectively identifiable ma-
terial interests.
Third, the exact combination of values guiding the understanding of the national inter-
est that policymakers adopt is bound to differ across time and space, which is why we need
to understand notions of the national interest in their historical context. This, however, does
not just boil down to variations in the distribution of power in the international system, but
also to the dynamics of domestic power constellations and the historically specific state of
political beliefs held by those who have a say in the definition of the national interest. For
example, the issue of Muslim immigration and integration that defines both of the aforemen-
tioned examples cannot be understood without taking into account the short- and long-term
developments in the understandings of the figure of ‘the Muslim’ and ‘the Arab’ shared across
31

the West, in specific Western countries, and among different political camps therein. As Mah-
mood Mamdani demonstrates, the perception of the ‘bad Muslim’ as a security threat to the US
is a rather recent phenomenon (Mamdani, 2005), though the foundational stereotyping goes
back a long way (see Said, 1978). Whether we accept this antagonistic perspective, however,
is a matter of political contestation rather than the inescapable next step of history as Samuel
Huntington’s clash of civilization thesis suggests (cf. Huntington, 1996). The latter point was
illustrated nicely by Khizr Khan’s intervention at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia
in July 2016. Being the father of a fallen Muslim captain of the US army, Khan repudiated the
idea that being a Muslim and being US-American were two incompatible things. Instead, he
challenged Trump to consider the multiple dimensions of US-American identity and see Mus-
lims as an integral part of US-American society rather than as its antagonistic Other. The point
being that even in the presence of large structural forces that influence political antagonisms,
the interpretation of the latter is constantly being re-negotiated and changes ever so slightly
from situation to situation.
None of these points are entirely novel, of course, and the examples resonate well with re-
peatedly made critiques of essentialist understandings of the national interest (e.g., Finnemore,
1996; Hansen, 2006; Kratochwil, 2011; Rosenau, 1980; Weldes, 1996, 1999a). As James
Rosenau puts it poignantly:

Men are bound to differ on what constitute the most appropriate goals for a na-
tion. For, to repeat, goals and interests are value-laden. They involve subjective
preferences, and thus the cumulation of national interests into a single complex
of values is bound to be as variable as the number of observers who use different
value frameworks. (Rosenau, 1980, 287)

In other words, the definition of the national interest is a deeply political process that involves
overcoming empirical and normative uncertainty as well as ideological differences. Since
system-level IR theories do not provide analytical means to appreciate this dynamic process,
they fail to appreciate the political nature of the national interest. Given the contested nature
of the national interest examples discussed so far, system-level theories therefore provide little
guidance for understanding these domestic political dynamics underlying the meandering of
the Western gaze on foreign armed conflicts.

Domestic Politics I: Liberalism and Two-Level Games

In order to understand what constitutes the national interest, we need to look at the inner
workings of states rather than at system-level dynamics in isolation. While scholarship on the
domestic origins of international politics has advanced considerably over the last decades, im-
portant questions remain unanswered and the role of media discourses is not necessarily well
understood. The following four sections explore how and to what extent the most dominant
 32

approaches to domestic politics can address the three aforementioned critiques of an essen-
tialist understanding of the national interest, and hence provide a theoretical perspective that
might help to answer the thesis’ research question.
The first and probably most widely received approach is Andrew Moravcsik’s authoritative
reformulation of liberalism (Moravcsik, 1997), which is based on Robert Putnam’s idea that
governments play a two-level game that takes place at both the domestic and the international
level (Putnam, 1988). At the domestic level, societal actors with different interests fight for
political domination. The government represents the subset of society that wins this strug-
gle, formulates state preferences accordingly, and henceforth tries to maximize them in the
international game between different governments. So far, this is an intriguingly parsimonious
description of foreign policy and international relations that is hard to refute. If we understand
state preferences as synonymous to the national interest, we have a promising candidate for the
explanation of foreign policy agendas: The national interest – and by implication the foreign
policy agenda – is defined by the preferences of those societal forces that win the domestic
political struggle over the dominance of formal institutions and thereby get to represent the
state on the international level.
While intriguing, Moravcsik’s version of liberalism has some analytical short-comings
that are problematic for the purpose of this thesis. The problem is that it roots the description
of political struggle in the rational-choice paradigm, which has some well-known problems
with regard to explaining or understanding preference formation (see, e.g., Hitzel-Cassagnes,
2002; Holzinger, 2001; Keck, 1997; Müller, 1995; Risse-Kappen, 1995; Schimmelfennig,
1997; Schmalz-Bruns, 1995; von Prittwitz, 1996; Zangl, 1995; Zangl and Zürn, 1996; Ze-
hfuss, 1998). Moravcsik argues that:

The fundamental actors in international politics are individuals and private groups,
who are on the average rational and risk-averse and who organize exchange and
collective action to promote differentiated interests under constraints imposed by
material scarcity, conflicting values, and variations in societal influence. (Moravc-
sik, 1997, 516)

This is undoubtedly a more accurate depiction of the origins of the national interest than pro-
vided by the essentialist system-level theories. However, it suffers from a very similar problem
that warrants a similar three-fold critique. Because, instead of essentializing the national in-
terest, Moravcsik’s liberalism essentializes the interests of individuals and private groups. As
Martha Finnemore argues:

Like neorealism and neoliberalism, liberalism imputes preferences; it just imputes

them one or more levels down below the level of the state, to individuals and
groups. When liberals investigate state preference formation, what they are really
doing is investigating preference aggregation. Everybody in civil society (where
analysis presumably starts) already knows what they want; the question is who
33

will prevail in the domestic struggle to control state policy. (Finnemore, 1996,
147)

Thus, liberalism lacks a proper account of preference formation for individual societal
actors. Moreover, given the intellectual debt rational-choice approaches owe to the field of
economics, it comes at no surprise that many conceive of Moravcsik’s liberalism to be prone
to notions of narrowly self-interested or economically utility-maximizing behaviour. Despite
his and Frank Schimmelfennig’s rebuttal to such critiques (Moravcsik and Schimmelfennig,
2009), there remains an impression that liberalism falls short when trying to explain behaviour
around issues that typically involve more than economic rationales, which applies to the for-
eign armed conflicts studied in this thesis. This impression was not least inspired by Moravcsik
affirming that national preferences are driven by ’generally economic’ interests in his investi-
gation of European Union (EU) integration (Moravcsik, 1998). If we understand liberal takes
on domestic politics as suggestive of the perspective that political actors are guided by self-
interest, we can raise the same three critiques I outlined for the system-level accounts of the
national interest: What constitutes self-interested behaviour is not self-evident, it can easily
include a variety of normative aspects, and these are situated in a continuously changing his-
torical context.
First, if we accept that, for example, economic well-being defines an individuals’ approach
to the national interest, we are left with the problem of identifying exactly how to maximize
their own economic benefits via state policies. In the political context of modern states, this
involves complex theories about how the economy works, most of which are contested and
fraught with political and normative assumptions (Sedláček, 2011). In other words, the ques-
tion of how to maximize one’s interests is rarely self-evident or objectively answerable. Sec-
ond, the Hobbesian figure of the egoistic individual is barely more than a normatively charged
assumption, the empirical track record of which is not as obvious as its proponents sometimes
claim (see, e.g., Tomasello, 2009). Rather than a purely self-interested individual, we can eas-
ily identify sociological, educational, and political factors that influence what an individual
considers to be in its interest (see, e.g., Bourdieu, 1980). As such, non-egoistic and socially
oriented norms can be part of a person’s perceived interests. Third, as a consequence, this
perception of individual interests is bound up with the historical, cultural, and social context
the person is embedded in, which changes over time. Thus, it is problematic to assume indi-
vidual preferences to be simply self-interested as some readings of liberalism do. We need to
understand the continuous process of how they are (re-)shaped through a variety of factors and
processes.
A more favourable reading of Moravcsik’s liberal proposal would argue that he simply
does not attempt to provide an account of individual preferences or preference formation, but
just a theory about how established preferences play out in the political game. An application
of liberalism would therefore resort to a mere description of preferences rather than attempting
to explain them. That is, liberalism would start with Trump’s anti-Muslim sentiment and focus
 34

on how his political standing prevented him from translating it into policy while running for
President, but enabled him to do the same once he was elected. A liberal approach would not
ask why Trump had this preference in the first place. Yet, this is exactly the kind of question
that this thesis seeks to answer: Why do policymakers consider some armed conflicts to affect
the national interest and not others? As with system-level realism and neoliberal institutional-
ism, liberalism can tell us a lot about how actors interact strategically to further their respective
preferences. However, they fail to answer the question of how and why these actors came to
have their preferences, which is symptomatic for rational-choice oriented approaches. Their
parsimony is the result of ‘black-boxing’ one of the most complex and puzzling question in
politics: Where do our political preferences and beliefs come from? By ignoring this question,
liberalism also has difficulties accounting for changing preferences of political actors (and of
nation states). Even if one argues that actors rarely change their broad ideological identity, the
interpretive margins when translating abstract political principles into real policy answers or
situationally specific formulations of the national interest are significant and make for a quite
dynamic picture of political preference formation on both individual and national level.
Thus, while this sort of rational-choice liberalism is a powerful tool to analyse how the
struggle over the domination of political institutions plays out, it falls short on illuminat-
ing how conceptions of the national interest come about and change throughout this political
struggle. An empirical application of liberalism to this thesis’ research question would simply
resort to describing the perception of the national interest by those who hold power in a given
society. This is not a bad starting point, but the theoretical perspective I develop in the second
part of this chapter is able to go beyond description and provide a broader understanding of
the discursive struggles that lie at the heart of political preference formation.

Domestic Politics II: Neoclassical Realism

Another seminal approach to domestic politics has emerged from within the realist tradition.
Neoclassical realists continue to argue that system-level threats resulting from the anarchic
character of the international system and the distribution of power among states are the driving
force of state behaviour. Essentially, neoclassical realists still hold that national security is the
single most important concern defining the national interest. Unlike structural realists, though,
they concede that there are intervening variables at the domestic level that shape policymakers’
perceptions of threats and hence the national interest. The threats remain factual rather than
socially constructed, but policymakers might misinterpret the factual distribution of power in
the system, at least in the short- and medium-term (Rose, 1998, 157f).
One problem with neoclassical realism, however, is that it lacks a systematic account of ex-
actly how domestic variables shape perceptions. Their qualitatively and historically oriented
approaches are insightful in many ways, but remain theoretically under-developed, idiosyn-
cratic, and dominated by ad hoc rationalizations (see also Carlsnaes, 2002, 336f). In itself,
this is not a fundamental obstacle because the theory could be developed further to remedy
35

these shortcomings, and some might argue that this thesis’ argument is thus complementary
to the existing neoclassical realist literature. However, I argue that neoclassical realism fails
to convince on a more fundamental level in that it does not acknowledge the political nature
of varying perceptions of the national interest. By understanding these perceptions as biased
rather than as reflective of different political perspectives, it re-ifies the idea that there is an
independently existing and objectively defined national interest that we can uncover through
our analysis. Policymakers are aiming at this ‘true’ definition of the national interest, but often
fail to reach it because they are biased or misinformed in some way.

While neoclassical realists try to address the issue that threats to the national interest are
not always self-evident, they fail to acknowledge the political dimension of this conundrum
by reducing it to an empirical problem. For example, in the aforementioned debate about
whether or not Muslim immigration poses a threat to US national security, a neoclassical re-
alist perspective would need to develop an argument about whether the empirical situation
indeed affects the survival of the state and why either side of the political spectrum was right
or wrong in their assertions. Potential questions would be: How many people have died in
terrorist incidences? How many Muslim immigrants are terrorists? How many terrorists are
Muslim immigrants? But, almost inevitably, the question whether it is in the US national
interest to stop Muslim immigration touches upon difficult political questions that cannot be
answered with simple empirical facts: Should we consider Islamist terrorism as a central na-
tional concern, or is it just another form of criminality that our justice system is able to handle?
Is a general ban on Muslim immigration proportionate to the risk a few terrorist pose to a few
of our citizens? Is it fair to discriminate against an entire religion? Are terrorist victims
qualitatively different from victims of, for example, regular gun violence? In other words,
given that there is no possibility to take a purely ‘factual’ position on the question of Muslim
immigration, neoclassical realism would end up taking a politically rather than empirically
informed stance on what constitutes the national interest on the matter. As such, this approach
is closer to a normative theory that empowers certain understandings of the national interest
by asserting that they are the ‘factual’ way of understanding the term (for a related argument
see, e.g., Walker, 1993).

This example also shows, as argued before, that the national interest does not necessar-
ily need to be confined to concerns about physical survival. Other values and norms can play
into the definition, and neoclassical realism does not provide analytical means to appreciate the
multidimensional nature of existing understandings of the national interest. Without this, how-
ever, we cannot grasp the full extent of the ideological variation in national interest conceptions
and we would underestimate their historical context-dependency. Neoclassical realism has the
merit that it explicitly highlights system-level pressures that are influential without resorting to
defining these pressures as narrowly as structural realism did. Without a clear theory of where
preferences beyond that of basic survival come from, however, neoclassical realism lacks the
analytical means to convincingly address the empirical puzzle at the heart of this thesis.
 36

Domestic Politics III: Psychological and Organisational Approaches

Another alternative to system-level theorizing is less a single coherent theory than a collection
of mid-range theoretical approaches that are united mostly in style and heritage. Arguably
most of these theories can be intellectually traced back to Herbert Simon’s and James March’s
seminal work on decision making and organizational processes (March and Simon, 1958).
The latter were crucial in challenging the dominance of rational-choice approaches in both
psychology and organization theory. What all of the approaches discussed in this section have
in common is a critique of rational-choice that builds on the cognitive limitations of human
beings. While the literature from psychology and organizational theory is much broader, there
is a series of particular publications in the field of IR that have been highly influential in
inspiring empirical research.
First, Graham Allison introduced both the idea of bureaucratic politics and organizational
processes to IR (Allison, 1971). The former argues that governmental decisions are the out-
come of politically charged ‘turf battles’ between different bureaucratic departments that par-
ticipate in the decision making process. The latter proposes that governments, as any large
organization, operate according to pre-established routines and standard rules to reduce the
complexity of the tasks they face. Second, Irving Janis introduced the idea of groupthink to
IR (Janis, 1972). He argues that there is an inherent drive for internal consensus among pol-
icymakers, which leads to irrational or dysfunctional decision making. Third, Robert Jervis
elaborated on an eclectic range of psychological biases that lead to misperceptions of inter-
national politics by policymakers (Jervis, 1976). Fourth, Yuen Foong Khong has argued that
policymakers use historical analogies to heuristically assess foreign policy situations, which
influences the range of policy options that they actively consider (Khong, 1992). The list
of contributions is of course much longer (for a discussion of more recent contributions, see
Hafner-Burton et al., 2017), but these four arguably represent the most influential publications
to this date.
The strength of these approaches is that they operate at a mid-range level and that they are
far less ambitious regarding their explanatory scope. They are apt in explaining the behaviour
of individual policymakers and small groups while taking their preferences and world-views
as largely external to the analysis. As such, they deserve praise for illuminating the pitfalls
of rational-choice theories even from a methodologically individualist perspective. Taken in
isolation, however, these approaches are limited due to their inability to explain the origins
of actors’ preferences. As much as rational-choice, they simply externalise the preference
formation of actors, and focus on the psychological or organizational processes that trans-
late preferences into policy decisions. In other words, when it comes to the definition of the
national interest, they suffer from the same shortcoming as rational-choice liberalism.
Unlike rational-choice, however, this intellectual tradition is more open about the limited
scope of its explanatory power. While concrete stances on this differ, it is easily possible to see
the sociological context of individuals and groups as the determinant of preferences and even
37

influencing the way they arrive at decisions (see, e.g., Boyd and Richerson, 2001; Gigerenzer,
2001, 2007, 2008; Henrich et al., 2001). Thus, though they retain an ambition to make abstract
statements about the nature of human cognition, they do not deny its ultimate historical and
context-bound contingency. In that sense, I argue that much of the psychological research
rooted in the notions of bounded rationality and heuristics should be perceived as compatible
and potentially even complementary to social constructivism.

Domestic Politics IV: Social Constructivism

The final alternative to system-level theorizing is more a meta-theoretical approach than a
concrete theory. Social constructivism can be broadly defined as a perspective that assumes
reality to exist independently of the observer, but the meaning of this reality for human beings
to be intersubjectively constructed and therefore malleable across time and space. To give
an example, a mountain might exist independently of the human observer, but whether we
understand the mountain as the result of tectonic shifts, the vessel of a nature spirit, a prove of
the majesty of nature, or just an obstacle in our way is dependent on the social and historical
context of the observer. This notion has its proponents in many fields of the social sciences
and in the philosophy of science, though differences exist in the extent to which scholars
subscribe to this notion and its consequences for fundamental ontological and epistemological
questions (see, e.g., Derrida, 1990; Searle, 1995). From this perspective, the national interest
is a historically contingent category that does not have a priori meaning, but only gains such
through social processes and interactions in a concrete historical context.
In IR, social constructivism has reached widespread recognition with Wendt’s assertion
that “anarchy is what states make of it” (Wendt, 1992). While his work is widely regarded as
the most influential constructivist account of international politics, his openly positivist (see,
i.a., Wendt, 1999, 39) appropriation of social theory has split the constructivist IR commu-
nity and inspired a lot of critique of ‘mainstream’ constructivism (e.g., Doty, 2000; Guzzini
and Leander, 2005). Consequently, there is not one coherent constructivist approach to IR,
but many different versions that take inspiration from different (non-IR) social theorist and
thus advocate different ontological and epistemological positions. As with any binary cat-
egorization of scholarship, it is bound to be too simplistic to say that some constructivist
work leans more towards a conciliation with and expansion of rationalist-positivist IR theories
(e.g., Adler, 1997; Barnett and Finnemore, 1999; Checkel, 1998; Finnemore, 1996; Finnemore
and Sikkink, 1998; Katzenstein, 1996; Kratochwil, 2000; Risse, 2000), while others are more
radical in their refutation of positivism in favour of various post-structuralist or critical con-
structivist modes of knowledge production (e.g., Campbell, 1992; Doty, 1993; Hansen, 2006;
Hopf, 1998; Weldes, 1996). Though this distinction underplays the diversity of perspectives
in both camps within IR, as well as the complexity of the intellectual history of constructivist
and post-structuralist thinking beyond IR, it has become a common practice in anthologies of
IR theories (see Burke, 2008; Campbell, 2013; Fierke, 2013; Hurd, 2008). Insofar as we fol-
 38

low this distinction, it should be said that ‘mainstream’ constructivist scholarship has mostly
dealt with the international rather than the domestic level. The literature is strong in deal-
ing with international norms, international organizations, and state-to-state interactions. The
afore-mentioned post-structuralists, on the other hand, have furthermore provided insights into
the discursive and thereby contingent and political roots of central concepts in foreign policy-
making and provided various methodological guidelines on how to study their evolution and
constitution.
While the degree to which constructivist scholars analytically sideline domestic political
struggles varies from study to study, post-structuralists and Jutta Weldes in particular come
closest to developing a constructivist theory of domestic politics and the national interest that
harmonizes with the argument put forward in this thesis (Weldes, 1996, 1999a). Formulated as
a reaction to essentialist conceptions of the national interest, Weldes critique of realists resem-
bles the arguments outlined earlier in this chapter. She contends that: “The ‘national interest’
[...] is constructed, is created as a meaningful object, out of shared meanings through which
the world, particularly the international system and the place of the state in it, is understood”
(Weldes, 1996, 277). Beyond that, she argues that we also need to look within the state in
order to understand international politics:

[...] the political and historical context in which national interests are fashioned
[...] cannot arbitrarily be restricted to those meanings produced only in inter-state
relations. After all, states are only analytically, but not in fact, unitary actors.
The meanings which objects, events and actions have for ‘states’ are necessarily
the meanings they have for those individuals who act in the name of the state.
And these state officials do not approach international politics with an already
quite comprehensive and elaborate appreciation of the world, of the international
system and of the place of their state within it. This appreciation, in turn, is
necessarily rooted in meanings already produced, at least in part, in domestic
political and cultural contexts. (Weldes, 1996, 280)

As a consequence, Weldes suggests that we should study domestic discourses in order to un-
derstand what a specific country understands as its national interest. This is not to say that
the international system is inconsequential for the definition of the national interest. But, in
contrast to the argument of realists, a threat from another state needs to be discursively con-
structed, be understood as such before it can influence the behaviour of policymakers. Thus,
we should understand the national interest as discursively constructed rather than tied to ob-
jectively identifiable facts.

Discourse and Framing: National Interest as Floating Signifier

This review of IR theories suggests that psychological and social constructivist approaches are
the most promising for providing perspectives that could improve our understanding of the
39

role of media discourses in foreign policymaking. More specifically, the following combina-
tion of discourse and framing theoretical arguments builds upon similar foundations as those
found in the cognitive psychological literature on bounded rationality and in post-structuralist
approaches to IR. Before elaborating on the specific theoretical propositions, let me discuss
why I propose a combination of these two literatures rather than choosing one perspective at
the expense of the other, and why my thesis argues that such a combination is possible despite
potential meta-theoretical differences.
On the one hand, though it would be possible to approach the social construction of the
national interest in media discourses from an either purely framing theoretical or purely dis-
course theoretical perspective, this thesis aims to counter-act the current tendency in IR to build
‘camp-fires’ that reify isolated scholarly practices and result in a lack of engagement between
different approaches to studying international politics (see Kristensen, 2018). While part of
these sub-disciplinary divisions are due to legitimate disagreements about ontological and/or
epistemological fundamentals, I argue that we should not too hastily preclude the exploration
of commonalities and the potential for intellectual exchange. Thus, I propose a combination
of discourse and framing theoretical arguments because both provide potentially complemen-
tary perspectives on processes of the social construction of meaning (see also Mortensgaard,
2018). In the context of this thesis, the discourse theoretical concepts illuminate the broader
political function of media discourses in foreign policymaking while the framing concept is
used to facilitate a systematic and comparative investigation of discursive dynamics.
On the other hand, I propose a post-structuralist reading of the framing theoretical liter-
ature that addresses critiques of potential meta-theoretical incompatibilities. As mentioned
above, though much of the current scholarship on framing is rooted in psychological ap-
proaches, this does not necessarily contradict or preclude a social ontology (see the notion
of social cognition in Adler 2019; see also Tomasello 2009, 2010; Vygotskiı̆ 1962). The fo-
cus of investigation in experimental studies of framing effects might be the individual, but the
understanding of these effects is necessarily, though often implicitly, rooted in a specific so-
cial, cultural, and political context. Given that this context is not the focus of investigation for
framing theoretical scholarship, the understanding of the latter is typically ill developed, but it
is not completely absent either. This is where a post-structuralist understanding of discourse
can complement framing theory. Epistemologically, one could argue that the two approaches
are slightly more incompatible in that post-structuralists generally reject positivism in favour
of context-aware interpretivism (e.g., Campbell, 2013), whereas contemporary scholarship
on framing tends to apply methods that are typically associated with a positivist epistemol-
ogy (e.g., Druckman, 2004; Tversky and Kahneman, 1981). However, though some framing
scholars would disagree with this down-sizing of their inferential ambitions, nothing prevents
a post-structuralist reading of the evidence produced by the latter in which one is more careful
about the limited generalizability of specific findings (see also Hopf, 2007). That is, we can
read insights from framing studies as epistemologically bound to the social, cultural, and po-
litical context they pertain to rather than as claims to or attempts at the uncovering of universal
 40

laws of human behaviour.

As a final disclaimer, let me clarify why the following section does not simply repeat
existing post-structuralist readings of the national interest and related terms (Campbell, 1992;
Hansen, 2006; Wæver, 1993; Weldes, 1996), or framing theoretical scholarship on foreign
policy debates (Entman, 2003, 2004). The latter will be the focus of Part II of this thesis, in
which I address this literature’s question of who is able to shape media discourses on foreign
policy and why. Though this concern is intrinsically linked to the question whether media
discourses have an influence on foreign policymaking, its investigation requires a different
methodology than that used in Part I of this thesis. Moreover, the framing literature on foreign
policy debates raises some distinct theoretical issues that I would like to address after having
established the systematic correlation between media discourses and foreign policy agendas in
Chapter 3.
As for the post-structuralist IR literature, the tension with framing theoretical approaches
and this thesis research goal lies more with the traditional post-structuralist focus on problema-
tization and deconstruction, and the explicit rejection of causal research questions by some of
its proponents (e.g., Campbell, 1992, 2013; Fierke, 2013; Hansen, 2006). In this sense, it
would be misleading to claim to apply one of these authors’ perspectives to the issue at hand
because they are linked to a different methodological ambition than that underlying this thesis,
and do not address questions of causality as such. I have instead elaborated in the introduc-
tion why a probabilistic understanding of causality is compatible with a post-structuralist and
discourse theoretical ontology, and that quantitative-causal research methods can be used in
combination with an interpretative epistemology. In order to further build the causal narra-
tive of this thesis, I build upon specific discourse theoretical concepts developed by Ernesto
Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Slavoj Žižek, whose work has influenced other post-structuralist
scholars in IR as well, though in different substantive context and with different theoretical
ambitions (e.g., Edkins, 1999; Epstein, 2018; Wæver, 1993). Other post-structuralist thinkers
could have provided equally insightful perspectives on the matter of media discourses in for-
eign policymaking, but I chose this theoretical trio because the concept of a floating signifier
and their Hegelian-Lacanian theory of the subject seem particularly amenable to a combination
with the psychological notion of framing. While this thesis uses the notion of a floating signi-
fier explicitly throughout the analysis, the Hegelian-Lacanian theory of the subject is more of
an ontological disclaimer that is necessary to underpin the specific approach to the structure-
agency question used in Chapter 4 and 5 of this thesis. Perhaps more importantly, I also
focus on these three because their work is not generally associated with a specific method and
therefore methodologically more flexible to accommodate this thesis’ interpretive approach
to quantitative-causal methods. In that sense, I understand their work as primarily discourse
theoretical rather than discourse analytical as it is commonly understood in post-structuralist
IR (e.g., Laffey and Weldes, 2004; Milliken, 1999). Thus, though understanding the national
interest as a floating signifier is functionally similar to much of post-structuralist writing on
the issue, it is methodologically less prescriptive.
41

This thesis post-structuralist position is rooted in an understanding of discourse that re-

jects the common distinction between discursive (i.e., linguistic) and non-discursive (i.e., be-
havioural) practices, or between the ideational and the material (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985,
107f). Instead, it conceives of every social practice as articulatory, and:

The practice of articulation [...] consists in the construction of nodal points which
partially fix meaning; and the partial character of this fixation proceeds from the
openness of the social, a result [...] of the constant overflowing of every discourse
by the infinitude of the field of discursivity. (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, 113)

In other words, discourses consist of the continuous attempts to construct meaning through
social practices, which are processes that can never come to an end because of the inherent
impossibility of a total fixation of meaning (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, 105-114). While Laclau
and Mouffe’s discourse theory contains more analytical elements that stand in a complex and
sometimes antagonistic relation to other discourse theorists like Michel Focault, Ferdinand de
Saussure, or Roland Barthes (see Laclau, 2007), for the sake of this thesis I will focus on the
notion of floating signifiers (see especially Laclau 1996c; also Laclau 2005, 67-156). Such are
abundant in politics because their function is to unify politically differentiated camps under
the roof of a single slogan or Kampfwort – ‘the people’ for populists, ‘the working class’ for
communists, ‘freedom’ for libertarians, etcetera. The discursive function of these terms is not
to provide a means for concrete political analysis or critique, but to create a sense of a shared
political cause and understanding. Floating signifiers can serve this function exactly because
they are vague and can accommodate a variety of ideological positions rather than referring to
a specific set of empirical facts or normative predispositions. The more the discursive practices
around a floating signifier approach such a specific definition, the less effectively it can serve
as a unifying political motive. Because of their a priori vagueness, floating signifiers can be
appropriated by different political camps to advance different political agendas. For example,
asserting to represent ‘the people’ is a discursive feature applied by many if not most political
movements, even though they all have different understandings of the political beliefs of those
they all claim to speak for. Understanding such phenomena as discursive dynamics around
floating signifiers means that we should understand claims to speak for ‘the people’ not as an
empirically falsifiable statement about the preferences of the citizens, but as the attempts to
discursively create momentum and unity for a specific political cause, movement, or party.
I argue in this thesis, that we should understand the national interest as a floating signifier
in a similar sense. It is a term that is employed by a variety of actors with different political
understandings of the goals of foreign policymaking. It does not have a fixed meaning, but de-
rives its political significance exactly from its vagueness and ideological malleability. Those
actors that manage to construct their specific vision as the hegemonic – or dominant – inter-
pretation of the national interest in public discourse are the most effective in shaping foreign
policy decisions. Even when they do so, however, the meaning of the national interest is only
ever partially fixed and can be dislocated at any moment either by the arrival of events that do
 42

not fit the hegemonic interpretation or by rival political groups challenging the consensus in
discursively powerful ways. As such, there is no way to a priori provide an analytical account
of what the national interest consists of. Rather, we need to look at discursive practices to
understand what conceptions of the national interest are present and compete with each other
in a given historical and political context.
In order to achieve hegemony over the interpretation of the national interest, political ac-
tors need to unify a variety of political perspectives into a single-headed ‘national’ stance.
To do so, they create what Laclau, building upon his earlier work with Mouffe (Laclau and
Mouffe, 1985), calls chains of equivalences, which suggest that otherwise differentiated polit-
ical problems become unified under the roof and calling of the floating signifier. For example,
national security, humanitarian concerns, and geopolitical stability can easily be separated as
analytically distinct concerns. A significant part of IR scholarship aims to disentangle them
and tries to establish their respective significance for the conduct of foreign policy and inter-
national politics (e.g., Choi, 2013; Choi and James, 2014; Crawford, 2015; Del Biondo, 2015).
However, understanding the national interest as a floating signifier highlights that the political
logic of foreign policymaking requires exactly the opposite. The most effective takes on the
national interest are those that equalize the differences between these concepts and show that
they are part of the same ‘national’ political project. Of course, the degree to which political
actors manage to create this unity varies and most would consider it a political success if there
is a hegemonic consensus amongst the political constituency of the incumbent policymakers
rather than the nation as a whole. For example, if the Republicans hold the government in
the US, they might try to win over a broader public for their specific interpretation of the US
national interest, but it is already a political success if there is agreement on the issue amongst
Republican political elites, and, if necessary, a broader Republican electorate. However, given
the historically low interest of the general public for most foreign policy issues (Almond,
1950; Bailey, 1948), discursive struggles around the national interest would typically take
place amongst a broadly defined political elite.
But, what does this mean for our analysis of Western reactions to foreign armed conflicts?
If these reactions are indeed a game played for national interest, they are so only because po-
litical actors manage to discursively construct and claim the floating signifier of the national
interest in terms their particular ideological position. For example, if the US government spend
time and resources on the Syrian chemical weapons attacks, it was because humanitarians and
others convinced a broad range of political actors that these incidences were a threat to the US
national interest. As described in the introduction, they did so by occupying public discourse
with a specific framing of the events as a threat to foundational humanitarian norms that were
bound up with US-American identity, the violation of which threatened the stability of the
international system as well as national security. While these are defensible and for many
truthful representations of the national interest, they are also easily contestable: More people
died in Syria from regular warfare than from chemical weapons;8 it is arguably not chemi-
cal weapons that produced instability but the increasingly antagonistic political constellations
43

of the region; and the risk this posed to US national security was debatable given that the
chemical weapons were under the control of a recognized state rather than a terrorist organiza-
tion.9 Thus, there was nothing intrinsic to the situation in Syria that would have automatically
threatened the US national interest. Only the successful framing of the situation in such terms
caused the government to put it on the foreign policy agenda. This framing was successful
in that it achieved a hegemonic standing in public discourse in which disagreement with this
interpretation of the national interest was marginalized – at least temporarily. Facilitating this
success was the fact that the humanitarian interpretation of the national interest was partially
complemented by geopolitical and security perspectives, which enlarged the political support
for the consideration of military action against the Syrian regime. In that sense, thinking about
the national interest as a floating signifier enables us to overcome the idea that humanitarian,
security, and geopolitical perspectives are competing explanatory stories. While not strictly
necessary, they can be constructed as complementary pillars of national interest discourses
and the more political actors manage to do so, the more likely they are to create broad support
for their underlying political goals.
As this example illustrates, the notion of framing can help us to understand the processes
through which political actors try to fixate the ideological meaning of the national interest. Due
the concept’s rich history that cuts across fields like anthropology, economics, psychology, so-
ciology, and political science (e.g., Chong and Druckman, 2007a; Goffman, 1974; Hänggli and
Kriesi, 2012; Snow and Benford, 1988; Tversky and Kahneman, 1981), framing is a somewhat
‘fractured paradigm’ as Robert Entman puts it. Since this thesis’ usage of the framing con-
cept serves to facilitate an empirical approach to the idea of the national interest as a floating
signifier, I stick to Entman’s baseline definition without subscribing to associated concepts
developed in, for example, the study of social movements, economic, or political behaviour.

To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more
salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem
definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommenda-
tion for the item described. (Entman, 1993, 52)

In this sense, this thesis understands framing as the discursive process of interpreting the mean-
ing of reality and a frame as the outcome thereof (see also Hänggli, Bernhard and Kriesi, 2011,
69). If the national interest is a floating signifier, national interest frames are the discursive
units that compete with or complement each other in the struggle over the ideological fixation
of the meaning of the national interest. That is, a national interest frame specifies and pro-
motes a certain empirical and normative interpretation of a foreign policy issue alongside with
an implicit or explicit referral to desirable foreign policy reactions. It is noteworthy that, in
the same spirit as the above-described chains of equivalences that blur the distinction between
different political takes on the national interest, the practice of framing also often brushes over
the logical sub-parts of a frame mentioned in Entman’s definition, addressing only parts of the
latter or doing so implicitly. Thus, we can identify a national interest frame by asking whether
 44

a specific text offers a (partial and/or implicit) answer to the question: what should we do and
why?
While post-structuralist discourse theory provides us with an understanding of the broader
political significance of discursive processes, framing theory provides us with a methodologi-
cally manageable way for operationalizing them in order to facilitate quantitative-comparative
research on the topic. That is, measuring national interest frames enables us to analyse how
certain discourses develop and spread over time and across different sub-discourses, assessing
the degree to which some of them gain a hegemonic status. What is more, the adoption of the
framing concept allows discourse theoretical scholarship to communicate with the more posi-
tivistically oriented literature that deals with foreign policy debates and framing contests (for
an overview, see Baum and Potter, 2008), which shares a lot of the assumptions of social con-
structivism and should not be ignored despite potential epistemological tensions. This framing
literature has developed mostly in isolation from the IR theories discussed in this chapter and
raises some distinct analytical problems that merit a separate treatment. Thus, in order to facil-
itate a focused discussion and the adoption of an appropriate methodology, I only address the
related issues in the second part of this thesis. There, I will further discuss the input dimension
of this discursive framing process, exploring answers to the question about who might be able
to frame the national interest successfully and why(see, e.g. Hänggli, Bernhard and Kriesi,
2011; Koopmans and Statham, 1999). After having reviewed the IR literature and proposed
a combination of discourse and framing theory to understand the political construction of the
national interest in public discourses, this first part of the thesis continues to elaborate a ten-
tative causal narrative for why these public discourses might be linked to the formulation of
foreign policy agendas.

Dissecting the Role of the Public: Cognition, Sociology, and Politics

When I say that the national interest is constructed in public discourse, I of course do not
claim that secretive, private, and non-public discourses are inconsequential for foreign pol-
icymaking. Much if not most of the latter is indeed conducted without formal inclusion of
a broader public (see, e.g., the notion of the ‘policy sphere’ in Schmidt, 2008). However,
closed governmental and diplomatic encounters are structurally embedded in a broader dis-
cursive sphere, which conditions how the participating actors view the world and how easily
they can deviate in their decisions from the broadly shared understandings of a situation and
of the national interest (see also Hansen, 2006, 7-9). In the following section, I provide some
evidence from secondary literature that relates this claim to cognitive, sociological, and politi-
cal mechanisms, which link the perception of the national interest reflected in specific subsets
of public discourse – i.e., elite media discourses – to those adapted by policymakers. These
mechanisms add to and go beyond the impact of public discourse on public opinion, and of
the latter on the vote-share-maximizing behaviour of politicians. More dedicated research is
necessary to substantiate and develop these arguments as they are mostly based on evidence
45

from the secondary literature. Moreover, especially the sociological and political mechanisms
were derived deductively and, as mentioned in the introduction, they should be subjected to
further, potentially more anthropological and practice-oriented, research, which goes beyond
the scope of this thesis. That being said, the following section provides sufficient reason to
expect a causal link between media discourses and foreign policy agendas as described at the
end of this chapter, and which can thus be empirically probed from a correlational perspective
on causality in the subsequent quantitative analysis.
Cognitively, research from political psychology suggests that the frames we are regularly
exposed to influence our way of interpreting the world in the direction suggested by the frame,
especially if it is presented by an interlocutor we know and trust (see, e.g., Druckman, 2001,
2004; Chong and Druckman, 2007a,b). While most of the underlying evidence for this claim
stems from experiments with ‘average citizens,’ I argue that the political actors involved in
foreign policymaking – politicians, bureaucrats, diplomats, etcetera – are not exempt from this
cognitive mechanism. It is common to conceptualize these actors as boundedly rational in
the sense that they have limited time and resources to make decisions. As a consequence, they
often need to use heuristics – or mental short-cuts – to arrive at decisions rather than evaluating
situations in consideration of all available information and all possible alternatives (Gigerenzer
and Goldstein, 1996; Gigerenzer and Selten, 2001; Gigerenzer, 2007, 2008; March and Simon,
1958). The effects of framing can be understood as the outcome of such a heuristic: If an
authoritative source describes a situation in a given way, there must be some truth to it. The
question is thus not whether actors involved in foreign policymaking are subject to framing
bias, but which sources of framing they consider to be authoritative.
In line with the overarching argument of this thesis, there is dispersed evidence from quali-
tative research into the relation between foreign policymakers and news media which suggests
a key role of elite media outlets as a central source of information on international politics –
not just for the average citizen, but also for those presumably more acquainted with the sub-
ject matter. For example, Florian Otto and Christoph Meyer show that foreign policy officials
on various levels in the US, the UK, and Germany consider elite newspapers when judging
whether or not to put a foreign armed conflict on the policy agenda (Otto and Meyer, 2012).
Moreover, not only officials at home say so: “Several of our interviewees confirm that foreign
affairs bureaucracies, including their embassies, are very sensitive to news coverage at home
and, while they do convey warnings without media reporting, they do get ‘switched-on’ to
emerging conflicts once leading ‘home news media’ report about them. News media warnings
can thus trigger in-house warnings.” Another interviewee adds that “[i]f the New York Times
says something is happening, people think it is happening. For better or for worse” (Otto and
Meyer, 2012, 209). In a different context, Natalie La Balme writes about the French case:
“A day does not go by without most policymakers reading what is published in Le Monde”
(La Balme, 2000, 268). Even more to the point, Robert Grenier, a prominent former CIA of-
ficer and key figure in the US invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq, describes precisely how
agenda-setting by media outlets is a common rather than exceptional phenomenon: “On any
 46

given morning, I could look at the papers to see what would be on the minds of policymakers
and Congress, and immediately convene the best analysts in the community to produce an in-
stant, ad hoc assessment for them” (Grenier, 2015, 24). These observations are not particularly
surprising if we consider that the distribution of elite newspapers like The New York Times or
Le Monde typically fails to surpass one percent of the respective populations. In that sense, it
would be misleading to refer to them as ‘mass’ media or to equate the writings of The New
York Times to the views of ‘the’ public. Those who actually read these outlets are presumably
also, among others, those whose livelihood and personal success depends on their intimate
knowledge of the day-to-day political dynamics. The example of President Donald Trump’s
reported affinity for Fox News supports this argument as the related outrage suggests that he
is an exception to the rule when it comes to the consumption of elite media outlets.10 In line
with the described notion of framing effects, then, if foreign policymakers are regular readers
of certain newspapers, these papers become an important micro-foundation of the influence
of ‘the public’ on foreign policymaking. As a consequence, however, it makes most sense to
focus on those subsets of public discourse that the actors involved in foreign policymaking
are most exposed and sympathetic to. As the above-cited literature suggests, this tends to be
elite newspapers. However, the rise of Twitter and other social media as a means of foreign
policymaking over the last years also suggests that the specific media that have the described
cognitive impact on policymakers might be changing, which serves as a note of caution for
applying this thesis’ insights beyond the time-frame analyzed here.11
Sociologically, I argue that these individual media-induced cognitive biases of actors in-
volved in foreign policymaking add up to a collectively shared understanding of a given sit-
uation that is influenced by dominant elite media discourses. Though not every policymaker,
bureaucrat, or diplomat will agree with the elite media framing of the situation, it remains a
common reference point and can reasonably be expected to shape the views of a significant
portion of the organizational apparatus that prepares, informs, and implements foreign policy
– especially of those who do not have specialized knowledge or access to the latest intelligence
on the respective issue. Hence, even if individual policymakers can simply disagree with the
media framing and overrule it in their decisions, they are sociologically embedded in and or-
ganizationally dependent on a community of actors that might experience such decisions as
deviations from a shared consensus. In order to ensure a smooth translation of their politi-
cal preferences into policy and organizational behaviour, I argue that policymakers are thus
incentivized to take elite media discourses seriously as a common reference point when ex-
plaining their decisions to those whom they work with on a daily basis. In a way, this argument
about a shared understanding of a situation could also be formulated in reference to a logic
of appropriateness (e.g., March and Olsen, 1989) in which the dominant elite media discourse
contributes to the constitution of a socially accepted narrative that limits and/or enables the
choice of appropriate behaviour available to policymakers.
Politically, the same logic applies for the multiple actors that formally and informally em-
power or constrain foreign policymakers – party politicians, business representatives, union
47

representatives, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the judiciary, etcetera. As with pol-

icymakers, bureaucrats, and diplomats, all of these actors can reasonably be presumed to be
part of the one percent of the population that regularly consumes elite media outlets like The
New York Times or Le Monde. So, if policymakers want to stay in office or more broadly
maintain their position of power, it is politically more sustainable for them to take elite media
discourses seriously rather than treating it as background noise. While the concrete institu-
tional design of these restraints on the powers of policymakers and the composition of actors
involved in it varies across countries and time, in democracies, they are usually derivative of
the idea that the citizens should have the ultimate control over the professional fate of politi-
cians. In the light of this, it is tempting to collapse this last political dimension to the impact of
electoral dynamics on foreign policy choices. Though the latter should certainly be a subject
of interest for scholars, it is not the only way in which ‘the public’ matters and it misses a lot
of the political dynamics in foreign policymaking. Mostly, it reduces the impact of the public
to functioning electoral democracies and to those times when a specific foreign policy issue is
actually a salient topic on the electoral agenda. The cognitive and constructivist argument of
this thesis, on the other hand, applies also when neither of these conditions are met. Rather
than invoking the electoral rationale, I argue that the broadly defined political elite shares an
understanding of foreign policy issues and the national interest that is influenced by elite media
discourses. Since policymakers depend on this political elites for short- and long-term politi-
cal support – in ways that depend on the institutional and historical context – they have to take
this shared understanding seriously even when no electoral consequences are to be feared.
Hence, even if they disagree with the framing of the situation or the interpretation of
the national interest, I propose to understand policymakers as incentivized to monitor and
participate in elite media discourses because they are sociologically and politically dependent
on a broad range of actors who rely on these discourses as a primary source of information
on foreign policy issues. Instead of side-lining news stories that do not fit their preferred
narrative, policymakers would rather attempt to shape public perspectives by intervening in
media discourses until those are more favourable to their understanding of the national interest
(see, e.g., La Balme, 2000). As the second part of this thesis discusses in more detail, however,
policymakers are but one of the forces trying to influence media discourses and they do not
always succeed in doing so. Moreover, there is typically a fair amount of heterogeneity and
disagreement among policymakers themselves, which undermines the appeal of a simple top-
down narrative denying the existence of government-independent media dynamics.

Public Discourse is not Public Opinion

As mentioned above, the argument about the political dependency of policymakers on the
public is most intuitive when relating it to ‘public opinion’ and the mechanism of electoral
punishment and rewards, which has received focused attention from political scientists and
not infrequently figures in general debates about international politics. It is worth mentioning
 48

that the famous ‘Almond-Lippman consensus’, which rejects that the public does or should
play a role in foreign policymaking (Almond, 1950; Bailey, 1948), still holds some ground
insofar as the behaviour of governmental and non-governmental elites are typically consid-
ered more important for explaining foreign policy dynamics. However, more recent research
suggests that public opinion can have a limited influence on foreign policymaking under a va-
riety of conditions (see, e.g., Bennett, 1994; Berinsky, 2007; Foyle, 2004; Holsti, 1992; Jacobs
and Page, 2005; Powlick and Katz, 1998; Soroka, 2003). This thesis neither contradicts nor
supports these findings, but rather deals with an altogether different, though related, political
phenomenon: Public opinion can be influenced by public discourse, but they are not the same
thing. This thesis empirical and theoretical investigations focuses on the direct agenda setting
impact of public discourse rather than its mediation through public opinion. Reducing the
foreign policy impact of ‘the public’ to the role of public opinion would be only a partial ap-
preciation of its political function, and research rejecting or limiting the explanatory power of
public opinion should not be mistaken for doing so with regard to ‘the public’ in a conceptually
more holistic sense.
So, what exactly is public discourse, why is it problematic to equate it to public opinion
(research), and how does it matter for the political dimension of foreign policymaking? Con-
temporary public opinion research mostly revolves around the evaluation of systematic surveys
that attempt to gauge the average opinion held by the citizens of a country (e.g., Everts and
Isernia, 2001, 2005; Gravelle et al., 2014; Isernia, Juhasz and Rattinger, 2002; Rathbun et al.,
2016; Reifler, Scotto and Clarke, 2011). As such, there are three reasons why the related
insights differ from those sought by a discourse theoretical perspective. First, the structured
nature of surveys that are aimed at comparative and quantitative evaluation reduces the com-
plexity of discursive dynamics to a limited set of categories and questions typically pre-defined
by the researcher. A question like ‘Should the US militarily intervene in Darfur?’ for example,
presupposes that people know about Darfur and that military intervention is the subject of the
debate. Though most surveys allow for an opt-out (‘I don’t know.’), such a question fails to
provide analytical leverage to appreciate the contested meaning of the conflict in Darfur, nor
does it reflect the dynamic range of options typically found in debates about the most appropri-
ate policy response. Second, by design, a survey of public opinion aims to make a ‘snapshot’
of what is on people’s minds, which stands in contrast to the discourse theoretical focus on
the processes and dynamics of how this ‘snapshot’ is constructed through discursive interven-
tions. While repeated surveys can provide a means to describe the temporal evolution of public
opinion, they provide little insight on how and why changes come about. Third, and probably
most important, whereas public opinion research aims at an egalitarian representation of the
opinions held by a country’s citizens, public discourse is an inherently power-ridden concept
in which some people matter more than others (for a related arguments, see Blumer, 1948;
Bourdieu, 1973).
Discourse, as understood by Laclau, Mouffe, and Žižek (see, i.a., Laclau and Mouffe 1985;
Laclau 1994, 1996b, 2005, 2007; Žižek 1989, 2012; for a synthesis, see Torfing 1999, 2005),
49

describes the constitutive process through which the interests and identities of political actors
are constructed – those of ‘average citizens’ as much as those of policymakers, bureaucrats,
diplomats, party politicians, academics, and other political elites. It is through discourse that
they position themselves vis-à-vis their political opponents, negotiate their perception of the
world, as well as their political preferences and opinions. From the perspective of this post-
structuralist take on discourse, the opinions and preferences of political actors are in a constant
flux and have to be (re-)constructed time and again through the discursive engagement with
other political actors.
Let me briefly mention three aspects of this discourse theoretical position that are poten-
tially at odds with other social constructivist or post-structuralist understandings of discourse.
First, based on Žižek’s Lacanian theory of the subject (see especially Žižek, 1989), this the-
oretical perspective assumes a radical and foundational instability that defines discourse and
prevents it from becoming an all-determining structural force that makes it impossible to con-
ceptually think about political agency or change. That being said, post-structuralism certainly
does not equate to anti-structuralism in the sense that anything goes. Discourses are struc-
tural forces in the sense that they cannot be reduced to the discursive interventions of indi-
vidual actors. Yet, discourse is also defined by its inability to provide a total closure to the
meaning-seeking quest of political actors – a radical undecidability in the structural forces that
influence the choices of political actors. This means that even seemingly stable discourses
can be dislocated or unsettled at any moment by the arrival of events that do not fit squarely
with its premises or via successful discursive deconstruction by rival political forces. Thus,
the discursive construction of the interests and identities of political actors (and nations) is a
Sisyphean process without a conceivable end (for a detailed account of this structure-agency
understanding, see Laclau and Žižek, 1990). While there are different readings on this, some
people argue (e.g. Torfing, 1999) that this position goes beyond the more structural writing
of other post-structuralists (Althusser, 1970; Foucault, 1966) by more actively incorporating
notions of political agency. Second, this discursive deliberation of meaning is not reduced
to the rational and egalitarian exchange of arguments as suggested by liberal understandings
of discourse typically associated with Jürgen Habermas (especially 1981a; 1981b). Rather,
they can easily involve manipulation, threats, physical exclusion, or bringing into disrepute
of political opponents. Even simple acts of persuasion are understood as involving a certain
amount of force and exclusion that is not necessarily benign or rational (see Laclau, 1996a).
Finally, the notion of ‘discursive’ does not equate to ‘ideational’ insofar as the latter implies
the possibility of distinguishing between ideational and material factors. Rather, this thesis’
post-structuralist perspective conceives of material factors as relevant for political behaviour
through their discursive construction as meaningful: How many people an armed conflict dis-
places can be stated as a ‘matter of fact,’ but whether this fact is considered meaningful for
foreign policymaking is a matter of discursive interpretation (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, 107f).
The intention of this thesis is to apply this understanding of discourse to the study of pub-
lic discourse in general and elite media discourses in particular, as well as to the construction
 50

of the national interest as a floating signifier. Rather than being concerned with how public
opinion forces policymakers to reconsider their choices and potentially counter-act their ‘ac-
tual’ preferences, this thesis is interested in the processes through which elite media discourses
influence the foreign policy preferences of policymakers in the first place. Thus, I understand
elite media discourses as a public forum, as Giovanna Dell’Orto puts it, “where meanings
for things literally foreign become understandable realities that, in turn, serve as the basis for
policy and action” (Dell’Orto, 2013, 1).

The Agenda-Setting Power of Elite Media Discourses

In sum, this thesis argues that elite media discourses shape the perceptions of policymakers
via these discourses’ structural position in daily lives of policymakers, bureaucrats, diplomats
and other formal and informal political elites. Elite media framing has a cognitive impact
on their readers, shaping how they view the events in foreign armed conflicts vis-à-vis the
national interest. Besides the direct influence on policymakers’ cognition, they have a socio-
logical impact through the media consumption of the actors that comprise the organizational
backbone of the government. Finally, they have a political impact through the media con-
sumption of the formal and informal elites that empower and restrain foreign policymakers.
What this amounts to is not a deterministic mechanism that purports an all-powerful media
single-handedly steering foreign policy. Rather, these mechanisms illustrate how the constant
exposition of these actors to elite media discourses subtly shapes their perception of foreign
policy issues along the lines implied in these discourses. Hence, while not determining, elite
media discourses nevertheless have a strong influence on the broadly shared understanding of
the national interest in a given situation.
Generally speaking, these arguments provide reasons to expect that policymakers are more
likely to perceive of a foreign armed conflict as a threat to the national interest if elite media
discourses suggest so. Whether this perception leads to a concrete foreign policy development
like the employment of troops in a foreign country, however, is a question that is influenced
by a broader set of factors. On the one hand, decisive and powerful governmental actors might
fundamentally disagree with the public depiction of the situation and try to influence the level
and nature of the government’s commitment to conflict resolution. On the other hand, as dis-
cussed in the introductory chapter, a variety of domestic and international mechanisms might
impede the translation of this shared understanding of the national interest into the preferred
policy response. Though these caveats do not undermine the validity of the arguments laid
out in this chapter, and the expectation that follows from that, they make it methodologically
difficult to trace the influence of elite media discourses in concrete empirical cases. In order
to investigate the structural relationship between elite media discourses and foreign policy,
this thesis thus proposes to focus on agenda-setting as an empirically more traceable subset
of the media’s role in foreign policymaking. Based on this, I formulate the following broad
hypothesis that serves as a starting point for the empirical analysis of Chapter 3.
51

Hypothesis: The more elite media discourses frame a foreign armed conflict as relevant to the
national interest, the more likely this armed conflict will appear on the foreign policy
agenda of national policymakers.

It is important to again stress the probabilistic nature of this hypothesis. The claim is
obviously not that every word written by The New York Times is blindly accepted by pol-
icymakers and thus translated into foreign policy. There are other factors at work as well.
Rather, the dominance of national interest frames in such a newspaper makes it more likely
that their readers conceive of the national interest as being at stake and react accordingly. The
non-determinism of this conjecture is based, in part, on the probabilistic nature of the men-
tioned evidence from cognitive psychological research on framing effects. At the same time, it
is also reflective of the ontological and radical undecidability implied in the post-structuralist
discourse theory described above. From this perspective, it is crucial to acknowledge that the
behaviour of political actors ultimately rests upon their political choice, even when the latter
is influenced by the discursive environment they are embedded in.
52
Chapter 3

National Interest, Media Discourses,

and Policy Agendas: A Statistical
Analysis

The purpose of this chapter is to embark on an empirical evaluation of the previous chapter’s
claim based on a quantitative methodology. Since there is no clear-cut blueprint for an empiri-
cal analysis of these theoretical arguments, this chapter should be read more as an inductively
informed conceptualization and measurement exercise rather than a strict deductive testing of
detailed hypotheses that go beyond the general notion outlined in Chapter 2.
A central goal of this thesis to empirically investigate the notion that elite media discourses
shape understandings of the national interest and thus influence foreign policy agendas. While
the second part of this thesis provides an qualitative investigation into the case of Western
reactions to Darfur, elaborating on conceptual questions from a process-tracing perspective,
this chapter aims to establish a correlational link between elite media discourses and foreign
policy agendas. Therefore, the aim is to quantitatively operationalize both and explore gen-
eral patterns in a large-n analysis. To this end, I evaluate the proposed argument for 20 of
the most intense armed conflicts between 1998-2010. I analyse how elite media discourses in
the US, the UK, France, and Germany align with their foreign policy agendas towards these
20 conflicts. The data is based on an original evaluation of approximately 42,000 newspaper
articles from eight different outlets, and approximately 50,000 newswires in three languages.
To analyse the newspaper articles, I use supervised machine learning to construct so-called
structured topic models that categorize different frames linked to conceptions of the national
interest. The newswires were used to manually collect data on a typology of events that re-
late to the notion of foreign policy agendas. The latter resulted in the identification of 4,200
relevant foreign policy events that were used as the dependent variable in this chapter.
In order to investigate the causal narrative postulated in this thesis, this chapter uses
monthly time-series cross-section models with close attention to the timing of changes in me-
dia discourses and those on foreign policy agendas. In particular, I develop a fading-memory-

53
 54

lag approach that models both the long-term accumulative impact of elite media framing, as
well as the fading away of ‘old stories’ and memories thereof. An inversion of this approach
is used to explore the extent to which an alternative hypothesis hold true, i.e, that elite media
framing follows foreign policy events rather than the other way around. By going beyond the
common approach of lagging the independent variable by one time unit, this takes seriously
the methodological call to actively conceptualize and model the time dimension, rather than
treating it as a nuisance (see Beck and Katz, 1996).
The following section elaborates on research design and case selection, which matter on
several distinct levels. Thereafter, the chapter deals with the conceptualization and measure-
ment of core concepts as well as the control variables used in the statistical models. In the
next part, I discuss the patterns that can be found in the data from basic correlations towards
multivariate regression analysis. The findings of the latter are illustrated by marginal effects
– an approach explained in detail later – for the case of Afghanistan. I thereby explore what,
according to the statistical models, would have happened to Western foreign policy agendas
if media discourses did not paint Afghanistan as a threat to the national interest. Finally, the
chapter concludes with reflections on the implications and limitations of the statistical analy-
sis.

Research Design and Case Selection

There are three levels on which case selection plays a role in this quantitative analysis given
three potential ways of generalizing the findings. First, this thesis talks about the West, a
precise definition and historicization of which would justify a thesis of its own. Second, it
talks about reactions to foreign armed conflicts, which refers to those conflicts that did not
take place in the West. Third, it talks about elite media discourses, which are constituted by
a range of high-quality newspaper outlets. All of these demand conceptual elaboration and a
justification of operational and analytical choices.

The West

This thesis can be read as a contribution to our understanding of how ‘the West’ reacts to
armed conflicts in third countries. Thus, it is a story about Western interventionism and the
sources of its sometimes inconsistent pattern of response. I use the word ‘West’ in broad terms
as a heuristic to refer to a set of powerful countries that are either situated in Europe or North-
America. The notion of the West can certainly be problematized as it has been quite malleable
throughout history and implies a questionable stereotyping of the non-Western Other (cf.,
Manchanda and Shilliam, 2014; Anievas and Nisancioglu, 2015). While sympathetic to this
problem, I do not want to engage with it in this thesis. Instead, I use the term analogous to its
widespread contemporary understanding.
Even within this understanding, however, there is reasonable disagreement about which
55

countries actually constitute the West and which ones are the most relevant in geopolitical
terms. Since I am limited to a subset of countries, I choose those most relevant in terms of
Western interventionism and covering the broadest range of cultural and linguistic contexts.
The latter is particularly important to ensure a certain level of generalizability and to avoid an
Anglo-Saxon bias.
The three countries that should not be omitted in any contemporary definition of the West
are the permanent members of the UN Security Council: France, the UK, and the US. Addi-
tionally, one could for example think of Canada, Italy, and the Netherlands as countries that
carry some weight when it comes to interventionism. The country I chose to complement the
three permanent Security Council members, however, is Germany. On the one hand, it adds to
the linguistic and cultural diversity of this study. On the other hand, it is one of the most pow-
erful countries within the European Union (EU) and is continuing to gain significance in terms
of international security regimes following increases in military spending and the development
of EU security policies.
Generalizing of this chapter’s findings beyond these four countries should be done with
caution. It would be reasonable to expect similar relations between elite media discourses
and foreign policy agendas in comparably liberal democracies, but this remains an open em-
pirical question. Cultures of political communication and the composition and freedom of
media systems vary across countries irrespective of whether a regime is considered liberal or
not. Applications of this thesis argument to other countries should therefore involve careful
reflections on the political context.

Foreign Armed Conflicts

The second level on which case selection plays a role is with regard to the choice of foreign
armed conflicts towards which the West reacted or not. In accordance with the Uppsala Con-
flict Data Program (UCDP), I define an armed conflict as “a contested incompatibility that
concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of
which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths [per
year]” (Gleditsch et al., 2002; Pettersson and Wallensteen, 2015). As mentioned in the be-
ginning of this thesis, the amount of conflicts that can be subsumed under this definition is
immense.
To select a subset of conflicts for the following analysis, I focus on the most intense ones
within a given time-frame. The logic is that these had the potential to raise attention in the West
on both humanitarian grounds and in terms of geopolitical stability. On an operational level, I
understand conflict intensity as the amount of combatant and civilian casualties as measured in
the UCDP’s Georeferenced Event Dataset (Sundberg and Melander, 2013; Croicu and Sund-
berg, 2017). Because the media data I use in this analysis is only fully available from 1998
onwards and because the advent of the Arab Spring in 2011 introduces too many interdepen-
dencies between the conflicts, I restrict my analytical focus on the period between 1998 and
 56

2010. Within that time-frame, I selected 20 of the most intense conflicts (see Appendix A for
more details on the selection procedure).
Within that subset, I excluded Afghanistan for the period after the US-American invasion.
This is because once Western military became involved in a full-scale war with these countries,
the discursive dynamics shift and became empirically so conflated with other aspects that it
would be almost impossible to provide a valid analysis within the methodological design of
this quantitative chapter. I would expect that the general mechanism I describe in this thesis
did play a role, but ultimately, the analysis of the post-invasion discursive dynamics would
require a separate research project that is well beyond what I can achieve in this context.
Even though UCDP provides some of the most widely used quantified data on armed
conflicts, there are many problems regarding data quality given the naturally difficult infor-
mational environment in war zones (see, e.g., Gohdes and Price, 2013). These problems
resonate with my argument about the empirical and normative uncertainty involved in these
cases, which impedes ‘fact-based’ reasoning even by experts in methodologically rigorous and
well-endowed research institutions like the UCDP. However, for the specific purpose of case
selection in this project, I argue that this is an appropriate starting point because it provides
a comparative assessment of conflict intensity to the best of our knowledge – with ‘our’ re-
ferring to Western experts. That is, to the best of our knowledge, these conflicts would have
justified more focused attention from the West if we take humanitarian and geopolitical stabil-
ity concerns as a guideline. Yet, as becomes clear in the analysis, the attention these conflicts
received from the West was sporadic and often difficult to explain in rationalist terms.

Elite Media Discourses

Finally, given the huge amount of data even one newspaper provides on these 20 conflicts
between 1998 and 2010, I must restrict the selection of newspaper representing elite media
discourses in each country. In line with the conceptual argument laid out in the previous
chapter, they should ideally be the most widely read and respected high-quality newspapers
amongst a country’s broadly defined political elite. On the other hand, they should also be
reflective of the different political orientations that are dominant within this elite. Thus, I
choose one centre-right and one centre-left newspaper for each of the Western countries.
For the US, I select The Wall Street Journal (centre-right) and The Washington Post
(centre-left). There are equal reasons for the inclusion of The New York Times and The Wash-
ington Post since both are widely read and represent the centre-left. My judgement call for
The Washington Post is based on the impression that its writing is more representative of the
political elite in Washington. However, this remains an assumption that warrants further em-
pirical investigation, which is why data for The New York Times is provided in the replication
files of this thesis.
For the UK, I select The Times (centre-right) and The Guardian (centre-left) since there is
no obvious more centrist alternative to the left-leaning Guardian, and armed conflicts do not
57

fall under the expertise of The Financial Times. For France, I select Le Figaro (centre-right)
and Le Monde (centre-left) since the only widely read alternative is La Libération, which is
considerably more left leaning and therefore less representative of the political mainstream in
Paris. Finally, for Germany, I select Die Süddeutsche Zeitung (centre-left) and Die Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung (centre-right). While Der Spiegel and Die Zeit would equally qualify as
important, it is preferable to stick to daily newspapers in order to increase the comparability
to those in the other countries.

Conceptualisation and Measurement

After having selected Western countries, foreign armed conflicts, and quality newspapers, the
following section deals with the conceptualization and measurement of foreign policy agendas
and the framing of national interest. Thereafter, it discusses the difficult challenge of quanti-
tatively operationalizing the long-term and structural effects of elite media framing. Finally, I
elaborate on the control variables used in this analyses and talk about some systematic limita-
tions quantitative international relations scholarship faces in that regard.

Foreign Policy Agendas

As mentioned throughout the thesis, it is problematic to equate the binary question of whether
there was a (military) intervention with the question of whether the West cared to do some-
thing about a foreign armed conflict. The advantage of such an approach is that it ensures a
certain level of reliability because the measurement of interventions is fairly straightforward
and related data sets are readily available (e.g., Kisangani and Pickering, 2008). The disad-
vantage is that, strictly speaking, studies that try to explain why and when Western countries
intervene militarily can only explain this specific policy tool, which depends on factors be-
yond whether Western countries perceived their national interest to be at stake. As discussed
in more detail before, previous experiences like those in Iraq or Afghanistan, geopolitical re-
straints, considerations of military overstretch, etc. all play a role in shaping the policy tools
selected to address a conflict.
Instead of the binary of interventionism, we should study the central question of this thesis
in the broader terms of foreign policy agendas. These are the “list[s] of subjects or problems to
which governmental officials, and people outside of government closely associated with those
officials, are paying some serious attention at any given time” (Kingdon, 1984, 3). The policy
agenda is situated a step prior to actual policies in that it does not necessitate policy activity to
lead to a specific policy outcome, but refers to policy activity as such.
In terms of Western reactions to foreign armed conflicts, it is less vulnerable to confound-
ing variables like geopolitical constraints or historical idiosyncrasies because it allows for
more internal variation regarding the concrete nature of the Western reaction. Therefore, the
study of policy agendas is better suited to answer the question that stands at the centre of this
 58

thesis. The disadvantage of such a conceptual shift is that it is much more difficult to measure
because policy activity does not always result in clear-cut and publicly available evidence of
such. It will inevitably introduce more measurement error and require a bigger data collection
effort. Ultimately, this amounts to a trade-off between reliability and conceptual validity, in
which I favour the latter for the sake of this chapter.
In the field of political science, a lot of effort has been spend on collecting data on the
concept of policy agendas. The Comparative Agendas Project stands out because it covers a
broad range of countries and political issues. There is no questions about the merits of such
a cross-national and systematic data set. However, for the specific purpose of this thesis, it
proved to be of limited help because it provides information on broad issue categories rather
than concrete policy content. Therefore, it is difficult to link the data set to concrete foreign
policy activity with regard to the selected armed conflicts. Even where this is possible, there
remains the question of whether the project’s selective attention to specific, broadly available
policy data would actually capture the entirety of the policy activity that we are interested in
here.
The alternative approach that informed my original data collection for this quantitative
analysis is to rely on a kind of primary source that combines practical availability with a
very fine-grained accounting of past political events: newswires. The obvious disadvantage
is that it does not allow a close look at what is happening behind closed doors (e.g., Allison,
1971) or through informal channels (e.g., Christiansen and Neuhold, 2013). It therefore might
miss developments that are either purposefully hidden from the public or are due to some
inherent automatism of the bureaucratic machinery. However, the logic of a policy agenda –
as understood in this thesis – undermines the validity of both objections. For an issue to be part
of the policy agenda, it requires that a substantial amount of policymakers paid some serious
attention to it. In both the case of collusion and bureaucratic automatism, there is usually only
a small group of people involved and the issue cannot be said to be subject to broad attention.
One does not have to entirely buy into this argument, however, to see that the advantages
of using newswires are persuasive and arguably outweigh the disadvantages when it comes to
studying policy agendas. The most obvious advantage is that news agencies are quite pedantic
at archiving every little political momentum. Reuters, for example, produces more than 2.2
million ‘unique news stories’ a year, which averages to about 6,000 newswires per day. What
did not leave a trace in such an archive probably also did not receive a lot of attention by
policymakers, ergo, did not form part of the policy agenda. Another advantage is that, in a way,
the very purpose of newswires is to convey what is on the mind and agendas of policymakers.
In fact, many of the events coded in this chapter come straight from newswires outlining the
daily meetings of policymakers.
That being said, it is evident that this source will nevertheless not be able to reliably and ex-
haustively cover all events that might be considered relevant in an ideal case scenario. Given
the probabilistic and large-n nature of the following analysis, however, I argue that this ap-
proach is sufficiently accurate to allow valid inference about general patterns. Obviously, once
59

Table 3.1: Categories of events for measurement of foreign policy activity related to armed conflict.
The values in brackets refer to a rough weighting of how much time and resources events of the
respective category indicate. See Appendix for more detailed coding guidelines.

Category Explanation

[1] Embassy Activity Statements or actions coordinated by a country’s embassy in the foreign country.
[2] Travel Warning Warning not to travel to the foreign country issued by foreign ministry to its citizens.
[3] Official Statement Issued by senior officials or spokespersons of the government. Those statements that
relate to or explain events in subsequent categories are not coded separately.
[4] Official Report Official report or extended briefing by senior members of the administration or
spokespersons of the government.
[5] Meeting at Home Meeting of senior officials with international representatives in the capital of the
Western country. Can include representatives of the conflict parties, of third countries, or
of international organisations.
[6] International Coordination Proactive diplomatic efforts to coordinate reactions to the conflict with representatives of
the conflict parties, of third countries, or of international organisations. Usually at
international gatherings like the UN Security Council, the G8 summits, or European
Union meetings.
[7] Visit to Country Visit of senior official to conflict country with the intent to inspect the situation or
coordinate policy reactions.
[8] Mediation Efforts Proactive efforts or support by senior officials to bring multiple conflict parties to the
table to negotiate ceasefires, peace, or reconciliation.
[9] Legislative Activity Focused attention by representatives of legislative bodies as indicated by statements,
visits to the country, election campaigns, introduction of new foreign policy legislation,
questioning of the government’s position, etc.
[10] Policy Development Substantive development or change in foreign policy. For example, increasing of
development aid, sending troops, military cooperation, economic sanctions, evacuation
of embassy, promoting UN Security Council resolutions, etc.
 60

we look at individual conflicts in more detail, we should add other primary and secondary
sources to minimize the risk of omitting events, which I will do in the second part of this
thesis.
To gather data on the 20 conflicts, I manually evaluated all newswires that mention the
armed conflict in combination with a policy-related entity of the Western countries (see repli-
cation files for concrete search queries). I consulted Associated Press Newswires for the US,
Reuters News and Press Association National Newswires for the UK, French Reuters News
and Agence France-Press for France, and German Reuters News for Germany. All the data
was collected via Factiva.
Throughout the data collection for the first few conflicts, I inductively adjusted the cate-
gories of policy events linked to foreign armed conflicts presented in Table 3.1. The purpose
of this list is to give weight to different types of foreign policy events according to the amount
of attention and resources they require from policymakers. To give an example, stating a con-
demnation of the violence [3] requires less efforts than pushing the issue on the agenda of an
international body like the UN Security Council [6], or actively participating in mediations
between the warring parties [8].
The purpose of this list within the context of this thesis is a rather limited one. It is a step
in constructing a variable that enables us to see how much time and resources policymakers
spend on a foreign armed conflict at a given point in time. To do so, I accumulate the values of
each event that took place within a given month and thereby create an indicator of how much
a conflict was part of the foreign policy agenda:
n
Foreign Policy Agenda = Â Event Occurence i ⇥ Event Type Weight i (3.1)
i=1

In a way, this list of categories could also be the starting point of a broader approach to study-
ing not just policy agendas, but also different types of foreign policy tools. It would be an
interesting task to further conceptualize this as a proper typology and apply it to a broader
range of topics. This would certainly lead to a refinement of the presented categories, and
maybe the addition of others. In the context of this thesis, though, the presented list ensures
the collection of analytically valid and empirically relevant foreign policy events that mat-
ter for the following analysis. Considering the limited scope of this thesis and the already
sufficient complexity of the analysis, I leave this as a suggestion for further research.

Framing the National Interest

While conceptualizing and operationalizing foreign policy agendas provides its challenges,
doing so for the national interest is the real crux of this analysis. As argued previously, I start
with the constructivist argument that there is no fixed definition of the term. It is a floating
signifier to which different groups try to attach ideological content specifying what they think
it ought to be. Conceptually, this means that there is no way to a priori provide an analytical
account of what the national interest consists of. Rather, we need to look at discursive practices
61

to understand what conceptions of the national interest are present and compete with each
other in a given historical and political context. Operationally, I propose to understand these
different conceptions as competing national interest frames. Such provide an interpretation of
a given foreign armed conflict that suggests its relevance for the national interest of a country.
I rely on Robert Entman’s definition of framing: “To frame is to select some aspects of
a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to
promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treat-
ment recommendation for the item described” (Entman, 1993). Thus, framing is a discursive
process and a frame is the outcome thereof. If national interest is a floating signifier, national
interest frames are the discursive units that are used in the fight over hegemony of the political
interpretation of the signifier.
While national interest frames can also suggest that events should not concern foreign pol-
icymakers, I focus on those that do so in this chapter. Thus, the least common denominator of
the frames analyzed here is that they either explicitly or implicitly suggest that the events they
describe should concern policymakers because a key value or goal for the country is at stake.
Based on this reasoning, I inductively identified four frames that are consistently present in the
Western newspaper data from 1998 to 2010. This was done by reading a random selection of
1600 newspaper articles and creating categories for the most systematically prevalent frames
in this sample.
First, the humanitarianism frame invokes liberal values about human rights, political free-
dom, and peace, which need to be defended. It has an individualist bias and is often linked
to stories about suffering or oppressed people. Second, the security frame invokes concerns
about the national security which needs to be defended. Since the period covered in this analy-
sis is to a large extent post-9/11, it should come without surprise that this frame typically talks
about terrorism and Islamist extremism. Third, the stability frame invokes ideas about the re-
sponsibility of ‘great powers’ to provide for peace and stability. It revolves a lot around peace
negotiations and typically avoids giving the humanitarian rational for seeking stability. Rather,
it sees stability as a value of its own. Fourth, the economics frame invokes a self-serving util-
itarian logic. It is a rarer, but steadily present kind of frame that stresses how a conflict is
endangering the exploitation or preservation of economic resources. These categories were
inductively adjusted during the manual coding of newspaper articles. As such, they are not
exhaustive of all possible national interest frames, but they are the empirically most relevant
for this analysis and arguably with regard to Western interventionism in recent times.
To gather data on these frames, I manually evaluated a sample of individual newspaper
articles on whether they contain traces of them. All articles were related to one of the 20
conflicts. Since the ‘national interest’ is rarely mentioned explicitly, I paid particular attention
to the words being used to talk about and describe the armed conflict. The best way to show
what these four categories entail is to illustrate the word distributions of each individual frame
in the four countries covered in this analysis (see Table 3.2).1
In order to handle the coding of all 42,000 newspaper articles, I use supervised structured
 62

Table 3.2: Illustration of word distributions for most prevalent national interest frames. They repre-
sent the weighted words that the topic models associate with each frame and thus use to predict the
probability of a certain article containing a frame.

United States United Kingdom France Germany

Humanitarianism
Security
Stability
Economics
63

topic models to extrapolate the manual coding of a sample to the population. The logic is to
manually and interpretively code randomly selected ‘training’ and ‘test’ samples of articles.
The training sample is then used to build – i.e., ‘train’ – a statistical model that can predict the
frames – i.e., ‘topics’ – that were manually assigned to the articles. Thereafter, the statistical
model is used on the test sample to see whether it can replicate the manual and interpretive
coding. Once the machine coding is sufficiently similar to the manual coding, the statistical
model can be used to code the rest of the population. Though there are other approaches, this
thesis uses a machine learning technique that tries to identify whether the qualitatively identi-
fied national interest frames are systematically correlated with patterns of words (or signifiers),
and uses the latter to replicate the manual coding outcomes. Currently, the models are based
on 400 manually coded articles per country and the evaluation of the model performance can
be found in the appendix (Table A.1).2
This approach has the additional advantage that it not only provides a binary assessment
of whether an article fits into a specific category. Rather, the outcome is a probabilistic value
between 0 and 1 that indicates how far the words used in an article fit a general category. Thus,
one article can show signs of multiple frames simultaneously and to different degrees. Whether
an article ‘frames the national interest’ is measured as the extent to which the words it uses
to describe an armed conflict belong to any or all of the four frames described above. While
the outcome of this process might resemble what is sometimes labelled as ‘content analysis’
(e.g., Herrera and Braumoeller, 2004), it does not share its meta-theoretical commitment to
positivism since it remains intrinsically linked to an interpretive approach to analysing text.

Modelling Time: Fading-Memory-Lag and Indexing-Hypothesis Lead

Now that we have data on both the dependent and independent variables, the question arises
how we can statistically model the theoretically described relationship between the elite media
discourses and foreign policy agendas. First, striking a balance between macro- and micro-
level analysis, I aggregate the the data on a monthly level. For the foreign policy agenda, this
means that a month-year observation (e.g., July 2001) is coded by an accumulation of each
foreign policy event that took place in this month, weighted by the ordinal scale described in
Table 3.1 (see Equation 3.1). Equally, to measure the presence of a national interest frame in
elite media discourses, I calculate a monthly count of published words that can be associated to
a specific frame. After the topic models assign a probability of whether an article contains the
frame, I use that probability to weigh the word count of the article and add the frame-related
share to the monthly count.
n
Frame Word Count (FWC) = Â Frame Probability i ⇥Wordcount i (3.2)
i=1

Second, we need to quantify the long-term accumulative as well as the memory loss aspects of
the impact of elite media discourse. The orthodox approach in most political science and in-
ternational relations applications of time-series cross-section models is to lag the independent
 64

variable by one time unit to account for the fact that the cause has to precede the effect. This
would mean that the national interest framing in July 2001 would have an impact on the for-
eign policy agenda in August 2001. Such an approach also addresses the issue of endogeneity
– i.e., Y causing X instead of X causing Y – because Y clearly occurred after X and therefore
could not possibly have caused something that happened in the past. This is a good starting
point, but I argue that it is insufficient to model the structural impact of elite media discourse.
On the one hand, it matters whether a foreign policy event is preceded by a long-term
framing effort or not. The power of elite media discourse is structural, and actors remember
more than the news of the last month. Moreover, the news of the last month are interlinked with
previous discourses and their interpretation depends on what happened before. For example,
whatever the newspapers wrote about Syria in July 2017 will be read in the context of a history
of violence that goes back several years. We should take this into account when quantitatively
analysing the impact of discourses.
On the other hand, the effect of the framing should also fade away after a while because
of the typically short term memory of the audiences. While Syria indeed has a long history
of conflict, it is also a complex one and most people who read the news today are not likely
to remember the details of how it started in March 2011 and evolved over the years. Even
where they do remember the events, it is not evident that they will remember the specific
frames used to talk about them at the time. To account for this, I propose to make the foreign
policy agenda in one month dependent on the weighted accumulation of the national interest
framing in previous months. The weighting decreases the contribution of the frame word count
depending on how many months have passed since. I call this a fading memory lag:

6
FWC t m
Fading Memory Lag = Â (3.3)
m=1 1 + m

There is a reasonable expectation that foreign policy activity is not just inspired by media
discourse, but also inspires media discourse itself. The strongest version of this is probably
the indexing hypothesis (cf., Bennett, 1988, 1990), which maintains that policymakers set the
terms of the discussion, and journalists follow their lead. A full discussion and investigation
of this follows in the second part of this thesis, but we can tentatively evaluate the extent to
which this alternative hypothesis is reflected by patterns in the data. To do so, we can invert
the equation and see whether there is a long-term but fading impact of foreign policy events
on the framing of media discourses over the following months. Let us call this an indexing
hypothesis lead:

6
FWC t+m
Indexing Hypothesis Lead = Â (3.4)
m=1 1 + m

Thus, we have three discursive variables per frame-newspaper combination to include in our
models. First, the basic contemporary correlation between media discourses and foreign pol-
icy agendas in a given month. Second, the fading-memory-lag version that indicates the dis-
65

Table 3.3: List of control variables used in models. See the codebook in the replication files for
more details.

Name Source Concept Explanation Scale

Humanitarianism

e fh ipolity2 V-Dem Democracy “Average of Freedom House (fh pr and fh cl) is transformed to a 0-10 where 0 is least
scale 0-10 and Polity (p polity2) is transformed to a scale 0-10. democratic and 10
These variables are averaged into fh polity2.” (V-Dem Codebook) most democratic
deaths civilians UCDP Civilian Casualties The best estimate of civilians killed in a given month. Count in 1000
IDPs UNHCR Internally Displaced Persons The amount of internally displaced persons. Count in 1000
refugees UNHCR Refugees The amount of refugees originating from this conflict. Count in 1000

Stability and Security

best UCDP Overall Casualties The best estimate of civilians and combatants killed in a given Count in 1000
month.
refugees us UNHCR Refugees to the United States The amount of refugees in the United States originating from this Count in 1000
conflict.
refugees uk UNHCR Refugees to the United Kingdom The amount of refugees in the United Kingdom originating from Count in 1000
this conflict.
refugees fr UNHCR Refugees to France The amount of refugees in France originating from this conflict. Count in 1000
refugees ge UNHCR Refugees to Germany The amount of refugees in Germany originating from this conflict. Count in 1000

Economics

e reserves billions V-Dem Oil Reserves Estimates of oil reserves. Constant value from 2006 since it is the In billions of barrels
last data point.
trade us COMTRADE Economic Interests of the United Overall flow of goods between conflict country and the United US Dollar
States States
trade uk COMTRADE Economic Interests of the United Overall flow of goods between conflict country and the United US Dollar
Kingdom Kingdom
trade fr COMTRADE Economic Interests of France Overall flow of goods between conflict country and France US Dollar
trade ge COMTRADE Economic Interests of Germany Overall flow of goods between conflict country and Germany US Dollar

courses that preceded foreign policy events. Second, the indexing-hypothesis-lead version that
describes the discourses that followed upon foreign policy events. Ultimately, we can expect
that all three indicators show some correlation with foreign policy agendas. However, if the
fading-memory-lag approach does not add any explanatory power to the models, this would
be a strong refutation of the hypothesis specified in the beginning of this chapter and thereby
of the argument of this thesis.

Control Variables: The Data Problem and Omitted Variable Bias

There are limits to the extent a non-experimental research design can eliminate the potential
for confounding variables. Quantitative scholarship in international relations is particularly
affected by this problem because of a lack of systematic and comparative data for most of the
factors that a qualitative investigation would more easily be able to incorporate. In practice,
many scholars tend to use a variety of readily available indicators that can control at least for
some alternative explanations.
Interestingly, the typical selection of these indicators can be understood in terms of the
four national interest frames this thesis identified in the media discourses on foreign armed
conflicts. As Table 3.3 shows, they are linked to humanitarianism, security, stability, and
 66

economic concerns. Most of them are an attempt to find an ‘objective’ measure of each of
these notions that could be used to corroborate a rationalist approach.

As I argued in the previous chapter, the tension between this essentialist version of ratio-
nal choice and this thesis’ constructivism lies at a more fundamental level and cannot be fully
addressed with empirical research. For example, while acknowledging the methodological
efforts informing the rigour of each indicator, I would nevertheless doubt the claim that the
impact of these variables is in any way more rooted in ‘objectivity’ than that of the discursive
mechanisms I elaborate on. After all, each of them is based on a specific political understand-
ing of what ultimate goal constitutes the ‘national interest’ – peace, security, stability, power,
economic success, etc. – as well as a specific understanding of how to achieve it – spreading
democracy, minimising conflict intensity, protecting trade relationships, etc.

Moreover, the choice of these indicators is often based on data-availability rather than on
conceptual reflections. There is not always a clear-cut expectation about the nature of the cor-
relation between these indicators and the dependent variable. For example, if the West pays
more attention to already democratic countries, is that because it does not care about democ-
racy promotion, or does it mean that non-democratic states are less likely to be malleable to
Western attempts to influence the situation? However, since it is common practice, I test for
the impact of all the listed indicators and discuss the conceptual implications of patterns where
they seem to matter.

One potential rationalist critique of the argument in this thesis is that media discourses
only correlate with foreign policy agendas because media discourses more or less directly
reflect ‘objective facts’ about the conflict or a country’s interest. If that where to be the case,
not controlling for the factors in Table 3.3 would lead to an overestimation of media effects
because of an omitted variable bias. It also implies that these factors should be better able to
explain the variation of foreign policy agendas and that the media variables would only add
slightly to the explanatory power of the models. Thus, including these indicators enables us to
explore the rationalist-constructivist debate in a slightly more empirical fashion.

Ultimately, however, the bigger problem remains that even these commonly used indica-
tors cannot account for most of the factors that we would consider crucial in a case-oriented
foreign policy analysis. They cannot account for peculiarities in Western perceptions of the
situation in the conflict country and they have an economic-rationalist bias because this is the
area that produces the most systematic data. Thus, it is impossible to isolate the impact of
media discourses from those of epistemic communities, ideological backgrounds of individual
policymakers, bureaucratic politics, diplomatic interactions, or the role of international organi-
sations within the methodological design of this chapter. While this limitation does not prevent
us from carefully proceeding with the analysis, it should be kept in mind when interpreting the
findings of this chapter.
67

Table 3.4: Frequency of manually coded foreign policy event types per country between 1998 and
2010. Based on manual evaluation of 50,476 news wires on 20 of the most intense foreign armed
conflicts during that period.

United States United Kingdom France Germany Total

Embassy Activity 151 36 37 12 236

Travel Warning 62 28 17 10 117
Official Statement 532 128 901 137 1698
Official Report 56 0 17 6 79
Meeting at Home 87 29 159 16 291
International Coordination 218 57 252 43 570
Visit to Country 125 36 101 12 274
Mediation Efforts 54 15 40 1 110
Legislative Activity 169 45 117 24 355
Policy Development 268 56 208 32 564

Total 1722 430 1849 293 4294

Basic Patterns of Foreign Policy Agendas and National Interest Fram-

ing

Before diving deeper into the statistical relationship between elite media discourse and for-
eign policy agendas, it is worth contemplating the implications of Table 3.4 for the argument
about studying policy agendas rather than the binary of (military) interventionism. These event
frequencies give an impression of how regularly the armed conflicts were part of the foreign
policy agendas of the four countries analysed here. If we would only look at (military) in-
terventions, the present conflicts and selection of Western countries would have resulted in
a handful of positive observations at best. This is evident from the frequent observation of
events in categories that precede ‘policy developments’, but even the latter only occasionally
refers to an actual (military) intervention. Rather, it also includes changes to the amount of
aid allocated to a country, the imposition of sanctions, the decision to contribute troops to
international peacekeeping forces, etc.
The country for which this extended coverage has the most visible effect is Germany,
whose non-interventionist bias usually excludes it from reflections on interventionism. How-
ever, the abundance of other activities shows that Germany does not shy away from the prob-
lem of foreign armed conflicts but typically chooses different means to address them. The
basic message of Table 3.4 is that a lot of policy related developments would simply have been
ignored by the orthodox focus on (military) interventions. Furthermore, the table substantiates
the claim that the approach to use newswires for this coding exercise is very productive for
the study of policy agendas. While the caveat of potentially omitted events remains, the sheer
number of re-covered foreign policy events per conflict and country is sufficient to enable a
 68

probabilistic analysis to find patterns in the data.

In order to do so without the potentially overwhelming complexity of contemporary sta-
tistical methods, let us first have a look at some basic correlations between the frames used in
the elite media discourse and the place a conflict took on the foreign policy agenda of the four
Western countries. Figure 3.1 shows how much the four national interest frames correlate with
foreign policy agendas at different time-points. The disaggregated versions are depicted in the
appendix (Figure B.1, B.2, B.3, B.4).
Of course, all of these graphs should be looked at with a decent amount of suspicion be-
cause such correlations cannot account for confounding variables. Deviations from the general
trend might, for example, disappear once we take into account that the four national interest
frames might work together rather than in isolation – something that multivariate regression
analysis is better suited to do. To be clear, the time-series cross-section analysis will show a
more nuanced picture for some of these relations, which further complicates the causal nar-
rative. However, this simple exploration facilitates an initial understanding of some basic
patterns in the data that are indicative of the later findings.
What we can see is that there is a clear tendency for each of the national interest frames to
be related to higher values on the foreign policy agenda. While the clarity and intensity of the
relationship differs per frame and newspaper, it is nevertheless a homogeneous pattern across
the board. It is clear that the strongest link between media discourse is the contemporaneous
correlation at t0. With this, we cannot draw any unequivocal conclusions about the causal
direction, but we are able to say that foreign policy activity with regard to these armed con-
flicts is consistently embedded in a discourse that invokes conceptions of the national interest.
While the correlations are weaker, national interest frames preceding and following upon for-
eign policy events are also related in a consistent manner, which indicates that the correlation
decreases with the temporal distance to the foreign policy event.
The latter strongly corroborates the application of both the fading-memory-lag and indexing-
hypothesis-lead structure to the discursive variables. Figure 3.2 illustrates the benefits of these
strategies for modelling the temporal relation between elite media discourses and foreign pol-
icy agendas. Both the discursive patterns that precede and follow upon foreign policy events
are as systematically correlated with them as the contemporaneous discourse measured at t0
(see Figure 3.1). The lag versions seem to have a slight advantage over the lead versions, but
the difference is minimal and it would be overzealous to interpret this as an argument in favour
of either side. They clearly matter both.
These observations alone are already a strong finding that underpins the significance of
elite media discourses in foreign policymaking and justifies the attached research agenda. If
foreign policy events are structurally linked to certain discursive patterns about the national
interest in elite media outlets, we cannot maintain the dismissal of these discourses as mere
rhetoric that is detached from ‘actual’ policymaking. Rather, elite media discourse and ‘actual’
policymaking are intrinsically connected. Neither is it possible to easily dismiss discursive
patterns in elite media as the mere result of policymaking since a significant part of it precedes
69

The Washington Post The Wall Street Journal

0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00

The Guardian The Times

0.75
Correlation with Foreign Policy Agenda

0.50

0.25

0.00

Le Monde Le Figaro
0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00

Die Süddeutsche Zeitung Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00
t− 1
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
t0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
t+ 9
10
11

t− 1
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
t0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
t+ 9
10
11
1

t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−

t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+

t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−

t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t−

t+

t−

t+

Time Relation to Foreign Policy Agenda Month (t0)

Figure 3.1: Average correlation between national interest frames and foreign policy agendas. The
small dots represent correlations for individual frames, the big ones represents the overall averages.
 70

Lag Lead The Washington Post The Wall Street Journal

0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25

The Guardian The Times

0.75
Correlation with Foreign Policy Agenda

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25

Le Monde Le Figaro

0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25

Die Süddeutsche Zeitung Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25
Humanitarianism Security Stability Economics Humanitarianism Security Stability Economics

Figure 3.2: Comparison of fading-memory-lag (squares) and indexing-hypothesis-lead (triangles)

correlation between national interest frames and foreign policy agendas. The small dots represent
correlations for individual conflicts, the big ones represents the overall averages.
71

foreign policy events.

So much for the abstract conceptual argument. However, what these correlations also show
is that the extent and nature of this relationship varies significantly in terms of newspapers,
frames, and foreign armed conflicts. What this prevents is an agglomeration of the data that
could produce a simplistic statement about what national interest frames elite media would
have to produce to put an issue on the foreign policy agenda. Different national interest frames
matter for different conflicts, different outlets play different roles in different countries, and
the timing of political discourse and foreign policy agendas varies across the board.
That being said, we can at least explore some reasons for this variation that enables us to
better understand the complexity of the patterns. On the one hand, we should expect mea-
surement error to affect the patterns we see in these graphs: foreign policy agendas are most
likely underestimated because newswires leave out a lot of low-key activity; the quantifica-
tion of the national interest frames was done systematically, but it is up for debate whether
this approach actually captures the discursive relevance of a frame; the four national interest
frames are only the most prevalent frames in the sample, but this most likely ignores national
interest frames that were relevant in a more specific context. All of these sources of mea-
surement error are bound to differ across countries, newspapers, and foreign armed conflicts,
which might influence why we do not see a more homogeneous pattern. On the other hand,
it is to be expected that bivariate correlations are not the most appropriate way to understand
these relations because national interest frames work in combination rather than in isolation.
On a conceptual level, the empirical patterns suggest that there is no such thing as ‘the
media’ and that different outlets have different relevance for foreign policy agendas. This
opens the question whether the ideological orientation of the newspaper in relation to that of
the incumbent government might condition these correlations. While it is not impossible to
include such an argument in a multivariate regression analysis, I refrain from doing so here
because of the already overwhelming complexity of the models. A more detailed discussion
of this follows in the second part of the thesis.
However, to make sure that these nuances are not completely lost in the following analysis,
I continue to investigate each relationship on its own rather than aggregating the data. Regres-
sion models are run independently for each Western country, framing patterns are analysed
for each newspaper separately, and temporal variation is captured by the previously specified
fading-memory-lag and indexing-hypothesis-lead approaches. This increases the complexity
of the analysis and makes a parsimonious representation of the findings considerably harder if
not impossible, but it does justice to the contextual differences and allows us to explore them
in a systematic fashion.

Time-Series Cross-Section Analysis

What happens when we take into account the interdependent nature of the relationship be-
tween national interest frames and foreign policy agendas? To investigate this question, I use
 72

a time-series cross-section analysis with the aforementioned fading-memory-lag, indexing-

hypothesis-lead, and contemporaneous versions of each newspaper-frame combination. I gen-
erally control for the indicators listed in Table 3.3 and additionally allow for random variation
of the intercept for both the conflicts and each year-month observation. The latter allows us to
account for conflict and time specific variation that is not explained with the independent vari-
ables included in the models. This means that the regression analysis asks the question: ‘After
looking at the explanatory role of the discursive and control variables, is there still something
specific about conflict X or time-point T that makes it more or less prone to be on the foreign
policy agenda of country Y?’ Because the dependent variable resembles a zero-inflated count
variable, I use a generalized linear poisson model for the estimation.
A central strategy to enable a substantive interpretation of statistics that is intelligible to a
broader audience are so-called marginal effects (cf., King, Tomz and Wittenberg, 2000). The
result is quite intuitive to grasp, but considering that a lot of the conclusions drawn in this
analysis are based on the interpretation of marginal effects, it is worth recapitulating the gen-
eral logic for readers with little statistical training. On the most abstract level, every regression
analysis tries to find correlations in the data that would enable us to predict the dependent
variable – something that is usually changed to the word ‘explain’ based on theoretical narra-
tives about causation. The regression coefficients found in the tables of the appendix are the
outcome of a procedure where we try to understand which combination of independent vari-
ables is best able to predict variations of foreign policy agendas. However, it is typically very
difficult to interpret these numbers in terms of their substantive significance. For example, the
analysis suggests that the more refugees a conflict produces, the more likely it is to appear on
the foreign policy agenda of the US. This relationship is statistically significant, but substan-
tively so small that it is negligible (see, e.g., Carver, 1978). This conclusion is difficult to grasp
when just looking at the regression coefficient (see appendix, Table B.2), but it becomes clear
when we take into account the marginal effects of this relationship (see Figure B.9).
A marginal effects graph depicts the predictions of the dependent variable in a hypothet-
ical constellation of independent variables. We use the outcome of the regression analysis
to understand what would have happened in a given scenario? The most common approach
is to fixate the values for all independent variables (i.e., ceteris paribus) at the mean and see
how the prediction of the dependent variable changes when modifying only the values for one
specific variable of interest. In the case of the refugees, we would take values from zero to
the highest number observed in the data (almost 4 million in the case of Afghanistan), and see
how the likelihood of being part of the US foreign policy agenda changes when we increase
the number of refugees in this hypothetical case. The answer from Figure B.9 in the appendix
would be that an an increase from 0 to 2,000,000 refugees produced by a conflict would result
in a three-point increase of this conflict on the US-American foreign policy agenda. This is
the equivalent of an official statement condemning the situation.
The following section proceeds by first comparing the performance of different model
specifications. Particularly, it will elaborate on how the set of control variables fare vis-à-
73

vis the fading-memory-lag and indexing-hypothesis-lead versions of the discursive variables.

Thereafter, I explore the implications of the discursive models using the case of Afghanistan to
further illustrate model performance and discuss marginal effects. That is, I take Afghanistan
as a starting point for understanding how hypothetical changes in elite media discourses could
have affected the extent of foreign policy activity with regard to the conflict.

Comparing Model Performance

The detailed results of different model specifications can be found in the appendix (Table B.1,
B.2, B.3, B.4). Given the complexity of the models, I refrain from reproducing any of the
regression output in the main chapter but focus on the aspects that matter. The main question
for this section is whether we can identify a set of variables that is clearly better at explaining
the variation of foreign policy agendas than others. Poisson regression models do not provide
a neat measure that can help us to determine the overall performance in absolute terms, but we
can compare models that try to explain the same dependent variable with the Bayesian Infor-
mation Criterion (BIC). The BIC is based on the log likelihood of the regression estimator and
has a punitive term that takes into account the parsimoniousness of a model. Mathematically,
we could increase model performance by just adding more and more variables, but conceptu-
ally this usually does not make sense. BIC takes this into account and is therefore useful to
answer questions about model fit.
While this sounds quite technical, the implication is simple: The smaller the BIC, the better
the model can explain the variation of the foreign policy agenda of the respective country.
However, we can only compare the BIC values between models that try to explain the same
dependent variable, which prohibits us from comparing models between the four countries.
Thus, we can compare BIC values within each country and see which one is smaller in order
to understand the performance of the combinations of explanatory variables.
Table 3.5 presents the BIC values for the most important models, all of which are outlined
in more detail in the appendix. The baseline is the ‘RI Only’ model, which includes only the
random intercepts (RI) for the conflicts and time-units. The second model includes the control
variables of Table 3.3 as well as the random intercepts. The third model includes the random
intercepts and the discursive variables in the fading-memory-lag as well as the contempora-
neous version. The fourth replaces the fading-memory-lag with the indexing-hypothesis-lead
versions. The fifth combines the previous two models. Finally, the full model includes the
controls, the discursive variables, and the random intercepts.
Comparing BIC values suggests that the control variables are able to explain something
on their own, but are clearly outperformed by the discursive variables. While a lot of the
control variables stay statistically significant, they add very little to the explanatory power of
the discursive models. Comparing the fifth with the sixth model in Table 3.5 indicates that the
discursive variables do the heavy lifting while the control variables only marginally improve
the model performance. What is more, despite their statistical significance, the substantive
 74

Table 3.5: Comparing model performance by Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). BIC values
are comparable within different models for each country, but not across countries. Thus, model
performance can be compared horizontally, but not vertically in this table.

RI Only Controls Frames (lag) Frames (lead) Frames (both) Full Model

United States 22, 769.50 20, 339.06 17, 634.61 17, 453.52 16, 886.62 16, 555.49
United Kingdom 8, 466.80 7, 531.77 6, 426.35 6, 481.97 6, 231.34 6, 171.18
France 19, 927.16 18, 382.27 14, 785.57 14, 900.95 14, 434.99 14, 093.44
Germany 5, 464.57 4, 528.05 3, 315.16 3, 169.48 3, 077.30 3, 048.54

impact on foreign policy agendas of most control variables stays very low compared to that
of the discursive variables. With the exception of refugees for the French model and civilian
casualties for Germany, even the most radical changes for these variables would not achieve
an increase on the foreign policy agenda that equates to a policy development (see appendix,
Figures B.9, B.10, B.11, B.12).
This is quite striking as it is the inversion of the scenario that an essentialist version of
rational choice would predict. Rather than elite media discourses just being a reflection of
‘objective facts’ about the conflict, they are a force of their own. Of course, this is not to say
that elite media discourses are completely detached from what is happening on the ground
in these conflicts. Even though often falsely accused of such, discursive approaches do not
deny the existence and relevance of ‘the world out there’ (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, 108).
However, what is happening on the ground first needs to be interpreted by the political elite
at home as being relevant for their national interest. Already at this point, the analysis of this
thesis can safely discard the notion that Western policymakers are driven by facts rather than
interpretations of those facts. The latter is clearly a more cogent explanation given the patterns
we see in the data.
The juxtaposition of the fading-memory-lag and indexing-hypothesis-lead version, on the
other hand, did not provide a clear-cut answer as to whether one or the other is better at
explaining foreign policy agendas. The multivariate regression analysis confirms the previous
finding based on bivariate correlations in that both versions clearly play a role. Given that
such a conclusion entails the importance of the fading-memory-lag version, this supports the
notion that elite media discourses have a strong and independent role to play in the discursive
construction of the national interest. Elite media discourses do not just report on foreign policy
events but also help to bring them about in the first place.

Afghanistan: What Would Have Been?

As explained above, the best approach to understand the substantive implications of these sta-
tistical models is to explore the predictions of the dependent variable that the models produce
75

in different scenarios. To make these scenarios more tangible, the following section takes the
case of Afghanistan from January 1998 to October 2001 as the real-world baseline to explore
the substantive implications of our models. The purpose is not to treat the case of Afghanistan
in depth, but to use it as a guinea pig to illustrate the more general findings of the time-series
cross-section analysis. First, I discuss how well the models are able to (retrospectively) pre-
dict Western foreign policy agendas towards Afghanistan in general. Thereafter, I explore the
marginal effects of a selection of discursive variables with the substantively most significant
and straightforward effects.
There are two advantages to taking a real-life scenario rather than a hypothetical one where
all other variables are kept constant at the mean. First, it illustrates the implications of the sta-
tistical models in a way that is accessible to a broader audience without extensive statistical
training. Second, it enables us to be more transparent about the limitations of statistical mod-
elling in the social sciences. The case of Afghanistan is particularly useful for this because,
while interpreting the graphs in this section, it is difficult not to wonder whether the impact
of 9/11 is properly captured by the variables used in this thesis. Thus, it illustrates how the
substantive impact of these variables might be overestimated because of an omitted variable
bias. Addressing the latter problem to the degree that is possible within the methodological
design of this chapter, I base the calculations of the foreign policy agenda predictions on the
full models for each country, which include all control variables.
Figure 3.3 illustrates how well the models are able to predict developments on the foreign
policy agenda given the real-world data about Afghanistan. The figures juxtapose the observed
variation of the foreign policy agenda (bars) with the model predictions (lines) based on the
observed explanatory variables. By comparing the predictions of the control model with those
of the full model, we can understand the increase in accuracy that an inclusion of discursive
variables achieves. While neither model is entirely flawless, the discursive variables contribute
significantly to bringing the model predictions closer to the observed foreign policy agendas.
A such, these graphs underline the methodologically more rigorous conclusion drawn from the
comparison of the BIC values. Additionally, they illustrate that while the predictions of the
full model are far from perfect, their accuracy is quite impressive for a social science analysis.
Even though the predictive power of the discursive variables is noteworthy, there is no
simple narrative to make sense of the complex dynamics exhibited by specific newspapers.
As mentioned before, different national interest frames matter for different newspapers. What
the multivariate regression analysis has demonstrated is that not all of them work in the ex-
pected direction indicated by the hypothesis specified at the beginning of this chapter. Table
3.6 provides a summary of the directions of statistically significant relationships. One could
proceed by discussing each individual effect in isolation, reflecting on the conceptual reasons
why some follow the logic of the initially specified hypothesis and others not.
However, I would advise caution with such an approach as quite a few of these signs would
change direction depending on methodological choices that are difficult to answer unequivo-
cally: a weekly aggregation might have been more appropriate than the monthly one chosen
 76

United States, Controls United States, Full Model

175
150
125
100
75
50
Foreign Policy Agenda (Lines for Predictions // Bars for Observed Data)

25
0

United Kingdom, Controls United Kingdom, Full Model

175
150
125
100
75
50
25
0

France, Controls France, Full Model

175
150
125
100
75
50
25
0

Germany, Controls Germany, Full Model

175
150
125
100
75
50
25
0
98 1
98 4
98 7
99 0
99 1
99 4
99 7
00 0
00 1
00 4
00 7
01 0
01 1
01 4
01 7
0

98 1
98 4
98 7
99 0
99 1
99 4
99 7
00 0
00 1
00 4
00 7
01 0
01 1
01 4
01 7
0
19 −0
19 −0
19 −0
19 −1
19 −0
19 −0
19 −0
20 −1
20 −0
20 −0
20 −0
20 −1
20 −0
20 −0
20 −0
−1

19 −0
19 −0
19 −0
19 −1
19 −0
19 −0
19 −0
20 −1
20 −0
20 −0
20 −0
20 −1
20 −0
20 −0
20 −0
−1
98

98
19

19

Figure 3.3: Contrasting model predictions (lines) with real observed data (bars) on foreign policy
agendas regarding the conflict in Afghanistan. The predictions on the left are based on the models
containing only control variables, the ones on the right are based on the full model including all
framing and control variables as well as random intercepts.
77

Table 3.6: Summary of effect direction for each newspaper-frame-time combination based on full
models. The plus sign indicates that the more the newspaper uses this frame at the specified time,
the more foreign policy activity is observed at t0. The minus sign indicates the opposite and no sign
indicates that the relationship is not statistically significant.

Humanitarianism Security Stability Economics

lag t0 lead lag t0 lead lag t0 lead lag t0 lead

The Washington Post + + + + +

The Wall Street Journal + + + + + + +
The Guardian + + + + + + +
The Times + + + + +
Le Monde + + + +
Le Figaro + + + + +
Die Süddeutsche Zeitung + + + +
Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung + + + + +

here; the mathematical implementation of the fading-memory-lag and indexing-hypothesis-

lead versions can be debated; the statistical significance level is a fairly arbitrary convention;
the multilevel structure of the model can be approached in a more complex way; the perfor-
mance of the topic models for categorising national interest frames could be improved; the
initial keyword searches for the newspaper articles already introduced a certain selection bias;
the foreign armed conflicts analysed here are not a random sample from which one could
easily generalize to the population – however one might understand the latter; different histor-
ical periods with different governments should be considered before drawing conclusions; the
newspapers might not be the most important ones; crucial control variables might be missing;
etc.
It seems therefore unwise to draw too detailed conclusions from the individual results of
the empirical models of this chapter. We should refrain from using this initial and in many
ways exploratory study as a basis for conclusions about which national interest frames matter
more or less – neither in the affirmative nor in the negative. What can be said with a reasonable
amount of methodological certainty is that a significant portion of the national interest frames
show a relationship in the expected direction, but that some have a stronger impact depending
on which newspapers embrace them. Thus, discursive dynamics in elite media outlets are
clearly a powerful explanatory factor for the variation of foreign policy agendas, but their
nature and impact are highly context dependent.
These methodological concerns aside, there is still value in illustrating the substantive
significance of the discursive variables. To this end, I choose for each newspaper the frame
that shows the most consistent patterns in the expected direction. For these, I calculate the
predicted foreign policy agendas for Afghanistan in the hypothetical scenario in which they
would have not used a particular frame. The results are depicted in Figure 3.4 and illustrate
 78

United States, No Stability Frame in The Washington Post United States, No Security Frame in The Wall Street Journal
175
150
125
100
75
50
Foreign Policy Agenda (Lines for Predictions // Bars for Observed Data)

25
0

United Kingdom, No Security Frame in The Guardian United Kingdom, No Stability Frame in The Times
175
150
125
100
75
50
25
0

France, No Security Frame in Le Monde France, No Humanitarianism Frame in Le Figaro

175
150
125
100
75
50
25
0

Germany, No Humanitarianism Frame in SZ Germany, No Stability Frame in FAZ

175
150
125
100
75
50
25
0
98 1
98 4
98 7
99 0
99 1
99 4
99 7
00 0
00 1
00 4
00 7
01 0
01 1
01 4
01 7
0

98 1
98 4
98 7
99 0
99 1
99 4
99 7
00 0
00 1
00 4
00 7
01 0
01 1
01 4
01 7
0
19 −0
19 −0
19 −0
19 −1
19 −0
19 −0
19 −0
20 −1
20 −0
20 −0
20 −0
20 −1
20 −0
20 −0
20 −0
−1

19 −0
19 −0
19 −0
19 −1
19 −0
19 −0
19 −0
20 −1
20 −0
20 −0
20 −0
20 −1
20 −0
20 −0
20 −0
−1
98

98
19

19

Figure 3.4: Contrasting model predictions (lines) for hypothetical scenarios with real observed data
(bars) on foreign policy agendas regarding the conflict in Afghanistan. The predictions are based on
the full model including all framing and control variables as well as random intercepts.
79

how much less attention Afghanistan would have received if the newspapers would have re-
frained from depicting it in the light of these national interest frames – that is, according to the
statistical models we constructed in this chapter. There is the obvious counter-argument that
these models cannot fully account for the events around 9/11 and their meaning for Western
perceptions of Afghanistan. That is true and the issue would deserve more attention and dis-
cussion than I can provide in this chapter. Yet, there are also good arguments to conceive of
these national interest frames in elite media discourses as the mechanism through which the
meaning of 9/11 has been constructed. There is also an interesting question to what extent the
framing of Afghanistan that preceded 9/11 has facilitated the interpretation of the Taliban as
complicit in the attack on the US.

Implications and Limitations of the Statistical Evidence

In concluding this chapter, I do not want to repeat the many methodological caveats related
to technical choices in the collection, processing, and statistical analysis of the data presented
in this chapter. As in any quantitative social science analysis, there are plenty of alternative
approaches that might change the outcome, even if only slightly. With this in mind, we can
draw from this chapter’s large-n analysis that policy activity with regard to a foreign armed
conflict is systematically embedded in elite media discourses invoking conceptions of the na-
tional interest. What is more, a significant part of these patterns in elite media discourses
precede changes on the foreign policy agenda. Thus, we can conclude that the more elite me-
dia discourses invoke conceptions of the national interest, the more a foreign armed conflict
will occupy the minds of policymakers. The question about which exact discursive approach
to the national interest is most effective in setting the agenda, however, depends on the country,
newspaper, and the historical context.
The analysis showed that none of the control variables typically used in quantitative inter-
national relations scholarship was able to contribute significantly to the explanation of foreign
policy agendas once we take into account the effect of media discursive dynamics. However, it
was not possible to control for the confounding effects of less easily quantifiable variables like
epistemic communities, ideological backgrounds of individual policymakers, bureaucratic pol-
itics, diplomatic interactions, or the role of international organisation. We might expect that,
if we could account for these, the substantive significance of elite media discourses would be
lower than the models suggest at the moment. There is also an open conceptual question about
how much these factors interact with or work through elite media discourses.
The latter is linked to a more fundamental concern that remains unanswered because of
intrinsic methodological limitations of this first part of the thesis. Even though the preceding
of media discursive dynamics to shifts on foreign policy agendas is a necessary pre-condition
to establish causality from a quantitative perspective, it is not sufficient to unequivocally sub-
stantiate the causal story of this thesis. At a fundamental level, the latter still depends on the
cogency of the theoretical arguments laid out in the previous chapter, which lack the mid-range
 80

specificity to reject a major objection to the interpretation of the findings presented here.
A sceptical reader will have no difficulties to object that even though elite media discourses
precede foreign policy events, they might still be determined by the views of powerful gov-
ernmental officials that presumably have an informational advantage to journalists with regard
to foreign policy issues. The second part of this thesis deals with this question in detail and
problematizes this top-down narrative not by invoking a naive counter-argument about the
democratic nature of foreign policymaking, but by taking discourse theoretical understandings
of structure, agency, and power into account.
 Part II

National Interest in the Making

81
Chapter 4

An Analytical Framework

The first part of this thesis established that there is a structural relationship between elite
media discourses about the national interest and the amount of time and resources Western
policymakers spend on foreign armed conflicts. As such, it allows us to assume a non-trivial
empirical relationship between the two phenomena and thereby prevents an easy dismissal of
such discursive patterns as epiphenomenal rhetoric. The quantitative analysis generated two
important findings: First, the discursive variables are significantly better at explaining foreign
policy agendas than the more typical ‘objective facts’ about what is happening in the armed
conflict or ‘objective interests’ Western countries might have in that part of the world. Second,
discursive patterns on the national interest in elite media outlets precede shifts on the foreign
policy agenda, which hints at a causal relationship that sees the agenda as the result of elite
discourses rather than the other way around – at least in a significant amount of cases. The
conclusion of the previous chapter is that when Western elite media talk about foreign armed
conflicts as a threat to the national interest, these conflicts are much more likely to form part
of the respective foreign policy agenda.
The purpose of this second part of the thesis is to qualitatively investigate the nature of
this national interest framing in elite media discourses and to understand better who is able to
effectively intervene in this process. The goal is not to develop a full-fledged theoretical model
which sets out the factors that might influence the development of elite media discourses, but
rather to critically investigate widely acknowledged scholarly interventions from the field of
political communication on the topic of foreign policy debates. Contributions to this literature
do not necessarily doubt the constructed nature of the national interest, but debate who is able
to frame its content. As the following two chapters demonstrate, the theoretical assumptions
made throughout these contributions limit their utility for empirical analysis. As I demon-
strate in this second part of the thesis, the previously introduced post-structuralist approach to
discourse can help us to improve our conceptualization of structure, agency, and power, and
thus enhance our understanding of what is at stake in foreign policy debates. To this end, I
develop an analytical framework that can be used to examine discursive dynamics throughout
the public framing of the national interest. In particular, this framework can be used to map

83
 84

the political development of national interest frames in different subsets of public discourse,
which I demonstrate with the case of Western reactions to the civil war in Darfur. While it
highlights some key dimensions that influence these developments, its aim is to provide an
analytical lens to understand empirical developments rather than to enable us to fully explain
or predict them.
At its core, the second part of this thesis thus addresses a commonly raised counter-
argument to the conclusion of the statistical analysis: Media discourses might be structurally
related to foreign policy agendas, but how can we exclude the possibility that the elite just
imposes this discourse on the public and that the media just write what they are told by those
who are in charge and presumably better informed? Whom does this discourse belong to? The
media? The public? The elite? If it is the latter, is it not misleading to put so much emphasis
on discourse if the real drivers of these dynamics are the interests of powerful elites? This kind
of argument was most radically formulated by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky (1988)
in their thesis that the elite is ‘manufacturing consent’ but it also resonates with Lance Ben-
nett’s indexing hypothesis (1988; 1990). The gist of this argument, however, resounds well
beyond the confines of academia. Not least, the trope of the manipulating and Machiavellian
politician is omnipresent in pop-cultural representations of (international) politics, which pre-
sumably has a much broader impact on people’s thinking than mere academic debates (see
Kiersey and Neumann, 2013; Nexon and Neumann, 2006; Rowley and Weldes, 2012; Weldes,
1999b). For example, in the popular television series House of Cards, the protagonist Frank
Underwood seems to have a superhuman capacity for shifting the course of domestic and in-
ternational politics to his benefits. The paradigmatic real-life case is that of Colin Powell’s
UN Security Council presentation on the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq in March 2003. In the popular ‘war for oil’ narrative, this is seen as a cunning manipu-
lation of public perception that hides powerful economic interests behind a discursive veil of
humanitarianism.1
What interests me here is less the empirical plausibility of this story in relation to the Iraq
war, but rather the conceptual perspectives on politics that underlie this narrative as well as the
pop-cultural trope and the counter-argument outlined above. A central goal of the following
two chapters is to problematize three terms that figure prominently in this style of reasoning:
the elite, the media, and the public. These are powerful words that form part of our daily po-
litical vocabulary. However, I argue in this second part of the thesis that they are empirically
unhelpful, conceptually confusing, and politically restrictive. Concretely, I propose that polit-
ical elites are not defined by their formal decision power, but by their ability to authoritatively
intervene in discursive political contests. Thus, political elites are not necessarily or always
governmental officials, but also societal actors like representatives of social movements, aca-
demics, public intellectuals, celebrities, or journalists. Second, I suggest that the media is not
just another actor in the political game, but that media discourses are structural phenomena
that can be occupied by various ideological positions. Finally, these chapters show that public
and media discourses, as well as political elites are ideologically fragmented on questions of
85

the national interest. It is problematic to conceive of either as a homogeneous actor imposing

coherent positions on the others. Thus, the elite-media-public triad that informs much of our
thinking on the domestic dynamics of foreign policymaking is misleading because it misspec-
ifies the ontology of the political cleavages. The divide is not between ‘the elite,’ ‘the media,’
and ‘the public,’ but between ideological positions on questions of the national interest. To
understand why media discourses influence foreign policy agendas, we need to conceptually
appreciate this problem and how it changes the way we understand the political significance
of media discourses.
Methodologically, the arguments that feature in this part of the thesis have been devel-
oped in a constant back and forth between a qualitative empirical investigation of Western
reactions to the civil war in Darfur, analytical propositions from the political communication
literature on foreign policy debates, and the discourse and framing theoretical foundations laid
out in Chapter 2. As a result, the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence presented in
the following two chapters are the outcome of a dynamic research process aimed at theory-
development rather than theory-testing. In order to facilitate a concise presentation of the
insights produced in this process, however, Chapter 4 immediately discusses the theoretical
critique and arguments, which Chapter 5 then illustrates with the empirical material on the
case of Western reactions to Darfur. I begin in Chapter 4 by elaborating the methodological
underpinnings of the qualitative research process that informed the second part of the thesis.
Thereafter, I discuss and problematize core contributions from the political communication
literature on the subject of foreign policy debates. The chapter concludes with the formula-
tion of an alternative analytical framework as well as a brief discussion of its meta-theoretical
roots in the previously discussed post-structuralist discourse theory. Chapter 5 introduces the
issues that the West perceived to be at stake in Darfur and analyzes selected foreign policy
debates for the US, the UK, France, and Germany. It does so with the intent to empirically
illustrate the theoretical critiques of the political communication literature and show how a
post-structuralist inspired analytical framework might help to overcome them.

Methodological Reflections
Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 are based on a theory-developing analysis of US-American, British,
French, and German foreign policy reactions to the so-called Darfur crisis. Many chapters –
indeed, many books – could be written on this topic without repeating the same story twice.
The purpose of this particular investigation, however, was specific: it was geared towards the
theoretical issues mentioned above instead of towards a holistic appreciation of the Darfur
crisis and its varying perceptions. I therefore used Western reactions to Darfur as a historical
laboratory for the probing of existing analytical propositions and the exploration of new ones.
The analytical goal of this research process was twofold: First, it aimed to assess the utility
of the arguments provided by the political communication literature in order to understand the
discursive dynamics in the West around the situation in Darfur. Thus, the goal was not to test
 86

hypotheses set out in this literature, but to investigate whether the questions these hypotheses
are based on adequately capture the political and power dynamics at stake. Second, it sought
to set out the building blocks of an analytical framework that could address the problems
uncovered in the first step.

Problematizing and Process-Oriented Theory Development

In Derek Beach and Rasmus Brun Pedersen’s understanding of the process-tracing method, my
treatment of the Darfur case should be understood as theory-developing rather than theory-
testing (2012, 9ff; 2016, 302ff). But, what does theory-developing process-tracing actually
mean? The methodological literature rightfully leaves a lot of leeway for interpretation since
it is ultimately a creative process that can take different forms depending on the nature of
the research topic, the current state of theoretical knowledge in the literature, as well as the
(stylistic) preferences of the researcher (see Beach and Pedersen, 2016, 2012; George and Ben-
nett, 2005; Schwartz-Shea and Yanow, 2013). For the sake of this particular analysis, I have
embraced some methodological perspectives that I deem to be particularly productive in the
context of this thesis. First, rather than the development of testable hypothesis or precise causal
mechanisms, this investigation is geared toward the development of an analytical framework.
By this, I mean a theoretically informed tool that guides the qualitative study of an issue by
specifying the analytical dimensions that should receive attention. An analytical framework
identifies the actors and processes, as well as the relationship between those actors and pro-
cesses, that are deemed relevant for understanding the empirical dynamics of a subject matter.
As such, though an analytical framework may contain sub-arguments that can be subjected to
hypothesis testing, it is broader in its orientation. Its ontological choices condition the kind of
questions we would ask of an empirical case and the kind of hypotheses we might subject to
testing. The focus on an analytical framework in this part of the thesis is not least due to the
fact that some of the most relevant propositions from the political communication literature
cannot be simplified to crude hypotheses because they entail broader theoretical arguments
and assumptions that are the subject of further discussion below.
Second, the initial goal of the qualitative investigation was to critically probe whether the
questions, categories, and processes prescribed by the political communication literature could
capture the political dynamics of the public framing of the national interest exhibited by the
case. A possible outcome of this research process could have been the embracing of arguments
provided by this literature. However, the empirical material instead problematized these ana-
lytical perspectives because they focus our attention on a presumed political rivalry between
the elite, the media, and the public. This process of problematizing is different from hypoth-
esis testing in that it does not focus on the exploration of simple and falsifiable statements,
but on whether the analytical perspectives proposed by the literature convincingly capture the
political dynamics at stake in the case – in other words, whether they ask the right questions.
Problematizing a set of literature thus does not deny its fundamental analytical validity as
87

a heuristically simplified approach to the subject matter, but highlights what processes they
might miss due to a priori ontological choices.
The third task, following from the second, was to develop an alternative analytical frame-
work that could better capture the political dynamics encountered in the empirical case. It
would be misleading to label this theory-developing case study as either inductive or de-
ductive. Instead, the term ‘abductive’ is more appropriate insofar as the propositions were
formed in a dynamic dialogue between theory and empirical material (see Schwartz-Shea and
Yanow 2013, 26ff; also Friedrichs and Kratochwil 2009). Concretely, the hegemonic struggle
model, which I introduce later in this chapter, was developed in close consideration of the
empirical evidence from the case as well as the post-structuralist literature that informs the
meta-theoretical perspective of this thesis. In particular, the analytical framework prioritizes
the post-structuralist position on the structure-agency debate found in the work of Laclau,
Mouffe, and Žižek (Laclau and Žižek, 1990; Torfing, 1999, 137-154), which highlights the
constantly evolving nature of structural forces and the agency of political subjects to bring
changes about (see also Doty, 1997). Insofar as the latter position is not shared by other social
scientific approaches, the proposed framework should be read as an illustration of the analyti-
cal implications of this post-structuralist stance for empirical research and political analysis.

The Case of Darfur

Considering the theory-developing purpose of this case study, why should we focus on Darfur?
In the quantitative chapter, I chose 20 of the most intense armed conflicts between 1998 and
2010. Darfur is not necessarily the most remarkable one in terms of what happened in the
armed conflict itself. However, it is a very interesting case in terms of what the West made
of it and when they did so. Even though the US, the UK, France, and Germany all conceived
of Darfur as a problem that needed to be solved, they differed in the extent of their attention
as well as in their timing. Additionally, all three actors in the elite-media-public triad paid
attention to the conflict at some point in time. Thus, the variation across space, time, and
political actors provides ample material to explore conceptual questions about the nature and
dynamics of foreign policy debates. In short, the case of Darfur provides for a rich historical
laboratory investigating the theoretical issues at stake in this second part of my thesis.
A more pragmatic reason for focusing on Darfur is the wealth of available primary and
secondary resources. The prominence of the US debates on the ‘genocide in Darfur’ has
lead to an abundance of academic literature on Western responses to the conflict. Together
with the data on the foreign policy agenda collected for the previous chapter, this enabled
me to triangulate multiple sources and thereby to focus on analytical issues rather than re-
constructing the basic empirical facts of the case. It also contributes to the transparency of
my argumentation, given the ease with which other researchers can re-evaluate the empirical
material. That being said, the high saliency of Darfur in Western discourses also suggest
that it might be a rather extraordinary case with regard to the interaction between public,
 88

media, and governmental discourses. Given that this thesis does not invest inferential claims
into the following analyses, this limitation does not undermine the arguments forwarded here.
However, the proposed analytical framework should be read as a tentative proposition that is
to be further developed in studies on other cases, which goes beyond the scope of this thesis.

Selecting the Most Active Foreign Policy Episodes

Within the case of Darfur, there is another level on which case selection matters, given the
limited scope of this thesis and the complexity of the armed conflict and its perceptions. Any
reasonably succinct qualitative evaluation of Western reactions to Darfur would have to focus
on selected episodes that are deemed crucial to the analysis. While the time-frame for the
quantitative analysis ran from 1998 to 2010, this qualitative investigation adopts a more con-
centrated analytical focus to prevent a superficial treatment of macro-level patterns in favour
of mid-range theoretical development.
In order to achieve this mid-range perspective, I concentrate the analysis on the most active
foreign policy episodes. For each of the Western countries, I use the previous chapter’s data on
the foreign policy agenda to select the episodes where policymakers spend most time and re-
sources on the Darfur conflict. Concretely, I select the three months with the most consecutive
activity on the foreign policy agenda in order to capture not necessarily the most important
moment in terms of policy developments, but at least a crucial moment in the country’s dis-
cussion of the situation in Darfur. Since this sub-selection of episodes follows the same logic
as the selection of the case of Darfur, the same caveat applies that the findings might therefore
be biased towards the study of discursively salient foreign armed conflicts.
Obviously, it is not possible to completely isolate these episodes from what happened
before, after, or in different countries. Where necessary, the analysis therefore includes a
broader discussion of the political and historical context. However, the purpose is to focus on
the dynamics and events that happened within these episodes and within the respective country.
Guiding the analysis of each episode are several questions that build upon the discussions in
the previous chapters as well as the debates in the political communication literature: (1) What
happened on the policy agenda during these months? (2) Which understandings of ‘national
interest’ can be traced in the public and policy discourse? (3) Who can they be attributed to?
(4) How did policymakers interact with journalists? (5) How did policymakers interact with
the broader public?

Triangulating Primary and Secondary Sources

Both the focus on Darfur and the limited time-frames adopted for this analysis enables us to
consider a broader range of sources. While the previously gathered news wires on foreign
policy events as well as the data on the elite media discourse about Darfur are re-used in these
chapters, I also consider the wide-ranging academic literature on Western responses to the
conflict. I use the latter to identify more primary resources in the form of government releases,
89

reports from non-governmental and international organizations, as well as media reports from
different outlets and TV broadcasts. The concrete composition of sources depends on the
nature of the foreign policy episode, but in general, the information is triangulated as far as
possible.

Political Communication: The Elite, the Media, and the Public

The political communication literature analyzing foreign policy debates has developed largely
in isolation from the IR theories discussed in Chapter 2. Furthermore, while the concept
of framing appears in some of the contributions, this literature has not yet utilized a post-
structuralist discourse theoretical perspective as advocated in this thesis. Rather than guided
by IR debates or general concerns about social theory, the contributions from the political
communication literature have been strongly influenced and directly inspired by the context of
the broader political debates of the times in which they were written. For example, Herman
and Chomsky’s work (1988) is an analytical argument to explain the dynamics of what this
thesis calls national interest framing as well as a frank political critique of prevailing trends in
US-American foreign policy. In addition, even though the CNN effect has been addressed in
several academic publications, the initial formulation of the argument goes back to a broadly
shared public sentiment in the early 90s, which suggested that media technologies like tele-
vision are qualitatively changing the dynamics of foreign policymaking.2 To give another
example, Bennett’s writing on the role of the media is explicitly informed by a normative
understanding of the public as a democratic institution that is supposed to hold politicians ac-
countable, and thereby plays into political debates that go beyond academic concerns about
explanatory analysis (see especially Bennett, 1990). It is important to acknowledge these po-
litical contexts since they affect the kind of question asked and conceptual vocabulary used by
the literature.
One, or perhaps the key question that has occupied scholars in this field is that of the direc-
tion of influence between the public, the media, and the elite when it comes to foreign policy
issues (see also the instructive review in Baum and Potter, 2008). The literature can be cate-
gorized according to the contribution’s positioning of these three entities vis-à-vis each other,
and the arrows of influence they draw between them. Consequently, the following critical dis-
cussion focuses on: the top-down logic of the manufacturing consent and indexing hypothesis,
which see elites as the masters of foreign policy issues; the bottom-up logic of the CNN effect,
which purports that public and media outrage is pushing policymakers further than they would
like; and the cyclic logic of Entman’s cascading activation model, which tries to reconcile the
two previous arguments. I proceed by discussing each contribution’s problems highlighted by
the analysis of the Darfur case. Thereafter, I summarize how we should re-conceptualize the
elite, the media, and the public to address the shortcomings of the literature.
As mentioned with regard to the review of the IR literature, such an exercise is necessarily
selective and needs to simplify the broader intellectual horizon found among scholars in this
 90

field. Therefore, the following discussion again focusses on the most widely acknowledged
and therefore influential contributions from the political communication literature on the issue
of foreign policy debates. Each of these has made a significant impact on the literature and
has merit as an analytical perspective. The purpose of this review is thus not to discuss the
fundamental validity of these contributions or to pick on the nuances they miss for the sake of
doing so (see Healy, 2017). Rather, the goal is to identify those analytical problems that might
help us to improve the analytical cogency of our understanding of the role of media discourses
in the process of framing the national interest.

Top-Down: Manufacturing Consent and the Indexing Hypothesis

In their influential book, Herman and Chomsky take Walter Lippmann’s phrase “manufactur-
ing consent” and put a twist to it that amounts to a radical critique of public discourse as being
firmly controlled by those with economic and political power (Lippmann, 1922; Herman and
Chomsky, 1988). Building upon case studies of several US-American foreign policy episodes,
they argue that the elite-approved framing of events typically becomes the widely shared con-
sensus in the media. By juxtaposing this consensus with their presumably more disinterested
interpretation of the situation, they argue that the media uncritically repeats propagandistic lies
that serve the interests of powerful political and economic elites. Among other things, they
argue that a monopolistic ownership structure of media firms, a reliance on information pro-
vided by government and business, and the “national religion of ‘anticommunism”’ has lead to
an “elite domination of the media and marginalization of dissidents” (Herman and Chomsky,
1988, 2).
If we take their writing as a political critique, there is much merit in the in-depth anal-
ysis of self-serving trends in US-American foreign policy that leave little room for nuanced
conceptions of political justice in foreign countries. They are right to point out that a critique
like theirs is rarely found at the centre of US-American public discourse or reflected in US-
American foreign policymaking. Where we see controversy and debate, it tends to stay within
the boundaries of a certain orthodoxy. News are not neutral and they side with certain concep-
tions of the US-American national interest, and these are rarely in line with those of the radical
left that the authors represent. So far, this is compatible with the argument of this thesis and
there is certainly a possibility to criticize US-American foreign policy and public discourse on
Darfur in a similar manner.
Where Herman and Chomsky fall short is in their analysis of why their critical perspectives
on US-American foreign policy have so little purview in the public debate. Throughout their
impressive empirical analysis, they show a consistent correlation between US-American for-
eign policy and the broader consensus found in media discourses. What they fail to empirically
support is the notion that this correlation is a result of the tight grip “market and governmental
centers of power” have on media discourses (e.g., Herman and Chomsky, 1988, lx) and that
this is due to the “power of the government to fix frames of reference and agendas, and to
91

exclude inconvenient facts from public inspection” (e.g., Herman and Chomsky, 1988, lxii).
These remain assertions by the authors who fail to discuss the possibility that the criticized
trends in US-American foreign policy are simply a reflection of a broadly shared consensus
within the political public. Why do we need a manipulative government and media owners to
conceive of the dominance of a political ideology that is not in line with that of the radical left?
Could it not be that the latter is simply isolated in the US-American political space because
they fail to convince a broader political audience of their views?
What is more, the idea that the government is spreading propagandistic lies and manu-
factures consent in the media raises questions about the nature of the agenda underlying this
orchestrated deceit of the public. What exactly are the elite’s preferences? Herman and Chom-
sky (1988) talk about “the powerful” (xi); “government and dominant private interests” (2); the
“utility to elite interests” and “government-business-military interests” (33); the “serviceabil-
ity to important domestic power interests” (35); the “economic, social, and political agenda
of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state” (298); the “needs of
privilege and power” (306). In the empirical sections, it becomes clear that the media serves
these elite interests if it supports the fight against communism, uncritically ignores war crimes
committed by the US or its allies, and persecutes human rights violations by US rivals like
Soviet Russia. What remains unclear, however, is why the elite considers these things to be
in their or the national interest of the US in the first place. Also, the propaganda model does
not provide analytical means to understand the variations of these interests within the elite and
across time.
The stability and unity of these elite interests, however, is quite crucial to the cogency of
their model. What the subsequently discussed analysis of the Darfur case highlights is short-
term variation as well as intra-elite disagreement about what serves their (or the country’s)
interests. In these instances, the notion that these elites are manufacturing consent loses appeal
because there is no coherent consent that could form the message of targeted propaganda
campaigns. A critical evaluation or Herman and Chomsky’s empirical cases is beyond the
scope of this thesis, but the extensive analysis of the Cuban missile crisis, for example, has
shown time and again that even during the Cold War, the national interest and hence foreign
policy were contested within elite circles (especially Allison, 1971).
Herman and Chomsky are certainly right to point out that proponents of conservative and
anti-communist conceptions of foreign policy engage strategically in public discourse to fur-
ther their ideological cause. They are also right to point out that this engagement is far from
benign and have improved our understanding of economic and political mechanisms that shape
the dynamics of these debates. Their propaganda model, however, forwards a quite radical top-
down narrative that denies the possibility of media discourses to deviate meaningfully from
these conservative and anti-communist narratives, which seems to be part of a rhetorical strat-
egy rather than analytically motivated. It reiterates an antagonism between ‘the elite’ (them)
and ‘the dissidents’ (us) that shapes the identity of the US-American radical left. As such,
the political logic of Herman and Chomsky’s work creates an artificial homogeneity among
 92

the political elites that impedes us from understanding and appreciating the ideological dy-
namics within this heterogeneous group of people (see also Laclau, 2005), as well as how this
ideological fragmentation influences the dynamics of foreign policy debates.
Another contribution that perpetuates this top-down logic is the so-called indexing hypoth-
esis (Bennett, 1988, 1990). On the surface, this approach is very similar to the manufacturing
consent argument: What is in the news are populated by the views of official political elites.
The range of opinions seen in the newspapers is the range that can be found among politicians
in government and parliament. However, the indexing hypothesis neither makes reference to
economic elites, nor does it imply homogeneity of elite views. It merely argues that views
not already expressed by professional politicians will not appear in the news. It also entails a
quite explicit normative critique of the ‘press-state’ relationship wherein the critical corrective
function of the news is undermined by an over-reliance of journalists on official statements
and a lack of investigative zeal.
While the indexing hypothesis has validity as a political commentary, it has little empirical
thrust since it does not exclude a deviation from this hypothesis but explicitly asks for such by
encouraging journalists to be more critical. If we take it seriously as an empirical hypothesis,
though, the analysis of cases such as Darfur provide a clear refutation: Not all views expressed
in the media are inside the range already expressed by professional politicians. To the contrary,
as I demonstrate in Chapter 5, the powerful genocide frame was expressed by non-professional
political elites first before it was picked up by Congress and the White House. While this top-
down narrative has received further attention and varying support by other studies (e.g., Hallin,
1989; Mermin, 1997; Zaller and Chiu, 1996), the gist of the outlined critique still stands. First,
if governmental officials are divided on a foreign policy issue, what decides on which officials’
position is embraced by the media? Second, though the studies quoted above document cases
where the media faithfully followed the governmental narrative, there are likewise cases in
which they deviated from and challenged it (see also, e.g., Robinson, 2001; Wolfsfeld, 1997).
How does this top-down narrative deal with the latter evidence?

Bottom-Up: The CNN Effect

The logic of the so-called CNN effect, on the other hand, maintains the polar opposite position
that media reporting influences policymakers rather than the other way around (Robinson,
1999, 301f). It is not clear, however, what exactly the CNN effect refers to despite the frequent
usage of the term by politicians, journalists, as well as academics (see Gilboa, 2005b). On a
most basic level, proponents of the term argue that the 24-hours news cycle and the constant
bombardment with images from war-torn regions have an influence on foreign policymaking,
encouraging an interventionist stance or at least setting the policy agenda. While it is not
always made explicit, many use the term in a pejorative form, highlighting the policymakers’
loss of control over foreign policy (Livingston and Eachus, 1995), juxtaposing it to the national
interest (Jakobsen, 1996; Feist, 2001), or even distinguishing between news-driven foreign
93

policy and policymaking as two separate phenomena (Seib, 2002). Thereby, scholars equate
the CNN effect with a situation wherein policymakers are driven by frantic public outrage to
make decisions they would not have made otherwise. Since policymakers are thus depicted
as disagreeing substantively with the media framing of the situation, the mechanism through
which the CNN effect forces them to comply is typically linked to the role of public opinion
and electoral punishment and rewards.

The most common empirical support of this thesis comes in the form of an agenda set-
ting effect of media coverage on foreign policy (e.g., Jakobsen, 2000; Hawkins, 2002, 2011).
However, more scholars use the CNN effect as a rhetorical tool to introduce evidence that,
on the contrary, supports the top-down narrative as described above (Livingston and Eachus,
1995; Livingston, 2011), or to propose a more nuanced understanding of the media-policy re-
lationship that acknowledges mutual influences (e.g., Robinson, 2001, 2005). In short, there is
limited support among scholars for the CNN effect as it is described above and there is no need
for this thesis to repeat the widely accepted critiques of the notion. However, since this thesis
highlights the ability of non-governmental political elites to influence foreign policy agendas,
this ‘bottom-up’ aspect of my argument might be misinterpreted as trying to revive the notion
of a CNN effect. This is not the intention of my thesis. Let me therefore briefly clarify in what
aspects this thesis’ argument differs from the CNN effect.

First, the origin of the CNN effect is usually attributed to technological changes that ac-
celerate the production and distribution of news. This thesis does not deny that new media
technologies might influence the way journalists and policymakers interact with regard to for-
eign policy, but sees the importance of media discourses in a more foundational act of discur-
sive meaning-making rather than the speed-accelerating properties of television or the internet.
Second, the CNN effect is portrayed as the elite’s loss of control over policymaking in favour
of an irrational media and ill-informed public. Rather, this thesis sees the impact of media
discourses as influencing what policymakers perceive as the rational course of action in the
first place – in other words, what they conceive to be in the national interest. Third, govern-
mental elites are portrayed as following the media because of public opinion and against their
own (more rational) will. This thesis does not exclude this possibility, but argues for a more
comprehensive appreciation of the public’s influence on policymakers, which is elaborated in
Chapter 2. Insofar, from the perspective advocated in this thesis, the idea of a CNN effect is
misleading because it unnecessarily focuses on specific media technologies rather than me-
dia discourses, it is normatively charged in that it presupposes a rational and an irrational
understanding of foreign policy situations vis-à-vis armed conflicts, and it does not grasp the
full political role of the public in foreign policymaking because it acknowledges the impact of
public opinion but not that of public discourse.
 94

Cycle: The Cascading Activation Model

Building upon this tension between top-down and bottom-up narratives, most of the more
recent contributions from the political communication literature on this issue propose various
analytical frameworks that can accommodate both or highlight how and when media influence
policymakers and vice-versa. While there are other contenders (Robinson, 2001, 2005), the
probably most widely accepted approach is the so-called cascading activation model (Entman,
2003, 2004). Here, Robert Entman tries to reconcile the top-down and bottom-up arguments by
proposing a cyclic model that allows for more differentiation. According to Entman, frames
start at the level of governmental officials and travel down a ladder of political actors from
other elites, to the media, and finally to the public. Each of these actors provides feedback to
the previous level and thereby shapes future iterations of this cycle. As in real-world cascading
waterfalls, Entman argues that it requires less energy for frames to travel down than up.
Thus, in Entman’s model, a much broader variety of actors is able to influence the framing
of events, but some are intrinsically more powerful than others: “Ideas that start at the top level,
the administration, possess the greatest strength” (Entman, 2003, 420). He acknowledges
variation in this power distribution as “all elites are not equal: Some individuals in Congress or
the media, for instance, can get attention for their ideas far more easily than others” (Entman,
2003, 422). Also, disagreements within the government can influence – and be influenced by –
the media and dynamics of public opinion. Finally, while governmental officials have a power
advantage, frames need to be culturally resonant in order to succeed. That is, they need to use
images and words that are “noticeable, understandable, memorable, and emotionally charged”
(Entman, 2003, 417).
Overall, Entman is careful to avoid an exceedingly deterministic description of the power
dynamics in foreign policy debates. Even though he maintains a top-down bias, he does not ex-
clude non-governmental actors from intervening critically in order to shape the government’s
perception of the national interest. In this sense, we should understand the cascading activa-
tion model as an analytical framework rather than a strictly falsifiable hypothesis. As such, it
usefully proposes a more dynamic understanding of the interaction between elite, media, and
the public that could inform an empirical analysis. Yet, there are two issues with the model
that the analysis of Western reactions to Darfur reveals. On the one hand, I argue that media
discourses can convince the government to adapt a certain framing even if the government is
not in disarray over the issue. One the other hand, I argue that it is analytically more prudent to
conceive of intra-governmental disagreement, fractured and contradictory media discourses,
and a divided public as the rule rather than the exception in foreign policy debates.
Concretely, the most problematic episode to explain for the cascading activation model
is the genocide debate in the US, which I discuss in details in Chapter 5. The framing of
the situation in Darfur as a genocide did not originate at the administration level, but rather
in media discourses dominated by journalists and other elites in equal measure (for more
examples of such cases see, e.g., Gamson, 2005; Wolfsfeld, 1997). The government was not
95

divided on the issue either, but unanimously rejected the genocide label in favour of ‘ethnic
cleansing’ until the officials changed their assessment following the hegemonic status of the
genocide frame in public discourse. Insofar as the analytical framework allows for deviation
from general patterns, the cascading activation model could integrate this observation as an
exception that is rooted in, for example, the unusual cultural resonance of the genocide frame.
Rather than such an ad hoc mending of the analytical framework, however, we should use this
opportunity to take a critical look at the model’s conceptualization of stratification and cultural
resonance.
Entman’s primary stratification principle is linked to formal power or proximity to such.
The administration comes first, other political elites second, journalists third, and the general
public last. The choice to focus on formal power is reasonable as it is the most clear and
measurable form of power that allows for a clear-cut analysis. It is also a convincing starting
point for foreign policy analysis, the motivation of which is typically to understand foreign
policy decisions, and those with formal powers to make decisions obviously have the last
word in a literal sense.
However, in cases such as Darfur, we can see that the success of framing efforts – which
are linked but distinct from actual foreign policy decisions – is not just determined by the
formal power of the proponents of a frame. If that were the case, Colin Powell’s frequent
rejection of ‘genocide’ in favour of ‘ethnic cleansing’ should have prevented the hegemonic
standing of the genocide frame. The same Colin Powell who, in the case of Iraq, represents the
paradigmatic example of the top-down narrative, was unable to influence public discourse in
his preferred direction with regard to Darfur. It is not just that actors from lower levels of the
cascading activation model successfully promoted a particular frame, but they did so against
people with more formal power. I argue that these actors were successful, among other things,
because they possessed more discursive power: they were perceived to be more credible and
authoritative voices on the subject. Thus, discursive power pertains to a kind of relational
thinking in which formal power might play a role if it lends credibility and authority to the
speaker, but it might as well have the opposite effect.
Of course, the success of framing efforts does not just depend on how much discursive
power proponents can muster in support. It also depends on what Entman calls cultural res-
onance. A frame that is perceived to be ‘common sense’ does not need powerful proponents
to prevail. A frame that is inconsistent with people’s preconceptions about a subject will need
convincing before it can succeed. What is problematic with regard to Entman’s definition of
cultural resonance is that it is conceived as a fairly static background structure that does not
change within short-term rotations of the cascading activation model. It enables us to say that
the genocide frame was culturally resonant and therefore more likely to succeed, but we do
not have the means to explain the historical reasons for, or the short-term variations, in the
cultural resonance of such a frame. What we saw in the US genocide debate, however, was
not just the adoption of the frame by more and more powerful actors but also a change in the
cultural resonance of the genocide frame.
 96

On the one hand, it benefited from a baseline resonance that is linked to the Rwandan
genocide, 9/11, the Holocaust, the black civil rights movements, and so on. A proper discus-
sion of this broader historical context and the embededness of the genocide frame is beyond
the scope of this thesis. But, we also see a more short-term increase of the cultural resonance
of the genocide frame that marked its success. While it was powerful to begin with, over time
it became the most commonsensical way to describe the situation in Darfur for many people
in the US. Hence, in order to properly capture the nature of the political development, we need
a more dynamic understanding of resonance that enables us to understand the change in the
structural position of a frame in the discursive context of a foreign policy debate. From the
discourse theoretical perspective of this thesis, the structural discursive conditions of these de-
bates are dynamic and constantly evolving. Indeed, the very purpose of many interventions by
political actors is to increase (or decrease) the structural resonance of a given national interest
frame – in post-structuralist terms, I will refer to this as frame meaning fixation in the later
developed hegemonic struggle model. To put it in another way, the ultimate goal of participat-
ing in these debates is to make one’s own understanding of the national interest sound like the
most obvious and commonsensical position – i.e., to achieve its discursive hegemony.
Finally, let me briefly address the notion that elite consensus or ‘policy certainty’ is a
conditioning factor for the ‘bottom-up’ influence of media discourses: If elites are divided on
an issue, outside forces are much more likely to have an impact on who is able to win the
internal political struggles (Entman 2003, 2004; Robinson 2001; see also, e.g., Baumgartner
and Jones 1993; Hall 1993; Schattschneider 1960). The statement is empirically appealing
since it accords with a lot of evidence from different cases and speaks to intuition. However,
it is analytically problematic in that it conceives of elite disagreement as exogenous to public
discourse. That might be accurate in some cases, but is it not as likely that elite disagreement
is influenced, informed, and embedded in public political conflicts rather than independent of
such? If this is true, elite consensus, in turn, is more likely to manifest itself in the absence
of public disagreement. In that sense, elite consensus could be understood as the ultimate
success of public framing efforts rather than the absence of such. Thus, if a national interest
frame gains hegemonic status in public discourse, governmental discord is much less likely
to appear. From this perspective, claiming that public framing efforts only matter for foreign
policy when elites disagree is analogous to claiming that the engine of a car only matters for
driving if it breaks down.

Problematizing the Elite-Media-Public Triad

Even though more recent contributions in the political communication literature have man-
aged to overcome the all-too simplistic top-down and bottom-up narratives, there are some
remaining conceptual problems and inconsistencies with recent case studies, including the in-
vestigation into Western reactions to the civil war in Darfur. What I propose however, is not a
piecemeal adaptation of the existing analytical frameworks, but a more fundamental question-
97

ing of their underlying presuppositions. Is it really the juxtaposition of the government, the
media, and the people that is at stake in foreign policy debates? I propose that the question
of whether either of these have a stronger or weaker influence on the definition of the national
interest is problematic to begin with.
Instead, I argue that the real subject of interest should be the ideological struggles over the
definition of the national interest that usually divide governmental officials, representatives of
the media, as well as the population as a whole. It is therefore problematic to stylize either
the elite, the media, or the public as coherent and homogeneous actors. That, however, does
not mean that we should abandon these notions altogether. Rather, we should re-conceptualize
what we mean by these terms and what political function we expect them to play. Before elab-
orating on the hegemonic struggle model as an alternative analytical framework for the study
of foreign policy debates, I propose three core guiding assumptions: political elites are not de-
fined by their possession of or proximity to formal power, but by their ability to authoritatively
intervene in discursive struggles; the media are not just another actor in the political game,
but media discourses constitute a qualitatively different phenomenon that derives its political
significance from its structural position in society as the most important and wide-reaching
outlets of public discourse; and finally, the public does not just interfere in foreign policy via
electoral punishment and rewards, but is a constant companion in the continuous discursive
meaning-making underlying foreign policy issues. These assumptions are derived from the
theoretical propositions laid out in Chapter 2, but reformulated to address the specific issues
with the political communication literature.
First, it is unhelpful to define the political elite along the lines of their formal power to
make political decisions if we want to understand the dynamics of political discourse. Gen-
erally, the discussed framing literature suffers from a conceptually underdeveloped notion of
power in relation to discourse, which stems from a lack of engagement with the related work
from, i.a., Michel Foucault, to Pierre Bourdieu, or Steven Lukes (e.g., Bourdieu, 1979, 1991;
Foucault, 1975, 1982; Lukes, 2004), but it is also due to the ambiguity and empirical in-
tractability of the structure-agency conundrum in relation to the analysis of power. While a
conceptual analysis of this problem is possible, it remains a challenge to apply the related in-
sights in empirical studies. With the hegemonic struggle model, which I develop further below
and apply in Chapter 5, I propose an approach to the empirical study of power dynamics in for-
eign policy debates that bears similarities to Stefano Guzzini’s dyadic conceptualization of the
power relations between agents and structures (1993). However, for the sake of consistency
with the previous arguments, the model ontologically builds upon the previously outlined post-
structuralist approach to discourse by Laclau, Mouffe, Žižek, which share a similar position
on the structure-agency question (see especially Laclau and Žižek, 1990).
In contrast to the aforementioned formal power to make decisions, I thus propose to un-
derstand power in framing contests as the discursive leverage a political agent possesses in a
specific or the general public. Such a discursive conception of power can go hand in hand
with formal power if the agent’s institutional position lends credibility and authority to her
 98

statements. For example, we might consider statements by a US President during the State
of the Union as discursively powerful because of the ceremonial status that is attached to the
office and the occasion. By the same token, however, the discursive power of elected officials
can be weakened quite easily by political scandals, unpopular decisions, or a perceived incom-
petence with regard to a specific subject. In such cases, professional politicians can quickly
loose discursive power without a necessary or direct impact on their institutional position. At
the same time, political actors without any sort of formal decision power can nevertheless be
discursively very powerful. For example, one can think of the authoritative role of so-called
experts in explaining political phenomena to both the public and policymakers. But also inter-
ventions by charismatic public intellectuals like Jürgen Habermas in Germany or Olivier Roy
in France have a significant impact on discursive struggles. To give another example, former
government representatives like Henry Kissinger in the US or Helmut Schmidt in Germany
can have a powerful impact on political debates long after they resigned from their formal
positions of power. In sum, a political agent should be considered as discursively powerful if
her statements are perceived as credible and authoritative interventions in a political debate.
In addition to this, the political success of framing efforts also depend on the more structural
question of whether and to what extent a frame is anchored in previous discourses.
Second, the political significance of the media derives not from its independent role as an
actor in the political game. The media matter because their discourses have a structural impact
on political debates. The ideological positions that are represented in media discourses are in
an advantageous position because they are received by a wide audience and can therefore not
simply be ignored. Elite media discourses like those of The Washington Post, The Guardian,
Le Monde, or Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung matter more because their audience consists
of discursively and formally powerful actors – i.e., the political elite as defined above. As such,
a national interest frame that gains hegemony in elite media discourses is bound to have an
impact on the thinking of a range of powerful political agents. Thus, while media discourses
form only a subset of public discourse at large, they matter because they are the most central
and visible forum for political debates. We should conceive of ‘the media’ as an actor only
insofar as journalists act as gatekeepers to media discourses, legitimating some ideological
positions while discrediting or silencing others (see also, e.g., Scheufele, 1999; Shoemaker
and Reese, 2013; White, 1950).
Finally, the public’s political significance does not derive solely from the politicians fears
of the electoral consequences of unfavourable shifts in public opinion. Public discourse plays a
political role by shaping the meaning-making processes that inform the perception of foreign
policy issues and the national interest by policymakers via the cognitive, sociological, and
political processes explained in more detail in Chapter 2. Public discourse, in turn, does not
resonate well with the egalitarian and bottom-up notions that accompany the understandings of
‘the public’ found in most of the political communication literature on foreign policy debates.
Rather, it is inherently stratified by the discursive power imbalances described above.
What is more, the analysis of German perceptions of Darfur in the next chapter highlights
99

the ideological subdivisions of public discourse that interact with institutional divisions along
party political lines. This was most obvious in the case of Germany, but whether this mat-
ters is less specific to a country, but to the state of political polarization on specific issues.
While a broader consensus on foreign policy issues might emerge sometimes, we should be
more attentive to the plurality of public discourses. The recent focus on ‘filter-bubbles’ in
social media research has highlighted the principle (e.g., Bakshy, Messing and Adamic, 2015;
Colleoni, Rozza and Arvidsson, 2014), but it is clear that also more classical newspapers have
an ideological orientation in their style of writing as well as in their audience. When we talk
about ‘the public’ in a unitary fashion, we miss out that The Guardian’s public is a very dif-
ferent one than that of The Financial Times. This is important insofar as a liberal government
would presumably be more structurally embedded in communities of Financial Times readers,
whereas a Labour or left-leaning government would pay more attention to The Guardian. An
analytical framework for studying foreign policy debates should enable us to appreciate these
ideological divisions.

Structural Indeterminacy, Dislocation, and Political Agency

Much of the above critique of the elite-media-public triad is inspired by a specific discourse
theoretical position in the structure-agency debate that is informed by Laclau, Mouffe, and
Žižek’s advancements on post-structuralist thinking (see, i.a., Laclau and Mouffe, 1985; La-
clau and Žižek, 1990; Laclau, 1996b, 2005; Žižek, 1989, 2012). The purpose of this thesis is
not to repeat the arguments in favour of this position or engage in the related theoretical de-
bate. Instead, the goal is to adopt and apply some of the fundamental ontological assumptions
that feature in this approach in order to improve our understanding of the political issues and
dynamics at stake in foreign policy debates. In particular, this section briefly elaborates on
how structures are constantly dislocated, how subjects can therefore not be completely deter-
mined by structure, and how this enables us to appreciate the possibility of political agency in
foreign policy debates, and ultimately in international politics. These assumptions build the
meta-theoretical foundation for the arguments that the resonance of national interest frames is
changing throughout the course of a debate, and that the choices of political agents are foun-
dational for this change. Both are crucial to the analytical framework discussed below, and to
understand why I propose to replace the notion of frame resonance with that of frame meaning
fixation.
Based on the previously outlined definition of discourse (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, 105-
114) and its inherent rejection of the distinction between discursive and non-discursive prac-
tices, structures as well as agents should be understood as discursively constituted through the
constant (re-)articulation of meaning. According to Jacob Torfing (1999, 137f), agency “refers
simply to an intentionally acting subject.” Structure, on the other hand, describes the “com-
plex and relatively enduring relationships that define the basic properties of the system and
permit its continued reproduction.” The juxtaposition of the two becomes clearer when look-
 100

ing at a concrete example of social scientific explanations involving the two perspectives: “Is
the hegemony of liberal democracy explainable in terms of its beneficial effects on economic
growth, or is it a consequence of popular-democratic struggles?” The post-structuralist po-
sition embraced in this thesis resolves the tension between structure-based and agency-based
explanations by re-conceptualizing structure as fundamentally indeterminate. Understanding
structures as constituted through discourse also implies that structures can never provide full
closure to the underlying attempts at meaning fixation. Discourse is constantly dislocated by
events that it cannot fully absorb with the existing tools of collective meaning-making. That is,
we constantly face political and social events for which the words and concepts at our disposal
are only partially satisfying and need to be re-interpreted and re-negotiated. Thus, there is
a constantly moving gap in discursive practice that prevents structure from becoming a fully
closed totality. This lack of closure opens up the possibility to think the subject as not fully
determined by structural forces, which is where Žižek’s Hegelian-Lacanian conception of the
subject has complemented Laclau and Mouffe’s prior discourse theoretical work (Laclau and
Žižek, 1990; Žižek, 1989). As a consequence, we can conceive of the subject – or the agent –
as “partially self-determined in the sense that it constitutes the locus of a decision that is not
determined by the structure, which is always already dislocated” (Torfing 1999, 149; see also
Žižek 2012). Interestingly, this position is not that dissimilar to the most recent intervention
from ‘mainstream’ constructivism on the issue of agency, which builds upon a specific reading
of a presumed ultimately quantum theoretical basis of social reality (Wendt, 2015).
Thus, the relationship between structure and agency is that of a constant political re-
articulation. The gap that defines the dislocated structure needs to be filled, which inspires
hegemonic projects that provide meaning for events in international politics (see also Laclau
and Žižek, 1990, 50). Each of the national interest frames analysed in this thesis can be con-
ceived as such a hegemonic project – though often on a more mid-range scale then those found
in the scholarship typically associated with Laclau, Mouffe, and Žižek. The events that form
the headlines of the daily news constantly demand a discursive struggle over their meaning
vis-à-vis our identity as a country. What matters when it comes to domestic and international
politics, then, is this discursive struggle over the interpretation of the ‘national interest’ in the
light of these events. Since structure is always dislocated in some ways, the national inter-
est signifier can only ever be partially and temporarily fixed by these hegemonic projects, but
never fully constituted as a universal truth that closes the gap in the structure (see also Torfing,
1999, 151f).
The analytical consequence of these theoretical perspectives is that subjects are partially
free to choose certain national interest frames over others, despite the sociological or discursive
structures that they are embedded in. These political choices in relation to the hegemonic
projects can be seen as the locus of political change. Thus, this perspective puts emphasis
on political struggle not just as a formal choice made at the ballot boxes but also one that
constantly takes place in discursive practices. Throughout the research process for this thesis,
I have found this perspective to be helpful to understand the empirical dynamics at play in
101

foreign policymaking, but also normatively more desirable. By forcing us to conceive of

political developments as not simply ‘determined’ by structural forces, but also influenced by
political choices of political agents, it enables us to see political change as partially the result
of active political participation in these discursive struggles.

The Hegemonic Struggle Model

The hegemonic struggle model is an analytical framework to understand the political dynam-
ics of foreign policy debates. As such, it is a heuristic device that expands upon the discourse
and framing theoretical arguments laid out in Chapter 2 and addresses the critiques raised in
the discussion of the political communication literature. Furthermore, it provides a means
to empirically understand the interactions between structural and agential aspects of foreign
policy debates. The ambition of this framework is not to provide a testable explanation of
why, or a prediction of how certain discursive dynamics enfold. Ultimately, applying this
framework to empirical cases is bound to remain somewhat circular and certainly highly in-
terpretive. Rather, the aim is to develop a theoretically informed perspective that enables us to
highlight the issues and processes at stake in these debates and that points towards subjects for
further research. The latter would need a more systematic engagement with post-structuralist,
sociological, and psychological research on the sources of authority or power, which could
further build upon related interventions from the field of IR (Barnett and Duvall, 2005; Beren-
skoetter and Williams, 2007; Guzzini, 2005, 2017). The following builds on a combination of
Guzzini’s dyadic approach to the structure-agency question (Guzzini, 1993) and the specific
post-structuralist discourse theory discussed above.
The hegemonic struggle model understands foreign policy debates as revolving around
the political competition between different national interest frames in public discourse and
subsets thereof. As mentioned before, these national interest frames specify and promote a
certain empirical and normative interpretation of a foreign policy issue alongside an implicit
or explicit referral to desirable foreign policy reactions. Thus, we can identify a national
interest frame by asking whether a specific text offers a (partial and/or implicit) answer to the
question: what should we do and why? Over the course of foreign policy debates, different
political actors propose and oppose specific national interest frames in order for them to gain
hegemonic status or be silenced in public discourse and subsets thereof. Before the frame
does either, it usually passes through and often never leaves an antagonistic stage defined
by significant disagreement on the cogency of the frame among political actors. Where we
should situate a frame on this continuum over time – from silence to antagonism to hegemony
– depends on a combination of and interaction between structural and agential factors.
More specifically, Figure 4.1 proposes that the success or failure of political framing de-
pends on the degree to which the meaning of the proposed frame becomes fixed in discursive
structures (x-axis) and on the discursive power ratio between proponents and opponents of the
frame (y-axis). During foreign policy debates, a frame typically changes its position on both
 102

Proponent/Opponent Power Ratio

H
eg
em
on
i
c
A
nt
Frame

ag
Meaning

on
Fixation

ist
ic
Si
le
nc
ed

Figure 4.1: The hegemonic struggle model proposes a two-dimensional space to map the political
success of framing efforts over time and for different subsets of public discourse.

dimensions over time. The coalitions of proponents and opponents change and, as a function
of this as well as prior discourses, the frame begins to sound either more or less common-
sensical with regard to people’s preconceptions about the subject at hand. We can use this
two-dimensional space to map the development of political framing efforts over time and for
different subsets of public discourse. As mentioned earlier, if we want to understand the im-
pact of public discourse on foreign policy, we should pay particular attention to the hegemonic
struggle in those subsets of public discourse towards which policymakers are most sympathetic
and exposed to.
The proponent/opponent power ratio reflects the discursive power balance between the
political actors who support and those who oppose a specific frame. I propose to understand
discursive power as depending on: whether an actor is allowed to speak in the first place; the
credibility and authority an actor’s statements have in public discourse; and how much salience
actors attach to the frame in their interventions. These dimensions resonate with work from
social movement scholars on the physical access to public discourse (e.g., Koopmans and
Statham, 1999), with a post-structuralist understanding of subject positions (e.g., Hall, 1997),
as well as with sociological understandings of various forms of capital (e.g., Bourdieu, 1979).
As mentioned above, a full and systematic incorporation of these literatures’ insights on the
conceptualization of power is beyond the scope of this thesis. This is not least because these
103

approaches are rooted in different meta-theoretical positions, which requires careful considera-
tions about their analytical commensurability. For sake of this initial version of the hegemonic
struggle model, it shall suffice to say that an empirical analysis of discursive interventions in
foreign policy debates should at least consider the actor’s charisma, reputation, societal po-
sition, as well as her previous interventions in public discourse on the subject of the debate.
What is crucial, however, from the specific post-structuralist position adapted in this thesis, is
to acknowledge the role of political choice by the actor whether and how to intervene in the
debate. This choice might be influenced, but is never completely determined by the actor’s
sociological or discursive environment.
The frame meaning fixation dimension reflects how reasonable or convincing a frame
sounds to other actors in their role as the audience of public discourse. That is, how much
its meaning has been incorporated into the discursive background structures of the actors con-
stituting the public under investigation (see also the notion of sedimentation in Berger and
Luckmann, 1966). This dimension addresses a similar phenomenon as the concept of frame
resonance, which is used frequently in the framing literature as a factor influencing the strate-
gic choices of actors (e.g., Gamson, 1992; Hänggli and Kriesi, 2010, 2012; Koopmans and
Statham, 1999; Snow and Benford, 1988). That is, the frame meaning fixation dimension asks
how much does a frame resonates with the audience’s preconceptions about the subject of the
debate. However, rather than seeing frame resonance as a static background condition that
influences whether a frame is successful or not, the hegemonic struggle model proposed here
understands the ultimate goal of political framing contests as making a frame more or less
resonant with people’s preconceptions – that is, to fix a frame’s meaning is the very purpose
of discursive interventions in framing contests. This implies that frame resonance changes
throughout the discursive struggles to achieve the hegemony or silencing of a specific frame.
While the hegemonic struggle model builds its understanding of frame meaning fixation on a
reading of the empirical evidence from the case of Darfur through the post-structuralist per-
spectives proposed by Laclau, Mouffe, and Žižek, this more dynamic approach to the issue of
frame resonance bears similarities to understandings of the term by social movement scholars
inspired by similar critical thinkers (e.g., Ferree, 2002, 2003). The purpose of conceptualize
frame resonance as frame meaning fixation, is to highlight its processual and dynamic charac-
ter. It is not a property of a stable cultural background structure, but should be itself subject of
framing theoretical research. In that sense, frame resonance becomes something that can not
only be used strategically in the construction of frames, but something that changes through
the discursive interventions of the actors under scrutiny.
From the discourse theoretical perspective of this thesis, whether a frame’s meaning is
more or less fixed depends on whether and how much a frame or parts of it are rooted in
past discursive practices. The meaning and cogency of frames can sediment into a discursive
background structure, which allows people to use them without having to explain what they
mean. For example, the notion that the US had to fight communism did not need to be de-
fended for large periods of the Cold War because people accepted it as common sense. There
 104

is, however, a layered nature to this sedimentation process. Some notions are so deeply rooted
that it requires concerted efforts to unearth and challenge them. Those are often the subject
of scholarship using genealogical or deconstructive methodologies as a form of critique (see,
e.g., Koopman, 2013). Others, however, are less entrenched in discursive practices and can
therefore more easily be questioned. These typically form the subject of day-to-day foreign
policy debates and thus are at the centre of the hegemonic struggle model’s analytical concern.
Moreover, even the meaning of structurally anchored ideas like ‘the (post-9/11) need fight ter-
rorism’ has to be constantly interpreted in the light of a given situation. Thus, the positioning
of a frame on this dimension depends on the short- and long-term history of political debates
that preceded it. If discursively powerful actors decide to support a specific frame, it con-
tributes to the meaning fixation of a frame and thus influences how efficiently actors are able
to use that frame in future iterations of a specific debate. How much or how easily a frame’s
meaning fixation or structural resonance changes over time depends on how deeply embedded
it or its individual parts are in the background structure of public discourse.
It is clear that both discursive power and discursive structuration as used in the hegemonic
struggle model are not always easy to observe empirically and necessitate an interpretive read-
ing of the evidence. Applying the hegemonic struggle model to a specific foreign policy debate
thus requires in-depth knowledge and careful interpretation of the political and historical con-
text it is embedded in. While there would be merit to further conceptualize and operationalize
these dimensions, what the hegemonic struggle model in its current form enables us to do is
to focus the analysis of foreign policy debates on the ideological struggle over interpreting the
national interest without presuming political disagreement between the elite, the media, and
the public and without presuming political agreement within these entities.
Chapter 5

The Darfur Crisis and the West

The following chapter discusses the empirical investigation into US-American, British, French,
and German reactions to the Darfur crisis in Sudan in 2003 with a focus on the theoretical is-
sues raised in the previous chapter. In the back and forth between theoretical considerations
and empirical insights that underlies the formation of this second part of the thesis, the fol-
lowing empirical evidence has formed a crucial function in the development of the theoretical
propositions from Chapter 4. Thus, rather than considering the following as a test of these
propositions, it should be read as an integral part of their theoretical development, and thus
more as an empirical illustration of these arguments (see also Yom, 2018).
Even though the goal is not to provide a holistic treatment of Western reactions to the
Darfur crisis, it is helpful to start with a more generic overview of what happened and how
the West reacted to the situation. Yet, the task of writing such a short summary is challenging
because there are multiple competing narratives about the origins, causes, and the nature of
the conflict. The labels for what happened range from genocide,1 to ethnic cleansing and
humanitarian crisis,2 to counter-insurgency, civil war, and crimes against humanity.3 The
number of estimated casualties start at roughly 10,000 and go all the way up to 400,000.4
What label and narrative the situation in Darfur merits has been a profoundly political
question (e.g., Black and Williams, 2010; De Waal, 2007a; Hamilton and Hazlett, 2007; Mam-
dani, 2009; Murphy, 2007; Prunier, 2005; Seymour, 2014; Shaw, 2011). Given that this thesis
does not seek an answer to this, what can with reasonable certainty be said about Darfur in
retrospect? On the one hand, it is clear that the Western province of Darfur has a long and
rich political history that should be taken into account when analyzing the conflict (see, e.g.,
Mamdani, 2009; Natsios, 2012; Prunier, 2005; De Waal, 2007b). Many sources start the nar-
ration of the crisis with the anti-government insurgency of Darfuri rebels in February 2003,5
but political tensions including occasional armed struggle were present before.
Nonetheless, 2003 marks the year when the Khartoum government raised the profile of the
conflict by engaging in a violent counter-insurgency that was followed by international outrage
because of an abundance of civilian casualties. At the time, the focus of the UN and West-
ern observers was on the ongoing peace negotiations between the government and southern

105
 106

Conflict Intensity in Darfur

1750
1500
Casualties

1250
1000
750
500
250
0

United States
100

75

50

25

United Kingdom
100

75

50
Foreign Policy Agenda

25

France
100

75

50

25

Germany
100

75

50

25

0
19 −11

19 −05

19 −11

19 05

20 −11

20 −05

20 −11

20 −05

20 −11

20 05

20 −11

20 −05

20 −11

20 05

20 −11

20 05

20 −11

20 −05

20 −11

20 −05

20 −11

20 −05

20 −11

20 −05

20 −11

20 −05

20 −11

5
−0
−

−
97

98

98

99

99

00

00

01

01

02

02

03

03

04

04

05

05

06

06

07

07

08

08

09

09

10

10

11
19

Figure 5.1: Juxtaposition of developments in Darfur and its position on Western foreign policy agen-
das. The number of battle-related deaths is based on data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program
(UCDP GED v17.1; Sundberg and Melander 2013; Croicu and Sundberg 2017). The foreign policy
agenda is based on the scale constructed in Chapter 3. The dark bars mark the most active foreign
policy episodes selected for detailed analysis.
107

Sudanese rebels, which were engaged in a conflict that should be considered largely, though
not completely, separate from the situation in Darfur. According to the Uppsala Conflict Data
Program (UCDP), the fighting between insurgents and government forces was over by March
2004 with lower rates of civilian casualties continuing for some time thereafter (see Figure
5.1).
There are many reasons to read the UCDP data with caution despite their prominence in
the peace and conflict studies literature (e.g., Gohdes and Price, 2013). However, the basic
observation that by summer 2004, the fighting was reduced to a minimum – rather than inten-
sifying as some Western commentators claimed6 – is corroborated by other sources with more
direct expertise on the conflict (e.g., Flint and De Waal, 2008; Mamdani, 2009; Natsios, 2012;
Seymour, 2014). Though the numbers of casualties in this civil war is hard to assess, most ac-
counts agree on the gruesome nature of the violence that lead the UN Security Council to refer
the case to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in March 2005.7 This referral followed upon
a report by a UN Commission of Inquiry on Darfur in January 2005, which mentioned more
than one million internally displaced persons and about 200,000 refugees in the neighbouring
Chad.8 According to UN statistics, those refugees remained in Chad for years to come9 and
in precarious humanitarian conditions that were the main cause of death after the fighting had
stopped (Degomme and Guha-Sapir, 2010).

Western Reactions to the Darfur Crisis: A General Overview

Not going any further into the difficult task of approximating factual statements about what
happened in Darfur, the dynamics of Western narratives and reactions is what really interests
me here. Even a short glance at Figure 5.1 suggests two things: First, the only way in which
Western foreign policy agendas align neatly is that they all start paying attention to Darfur
in the spring of 2004 – roughly at the time when the most intense fighting was over – and
that they continue to do so when the fighting has already stopped. Second, across the four
countries, there is otherwise little convergence in terms of the timing and amount of attention
they spend on the conflict. Both of these observations strongly support the notion that the logic
of foreign policy agendas follows domestic dynamics rather than those of the foreign armed
conflict itself, which is in line with the findings of my statistical analysis.
On a methodological level, the dynamics of the foreign policy agendas depicted in Figure
5.1 are interesting in that they highlight how much foreign policy activity would fall under
the radar if we would only focus on military intervention. The absence of the latter does not
mean that policymakers did not spend significant time and resources on trying to resolve the
problem in Darfur. As discussed in the quantitative chapter, the measurement of foreign policy
agendas based on events reported in newswires is likely to underestimate the activity and only
show the peak of the iceberg. And yet, this measurement strategy resulted in the identification
of 368 Darfur-related foreign policy events for the US, 103 for the UK, 319 for France, and
45 for Germany (see Table 5.1). To give an impression of Western reactions, I provide some
 108

Table 5.1: Frequency of Darfur-related foreign policy events per country between 1998 and 2010.
Based on manual evaluation of 6,455 news wires.

United States United Kingdom France Germany Total

Embassy Activity 2 4 2 0 8
Travel Warning 2 0 0 0 2
Official Statement 135 28 149 24 336
Official Report 7 0 4 0 11
Meeting at Home 20 5 29 0 54
International Coordination 76 18 80 6 180
Visit to Country 21 11 10 1 43
Mediation Efforts 2 6 5 0 13
Legislative Activity 57 23 16 5 101
Policy Development 46 8 24 9 87

Total 368 103 319 45 835

examples of major policy developments in each of the four countries.

The US stands out because of its embracing of the term genocide. In June 2004, the US
Congress unanimously declared that “the atrocities unfolding in Darfur, Sudan, are genocide”
and that it “urges the Administration to refer to such atrocities as genocide.”10 Both Secretary
of State Colin Powell11 and President Bush12 adopted the term a few months later in Septem-
ber 2004. This seemingly rhetorical shift mattered because, according to the interpretations
and hopes of many observers, the UN genocide convention would now force the US to take
measures to respond to and prevent further atrocities.13
Insofar as these hopes were geared towards a unilateral military intervention, the US never
followed suit. However, it was the biggest Western contributor of humanitarian relief aid (see
Figure 5.2), appointed special envoys to monitor and arbitrate the conflict, imposed sanctions
against alleged war-criminals, and pushed forward a plethora of UN Security Council reso-
lutions – initiating condemnations, sanctions, embargoes, special inquiries as well as a UN
peacekeeping mission.14 This level of activity suggests that while one can accuse the US of
having not done enough to address the political violence in Darfur, it is impossible to accuse
the US of having done nothing. And, indeed, some even advanced the argument that the US
did too much (see, e.g., Mamdani, 2009).
The French perspective on the Darfur crisis was strongly influenced by its relation to the
neighbouring country of Chad. In addition to their colonial ties, French troops had been sta-
tioned in Chad since 1986 under the codename Opération Épervier. Given that a large share
of Darfuri refugees ended up in camps on the Chadian side of the border, France was alarmed
about the destabilizing effect that the Darfur situation could have on the region. This concern
lead to frequent visits of French officials to Chad and the refugee camps, a substantial amount
109

United States
1000
750
500
250
0
Official Development Aid (US Dollar, Millions)

United Kingdom
1000
750
500
250
0

France
1000
750
500
250
0

Germany
1000
750
500
250
0
98

99

00

01

02

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

10
19

19

20

20

20

20

20

20

20

20

20

20

20

Figure 5.2: Amount of official development aid to Sudan according to the Organisation for Eco-
nomic Cooperation and Development (OECD).15
 110

of humanitarian relief aid, as well as military involvement in securing the border region.16
France was also pressing the matter on the international level by supporting British efforts for
an ICC indictment of alleged war criminals in the UN Security Council against the will of
the US,17 and by pushing the European Union (EU) to initiate a military mission under the
codename EUFOR Tchad/RCA.18 Even though the EU was dealing more with internal matters
in Chad and the Central African Republic, it is hard to make a clear-cut distinction between
these and the Darfuri civil war because their actors and victims interact and partially overlap
(see Seymour, 2010).
Due to its strong historical ties with many African nations, France also played an ac-
tive role in bringing different regional stakeholders together at various international meetings.
Most notably, President Chirac put Darfur on top of the Africa-France summit in Cannes in
February 2007.19 In the Presidential elections shortly thereafter, Darfur was a major topic for
both the Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal and her Republican opponent Nicolas Sarkozy.20
After Sarkozy’s electoral victory, he made Darfur a top priority of his new government, evoked
the problem at various international meetings, and organized another designated conference
involving all (international) stakeholders of the Darfur conflict.21
As for the UK, Darfur played a much less dominant role on its foreign policy agenda
when set against the US and France. The British government joined these two countries in
some of their initiatives at the UN- and EU-level, but compared to the zeal with which the
topic was discussed in French and US-American politics, British policymakers did not spend
nearly as much time and resources on the conflict as its allies. This finding is interesting
insofar as Darfur shares a colonial past with the UK, which is commonly taken to inspire
increased attention by the coloniser’s contemporary foreign policymakers (e.g., Alesina and
Dollar, 2000) – in this case, it did not. As Figure 5.2 shows, the UK was nevertheless a major
contributor of aid from 2003 onwards. In addition, the British government drafted the UN
Security Council Resolution that referred the Darfuri case to the ICC for prosecution22 and
it provided some financial and logistic support to the African Union (AU) Mission in Sudan
(AMIS).23
In this international comparison, Germany’s contribution to solving the Darfur crisis might
be seen as marginal. However, that is not to say that Darfur did not figure on the German
foreign policy agenda. In reaction to the international outrage about the situation, Germany
increased its aid contribution to Darfur. It also contributed soldiers and military equipment
to assist the AU’s and later the UN’s peacekeeping mission.24 Considering Germany’s his-
torically conditioned reluctance to military engagement abroad, the significance of the latter
should not be underestimated in the context of German politics.

Exploring the Most Active Foreign Policy Episodes

As the juxtaposition of these few selected developments with the 835 events recovered from
newswires suggests, such a short summary necessarily has to ignore some developments in
111

favour of others and the above list cannot claim to be exhaustive. To avoid the larger Sisyphus
task of doing justice to the complexity of the historical developments and to avoid the dilemma
of having to select from the multiple possible macro-narratives, the following sections focus on
the most active foreign policy episodes to analyse a narrower set of mid-range developments.
As explained in the previous chapter, the selection of these episodes is based on the highest
aggregate scores on the foreign policy agenda scale developed in the quantitative analysis of
the first part of the thesis. As such, these episodes refer to the time when policymakers paid
most attention to the conflict, but not necessarily to the most important policy decisions. The
overarching goal of this focused analysis is to understand how policymakers, journalists, and
the broader public interact with regard to questions of the national interest.

United States: July-August-September 2004

Most of the US foreign policy activity towards Darfur in the summer of 2004 revolved around
the question whether or not to call it a genocide. Even though this was the period during
which the US spend most time and resources on the conflict, critics might counter that it was
all hot air without any practical implications (e.g., Prunier, 2005, 120). It is, of course, not the
purpose of this thesis to discuss the political question of whether the US has ‘done enough’ to
address the suffering in Darfur. However, it is worthwhile to explore some counterarguments
for why the adoption of the genocide terminology mattered from the perspective of US foreign
policy.
The most obvious problem with the ‘just rhetoric’ argument is that the US was the only
one to embrace this language to describe Darfur. If words are inconsequential and cheap in the
international power game, why were all other international actors so reluctant to use the term
genocide in official communication despite being frequently asked to do so? There are at least
two dimensions to the impact of such a linguistic choice that enable us to conceive of it as a
major development in US foreign policy towards Darfur.
First, embracing the label genocide was a strong signal to a domestic public that the gov-
ernment was taking the situation seriously. Prunier rightfully points out that the US Presiden-
tial elections on 2 November 2004 might have had an influence on the governments position
(Prunier, 2005, 140). But his assertion that there was a sharp post-election decline in official
attention to Darfur does not line up with the empirical picture shown in Figure 5.1 and Fig-
ure 5.2. According to the data gathered for this thesis’ data on Darfur’s position on the US
foreign policy agenda, the government continued to spend a significant amount of time and
resources on the issue also after the Presidential elections. Thus, rather than a mere electoral
ruse of Machiavellian politicians hiding their ‘real’ (dis-)interest behind empty words, this
move should be seen as a simultaneous signalling to the electorate and the political elite that
addressing the Darfur situation was seen to be in the interest and on the agenda of the US
government.
Second, the linguistic choice of the US government had a similar effect on the international
 112

level. On the one hand, it was a message to their allies in Europe that they should expect
initiatives against Sudan lead by the US and should take the US into account when planning
measures to address the situation in Darfur. On the other hand, it was also a signal to the
conflict parties in Darfur that the US might intervene in some way to change the power balance
of the conflict. Finally, to other regional and international actors, it suggested that siding or
cooperating with the Sudanese government might endanger their relations with the US.
The ‘just rhetoric’ dismissal presumably stems from a disappointment with the choice of
concrete policy tools and their perceived ineffectiveness. To be sure, both the appropriateness
of the policy choices and whether they have been effective are issues that go beyond the scope
of this thesis. Suffice to say that the answer is not obvious from a normative point of view (see,
e.g., Mamdani, 2009). But, what is more, the choice of tools is not completely up to the mere
political will of the government (Slim, 2004). In other words, a (retrospectively) perceived
poor choice of policy tools is not necessarily linked to governmental indifference at the time.
For example, we surely have to take into account that the US was already involved in
two costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where limited local support of their troops lead to
significant problems. Considering that most conflict parties in and around Sudan preferred the
AU for mediating the situation, the US was de facto facing a potential third war in an adverse
environment. Given the explicit humanitarian nature of the entire Darfur debate, it was not
therefore difficult to imagine an intervention scenario that would have worsened rather than
resolved the situation. Thus, even without the US actually following through with a unilateral
military intervention, we should still conceive of the embracing of the term genocide as a
serious policy development rather than just an inconsequential bluff.
In the light of these arguments, we can understand the label ‘genocide’ as a national in-
terest frame in the same way as those described in Chapter 3. That is, according to the pre-
viously provided definition of national interest frames, the genocide label suggests that we
(the US) should stop the violence and injustice because it is morally outrageous and against
international law. While not being identical, it resonates with the humanitarianism frame as it
suggests that ‘we should do something about it’ because we have a duty to prevent people suf-
fering unjustly. The government’s embracing of this national interest frame went hand in hand
with increased foreign policy activity without being an exhaustive explanation for the concrete
choice of policy tools. Two questions emerge from this observation: Where did the genocide
frame come from and how did the government end up using it in official communication?
In order to answer these questions, let us have a look at its proponents up until Democratic
Representative Donald M. Payne, on 24 June 2004, introduced a bill to the US Congress
that would initiate the official adaptation of the term by the government.25 One of the first
classification of the Darfur situation as genocide can be traced to a Washington Post editorial
from 25 February 2004, entitled the Unnoticed Genocide.26 The author, Eric Reeves, was a
professor of English language and literature at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Another usage can be found in a New York Times editorial on 27 March 2004 entitled Will
We Say ‘Never Again’ Yet Again?27 The author Nicholas D. Kristof had been a journalist for
113

the newspaper since 198428 and he would continue to push for action against the ‘genocide in
Darfur.’ In total, he published nine prominent op-eds about Darfur in the New York Times29
until the start of the congressional debate. Another Washington Post editorial suggests that UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan used the label to describe the situation in Darfur in a speech on
the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide on 7 April 2004,30 but a closer look at the actual
speech reveals that he was trying very hard not to use the term while nevertheless expressing
his great concern about the developments in Darfur.31
The first advocates of the frame that had more clearly defined connections to policymakers
were Susan E. Rice and Gayle E. Smith on 30 May 2004.32 The former was Assistant Secre-
tary of State from 1997 to 2001 and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institutions at the time
of writing. The latter was senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council
from 1998 to 2001 and a Senior Fellow at the non-profit organization Center for American
Progress at the time of writing. The next mention of genocide came from Samantha Powers,
who was a former journalist, public intellectual and professor at the Kennedy School of Gov-
ernment.33 Jerry Fowler – after a trip to the Darfuri refugee camps in Chad in May – joined
the choir in a Washington Post editorial on 6 June 2004.34 The latter is notable because he
was the staff director of the so-called Committee on Conscience, guiding the genocide preven-
tion activities of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Later that year, on 31 July,
this committee would issue a ‘genocide emergency’ warning for Darfur that received wide
attention.35 Jerry Fowler was also a co-founder and later director of the influential advocacy
network Save Darfur Coalition (Hamilton, 2011). Finally, in addition to further editorials that
represented the views of The Washington Post36 and The New York Times37 as a whole, the
Republican Senators Mike DeWine and John McCain joined the public embracing of the frame
in The Washington Post on 23 June 2004, shortly before it was introduced to congressional
decision-making.38
Up until that point, the US government – along with other international actors – unan-
imously used the frame of ‘ethnic cleansing’ to describe the situation in Darfur.39 Only in
June did the term genocide start to appear in relation with governmental officials. In these,
however, they usually reacted to journalistic enquiries and consistently refrained from a clear
stance arguing that they lacked unequivocal evidence that met the legal requirement for such a
classification.40 After Congress declared that the atrocities in Darfur amount to genocide and
urged the government to do the same, Powell told reporters that there is “a legal definition of
genocide which includes specific intent to destroy an entire group.” He stated that once the
government would receive more reports from the region, it would declare its judgement.41 On
9 September 2004, the government presented a report Documenting Atrocities in Darfur42 and
officially embraced the genocide frame.43 As mentioned, this decision remains legally and
politically controversial to this day, and many observers with substantive knowledge of the
case would disagree with the judgement.
Going back to the question concerning the source of the genocide frame, it is clear that its
origins are not to be found in circles of political elites with formal powers – i.e., elected gov-
 114

ernmental and parliamentary officials. Rather, it was brought to the policy agenda by members
of a public elite that drew its political power from discursive authority rather than formal insti-
tutions. That is, the discursive interventions of journalists, political activists, and NGOs were
perceived to be more credible and authoritative in relation to this issue than those of the govern-
ment. In addition, the government embraced the frame not just because of short-term electoral
calculations but stuck to it for some time to come. It is of course impossible to ascertain un-
ambiguously whether individual government officials actually believed in the accuracy of the
term. This determination is not required for the argument of this thesis, however, because in
the overarching institutional context, governmental officials surely accepted the implications
of the frame in terms of the US national interest regarding Darfur as evidenced by continued
foreign policy initiatives in the following years. What is more, whether they liked the term or
not, US officials still had to deal with the diplomatic consequences in the international context
and with regard to their relations to the Sudanese government since the latter perceived of the
genocide declaration as a threat. This is quite a different picture from the top-down as well as
the cyclic narrative discussed in the previous chapter.
Of course, this is not to say that we should assign the success of the genocide frame
in the US debate solely to the people mentioned above. In addition to individual discursive
power that proponents of the genocide frame possessed, there are more structural and historical
factors that explain why the genocide frame resonated so well with a US-American mindset.
To name but the most obvious, the narrative that Muslim Arabs were committing a genocide on
black Africans whom they call slaves (see I.D.F. and Assal, 2010, 40ff) was bound to resonate
with a post-9/11 US society in general and with memories of the black civil rights movement
in particular (for a more detailed discussion, see Mamdani, 2009). The detailed discussion
of these broader structural conditions upon which the genocide frame fell would necessitate a
separate study with a more extensive focus on the history and genealogy of the term in the US.
Building on this empirical account, we can now use the hegemonic struggle model to map
the political development of the genocide frame from its inceptions at the margins of US-
American public discourse to a quasi-hegemonic standing, which made it difficult for foreign
policymakers to ignore it, even if they might not have agreed with it. Figure 5.3 illustrates
how the adoption of the frame by discursively powerful political actors fixated the meaning of
this frame over time and thus increased its resonance, which reflects the dynamic interaction
between agency and structure build into the hegemonic struggle model. The positioning of
the frame in this two-dimensional space is, of course, stylized and does not reflect precise
measurement. The inclusion of events or moments in this graph is likewise not meant to be
exhaustive of all relevant discursive interventions, but illustrative of the principal logic of the
model. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the hegemonic struggle model constitutes a
point of departure for further research on how to operationalize these dimensions in a way that
enables comparative research.
The political evolution of the genocide frame from February (t0) to September 2004 (t1)
can thus be presented as follows. The public interventions of academics and journalists like
115

Genocide Debate (US 2004)

Proponent/Opponent Power Ratio

Genocide (t1)

Powell & Bush

(September)

U.S. Congress USHMM

(July) (July/August)

Rwanda
Anniversary
(April)

Frame
Meaning
Fowler Fixation
(June)
Rice/Smith
(May)
Kristof
(March)

Reeves
(February)

Genocide (t0)

Figure 5.3: Map of the temporal dynamics of the genocide frame in US-American public discourse
in 2004. The marked interventions and events are a non-exhaustive selection of important moments
in the debate. The two-dimensional spacing is approximative and interpretative.

Reeves or Kristof provided the initial and discursively relatively powerful support for the
frame, increasing its position on the y-axis. Since there was neither strong opposition, nor
widespread acclaim for the idea, the frame’s meaning (x-axis) became slowly fixed in the
sense that readers of The New York Times and The Washington Post got increasingly accus-
tomed to the idea that something significant was happening in Darfur. The fixation of the
frame’s meaning increased drastically in April 2004 by virtue of interventions that linked the
idea of ‘genocide in Darfur’ with the powerful and emotionally charged idea of the ‘West’s
failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda.’ By (wrongly) attributing this link to discursively pow-
erful actors like Kofi Annan, the Washington Post further pushed the frame up on the y-axis
toward a hegemonic place in public discourse. Even though other discursively powerful actors,
such as Colin Powell, opposed the genocide label, they did so cautiously and tried to avoid a
full-on confrontation of its proponents. Since the frame was already perceived as convincing,
however, it would have required a strong public denouncing of the idea and its implications in
 116

order to change the course of the debate, which neither Powell nor other relevant actors were
prepared to do. In September 2004, when both legislators and the government fell in line with
public discourse, the genocide frame gained quasi-hegemonic status as a description of the
situation in Darfur. It did so because political actors managed to build a coalition of discur-
sively powerful supporters for the idea, i.a., by creatively linking it to already existing ideas
that powerfully resonated with the political elites’ ideas about the goals of US-American for-
eign policy. At the end of this process, the idea of ‘genocide in Darfur’ had become a resonant
frame with (partially) fixed meaning of its own, changing the structural discursive conditions
under which future US foreign policy debates could be held.

Germany: October-November-December 2006

While Germany spent the least time and resources on Darfur in the quadrilateral comparison
of this thesis, the German foreign policy debate during these three months can nevertheless
tell us a lot about the conceptual questions underlying the second part of the thesis. The
primary focus of foreign policy discourse was on a division within the governmental coalition
about the appropriateness of sending (more) German troops to assist the AU mission in Darfur.
The episode is interesting because the public discourse was clearly divided into ideologically
informed subsets, which each had their internal understanding of the question. The following
discussion focuses on the disagreements within a centre-right Conservative public discourse,
and juxtaposes it to the more stable Social Democratic, Green, Liberal, and Leftist positions
on the question of whether and how to participate in the mission.
Following the N’djamena Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement on 8 April 2004, the AU sent
peacekeeping troops (AMIS) to Darfur to monitor the implementation of the agreement.44 Af-
ter 31 July 2007, the AU peacekeepers were merged with UN forces in the AU/UN Hybrid Op-
eration in Darfur (UNAMID).45 Germany’s contribution to these missions was first approved
on 3 December 2004 and consisted of up to 200 soldiers and several planes for transport and
supply of AU and UN troops.46 This military contingent was confirmed for six months47 and
had to be regularly re-approved by the parliament over the next years.48 One of these re-
approvals of the existing military deployment was discussed during the period studied here. It
was decided on 30 November 2006 by the government49 and approved on 15 December 2006
by the parliament.50
However, the debate that occupied the political discussions on Darfur was less about re-
newing the existing commitment, and more about whether or not Germany should extend its
contribution to the military peacekeeping efforts in Darfur or not. In short, what was at stake
was exactly the interpretation of Germany’s national interest. Should it assert a position as
a proactive international enforcer of humanitarian norms? Should it reduce African refugee
flows to Germany by solving crises where they originate? Should it let other actors take care of
the situation in Darfur and thereby avoid over-stretching its military capacities? The primary
lessons of this episode are that conceptions of the national interest are politically contested,
117

that elites are ideologically heterogeneous, and that contestation does not just occur between
established political camps but also within them.
While politicians of all political colours and standing weighed in on this debate, the pri-
mary protagonist was the Conservative defence minister Franz Josef Jung (CDU) who argued
already in July 2006 that participating in peace efforts in Darfur is in “Germany’s interest” and
that Germany “will not stand aside.”51 This remark contradicted the official government line52
and prompted a reply by Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) a few days later, when she argued
that “we should not overrate ourselves” in the international context and denied the existence
of government plans to increase German involvement in Darfur.53 The debate heated up early
September at the yearly ‘Regierungserklärung und Generalaussprache’ where the government
and opposition debate the fundamental orientation of German politics – a ritual quite similar
to the US-American ‘State of the Union.’
Merkel insisted that Germany did not have the capacity to get involved in Darfur in addi-
tion to its contribution to an EU mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).54 The
latter had been initiated earlier that year and already inspired debates among conservatives
about whether the German military was up to the task.55 Merkel’s intervention was criticized
by the Green parliamentarian Kerstin Müller (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) who used the geno-
cide frame and urged that Darfur should take a higher position on Germany’s foreign policy
agenda.56 However, Merkel got backing from her coalition partner by the Social Democrat
Johannes Kahrs (SPD) who quoted former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) saying “who
goes in somewhere must also know how to get out again.”57 Franz Josef Jung, on the other
hand, abstained from commenting on the issue, leaving it to Merkel to define the official gov-
ernment position.
This is not to say that he changed his opinion. After several high-ranking Social Democrats
repeated the idea of a stronger German military involvement in Darfur, and after Merkel re-
mained skeptical but did not want to categorically exclude the possibility,58 Jung repeated
his initial position on 28 November 2006 in the public television broadcaster ARD, arguing
that Germany could not simply deny an international request to do more if such would arise.
He explained that, faced with such a situation, a majority of the parliament would support
an increased military contribution.59 With this, he clearly overestimated political support for
German engagement and initiated an avalanche of rebuttals from opposition, coalition partner,
as well as members of his own political party.
On one side, Jung had strong Social Democratic allies in former defence minister and
party chairman, Peter Struck (SPD),60 as well as development minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-
Zeul (SPD).61 The idea of increased involvement – military or otherwise – in Darfur also
gained support among the Green parliamentarians62 and their chairman Claudia Roth (Bündnis
90/Die Grünen).63 On the other side, the chairman of the Christian Democrats Volker Kauder
(CDU) as well as his Bavarian counter-part Peter Ramsauer (CSU) were outraged by Jung’s
initiative and the lack of coordination with the party political base of the government. Finally,
the Liberals (FDP) bemoaned Jung’s initiative as premature, superfluous, and irritating for
 118

the Bundeswehr. The Leftists (Die Linkspartei.PDS) warned that any action against the will
of the Sudanese government would lead to a catastrophe.64 The political brawl ended with
the government reaffirming Jung’s political position as minister, but clearly abandoning the
idea that there should be an increase beyond the current mandate for the German mission in
Darfur.65
None of these positions were entirely new, of course, and none could be ascribed just to
the individuals that left a trace in the public archive of this political debate. Whether or not
Germany should play a more active military role in international interventions had been a re-
occurring topic in German politics for years with the debates around Kosovo, Afghanistan,
and Iraq all having repercussions for how the Darfur question could be discussed at the time.
The concrete question of increasing German military engagement in Darfur had been debated
before as well.66 This context considerably complicates a tracing of certain arguments directly
to their discursive origins as done in the previous section on the US genocide debate. Suffice
to say that the interventionist stance of the Greens can be found one-to-one in extensive re-
porting on Darfur by journalists of the taz – a newspaper closely associated with the party’s
ideological orientation.67 Representing the centre-left and centre-right that formed that gov-
ernmental coalition, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
were not supportive of, or even outright disinterested in Jung’s initiative. They duly reported
on it, but showed themselves rather bemused by the curiosity that a cabinet minister could so
openly misjudge the positions of his party political base.68
As its proponents admit, a simple indexing hypothesis is problematic in the face of such
elite fragmentation. Thus, instead of tracing the origins of positions and investigating the elite-
media-public triad, let us use this episode as an opportunity to investigate another conceptually
relevant question: Why did Jung fail to convince people that it was in the national interest of
Germany to send more troops to Darfur? I argue that there are two dimensions to Jung’s
failure that explain why his national interest frame did not succeed. The first is structural
– in the discourse theoretical sense of the term – in that his initiative did not resonate well
with the discursively sedimented meaning of the ideologically conservative orientation of the
government and the party base. The second is agential in that Jung did not possess the charisma
or political verve to convince more people of his re-interpretation of the conservative position,
which could have slowly changed the structural limitations to his initiative.
On the structural side, we have to consider that an interventionist stance was closely linked
to the previous governments of Social Democrats and the Greens under Chancellor Gerhard
Schröder (1998-2005). This coalition was associated with the NATO bombing in Kosovo and
perceived to be responsible for German soldiers in Afghanistan. Jung’s most powerful ally for
sending more troops to Darfur was former defence minister Peter Struck whose most famous
quote is that “[German] security is defended [...] also at the Hindu Kush” – variations of this
saying have continued to feature in German political debates about foreign policy missions of
the Bundeswehr.69 While formally quite powerful because of his position as the chairman of
the Social Democratic party, Struck had little leverage in this debate because he repeated the
119

position of the government that was voted out of office a year ago after two terms in power.70
Those Jung needed to convince were not those interventionists from Social Democrats and
Greens but his own Conservative party colleagues. And yet, these Conservatives had recently
been the most critical of sending the Bundeswehr to foreign countries, arguing that it lacked the
capacity and that Germany should rather leave these things to other international actors. It is
also worth noting that of the three opposition parties, only the Greens were lobbying in favour
of Jung’s initiative. Thus, in no way did Jung face a structurally ready-made opportunity to
call for policy change. In terms of the hegemonic struggle model, his proposition to increase
Germany’s military contribution to the Darfur mission started on the left side of the x-axis in
that it was far from commonsensical for the German Conservative public.
It is all too easy to deduct from such structural limitations the impossibility of political
change. But, if Jung had succeeded, an approach biased towards structural determinism could
readily find reasons for why change was inevitable instead: First, there were proponents of an
interventionist stance in the Social Democratic coalition partner as discussed above. Second,
the 780 soldiers sent to the DRC were bound to return in November, thereby freeing mili-
tary capacities and undermining the main argument of the conservatives against an increased
engagement. Third, there was a less humanitarian and more right-wing argument favouring
engagement for the sake of preventing refugee flows to Germany.71 Finally, all of the above
prompted Chancellor Merkel to relax her stance and acknowledge good reasons to show more
presence in Darfur: “In the light of the influx of refugees, we should not fail to try to find
solutions on the ground. [...] I think, we would be well advised not to leave engagement in
Africa to China, but to show that we are present as well.”72 Rather than fully embracing these
arguments, though, she remained reluctant and waited to see where the wind was blowing.
Thus, there was a chance for a version of interventionism in Darfur that would have res-
onated more with the Conservative public and thus could have lead to a substantive foreign
policy change. In order to succeed, Jung needed to take this blossom of a political project
and convince people, by engaging in an open debate as to why German conservatives should
favour more troops in Darfur. Instead, he passively reacted to questions by journalists and
repeated a vague position that did not possess the passion and cogency to mobilize political
support. Moreover, he more or less offended some parliamentarians by simply assuming that
they would rubber-stamp an extended mission.73 That is, Jung was both undecided about his
commitment to the idea that Germany should send more troops and was continuously under-
mining his political reputation, and thus his ability to credibly and authoritatively intervene in
this framing contest.
Building upon this empirical account, we can again use the hegemonic struggle model to
map the political development of frames that conceived it to be Germany’s national interest to
send more troops. For the sake of convenience, let us sideline the different reasons political ac-
tor’s listed in support of this issue, which could have become part of a chain of equivalence in
a counter-factual where Jung would have rallied cross-party support for more German troops.
Rather, let us focus on the ideological sub-divisions of public discourse that – in this case –
 120

More-Bundeswehr Question (Germany 2006)

Proponent/Opponent Power Ratio

Greens

Social
Democrats Frame
Bundestagsdebatte Merkel
(September) (July) Meaning
Fixation
Merkel Jung
(November) (July)

Conservatives (t0)
Kauder &
Ramsauer
(December)

Conservatives (t1)
Liberals Leftists

Figure 5.4: Map of the temporal dynamics of the debate over increased Bundeswehr participation
in Darfur in ideological subsets of public discourse in Germany 2006. The marked interventions
and events are a non-exhaustive selection of important moments in the debate. The two-dimensional
spacing is approximative and interpretative.

followed closely the ideological divides of the German political party system. To this end,
Figure 5.4 maps the rather static positions taken by Social Democrats, Greens, Liberals and
Leftists, as well as the development of the internal debates amongst Conservatives through-
out Jung’s attempt to push the idea of more Bundeswehr troops in Darfur from July (t0) to
December 2006 (t1).
During the period of interest, the Greens represented a pro-interventionist stance both in
terms of the the party political elite and the public discourse associated with (part of) the
party’s electorate. Social Democrats were a bit more split on the issue with powerful party
elites supporting more troops, but other members of parliament and the Social Democratic
public being more sceptical and cautious. The Liberals and Leftists, on the other hand, were
clearly opposed, both for their own reasons. With regard to the Conservative position, we
can observe a slightly more dynamic picture with the issue being the focal point of a tense
political contest. Jung’s initial proposition first increased the Conservative position on the y-
axis because the intervention of a government minister carries some discursive weight. The
121

immediate opposition from Merkel, however, put a halt on this development and at the latest by
the time of the parliamentary debate in September, the idea that Conservatives should support
more troops in Darfur was on its way to be silenced in Conservative public discourse. While
Jung’s continued efforts and Merkel’s reluctance to completely reject the idea slowed down
this process, the discursively powerful opposition by Conservative party elites made sure that
the notion was buried before it could have an impact on policy decisions. That is, at the end
of this process, the resonance of the interventionist position decreased in the Conservative
public because of strong interventions by discursively powerful actors within the Conservative
political camp. In more discourse theoretical terms, Jung’s proposition did not achieve partial
fixation in Conservative discourse because the strong interventions of his opponents dislocated
the frame’s meaning before it could become a structurally sedimented part of Conservative
discourse on the issue.

United Kingdom: July-August-September 2007

The central agenda item during this British foreign policy episode was the UN Security Coun-
cil approval to replace the AU peacekeeping mission with a joint operation that comprised
both UN and AU troops (UNAMID), which was passed on 31 July 2007.74 The contested ne-
gotiations over this mission went back almost to the start of the AU mission in 2004 and were
largely conducted at the level of international diplomacy between the UN, AU, and its relevant
member states, with only sporadic attention at the domestic level. However, in the summer of
2007, an agreement was reached – aided greatly by the fact that the two recently inaugurated
heads of government of France and the UK, Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown, put their
political weight behind the initiative and made it a prime objective to jointly push the related
UN Security Council resolution.75 While Sarkozy had just won the French Presidential elec-
tions in May, Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair as British Prime Minister in June.76 We will
deal with the French case in more detail below, but suffice to say that both Sarkozy and Brown
did not single-handedly push Darfur onto the foreign policy agenda. They picked up where
their predecessors left, encountered a ready-made opportunity prepared by international orga-
nizations, and leveraged the popular understandings of the situation in Darfur among NGOs,
protesters, and a broader political public at the time. What this British episode illustrates is
a situation in which a humanitarian interventionist framing of the national interest vis-à-vis
Darfur had gained hegemony in public discourse, which lead to a rather harmonic discursive
relationship between governmental officials, party elites, opposition, journalists, protesters,
and other political actors. Within this context, they jointly protected the hegemonic standing
of this specific interpretation of the national interest and marginalized disagreement, drawing
on their discursive weight as well as the appeal of a highly resonant moralizing discourse.
In order to investigate the hegemonic standing of the humanitarian interventionism frame
and to identify potential contesters, I probed a wide range of British newspaper on how they
talked about the situation in Darfur from beginning of 2006 to end of 2007. Concretely, I
 122

investigated the frames and actors represented in Darfur-related articles from The Financial
Times, The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Economist, The Daily Mail, and The
Sun. This wide-range coverage of sources was necessary because, unlike in the previous two
episodes, the focus of the investigation was not a succession of specific discursive interven-
tions, but the systematic distribution of a specific frame. While not every analyzed article
directly called for a humanitarian intervention supported by military might, almost all of the
articles framed the problem in Darfur as a humanitarian issue in which civilians were suffering
under the brutal actions of the government, and external forces were needed to alleviate the
misery rather than to resolve the political situation. To understand this depiction of the situ-
ation as an act of political framing is not to deny the human suffering that the humanitarian
interventionist frame highlights, but to point out that the political causes of the situation might
not be treatable via external military forces. There were a selected few who elaborated on
this objection, adding that the UN might overstretch its capacities, that Western troops would
not achieve much, and that an intervention would interfere with the promising local politi-
cal dynamics that pointed towards a solution of the conflict.77 Among those who advocated
such and similar critiques were Alex De Waal and Julie Flint, who remain leading experts
on the conflicts to this day. Furthermore, two journalists of The Guardian, Jonathan Steele
and Howard Roger, pushed back against the consensus among their journalistic colleagues
in various opinion pieces. But also figures like Khalid Al-Mubarak, media counsellor at the
Sudanese embassy in London, tried to counter the hegemonic discourse in the British public.
Thus, there was a coalition of actors with varying motivations pushing for a political solution
to the civil war against the consensus of humanitarian interventionism. However, these discur-
sive interventions constitute less than three percent of the British newspaper articles written
about Darfur in 2006-2007. Moreover, they were marginalized not just in terms of presence,
but also through reaction: each of these comments was met with outrage in the form of harsh
reader’s letters and opinion pieces.
On the other hand, the position that immediate external intervention is necessary was sup-
ported throughout the majority of publications in various forms. Most consistently, there was
a steady bias to report on the humanitarian aspects of the crisis in Darfur rather than illus-
trating the complex political dynamics that lead to situation in the first place. Though not all
of the following actors would have supported such a humanitarian interventionist framing of
Darfur, their names and selected quotes were nevertheless used to support this position in the
newspaper reporting. One of the probably most idiosyncratic aspects of Darfur is that Hol-
lywood celebrities took over the role of political activists, with George Clooney and Steven
Spielberg being the most represented in the media discourses of this period.78 However, jour-
nalists far more often referred to reports and statements by UN and EU officials, which tended
to highlight both the humanitarian significance and the need for action by the international
community.79 Such statements were usually accompanied by similar quotes from representa-
tives of various NGOs like Amnesty International, Children UK, or Oxfam.80 Furthermore,
media discourses referred to former as well as foreign politicians,81 think tanks and so-called
123

Humanitarian Interventionism (UK 2007)

Proponent/Opponent Power Ratio

George
Clooney

Steven Humanitarian
Spielberg Interventionism
Hillary
Benn

UN
Officials

EU
Officials

Amnesty
International

Children
UK
Oxfam Frame
Academic Meaning
Researchers
Fixation

Alex Political
De Waal Solution
Julie
Flint Howard Jonathan
Roger Steele

Figure 5.5: Illustration of hegemony of the humanitarian interventionism frame throughout the year.
The marked actors are a non-exhaustive selection of important participants in the debate. The two-
dimensional spacing is approximative and interpretative.

experts,82 academic researchers,83 and actors directly involved in or affected by the conflict.84
What this illustrates is not only that there was a broad coalition of societal actors actively sup-
porting the humanitarian interventionism frame, thereby maintaining its hegemony in public
discourse. It also shows that the distinction between the international and the domestic of-
ten become blurred in concrete foreign policy and the national interest discourses. Once we
understand the national interest as varying in its meaning and comprising broadly held human-
itarian norms, actors from other countries and international organizations can very well have
an impact on domestic understandings of the national interest. This influence is enhanced if
their discursive interventions are represented in domestic media discourses.
What is remarkable from the perspective of the political communication literature is that
there is very little mention of the (British) government throughout the news reporting on Darfur
in the British media in 2006-2007. Though major government initiative like the joint spon-
soring of the UN Security Council resolution for UNAMID by Sarkozy and Brown were duly
 124

reported, there is no direct evidence that journalists were particularly dependent on the gov-
ernment to define what was in the British national interest according to public discourse. Of
course, government officials were not idle and did try to intervene in the debates and forward
their perspective. For example, Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for International Development,
wrote a letter to The Guardian replying to Jonathan Steele’s previous critique of British for-
eign policy towards Darfur.85 Also, Prime Minister Gordon Brown opened the charity concert
‘Live8’ with a video message expressing the governmental support of efforts to raise awareness
and money for the situation.86 However, neither of these interventions can be said to have had
a significant impact on the media framing of Darfur as they simply repeated a broadly shared
consensus and as they were not referred to in subsequent reporting. What received more at-
tention was Sarkozy’s and Brown’s joint statement published in The Times, but the reception
of this discursive intervention focused on the related policy development with regard to the
UNAMID mission rather than the arguments about Darfur that both Sarkozy and Brown tried
to contribute to public discourse.87 More often, media reports referencing the government did
so in order to either report or criticize recent initiatives.88 Thus, there is no evidence support-
ing the top-down narrative promoted by parts of the political communication literature, which
sees governmental officials as being in charge of foreign policy discourse. Rather, the analysis
of this British foreign policy episode illustrates how, in a moment of discursive hegemony, the
government joined those voices that were calling for a humanitarian intervention and ignored
those marginalized voices that were highlighting the political complexity of the situation. It
is not difficult to reconstruct a strategic political rationale for this behaviour, since the related
policy developments proved to be rather popular among both a broader public and more spe-
cific political elites. However, as Chapter 2 suggested, there are good reasons to also consider
the potential cognitive psychological impact media discourses have on governmental officials
through their constant exposure to the dominant humanitarian interventionist framing, and the
sociological impact since the latter was supported by many serious and well-regarded political
colleagues of governmental officials.89 That is, supporting the humanitarian interventionist
frame was likely not just due to a strategic electoral calculus, but also due to the shared under-
standing of the Darfur situation among a broadly defined governmental and non-governmental
political elite. Of course, as mentioned before, such a claim is methodologically much more
difficult to substantiate with empirical evidence and this analysis cannot do more than point
out the possibility of these mechanisms. Ultimately, their cogency relies upon the assumption
that policymakers are boundedly rational and subject to cognitive biases, as well as social be-
ings whose understanding of the world depends on their sociological environment. Likewise,
though, the same holds true for the electoral strategizing argument, which presupposes that
politicians are vote- or power-maximizing rational actors.
In terms of the hegemonic struggle model, the situation in the UK in 2007 shows a dif-
ferent dynamic than the previous episodes in the US and Germany. Rather than a movement
of a national interest frame from one place to another in the proposed two-dimensional space,
we see the stasis of a hegemonic situation that was maintained by a coalition of different do-
125

mestic and international political actors (see Figure 5.5). On the one hand, they re-iterated
the humanitarian interventionist frame in countless interventions throughout the analyzed pe-
riod, which maintained the frame’s resonance. On the other hand, they actively attacked the
counter-frames highlighting the political complexity of the situation and the problems with hu-
manitarian interventions. Though (some of) the proponents of the latter were in individually
discursively powerful positions as recognized experts on the case, they faced a broad coalition
of actors that drew discursive power from their positions in international organizations and
NGOs. Also, their critiques were quickly silenced by the use of moral outrage and the notion
that this outrage implies the necessity of external intervention rather than the inclusion of local
political actors. The latter framing proved to be more resonant with the British political pub-
lic. Also, their critiques were quickly silenced by the use of moral outrage and the notion that
such must be followed by quick external intervention rather than the inclusion of local political
actors, which proved to be more resonant with the British political public. Even if there is no
temporal variation in the relative positioning of the analyzed frames, the hegemonic struggle
model illustrates how the hegemony of a certain foreign policy perspective was maintained
and how counter-frames were marginalized by a coalition of different actors rather than by
either the government, the media, or the public.

France: October-November-December 2007

Unlike the foreign policy episodes of the US, Germany, and the UK, the French foreign policy
vis-à-vis Darfur in the autumn 2007 did not revolve around a singular policy question, but
rather was characterized by a plethora of policy initiatives and developments. Most of these,
however, can be summarized as a sustained engagement with the conflict and its international,
regional, and local stakeholders aimed at stabilization and mediation. As with the British case,
this engagement was founded on a broadly and publicly shared understanding that it was in the
French national interest to address the situation, though not everyone agreed on the why and
how. Most notably, the French discourse on Darfur contained a greater focus on the need for
a political solution than the previously discussed British public discourse. Moreover, the gov-
ernmental interest in Darfur during this period built upon a long-term pre-occupation with the
conflict that was already shared by the previous government led by Jacques Chirac. The latter,
for example, put Darfur on the top of the agenda at the 24th Africa-France summit in Cannes
in February 201490 and actively engaged with political activists from Urgence Darfour, which
is roughly the French equivalent to the US-American Save Darfur Coalition.91 Nevertheless,
when Nicolas Sarkozy was elected on 6 May 2007, the new government immediately made
Darfur one of its top foreign policy priorities,92 which reflects Sarkozy’s position on Darfur in
the electoral campaign running up to his victory.93 One of the first trips of new foreign min-
ister Bernard Kouchner was to Sudan and Chad94 and the French military offered airplanes
to aid humanitarian relief efforts.95 At a G8 meeting in early June, Sarkozy spontaneous an-
nounced that he wanted to organize an international meeting on Darfur in Paris a few weeks
 126

later.96 Despite the short notice, the meeting gathered representatives of China, the US, the
UK, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia, as well as Ban Ki-moon for the UN and Amr
Moussa for the Arab League.97 Finally, Sarkozy’s government was also instrumental in the
French-British efforts to initiate the UNAMID peacekeeping mission (described above),98 as
well as the EUFOR Tchad/RCA mission that was supposed to secure and stabilize the Western
Sudanese borders to Chad and the Central African Republic.99
An analysis of the debates about the French national interest that surrounded these de-
velopments largely resembled the discursive situation depicted in the British case. Though
French public discourse was more appreciative of the local and regional political dynamics,
and furthermore had an undertone that suggested an innate French responsibility for the stabil-
ity of the African continent, the consensus was that Darfur should be on the top of the French
foreign policy agenda. This was only contested at the margins of public discourse. Thus, in
order to advance the theoretical goals of this investigation rather than repeat logic of the British
case, the following analysis instead focuses on an issue that betrays a more curious political
dynamic: the infamous case of L’Arche de Zoé, which highlights a tension between the French
government’s interest to maintain a good relationship with Chad in order to ensure the success
of the recently launched EUFOR mission, and the demand of the French public that the French
culprits of the L’Arche de Zoé case be tried by a French court. Ultimately, Sarkozy managed
to manoeuvre the situation in a way that incorporated both into his understanding of what is
at stake for France, and enacted French foreign policy accordingly. In the course of doing so,
however, he put the success of the EUFOR mission at risk for the sake of saving six French
nationals from a harsh sentence by a Chadian court. Insofar as the latter would not figure
normally in academic treatments of the national interest, analyzing this episode is interesting
insofar as it illustrates what the floating nature of the national interest signifier can amount
to. Furthermore, from a framing theoretical perspective, the case illustrates also how initially
separate frames can merge into a bigger frame and thereby increase their joint resonance. In
discourse theoretical terms, the joining of these initially differential frames created a chain of
equivalence that contributed to the floating quality of the national interest signifier, and thus to
its potential to create political momentum and unity.
The details of the L’Arche de Zoé case are fascinating in themselves and would justify
a lengthier study of its own. Indeed, the affair has even inspired a film adaptation of what
happened in autumn of 2007, which was aptly called Les Chevaliers Blancs.100 The briefer
discussion below, however, focuses only on the dynamics of public discourse and is based on
a synthesis of reports by Le Monde,101 Le Figaro,102 and La Libération,103 as well as some
academic publications on the case (Bergquist, 2009; Leclic, 2009). On 28 April 2007, the
NGO L’Arche de Zoé announced its plan to ‘rescue’ 10,000 orphans that were displaced by
the conflict in Darfur by enabling them to apply for asylum in France with the help of French
host families. The French foreign ministry was aware of these plans and, over the next months,
issued several cautionary remarks about the initiative, doubting its legality. Yet, the leaders of
the NGO were not deterred and travelled to Chad in September after they had gathered the
127

support of a sufficient amount of French families willing to take care of displaced orphans.
There, they registered as a humanitarian NGO called Children Rescue, falsely claiming to
have the support of the UNHCR and the Chadian authorities to take care of child victims
of the conflict without disclosing their intent to fly them to France. The French authorities
grew wary of the NGOs activities and informed Chadian authorities. On 25 October 2007, the
latter stopped members of the NGO at the airport, shortly before they attempted to board 103
children onto a chartered airplane. By the end of October, the Chadian police had arrested
nine French nationals associated with the NGO, seven Spanish and a Belgian crew member
of the airplane, as well as two Chadians that assisted the NGO in its efforts to find ‘orphans.’
Amongst the French nationals were also three journalists. The charge was that the action
amounted to “pure and simple abduction,” as the Chadian President Idriss Déby put it. He
furthermore asked whether “it is to sell them, to kill them, and to take their organs?”104
Sarkozy, as well as Rama Yade, French Secretary of State at the Foreign Ministry, quickly
condemned the NGO’s activities as illegal, irresponsible, and unacceptable. This turned out
to be a rather appropriate reaction given that, upon further investigation, most of the children
that were supposed to be rescued to France were neither orphans nor refugees from Darfur.
Rather, they were taken under various pretences from mostly Chadian families. The arrested
representatives of L’Arche de Zoé claimed that they had not been aware of this and that they
had been duped by their local contacts. Not least due to fears about the Chadian approval of
the recently launched EUFOR mission, Sarkozy quickly travelled to Chad, spoke to Déby, and
negotiated the release of at least the French journalists. His Spanish counter-part José Luis
Rodrı́guez Zapatero did the same for the crew of the chartered airplane. They were successful,
but the remaining six French nationals were tried by Chadian authorities and, by the end of
December, convicted and sentenced to eight years of prison with hard labour and hefty repara-
tion payments to the families of the abducted children. However, based on an exchange treaty
between France and Chad, they were repatriated and a French court changed the sentence to
eight years of closed prison. In early February, however, President Déby raised the possibility
that he might pardon the convicted if France wished him to do so. This was a proposition that
was certainly not favourable to the Chadian public,105 which was outraged about what some
called the return of a ‘compassionate neocolonialism.’106 And yet, the pardon was issued
soon thereafter, on 31 March 2008, in what many considered an exchange of political favours
with the French President: the pardon of French nationals for French military support of the
Chadian government against a recent rebel insurgency. The members of L’Arche de Zoé were
liberated immediately, and a French re-trial of the case in 2013 concluded with much milder
sentences.
After the news about the arrests broke on 25 October 2007, the French public was out-
raged about the actions of the NGO and strongly condemned it as a blow to the reputation
of other humanitarian relief efforts. Throughout the affair, no relevant participant of public
discourse was prepared to defend the members of L’Arche de Zoé on the grounds that they
did not commit a crime. However, already a few days after the initial disapproval, voices
 128

emerged that either trivialized the NGO’s actions, doubted the professionalism of Chadian
courts, or raised fears that they would become victims of a political show trial. On the one
hand, friends and acquaintances of the accused portrayed them as morally righteous people
with good intentions and the victims of an unfortunate mistake.107 On the other hand, there
was an immediate fear in the French public that the Chadian legal procedures would not allow
for a fair and professional trial. The latter argument was joined by suggestive portrayals of
Chad as an uncivilized, lawless, and failed state that could not live up to French legal stan-
dards.108 Finally, there were some voices that attacked the African outrage about the incident
as politically opportunistic attempts to gain leverage against the French government.109 The
latter two arguments were sustained mostly by a coalition of journalists, political commenta-
tors, and members of the opposition, with François Holland of the Parti Socialiste (PS) being
most audible in parliamentary inquiries towards the government. However, the opposition was
preaching to the converted as Sarkozy, after he ensured freedom for the French journalists,
very quickly conceded that he would “go and get those left [in custody], no matter what they
did.”110 Thus, the French depiction of the case moved quickly from disapproval of the crimes
to downplaying them as trivial, and condemning African outrage about the case as politically
motivated aggression against Europeans. The consensus quickly became that French nationals
should be tried in French courts. This view was only reinforced by the Chadian sentence at the
end of December, which was perceived as too harsh. The French debate about the case con-
trasted starkly with the Chadian perspectives, which did indeed raise anti-colonial critiques,
but also gave more consideration to the victims of the crime rather than the good intentions
of the perpetrators. Individually, one might object that the framing of the perpetrators is not
linked to the notion of the national interest, and thus should not be of relevance for this thesis.
However, insofar as the different frames merged into the notion that the French government
should ensure a French trial for French nationals, they ultimately contributed to the creation
of a national interest frame as defined in this thesis.
From a theoretical perspective, this particular episode illustrates four dynamics that re-
inforce the arguments made throughout this thesis: frames are supported by a coalition of
governmental and non-governmental actors; the government is not a homogeneous entity, but
consists of individuals with diverging views; a discursive notion of power is more accurate
given that institutionally powerless individuals were able to influence the debate; and finally,
understandings of the national interest can be rather context-specific and tend to unify different
political arguments.
First, as Figure 5.6 illustrates, the initial disapproval framing of the L’Arche de Zoé case
was simultaneously and instantly supported by governmental officials as well as NGOs and
journalists. The notion that French nationals should be tried in French rather than African
courts, on the other hand, was initially absent, but quickly gained momentum through in-
terventions by friends of the accused, oppositional politicians, and Nicolas Sarkozy himself.
Though there is an innate tension between the two frames, the disapproval framing was com-
plemented rather than replaced by the French-courts frame. Yet, by the end of the debate,
129

L’Arche de Zoé Case (France 2007)

Proponent/Opponent Power Ratio

French Justice
For French (t1)
Rama
Yade
Nicolas
Sarkozy
Disapproval
Journalists
of Crimes
Other Nicolas Sarkozy
NGOs

Frame
But: Incompetent Journalists Meaning
Courts in Chad (t0) Fixation
But: Still Good
Parti Socialiste (PS)
Intentions (t0)
Friends of Accused
But: Débry as
Opportunist (t0)

Figure 5.6: Map of the temporal dynamics of the framing of the L’Arche de Zoé case in French
public discourse in 2007. The marked interventions and events are a non-exhaustive selection of
important moments in the debate. The two-dimensional spacing is approximative and interpretative.

the papers spend significantly more time trying to defend the (rights of the) representatives
of L’Arche de Zoé as French citizens. In line with what has been argued and demonstrated
throughout this second part of the thesis, both of these frames were supported by a coalition of
actors that contained representatives of the government, the media, and the general public. The
French case neither portrays a clear top-down or bottom-up narratives, but suggests a political
dynamic that is badly captured by the focus on the elite-media-public triad.
Second, it is interesting that the proponents of the two frames were composed of largely
different representatives of the government, the media, and NGOs. Most notably, Rama Yade
withdrew from the pubic discussion of the case when it turned towards the defence of L’Arche
de Zoé and away from the illegality and unacceptability of their actions. Considering that
she had been highly critical about the NGOs plans for months, it is likely that she was not
prepared to start defending it now, as did her governmental colleague, President Sarkozy.
Thus, focusing on the interaction between government, media, and public, we would miss that
 130

different members of these entities professed different views on the matter. The hegemonic
struggle model is more agnostic about this issue and thus more appropriate as an analytical
framework.
Third, confirming instances from the other episodes, not just governmental voices had an
impact on the framing of the situation, but also societal actors of different political standing
who were perceived to be credible and authoritative with regard to the interpretation of the
situation and French foreign policy priorities. Most notably, the observation that the friends of
the accused members of L’Arche de Zoé were able to intervene meaningfully in the discussion
illustrates that the hegemonic struggle model’s discursive notion power is more appropriate
than the focus on formal decision powers or proximity to such. It is clear that this specific
instance is rather idiosyncratic to the case at hand, but the ambition of the hegemonic struggle
model is to be exactly more flexible at accommodating such idiosyncrasies and hint towards
the need to further develop our understanding of why it is that some people become discur-
sively powerful participants in foreign policy debates.
Finally, the focus on the L’Arche de Zoé case in a thesis on the construction of the na-
tional interest might strike some readers as odd. It is true that the discussion about Chadian
courts and the fate of a few French individuals would not necessarily feature in a typical IR
treatise on the concept of the national interest. Yet, the point of conceiving the term as a float-
ing signifier is precisely to radically say: the national interest is what people make of it, and
practised foreign policy quite rarely deals with the notion in abstract, philosophical terms, but
has to address concrete situations. While a discussion of the French interest in launching and
maintaining the EUFOR mission would better fit an orthodox IR treatment of foreign policy,
it would miss the interesting fact that Sarkozy put this realpolitical issue at risk for the sake
of saving a few French nationals from a harsh but not obviously life-threatening sentence.
Another point relating to the notion of a floating signifier is that the L’Arche de Zoé debate
illustrates how notions of the national interest become more resonant and powerful the more
they are able to unify otherwise differentiated political positions. A priori, we are able to dis-
tinguish the notions that the accused had good intentions, that Chad lacked the experience and
infrastructure to conduct a professional trial, and that Idriss Déby was a political opportunist
exploiting an unfortunate situation. However, over the course of the debate, these arguments
all became part of the same calling that suggested the French national interest to be to repatri-
ate the accused and repeat the trial in a French court. Though there are more poignant cases
of this, the latter relates to Laclau’s notion of chains of equivalences, and how these reinforce
the political thrust of a floating signifier.

Implications and Limitations of the Qualitative Investigation

The goal of the second part of this thesis was to deepen our theoretical understanding of how
foreign policy debates evolve, and who is able to shape the understandings of the national
interest represented in media discourses. More specifically, it sought to strengthen the propo-
131

sition that media discourses constitute a sufficiently independent political phenomenon to be

taken seriously as a subject of IR scholarship. The first implication of the qualitative inves-
tigation is that the debates and models that are at the center of the political communication
literature on foreign policy debates are problematic because they focus our attention on a pre-
sumed political cleavage between the government, the media, and the public. The analysis has
highlighted that these categories are unhelpful for understanding the more complex political
dynamics at stake in national interest framing, because none of these entities is a homogeneous
actor with a coherent and single-headed position on foreign policy issues. Thus, there is a need
for an alternative analytical framework that can account for the case-specific variations in the
composition of actors and political coalitions that compete against each other in the framing of
foreign policy issues. The second contribution is the development of an alternative analytical
framework – the hegemonic struggle model – which attempts to remedy the aforementioned
problems by introducing the notion of discursive power and adapting a post-structuralist posi-
tion on the structure-agency debate.
The qualitative case study presented in the last two chapters was designed to improve our
theoretical understanding, rather than to test concrete hypotheses. As such, there are, of course,
limitations to the inference that can be drawn based on the presented empirical evidence. To
begin with, the episodes illustrating Western reactions to the civil war in Darfur might be a
rather extraordinary cases with regard to the participation of non-governmental actors in the
definition of the national interest. Thus, there is merit to further investigate as to whether the
focus on the elite-media-public triad entails similar problems in other cases. In addition, the
hegemonic struggle model is but an analytical proposition that was build upon the evidence of
this specific case as well as the post-structuralist perspective of this thesis. Whether this ana-
lytical framework illuminates the political dynamics of foreign policy debates in general has to
be subjected to further research. The four examples in which I examined the two-dimensional
space to understand discursive dynamics only covered a handful of potential situations, and ap-
plications to other cases should creatively embrace ways of using this tool that go beyond what
has been demonstrated in this thesis. Moreover, there is still room to improve our understand-
ing, conceptualization, and operationalization of the hegemonic struggle model’s discourse
theoretical approach to power, structure, agency.
132
Chapter 6

Conclusion

This thesis set out to understand why Western countries spend a significant amount of time and
resources on some foreign armed conflicts while ignoring others. More specifically, the goal
was to understand whether and how media discourses play a role in setting Western foreign
policy agendas towards these conflicts. With this focus, the thesis contributed theoretical argu-
ments and empirical evidence to the quantitative-causal IR literature on the drivers of Western
foreign policy with respect to foreign armed conflicts (e.g., Aubone, 2013; Choi, 2013; Choi
and James, 2014; Fortna, 2004; Fordham, 2008; Huth, 1998; Koga, 2011; Yoon, 1997), as
well as to the political communication literature on the role of media in foreign policy debates
(e.g., Bennett, 1990; Entman, 2003, 2004; Herman and Chomsky, 1988; Robinson, 2011). By
adopting discourse theoretical concepts from Laclau, Mouffe, and Slavoj Žižek, this thesis
explored to what extent this specific post-structuralist approach to discourse can help us to
provide answers to the aforementioned causal questions. Furthermore, by proposing a prob-
abilistic conception of causality that is compatible with the above discourse theoretical on-
tology, as well as an appropriation of quantitative-causal methods that is epistemologically
explicitly post-positivist, this thesis also explored a methodological position that adds to the
methodological pluralism in post-structuralist and critical constructivist scholarship in IR (see
also Banta, 2013; Bleiker, 2014, 2015; Guzzini, 2011, 2017; Kurki, 2008).
More specifically, by building upon a post-structuralist understanding of discourse and in-
sights from framing theory, I argued that we should not reduce the role of media discourses in
foreign policy to their impact on public opinion and thereby on the electoral calculus of politi-
cians. Rather, we should understand the larger political significance of media discourses in
their foundational role for the construction of a shared understanding of the national interest –
not just among average citizens, but also among governmental and non-governmental political
elites. As a result, the role of media discourses should not be juxtaposed to ‘objective’ national
interests – be they defined by the economy, geopolitics, security concerns, or more explicitly
normative humanitarian considerations. Rather, media discourses are an integral element of
and a key forum for the discursive construction of the national interest, which can include a
historically flexible variety of understandings of what the term means. This discursive con-

133
 134

struction, in turn, should be understood as political and (potentially) contested.

In this sense, foreign policy – and the foreign policy agenda in particular – is indeed a
‘game played for national interests,’ but not in the manner advanced by analytical perspectives
from IR that seek to define the national interest in material and/or objective terms. Rather than
seeing foreign policy as the enactment or maximization of an independent and pre-existing
national interest, this thesis understands the ‘game’ as the discursive competition among po-
litical actors and coalitions to own the signifier of the national interest and define it in their
specific ideological terms. The challenge facing those playing the game is to make those polit-
ical actors that ultimately determine the foreign policy agenda believe that your interpretation
is the true interpretation of the national interest. This game is played out in largely – though
not exclusively – public discourses, and finds a particularly relevant outlet in the form of elite
newspapers such as The New York Times, Le Monde, The Guardian, or Die Frankfurter All-
gemeine Zeitung. These elite media discourse are relevant because they are read on a regular
basis by governmental and non-governmental political elites, and thereby have an impact on
their shared understanding of the national interest due to the well-documented cognitive psy-
chology of framing effects.
After a critical review of the IR literature on the national interest, this thesis developed
these arguments through a conception of public discourse that builds upon the post-structuralist
scholarship of Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Slavoj Žižek, as well as upon evidence
from framing theoretical investigations in the field of cognitive psychology. Thereby, the
arguments presented here draw from and are intrinsically linked to the insights of IR schol-
arship rooted in cognitive psychology (e.g., Allison, 1971; Hafner-Burton et al., 2017; Janis,
1972; Jervis, 1976; Khong, 1992) as well as in the post-structuralist IR research tradition (e.g.
Campbell, 1992; Edkins, 1999; Epstein, 2018; Hansen, 2006; Wæver, 1993; Weldes, 1996).
However, despite using methods typically associated with positivist scholarship, and despite
focussing on a causal research question, this thesis analysis remained ontologically and epis-
temologically committed to the post-structuralist and explicitly post-positivist approach.
The thesis supports its theoretical arguments about the role of media discourses in for-
eign policymaking with a quantitative analysis of US-American, British, French, and German
foreign policy agendas towards 20 of the most intense foreign armed conflicts between 1998
and 2010. An examination of 42,000 newspaper articles from elite media outlets shows that
media discourses do not just report on foreign policy developments post facto, but also help
to bring them about by framing the foreign armed conflict as a threat to the national inter-
est. Moreover, the qualitative investigation into Western reactions to the civil war in Darfur
highlighted that these media discourses can be influenced by a variety of discursively power-
ful actors including governmental officials, but also journalists, academics, celebrities, NGOs,
international organizations, political activists and more. Rather than simply dictating the con-
tent of the national interest in public discourse, governmental officials compete with a range of
non-governmental elites that derive their power not from their institutional position, but from
the discursive credibility and authority of their interventions in foreign policy debates.
135

Beyond the formulation and empirical investigation of these arguments, this thesis gener-
ates four challenges to the fields of IR and political communication. The first concerns a mil-
itaristic bias in our understanding and study of foreign interventions. The second highlights
(yet again) the political nature of the national interest. The third concerns dominant modes
of studying foreign policy debates. And the fourth problematizes the customary relationship
between quantitative-causal methods and post-structuralist scholarship in IR.
First, this thesis clarified that military intervention is by far not the most common and
arguably not the most important Western response to foreign armed conflicts. While it is
important for scholars to understand when and why Western countries choose military means
in reacting to crises abroad, the focus on this subject also obfuscates the plethora of other
tools at the disposal of Western foreign policymakers. More importantly, there is a tendency
in political commentary on Western responses to conflicts that contain a humanitarian crisis
to equate the absence of a military response to the absence of an interest in addressing the
situation. This thesis has shown that, on the contrary, foreign policymakers often spend a
significant amount time and resources on attempting to resolve an armed conflict without even
considering the deployment of troops: they signal preferences to the international community
and send warnings to the conflict parties in official statements; they invite heads of states
and representatives of the conflict parties to discuss the situation; they organize international
meetings on the conflict and draft UN Security Council resolutions; they visit the conflict
country in order to assess the situation; they actively foster mediation between different parties;
they employ economic and political sanctions; they fund large amounts of humanitarian aid;
they cooperate with and support local military forces; and so on. It is easy and not uncommon
to dismiss these efforts as cheap talk or inconsequential as long as they are not backed up
by military might. Of course, there is no doubt that a military intervention is a much bigger
financial burden on a government than any of the above action. Yet, calling these measures
‘cheap’ is rather problematic given that even the ‘cheapest’ of the listed actions still costs
foreign policymakers valuable time and resources. Even the simplest of public statements has
to be drafted, discussed by the cabinet, coordinated with domestic and international political
allies, and considered carefully in its wording and potential implications. All of this requires
governmental officials to spend time and resources that they could allocate to a different policy
priority. Furthermore, the assumption that such actions are only effective if backed up by
military forces might be correct in some instances, but more often such objections reveal a
militaristic bias rather than a careful assessment of the possibilities and limitations imposed
by the conflict dynamics. In the case of Darfur, for example, this thesis has shown that plenty
of experts with a thorough understanding of the local political dynamics were against a military
intervention by Western forces because it would not have been an effective means to solve the
problem.
The challenge, then, to IR scholarship is that it should pay more attention to the broader
notion of a ‘foreign policy agenda’ when analysing Western countries’ policies towards armed
conflicts, rather than to the binary question of whether or not the West send troops or not. This
 136

approach would not only establish a more accurate empirical picture of the scale and nature of
Western responses, but also broaden our perspective on the normative desirability of certain
Western foreign policy tools. This thesis provides guidance on how to study the notion of
foreign policy agendas, including a flexible, feasible, and easily transferable methodology to
operationalize and measure how much time and resources policymakers spend on a foreign
armed conflict.”
Second, this thesis joins a range of foreign policy analysts, constructivists, and post-
structuralist scholars in their efforts to make us more sensitive to the varying and politically
charged meanings of the national interest (e.g., Adler, 1991; Finnemore, 1996; Hansen, 2006;
Kratochwil, 2011; Rosenau, 1980; Weldes, 1996, 1999a). Depending on how one was intro-
duced to the discipline of IR or foreign policy analysis, conceiving of the national interest
as discursively constructed rather than objectively defined might seem obvious. Yet, despite
decade-long efforts to substantiate this argument, essentialist conceptions of the national inter-
est remain dominant in rationalist approaches to IR and, crucially, they return time and again
in non-academic political discourse. This thesis argues that the continued presence of claims
to be able to define the national interest in objective terms is not a haphazard historical coin-
cidence. The term ‘national interest’ continues to resonate because it has a crucial political
function in foreign policy discourses: it is a floating signifier – a term without a priori ideo-
logical content that serves as a discursive means to unify and mobilize otherwise differentiated
political forces under the roof of ‘one nation.’ As such, discursively occupying the term is one
of the key goals motivating political actors to participate in foreign policy debates, and claim-
ing to possess the objective representation of the national interest is a most effective means to
dispel political opponents. In that sense, this thesis does not just emphasize the constructed
but also the political nature of the national interest. What is more, the thesis moves beyond
a theoretical critique of rationalist understandings of the national interest, and also presents
systematic and comparative empirical evidence for the analytical power of a constructivist
perspective.
The related challenge to IR scholarship, and quantitative-causal IR in particular, is to put
more emphasis on the domestic political contestation of the national interest – or the discursive
marginalization of such. Studying the national interest from a constructivist perspective should
not just entail an analysis of how different ideas shape the historically specific perception of
the national interest, but also how different political forces fight over the terms definition in
(public) discursive struggles within nation states. While this position is not new to most con-
structivist and particularly post-structuralist IR scholars, quantitative-causal IR scholarship
could benefit from integrating the related literature better into their conceptualization of ‘in-
terests’ in studies attempting to explain foreign policy behaviour.
Third, this thesis challenges those perspectives from the political communication literature
that see governmental officials as the ‘masters’ of foreign policy discourse. It is, of course,
true that governmental officials are in a privileged position to ultimately choose which kind
of understanding of the national interest they prioritize in their decisions. However, these
137

decisions are structurally embedded in and shaped by a public discourse which can be in-
fluenced by a much broader range of actors. This impact of ‘the public’ is due not just to
electoral punishments and rewards based on shifts in public opinion, but also to the role of
public discourse in shaping the understanding of the national interest shared by governmental
and non-governmental political elites. Moreover, this thesis problematizes the focus on the
question whether it is the government, the media, or the public that influences foreign policy
debates. As the qualitative analysis has demonstrated, it is not uncommon that governments
are internally divided, that media landscapes are ideologically fractured, and that publics do
not share a coherent position on foreign policy issues. It is thus problematic to a priori con-
ceive of any of these as homogeneous entities. Thus, this thesis is both a critique of the cynical
top-down narratives that see the government as ‘manipulating’ public perceptions of foreign
policy issues and a critique of the bottom-up narratives that see public opinion as driving for-
eign policymakers towards irrational decisions. Instead, we should appreciate the complexity
and dynamic nature of ideological struggles over foreign policy discourse. What defines these
dynamics is less whether the government or the public embraces a specific stance, but whether
and to what extent discursively powerful political actors intervene in these debates in favour
of or against specific interpretations. While these interventions are shaped by structural con-
ditions – in the post-structuralist discourse theoretical understanding of the term – we should
be attentive to the fluctuating and constantly dislocated nature of discursive structures, as well
as the ability of political actors to bring such dislocations about.
The challenge to the political communication scholarship dealing with foreign policy de-
bates is thus to transcend the focus on the elite-media-public triad and develop analytic ap-
proaches that incorporate discursive notions of power. As this thesis has suggested, there are
plenty of insights on the latter in discourse theoretical, sociological, and psychological schol-
arship, which could be used to further improve the conceptualization, operationalization, and
measurement of discursive power dynamics. Moreover, we should be wary of attempts to re-
duce the impact of the public to that of public opinion and further develop our understanding
of how public discourse has an impact on the political elite’s understanding of the national
interest in the first place.
Finally, this thesis provides an example of how post-structuralist understandings of inter-
national politics can be productively combined with quantitative-causal methods. However,
its goal in doing so is not to promote a positivist understanding of social scientific practice,
but rather to illustrate the methodological flexibility of basic and advanced quantitative tools.
Instead of seeking to make post-structuralism more positivist, the aim is to make quantitative-
causal scholarship more post-structuralist. Therefore, the final challenge this thesis puts to
the field of IR is that it should critically reconsider its methodological orthodoxy that portrays
quantitative scholarship as intrinsically linked to rationalist theories and a positivist position
on the philosophy of science. Rather, this thesis demonstrates that there is room to explore a
critical approach to quantitative methodology that engages productively with the epistemolog-
ical and ontological arguments and critiques put forward in the post-structuralist and critical
 138

constructivist literature. Beyond this demonstration, it suggests that we should further ex-
plore the methodological promises and limitations of such a critical quantitative methodology
in complementing qualitative approaches. In sum, this thesis advocates a decisively pluralist
approach to methodology and seeks to enlarge the methods toolkit at the disposal of critical
approaches to the study of international politics.
Notes

Chapter 1
1. As a catch-it-all explanation for foreign policy, the sentiment was brilliantly put by Sir Humphrey Appleby in
Yes, Minister. Season 2, Episode 5: The Devil You Know. Written by Whitmore, Peter, Antony Jay and Jonathan
Lynn. 1981. BBC.
2. For a recent example, see Mearsheimer, John. Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions
That Provoked Putin. In Foreign Policy. September/October Issue 2014.
3. Barack Obama, President of the United States. 10 September 2013. Remarks by the President in Address to the
Nation on Syria.
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/09/10/remarks-president-address-
nation-syria [Accessed on 11 July 2018]
4. Analogous to Prunier 2005, see, e.g., McCain, John. As quoted in Smith, Roff. 7 May 2013. Word in the News:
Red Line. In National Geographic News.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130507-red-line-obama-syria-mccain-
chemical-weapons/ [Accessed on 27 February 2019]
5. See, e.g., Hamid 2015 or Tisdall, Simon. 10 February 2018. The epic failure of our age: how the west let down
Syria. In The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/10/epic-failure-of-our-age-how-west-failed-
syria [Accessed on 27 February 2019]
6. See the Strasbourg Agreement of 27 August 1675 between France and the Holy Roman Empire, which forbade
the use of poisoned bullets.
7. See Barker 2017; also Goldberg, Jeffrey. The Obama Doctrine. The U.S. president talks through his hardest
decision about Americas role in the world. In The Atlantic. April 2016 Issue.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/ [Accessed
on 16 July 2018]
8. This paragraph’s account of the episode is largely based on Goldberg, Jeffrey. The Obama Doctrine. The U.S.
president talks through his hardest decision about Americas role in the world. In The Atlantic. April 2016 Issue.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/ [Accessed
on 16 July 2018]
9. ibid.
10. Ball, James. 20 August 2012. Obama issues Syria a red line warning on chemical weapons. In The Washington
Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-issues-syria-red-line-warning-
on-chemical-weapons/2012/08/20/ba5d26ec-eaf7-11e1-b811-09036bcb182b_story.html?noredirect=
on&utm_term=.c961b1f9081d [Accessed on 27 August 2018]
11. See polling results in Jones, Jeffrey. 31 May 2013. Americans Oppose U.S. Military Involvement in Syria:
Public does not expect diplomatic efforts to succeed in ending civil war.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/162854/americans-oppose-military-involvement-syria.aspx [Ac-
cessed on 27 February 2019]

139
 140

Also: The New York Times. 10 September 2013. American Views on Intervention in Syria.
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/10/world/middleeast/american-
views-on-intervention-in-syria.html [Accessed on 27 February 2019]
12. Haberman, Maggie, Glenn Thrush and Peter Baker. 9 December 2017. Inside Trump’s Hour-by-Hour Battle
for Self-Preservation. In The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/09/us/politics/donald-trump-president.html [Accessed on
25 May 2018]
13. This relates to the post-structuralist distinction between politics and the political, which others have elaborated
on in detail, and is not the focus of investigation in my thesis (see, e.g. Edkins, 1999; Marchart, 2007; Mouffe,
2005a,b).

Chapter 2
1. Note that, for classical realists like Hans Morgenthau, a post-survival and insatiable will to power was the core
concern of realist theorizing (e.g., Morgenthau, 1946, 193). One can find nuances in this regard in all realist
theories, and it is worth critically engaging with realism in more detail in other contexts (e.g., Guzzini, 2004).
Since, for the sake of this thesis, the analytical problems with an essentialist conception of the national interest
are the same – irrespective of whether it is defined as the securing of physical survival or the will to power –
I focus here on the most fundamental aspect of the national interest common to all the system-level theories
covered in this section.
2. See, e.g., Johnson, Jenna. 7 December 2015. Trump calls for ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering
the United States.’ In The Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/12/07/donald-trump-calls-for-
total-and-complete-shutdown-of-muslims-entering-the-united-states/?utm_term=.d0f8e67ada4e
[Accessed on 29 July 2018]
3. See, e.g., The Washington Post. 14 December 2015. Republicans embrace Trumps ban on Muslims while most
others reject it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/americans-reject-trumps-muslim-ban-but-republicans-
embrace-it/2015/12/14/24f1c1a0-a285-11e5-9c4e-be37f66848bb_story.html?utm_term=.14fd70467b61
[Accessed on 29 July 2018]
4. See, e.g., Lind, Dara. 26 June 2018 . How Trumps travel ban became normal. In Vox.
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/27/17284798/travel-ban-scotus-countries-protests [Accessed on
30July 2018]
5. Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel. 31 August 2015. Sommerpressekonferenz von Bundeskanzlerin Merkel.
https://www.bundesregierung.de/Content/DE/Mitschrift/Pressekonferenzen/2015/08/2015-08-
31-pk-merkel.html [Accessed on 30 July 2018]
Ich sage ganz einfach: Deutschland ist ein starkes Land. Das Motiv, mit dem wir an diese
Dinge herangehen, muss sein: Wir haben so vieles geschafft -- wir schaffen das! Wir
schaffen das, und dort, wo uns etwas im Wege steht, muss es überwunden werden, muss daran
gearbeitet werden. Der Bund wird alles in seiner Macht Stehende tun - zusammen mit den
Ländern, zusammen mit den Kommunen -, um genau das durchzusetzen.
6. See, e.g., Giugliano, Ferdinando. 24 September 2015. A short-term burden, refugees may yet boost sagging EU
economy. In The Financial Times.
https://www.ft.com/content/6d9a2214-5df0-11e5-a28b-50226830d644 [Accessed on 9 January 2016]
7. Der Spiegel. 21 September 2015. Merkel’s Refugee Policy Divides Europe.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/refugee-policy-of-chancellor-merkel-divides-
europe-a-1053603.html [Accessed on 30 July 2018]
8. See, e.g., Tierney. Dominic. 4 December 2012. Syrian Civilians Better Hope They Die in the Right Way. In
The Atlantic.
141

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/12/syrian-civilians-better-hope-
they-die-in-the-right-way/265848/ [Accessed 11 March 2019]
9. See, e.g., Bandow, Doug. 9 April 2018. The President Is Right: It Is Time to Leave Syria. In The National
Interest.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/the-president-right-it-time-leave-syria-
25285 [Accessed 11 March 2019]
10. New York Times. 9 December 2017. Inside Trump’s Hour-by-Hour Battle for Self-Preservation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/09/us/politics/donald-trump-president.html [Accessed on
25 May 2018]
11. See, e.g., Bryant, Nick. 18 July 2012. E-diplomacy: Foreign policy in 140 characters. In BBC.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18856295 [Accessed on 27 March 2019]

Chapter 3
1. In order to facilitate a quantitative analysis of the newspaper articles, I used standard techniques of natural lan-
guage processing to distil those parts of the texts that are helpful for machine learning based text classification.
First, I analysed the grammatical role of each word (part-of-speech tagging). Based on this, I kept only verbs,
nouns, and adjectives, removing the rest along with so-called stopwords. The remaining corpus was stemmed
and reassembled to be used in a bag of words approach to text classification.
2. The F1 statistics in the appendix (Table A.1) should be interpreted with caution. While a revision of the training
sample is necessary given the poor performance of the topic models for some frames, the purpose of using topic
models was not to give an unequivocal binary assessment of whether a given article contains the frame. Rather,
it was to use the probabilistic prediction of the topic models to assess the extent to which the article contains a
frame. In this sense, F1 statistics are not the best approach to evaluate the performance of the topic models in this
context because they rely on a fairly arbitrary cut-off point of the probabilistic predictions to achieve the binary
categorisation of articles that F1 values are based upon. I nevertheless provide them in the appendix because
this is standard practice in machine learning based text categorisation research. – For the sake of this thesis, I
would suggest to focus the discussion of model performance on the features and their weights represented Table
3.2.

Chapter 4
1. See, e.g., Chomsky, Noam. 8 July 2008. It’s the Oil Stupid! In The Khaleej Times.
https://chomsky.info/20080708/ [Accessed on 6 March 2018]
2. See, e.g., Goodman, Walter. 8 December 1992. Critics notebook; Re Somalia: How much did TV shape policy?
in The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/08/washington/critic-s-notebook-re-somalia-how-much-
did-tv-shape-policy.html [Accessed on 30 August 2018]

Chapter 5
1. United States Congress. 13 October 2006. H.R. 3127 (109th): Darfur Peace and Accountability Act of 2006.
2. United Nations. 2 April 2004. Press Briefing on Humanitarian Crisis in Darfur, Sudan.
https://www.un.org/press/en/2004/egelandbrf.DOC.htm [Accessed on 6 March 2018]
3. Mamdani, Mahmood. 8 March 2007. “The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency.” London
Review of Books 29(5):5-8.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n05/mahmood-mamdani/the-politics-of-naming-genocide-civil-
war-insurgency [Accessed on 7 March 2018]
 142

4. See, e.g., Reeves, Eric. 20 August 2007. How many dead in Darfur? In The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/aug/20/howmanydeadindarfur [Accessed on 6
March 2018]
5. See, e.g., Security Council Report. Chronology of Events: Sudan (Darfur).
http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/chronology/sudan-darfur.php [Accessed on 5 March 2018]
United States Department of State. 9 September 2004. Documenting Atrocities in Darfur.
https://2001-2009.state.gov/g/drl/rls/36028.htm [Accessed on 6 April 2018]
6. See, e.g., Kristof, Nicholas D. 16 June 2004. Dare We Call It Genocide? In The New York Times.
7. United Nations Security Council. 31 March 2005. Resolution 1593.
http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1593(2005) [Accessed on 6 March
2018]
8. United Nations. 25 January 2005. Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to the United
Nations Secretary-General.
http://www.un.org/news/dh/sudan/com_inq_darfur.pdf [Accessed on 7 March 2018]
9. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 2018. Population Statistics.
https://popstats.unhcr.org [Accessed on 6 March 2018]
10. House of Congress 22 July 2004. Resolution 467: Declaring genocide in Darfur, Sudan. 108th Congress
(2003-2004).
https://www.congress.gov/bill/108th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/467 [Accessed
on 26 March 2018]
11. Colin L. Powell. 9 September 2004. Testimony Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: The Crisis in
Darfur.
https://2001-2009.state.gov/secretary/former/powell/remarks/36042.htm [Accessed on 26 March
2018]
12. US President George W. Bush. 9 September 2004. President’s Statement on Violence in Darfur, Sudan.
https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/09/20040909-10.html [Ac-
cessed on 26 March 2018]
13. United Nations General Assembly. 9 December 1948. Resolution 260: Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CrimeOfGenocide.aspx [Accessed on 26
March 2018]
14. United Nations Security Council. 24 March 2005. Resolution 1590.
15. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. 2018. Statistics.
http://stats.oecd.org [Accessed on 2 March 2018]
16. See, e.g., Agence France Presse. 30 July 2004. Darfour: Mobilisation de moyens militaires franais au Tchad
(Elysée).
17. See, e.g., Agence France Presse. 1 February 2005. La France favorable à une saisine de la CPI par le Conseil
de sécurité.
18. See, e.g., Reuters. 25 January 2008. Kouchner assure que l’Eufor ne soutiendra pas le président Déby.
19. Reuters. 14 February 2007. France/Afrique - Le sommet de Cannes se penche sur le Darfour.
20. Agence France Presse. 4 May 2007. JO-2008 – Divergence sur la menace de boycottage des Jeux de Pékin
(ENCADRE).
21. Reuters. 6 June 2007. France/Martinon – L’idée d’une confrence sur le Darfour avance.
22. United Nations Security Council. 31 March 2005. Resolution 1593.
23. Agence France Presse. 14 June 2005. Britain boosts support for Darfur force, names special envoy.
24. Reuters. 3 December 2004. Bundestag beschließt Bundeswehr-Einsatz im Sudan.
25. House of Congress 24 June 2004. Resolution 467: Declaring genocide in Darfur, Sudan. 108th Congress
(2003-2004).
143

https://www.congress.gov/bill/108th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/467 [Accessed
on 26 March 2018]
26. Reeves, Eric. 25 February 2004. Unnoticed Genocide. In The Washington Post.
27. Nicholas D. Kristof. 27 March 2004. Will We Say ‘Never Again’ Yet Again? In The New York Times
28. See http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/ [Accessed 5 April 2018]
29. Nicholas D. Kristof. 24 March 2004. Ethnic Cleansing, Again. In The New York Times.
Nicholas D. Kristof. 31 March 2004. Starved For Safety. In The New York Times.
Nicholas D. Kristof. 14 April 2004. Cruel Choices. In The New York Times.
Nicholas D. Kristof. 25 April 2004. Attacked, Expelled, Ignored. In The New York Times.
Nicholas D. Kristof. 29 May 2004. Bush points the way. In The New York Times.
Nicholas D. Kristof. 16 June 2004. Dare we call it genocide? In The New York Times.
Nicholas D. Kristof. 19 June 2004. Sudan’s final solution. In The New York Times.
Nicholas D. Kristof. 23 June 2004. Magboula’s Brush with Genocide. In The New York Times.
30. The Washington Post. 13 May 2004. Idle on Darfur.
31. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. 4 April 2004. Action Plan to Prevent Genocide. Press Release
SG/SM/9197 AFR/893 HR/CN/1077.
http://www.preventgenocide.org/prevent/UNdocs/KofiAnnansActionPlantoPreventGenocide7Apr2004.
htm [ Accessed on 5 April 2018]
32. Susan E. Rice and Gayle E. Smith. 30 May 2004. The Darfur Catastrophe. In The Washington Post.
33. Samantha Powers. 6 April 2004. Remember Rwanda, but Take Action in Sudan. In The New York Times.
34. Jerry Fowler. 6 June 2004. In Sudan, Staring Genocide in the Face. In The Washington Post.
35. Courtney C. Radsch. 1 August 2004. Holocaust Museum Calls Crisis in Sudan ’Genocide Emergency.’ In The
New York Times.
36. The Washington Post. 7 June 2004. 300,000 Deaths Foretold.
The Washington Post. 20 June 2004. As Genocide Unfolds.
37. The New York Times. 7 April 2004. Peril in Sudan.
The New York Times. 18 June 2004. Time for Action on Sudan.
38. Mike DeWine and John McCain. 23 June 2004. It’s Happening Again. In The Washington Post.
39. E.g., Charles Snyder, Acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of African Affairs. 8 April 2004. Press Conference
in Nairobi.
https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/af/rls/rm/31503.htm [Accessed on 6 April 2018]
United States Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. 27 April 2004. Sudan: Ethnic Cleansing in
Darfur.
https://2001-2009.state.gov/g/drl/rls/31822.htm [Accessed on 6 April 2018]
Andrew Natsios, Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. 27 April 2004.
Special Briefing on the United States Policy in Sudan.
https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/af/rls/rm/31856.htm [Accessed on 6 April 2018]
Charles Snyder, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. 6 May 2004. Ethnic Cleansing in
Darfur: A New Front Opens in Sudan’s Bloody War. Testimony Before the House International Relations
Committee.
https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/af/rls/rm/32316 [Accessed on 6 April 2018]
40. E.g., Pierre-Richard Prosper, Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues. 24 June 2004. Confronging, End-
ing, and Preventing War Crimes in Africe. Testimony before the House International Relations Committee,
Subcommittee on Africa.
https://2001-2009.state.gov/s/wci/us_releases/rm/33934.htm [Accessed on 6 April 2018]
Colin L. Powell, United States Secretary of State. As quoted by Marc Lacey. 12 June 2004. White House
Reconsiders Its Policy on Crisis in Sudan. In The New York Times.
Colin L. Powell, United States Secretary of State. 30 June 2004. Interview on National Public Radio with
Michele Norris.
 144

https://2001-2009.stae.gov/secretary/former/powell/remarks/34053.htm [Accessed on 6 April

2018]
Colin L. Powell, United States Secretary of State. 30 June 2004. Interview on CNN with Jeff Koinage.
https://2001-2009.state.gov/secretary/former/powell/remarks/34061.htm [Accessed on 6 April
2018]
41. Priscilla Cheunga, Associated Press. 23 July 2004. U.S. Congress declares atrocities in Darfur ’genocide’;
Powell, Annan urge Sudanese government to disarm Arab militias.
42. United States Department of State. 9 September 2004. Documenting Atrocities in Darfur.
https://2001-2009.state.gov/g/drl/rls/36028.htm [Accessed on 6 April 2018]
43. Colin L. Powell. 9 September 2004. Testimony Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: The Crisis in
Darfur.
https://2001-2009.state.gov/secretary/former/powell/remarks/36042.htm [Accessed on 26 March
2018]
US President George W. Bush. 9 September 2004. President’s Statement on Violence in Darfur, Sudan.
https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/09/20040909-10.html [Ac-
cessed on 26 March 2018]
Mamdani (2009, 24) claims that on ”June 30, President George W. Bush affirmed that ’the violence in Darfur
region is clearly genocide.’ In less than a month, on July 22, 2004, the House and Senate passed their respec-
tive resolutions unanimously.” However, the President’s statement was actually made a year later in June 2005,
which changes the time-line of the events. See George W. Bush, President of the United States. 30 June 2005.
President Discusses G8 Summit, Progress in Africa. Press conference at Meyer Auditorium at Freer Gallery.
https://2001-2009.state.gov/e/eeb/rls/rm/2005/48842.htm [Accessed on 6 April 2018]
44. African Union. 28 May 2004. Agreement with the Sudanese Parties on the Modalities for the Establishment
of the Ceasefire Commission and the Deployment of Observers in the Darfur.
https://peacemaker.un.org/sudan-darfur-ceasefire-commission2004 [Accessed on 11 April 2018]
45. United Nations Security Council. 31 July 2007. Resolution 1769.
46. Reuters. 3 December 2004. Bundestag beschließt Bundeswehr-Einsatz im Sudan.
47. Deutscher Bundestag. 17 November 2004. Drucksache 15/4227. Antrag der Bundesregierung. Einsatz
bewaffneter deutscher Streitkräfoe zur Unterstützung der Überwachungsmission AMIS der Afrikanischen Union
(AU) in Darfur/Sudan auf Grundlage der Resolutionen 1556(2004) und 1564(2004) des Sicherheitsrates der
Vereinten Nationen vom 30. Juli 2004 und 18. September 2004.
http://dipbt.bundestag.de/doc/btd/15/042/1504227.pdf [Accessed on 11 April 2018]
48. See Deutscher Bundestag. 18 March 2005. Gesetz üder die parlamentarische Beteiligung bei der Entscheidung
üder den Einsatz bewaffneter Streitkräfoe im Ausland (Parlamentsbeteiligungsgesetz).
http://www.buzer.de/gesetz/441/index.htm [Accessed on 11 April 2018]
49. Deutscher Bundestag. 29 November 2006. Drucksache 16/3652. Antrag der Bundesregierung. Fortsetzung des
Einsatzes bewaffneter deutscher Streitkräfte zur Unterstützung der Überwachungsmission AMIS der Afrikanis-
chen Union (AU) in der Region Darfur/Sudan auf Grundlage der Resolutionen 1556(2004) und 1564(2004) des
Sicherheitsrates der Vereinten Nationen vom 30. Juli 2004 und 18. September 2004.
http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/16/036/1603652.pdf [Accessed on 11 April 2018]
50. Reuters. 15 December 2006. Bundestag verlängert Einsatz der Bundeswehr in Darfur.
51. Franz Josef Jung, Verteidigungsminister. As quoted in Die Welt am Sonntag. 9 July 2006. WSBE-HP - Kongo
- Vor dem Start der Bundeswehr-Mission weist Verteidigungsminister Franz Josef Jung (CDU) Vorwürfe zurück,
die Ausrüstung der Truppe sei mangelhaft - Haben unsere Soldaten alles, was sie für ihren Einsatz im Kongo
brauchen, Herr Jung?
Frage: Wer im Kongo ja sagt, kann in Darfur nicht nein sagen. Dort ist die Lage nicht
nur instabil, dort finden nach UN-Ansicht ethnische Säuberungen statt. Wird Deutschland
im Rahmen der Nato mehr Soldaten dort hinschicken? Wäre ein solcher Einsatz im deutschen
Interesse?
145

Antwort: Eine Unterstützung der Friedensbemühungen ist im deutschen Interesse. Wir haben
bereits ein bestehendes Bundestagsmandat zur logistischen Unterstützung der Afrikanischen
Union in der Darfur-Region bis zu 200 Soldaten. Bereits mehrfach haben wir hier mit Lufttransporten
Hilfe geleistet. Darüber hinaus stellen wir das größte Kontingent an Militärbeobachtern
im Rahmen der UN-Mission im Südsudan. Derzeit beraten wir im Rahmen der UN, der Nato
und der EU gemeinsam mit der Afrikanischen Union und der sudanesischen Regierung, wie
die Friedensbemühungen in Zukunft weiter gestaltet werden können. Wir werden hier nicht
abseits stehen.
52. Reuters. 31 May 2006. INTERVIEW-Erler dämpft Erwartung von Bundeswehr-Einsatz im Sudan.
53. Reuters. 11 July 206. Merkel skeptisch gegenüber weiterem Sudan-Einsatz der Bundeswehr.
54. Angela Merkel, Bundeskanzlerin. As quoted in Deutscher Bundestag. 6 September 2006. Plenarprotokoll
16/46. Stenografischer Bericht. 46. Sitzung.
Wir haben uns für ein Engagement im Kongo entschieden und wir leisten beispielsweise in
Darfur Logistikhilfe. Ich sehe aber im Augenblick keine Möglichkeit, dass wir neben unserem
Engagement im Kongo ein zusätzliches Engagement in Darfur übernehmen.
(Beifall bei Abgeordneten der CDU/CSU und der SPD)
Wir müssen schauen, was die Welt tut. Daraus ergibt sich die Notwendigkeit der europäischen
Kooperation. Es zeigt sich: Wenn wir unseren Interessen dienen wollen, dann können wir
alleine sie nicht bedienen; das schaffen wir nicht. Deshalb ist es gut und richtig, in
Sicherheitspartnerschaften, in Gemeinschaften, in der Europäischen Union und in der NATO,
gemeinsam Aktivitäten zu ergreifen, Verantwortung zu übernehmen und sich Verantwortung
zu teilen. Anders werden wir unsere Interessen nicht mehr durchsetzen können. Auch das
ist eine Lehre aus den Bedrohungen und Gefahren der heu- tigen Welt.
55. Alexander Szandar. 30 March 2006. Bundeswehr: Allergrößte Zweifel. In Der Spiegel 12/2006.
56. Kerstin Müller, Bundestagsabgeordnete, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen. As quoted in Deutscher Bundestag. 6
September 2006. Plenarprotokoll 16/46. Stenografischer Bericht. 46. Sitzung.
In Darfur im Sudan geht der schleichende Völkermord vor den Augen der Weltöffentlichkeit
weiter, aber es findet dazu weder eine Debatte in der deutschen Öffentlichkeit statt,
noch bereitet die Bundesregierung dazu eine Diskussion vor. Wir haben doch bei der Kongodebatte
gesehen, wie fahrlässig und kurzsichtig das ist.
[...]
Darfur gehört ganz oben auf die politische Tagesordnung, auch während der deutschen Ratspräsidentschaft.
[...]
Frieden und Sicherheit in Afrika entsprechen unseren unmittelbaren Sicherheitsinteressen.
Tun wir endlich etwas dafür!
57. Johannes Kahrs, Bundestagsabgeordneter, SPD. As quoted in Deutscher Bundestag. 6 September 2006. Ple-
narprotokoll 16/46. Stenografischer Bericht. 46. Sitzung.
Ich glaube -- so sinnstiftend der jeweilige Einsatz der Bundeswehr in all diesen Regionen
auch immer sein mag --, man muss sich genau überlegen, was der Bundeswehr noch zugemutet
werden kann und was wir finanzieren können. Deswegen glaube ich, dass die Feststellung
Gerhard Schröders immer noch gilt: Wer irgendwann irgendwo hineingeht, muss auch wissen,
wie er wieder herauskommt. -- Das wird meiner Meinung nach nicht immer berücksichtigt.
58. Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 17 November 2006. Deutsches Engagement in Darfur? Struck und
Merkel schließen Bundeswehreinsatz nicht aus.
59. Franz Josef Jung, Verteidigungsminister. As quoted in Reuters. 28 November 2006. Jung offen für Bundeswehr-
Einsatz im Sudan.
"Wenn es eine Gesamtoperation gibt, dann werden wir uns, denke ich, einer solchen Anfrage
auch nicht verweigern." Zum Umfang einer deutschen Beteiligung an dem Einsatz äußerte
sich der Minister nicht. Zum Zeitplan sagte er: "Es gibt die Perspektive, dass dies
 146

bis Ende des Jahres klar sein soll." Er rechne mit Zustimmung des Bundestags: "Wenn sich
die Situation so stellt, werden wir auch dafür eine Mehrheit bekommen."
60. Reuters. 30 September 2006. Struck schließt weiteren Bundeswehr-Einsatz in Darfur nicht aus.
61. Reuters. 25 November 2006. Wieczorek-Zeul offen für Bundeswher-Beteiligung an Sudan-Truppe.
62. Reuters. 31 October 2006. Müller (Grüne) - Plangrößen fü Auslandseinsätze erhöhen.
63. Jan Friedmann. 1 December 2006. Bundeswehr-Missionen - Weltpolizei wider Willen. In Spiegel Online.
64. Reuters. 29 November 2006. Fokus 1-Kritik an Jungs Äußerung zu Sudan-Einsatz wächst.
65. Reuters. 30 November 2006. Bundesregierung gibt Jung Rückendeckung im Sudan-Streit.
66. E.g., Reuters. 23 April 2006. WDHLG-Magazin - USA wollen deutsche Soldaten im Sudan.
Spiegel Online. 24 March 2005. Uno verabschiedet Mandat fr Friedenstruppe.
Reuters. 18 April 2005. Struck fü Einsatz von Bundeswehr in Darfur bei UN-Auftrag.
Der Spiegel 30/2005. 25 July 2005. Auslandseinzats: Ab nach Darfur.
Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. 26 March 2006. “Ich würde noch mehr Soldaten in den Kongo
schicken.” Uschi Eid, einst Schröders Afrika-Beauftrage, über den Bundeswehreinsatz in Kinshasa sowie über
Chaos, Hoffnung und die Union.
Alexander Szandar. 30 March 2006. Bundeswehr: Allergrößte Zweifel. In Der Spiegel 12/2006.
Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 8 April 2006. Sudan-Beobachtermission verlängert.
Der Spiegel 17/2006. 24 April 2006. Bundeswehr: Einsatz in Afrika.
67. E.g., Dominic Johnson. 28 June 2006. Friedensprozess für Darfur platzt. In taz, die tageszeitung.
John Prendergast. 17 July 2006. Die zweite Phase der Vertreibung. In taz, die tageszeitung.
Dominic Johnson. 9 August 2006. Darfur Krieg erreicht neue Qualität. In taz, die tageszeitung.
Dominic Johnson. 5 September 2006. Sudans Regime sagt der Weltgemeinschaft in Darfur den Kampf an -
Unverhohlene Dreistigkeit. in taz, die tageszeitung.
Michael Braun. 29 September 2006. Kommentar: Statt Ursachen werden Folgen bekämpft. In taz, die
tageszeitung.
Josef Reich. 5 October 2006. Niemand schärfer als wir! In taz, die tageszeitung.
Dominic Johnson. 5 October 2006. ”Alles läuft auf ein zweites Ruanda hinaus.” In taz, die tageszeitung.
Bettina Gaus. 6 October 2006. Mit den Schurken verhandeln! In taz, die tageszeitung.
Armin Osmanovic. 17 October 2006. Unterlassene Hilfeleistung. In taz, die tageszeitung.
Dominic Johnson. 17 November 2006. Darfur als regionaler Krisenherd. In taz, die tageszeitung.
Dominic Johnson. 27 November 2006. Bundeswehr nach Darfur? In taz, die tageszeitung.
Armin Osmanovic. 1 December 2006. Die Pflicht zur Intervention. In taz, die tageszeitung.
68. E.g., Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 8 April 2006. Sudan-Beobachtermission verlängert.
Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 12 July 2006. Wo kein Wille ist.
Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 2 October 2006. Struck: Kein Nein zu einem Darfur-Einsatz.
Die Süddeutsche Zeitung. 13 November 2006. Struck will Bundeswehr in Darfur.
Peter Blechschmidt. 14 November 2006. Merkel muss weiter nein sagen; Deutsche Kampftruppen im Süden
Afghanistans würden Bundeswehr und Öffentlichkeit überfordern. In Die Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 17 November 2006. Deutsches Engagement in Darfur? Struck und Merkel
schließen Bundeswehreinsatz nicht aus.
Die Süddeutsche Zeitung. 29 November 2006. Jungs Blankocheck.
Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 29 November 2006. Kritik an Jung wegen Bereitschaft zu Darfur-Einsatz.
Homburger: Militärangebotspolitik / Unterstützung der Grünen.
Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 30 November 2006. Jung schließt deutschen Einsatz in Darfur nicht aus.
Harscher Widerspruch der Unionsfraktion / Kauder: nicht aktzeptable.
Peter Blechschmidt. 1 December 2006. Das falsche Wort zur falschen Zeit; Bodentruppen nach Darfur? Einmal
mehr sorgt Verteidigungsminister Jung für Verwirrung. In Die Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Jens Schneider and Peter Blechschmidt. 1 December 2006. Darfur-Einsatz wird nicht verstärkt; Bundesregierung
will auch unter UN-Mandat nicht mehr soldaten entsenden. In Die Süddeutsche Zeitung.
147

Stephan Löwenstein. 1 December 2006. Von Kongo in den Sudan. Die andauernde Debatte über Militäreinsätze
in Afrika. In Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Die Süddeutsche Zeitung. 1 December 2006. Bundeswehr hilft bereits im Sudan.
Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 3 December 2006. “Sudan-Einsatz nicht ausweiten.” CSU-Landesgruppenchef
Ramsauer über die Bundeswehr in Afrika und überforderte Deutsche.
69. Peter Struck, Verteigidungsminister. As quoted in Deutscher Bundestag. 11 March 2004. Plenarprotokoll
15/97. Stenografischer Bericht. 97. Sitzung.
Die Sicherheitslage hat sich entscheidend verändert. Deutschland wird absehbar nicht
mehr durch konventionelle Streitkräfte bedroht. Unsere Sicherheit wird nicht nur, aber
auch am hindukusch verteidigt, wenn sich dort Bedrohungen für unser Land wie im Fall international
organisierter Terroristen formieren. Im Übrigen wird unsere Sicherheit -- um auf den
Kollegen Schmidt einzugehen -- natürlich auch in Hindelang verteidigt. Ich kann allerdings
gegenwärtig dort beim besten Willen keine aktuelle Bedrohung erkennen.
(Heiterkeit und Beifall bei der SPD und dem BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN)
70. Reuters. 18 April 2005. Struck für Einsatz von Bundeswehr in Darfur bei UN-Auftrag.
71. See, e.g., Thilo Thielke. 7 December 2006. Darfur-Einsatz - Kapitulation vor den blutrünstigen Banden. In
Spiegel Online.
72. Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 17 November 2006. Deutsches Engagement in Darfur? Struck und
Merkel schließen Bundeswehreinsatz nicht aus.
Zuvor hatte Frau Merkel mit Blick auf Afrika gesagt, angesichts der Flüchtlingsströme
dürfe man "nichts unterlassen, zu versuchen, die Probleme vor Ort zu lösen". Sie fügte
an: "Ich glaube, wir tun gut daran, das Engagement in Afrika nicht China zu überlassen,
sondern auch hier Flagge zu zeigen." [...] Es gehe nicht nur um "karitative Argumente",
sondern "wieder um handfeste Interessen der Europäer in bezug auf Afrika".
73. Franz Josef Jung, Verteidigungsminister. As quoted in Reuters. 28 November 2006. Jung offen für Bundeswehr-
Einsatz im Sudan.
"Wenn sich die Situation so stellt, werden wir auch dafür eine Mehrheit bekommen."
74. United Nations Security Council. 31 July 2007. Resolution 1769.
75. The Sudan Tribune. 20 July 2007. Britain, France to push for swift UN resolution on Darfur.
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?page=imprimable&id_article=22942 [Accessed on 5 Septem-
ber 2018]
76. Reuters. 27 June 2007. Brown pledges change as British prime minister.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-brown-idUSL2690878320070627?src=062707_0919_
TOPSTORY_a_new_era [Accessed on 6 September 2018]
77. E.g., De Waal, Alex. 29 September 2006. We could have had peace in Darfur for another 100m Dollars: The
conflict in Sudan can be brought to an end, but we need to tone downt he rhetoric and focus on politics and
practicalities. In The Guardian.
Steele, Jonathan. 6 October 2006. Bush and Blair are deceiving the desperate people of Darfur: Britain and the
US are not going to send troops to Sudan. They should stop grandstanding and back the African Union force.
In The Guardian.
Howard, Roger. 16 May 2007. Where anti-Arab prejudice and oil make the difference: The contrast in western
attitudes to Darfur and Congo shows how illiberal our concept of intervention really is. In The Guardian.
Flint, Julie. 31 July 2007. All this moral posturing won’t help Darfur. In The Independent.
al-Mubarak, Khalid. 7 August 2007. Response Sudan is genuine in its efforts for peace in Darfur: The Sudanese
government is not criminal, it is working towards a settlement. In The Guardian.
Steele, Jonathan. 10 August 2007. Comment and Debate: Unseen by western hysteria, Darfur edges closer to
peace: The tribal leaders’ talks to end Sudan’s crisis are being driven by internal politics, no the intervention of
the west. In The Guardian.
Hume, Mick. 18 September 2007. Sorry, it’s not our job to save Africa from itself. In The Times.
 148

78. E.g., Hari, Johann. 11 May 2006. This peace won’t stop genocide in Darfur. In The Independent.
Randerson, James. 15 September 2006. International: Clooney warns UN of Darfur genocide: Actor warns of
first genocide of 21st century: Latest estimates say up to 255,000 may have died. In The Guardian.
Steele, Jonathan. 19 September 2006. Sorry George Clooney, but the last thing Darfur needs is western troops:
The rebels, not Khartoum, scuppered this year’s peace deal - the solution has to be an expanded African Union
force.
Glaister, Dan. 19 May 2007. Hollywood stars use power of celebrity to keep the US talking about Darfur:
Genocide in Sudan: Cannes premiere is latest event to be used to draw attention to African crisis. In The
Guardian.
Gumbel, Andrew. 28 July 2007. Spielberg may quit Beijing Olympics role over Darfur. In The Independent.
79. E.g., MacAskill, Ewen. 27 January 2006. UN prepares to send peace-keeping force to Darfur: African mission
‘has failed to curb violence’: Annan calls for large force with mandate to intervene. In The Guardian.
Dombey, Daniel and Andrew England. 9 March 2006. Renewed push for UN deployment in crisis-hit Darfur.
In The Financial Times.
Pepper, Daniel. 11 March 2006. Home is so dangerous that war-torn region is a refuge. In The Times.
Dinmore, Guy, Andrew England and Mark Turner. 6 April 2006. US opposes British list for Sudan war crime
sanctions. In The Financial Times.
Penketh, Anne. 21 April 2006. As the genocide in Darfur goes on, chaos and killing spread to Sudan’s neigh-
bours. In The Independent.
80. E.g., Selva, Meera. 21 January 2006. Bankrupt peacekeeping mission leaves Darfur civilians exposed. In The
Independent.
Crilly, Rob. 5 September 2006. Darfur faces fresh wave of killings. In The Times.
Vallely, Paul. 16 September 2006. Waiting for the slaughter. In The Independent.
Parker, George. 2 October 2006. Sudan may be open to stronger Darfur mission. In The Financial Times.
Macintyre, Ben. 26 December 2006. Grown men in ties sit and quarrel as the women and children are dy-
ing;Factbox;Darfur;Christmas appeal. In The Times.
Bloomfield, Steve. 17 February 2007. Please send UN troops, say desperate refugees. In The Independent.
81. E.g., Dinmore, Guy, Andrew England and Mark Turner. 6 April 2006. US opposes British list for Sudan war
crime sanctions. In The Financial Times.
Dombey, Daniel, andAndrew England. 28 April 2006. African Union tells Darfur foes to end fighting. In The
Financial Times.
Lantos, Tom. 26 September 2006. We must mobilise pressure and fear to save Darfur. In The Financial Times.
Parker, George. 2 October 2006. Sudan may be open to stronger Darfur mission. In The Financial Times.
Madeleine, Albright, Lloyd Axworthy, Ismail Cem, Erik Derycke, Lamberto Dini, Gareth Evans, Joschka Fis-
cher, Bronislaw Geremek, Rosario Green, Niels Helveg Petersen, Ana Palacio, Surin Pitsuwan, Lydie Polfer,
Jozias Van Aartsen and Hubert Vedrine. 18 December 2006. Sanctions would force a change of policy in Sudan:
Darfur a proposal form 15 former foreign ministers. In The Financial Times.
Schmid, Fidelius. 5 June 2007. France airs plan to protect Darfur refugees. In The Financial Times.
Thornhill, John. 21 July 2007. Sarkozy and Brown unite on Darfur. In The Financial Times.
82. E.g.,England, Andrew. 21 January 2006. African leaders face credibility test at Khartoum summit. Andrew
England assesses whether the African Union, which has won credibility for leading peacekeeping efforts in
Sudan, can meet new challenged. In The Financial Times.
Moorcraft, Paul. 6 April 2006. A replay of Iraq beckons in Darfur if we send in troops: Western intervention in
Sudan would play into the jihadists’ hands, uniting all factions in a war against outsiders. In The Guardian.
Penketh, Anne. 21 April 2006. As the genocide in Darfur goes on, chaos and killing spread to Sudan’s neigh-
bours. In The Independent.
Soares, Claire, and Daniel Howden. 3 May 2006. Darfur crisis puts Sudan top of ‘failed states’ list. In The
Independent.
83. E.g., Randerson, James. 15 September 2006. Darfur conflict death toll could be 255,000, say researchers. In
149

The Guardian.
Guha-Sapir, Debarati. 18 December 2006. Two things we must do now if we are serious about Darfur. In The
Financial Times.
Doyle, Leonard. 19 July 2007. Underground lake may ease Darfur crisis. In The Independent.
84. E..g, Pepper, Daniel. 11 March 2006. Home is so dangerous that war-torn region is a refuge. In The Times.
Hari, Johann. 11 May 2006. This peace won’t stop genocide in Darfur. In The Independent.
England, Andrew. 7 July 2006. Darfur peace deal hangs in balance. Renewed violence threatens to wreck a
deal aimed at ending the misery of 2m refugees, reports Andrew England. In The Financial Times.
Vallely, Paul. 16 September 2006. Waiting for the slaughter. In The Independent.
Lewis, Paul. 18 September 2006. Little support for refugees on streets of London. In The Guardian.
Hari, Johann. 18 September 2006. Aid with these strings is close to murder. In The Independent.
Bloomfield, Steve. 17 February 2007. Please send UN troops, say desperate refugees. In The Independent.
85. Steele, Jonathan. 30 September 2006. News: Sudan crisis In Darfur’s refugee camps, survivors tell of attacks
by rebel groups that used to protect them: It was meant to bring peace. Instead, British-brokered deal has
rekindled war. In The Guardian.
Benn, Hilary. 4 October 2006. Reply Letters and emails: Relief for the people of Darfur. In The Guardian.
86. The Guardian. 22 October 2007. Muslim Live8 brings home Darfur crisis.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/oct/22/religion.musicnews [Accessed on 7 September 2018]
87. Brown, Gordon, and Nicolas Sarkozy. 31 August 2007. We are pushing and pushing to save the Darfuris. In
The Times.
88. E.g., Borger, Julian. 28 March 2007. Sudan: Blair’s no-fly zone plan likely to be grounded despite growing
crisis: Death toll continues to grow but hopes of relieving Darfur tragedy diminished by intervention in Iraq. In
The Guardian.
Dombey, Daniel, and Mark Turner. 19 April 2007. US and Britain to step up pressure on Sudan. In The
Financial Times.
Webster, Philip. 1 June 2007. Blair tells his critics to ‘get real’ as he hints at intervention in Darfur;Poliitcs. In
The Times.
Thornhill, John. 21 July 2007. Sarkozy and Brown unite on Darfur. In The Financial Times.
89. E.g., MacAskill, Ewen. 27 January 2006. UN prepares to send peace-keeping force to Darfur: African mission
‘has failed to curb violence’: Annan calls for large force with mandate to intervene. In The Guardian.
Dombey, Daniel and Andrew England. 9 March 2006. Renewed push for UN deployment in crisis-hit Darfur.
In The Financial Times.
Madeleine, Albright, Lloyd Axworthy, Ismail Cem, Erik Derycke, Lamberto Dini, Gareth Evans, Joschka Fis-
cher, Bronislaw Geremek, Rosario Green, Niels Helveg Petersen, Ana Palacio, Surin Pitsuwan, Lydie Polfer,
Jozias Van Aartsen and Hubert Vedrine. 18 December 2006. Sanctions would force a change of policy in Sudan:
Darfur a proposal form 15 former foreign ministers. In The Financial Times.
Guterres, Antonio. 21 December 2006. Our tenuous lifeline is under threat. In The Independent.
90. Reuters. 14 February 2007. France/Afrique – Le sommet de Cannes se penche sur le Darfour.
91. E.g., Reuters. 21 March 2007. Darfour: sans accord politique une intervention armée serait un échec [Douste-
Blazy].
92. See, e.g., Reuters. 19 May 2007. RESUME DE L’ACTUALITE A 16H00 GMT [19/05].
93. Reuters. 21 March 2007. Darfour: Sarkozy pour des sanctions unilatérales de la France s’il est élu.
94. Reuters. 9 June 2007. Bernard Kouchner au Tchad samedi et dimanche.
Sudan Tribune. 11 June 2007. French FM seeks to boost Frances role in solving Darfur crisis.
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article22327 [Accessed on 11 September 2018]
95. Reuters. 15 June 2007. Tchad – Des Transall français à la disposition des humanitaires.
96. Sudan Tribune. 7 June 2007. France to host Darfur meeting on June 25.
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article22270 [Accessed on 11 September 2018]
97. Ironically, the meeting did not include representatives of the AU, which was still leading the peacekeeping
 150

mission at the time and ergo a key stakeholder of the conflict.

Reuters. 19 June 2007. Les grandes puissances réunies lundi à Paris sure le Darfour.
Bernard, Philippe. 25 June 2007. Darfour: Paris souhaite un nouvel élan diplomatique. In Le Monde.
98. Reuters. 12 July 2007. Présentation d’un projet de résolution sur la force ONU-UA au Darfour.
99. Reuters. 13 September 2007. Darfour: la France assure la ’pré-planification’ d’un déploiement de l’UE.
100. Lafosse, Joachim. 20 January 2016. Les Chevaliers Blancs. Versus Production, Les Films du Worso, France
3 Cinéma.
101. Le Monde. 2 December 2012. Arche de Zoé: retour sur un fiasco humanitaire.
https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2012/12/02/arche-de-zoe-retour-sur-un-fiasco-
humanitaire_1798665_3224.html [Accessed on 12 September 2018]
102. Le Figaro. 5 November 2007. L’affaire de l’Arche de Zoé.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2007/11/05/01003-20071105ARTFIG00128-chronologie-
le-naufrage-de-larche-de-zoe-.php [Accessed on 12 September 2018]
103. La Libération. 30 October 2007. Arche de Zoé: Questions sur un fiasco.
http://www.liberation.fr/evenement/2007/10/30/arche-de-zoe-questions-sur-un-fiasco_105052
[Accessed on 12 September 2018]
104. Déby, Idriss, President of Chad. As quoted in Le Monde. 2 December 2012.
Arche de Zoé: retour sur un fiasco humanitaire.
https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2012/12/02/arche-de-zoe-retour-sur-un-fiasco-
humanitaire_1798665_3224.html [Accessed on 12 September 2018]
[...] un enlèvement pur et simple [...] Est-ce que c’est pour les vendre ou les tuer
et enlever leurs organe?
105. Belleret, Robert. 9 November 2007. TCHAD OPINION PUBLIQUE; L’affaire de l’Arche de Zoé ravive le
sentiment antifrançais au Tchad. In Le Monde.
106. Mamère, Noël. 6 November 2007. As quoted in Wikipedia.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Arche_de_Zoe [Accessed on 12 September 2018]
[...] néocolonialisme compassionnel [...]
107. E.g., Samson, Michel. 1 November 2007. Arche de Zoé: le village de Castellane défend son docteur, qui
s’est “retrouvé dans cetter galère. In Le Monde.
Eudes, Yves. 6 November 2007. Joie à Villacoublay, manifestation de soutien aux déenus de N’Djamena à la
Bastille. In Le Monde.
Vincent, Elise. 22 December 2007. Les proches des détenus entre stress, galères et défense de l’ “innocence.”
In Le Monde.
Bernard, Philippe. 23 December 2007. TCHAD; Arche de Zoé: Breteau affirme avoir été trompé. In Le Monde.
Eudes, Yves. 28 December 2007. Stupeur et désarroi chez les familles des condamnés. In Le Monde.
108. See, e.g., Solé, Robert. 31 October 2017. Billet; L’Arche de Zoé. In Le Monde.
Eudes, Yves. 7 November 2007. Marc Garmirian raconte sa détention au Tchad avec les humanitaires arrêtés.
In Le Monde.
Le Monde. 14 Novembre 2007. Soutenons l’indépendance de la justice tchadienne.
Bernard, Philippe. 27 December 2007. Le procès de L’Arche de Zoé est l’occasion pour les magistrats tchadiens
de relancer un système judiciaire en panne. Entre 2004 et septembre 2007, aucune affaire criminelle n’a été
jugée; Au Tchad, scènes d’une justice ordinaire. In Le Monde.
Bordenave, Yves. 15 January 2008. JUSTICE APRÈS LEUR CONDAMNATION AU TCHAD À HUIT ANS
DE TRAVAUX FORCÉS’ Les peines des membres de L’Arche de Zoé transposéesen droit français. In Le
Monde.
109. E.g., Rémy, Jean-Philippe. 2 November 2007. Entre crise tchadienne et guerre au Darfour, l’affaire de
L’Arche de Zoé conforte Idriss Déby. In Le Monde.
Belleret, Robert. 6 November 2007. L’Arche de Zoé: Nicolas Sarkozy a ramené les journalistes français et les
hôtesses espagnoles du Tchad. In Le Monde.
151

110. Sarkozy, Nicolas. French President. As quoted in Le Monde. 8 November 2007. Polémique franco-
tchadienne autour de L’Arche de Zoé.
J’irai chercher ceux qui restent, quoi qu’ils aient fait
See also, Eudes, Yves. 31 October 2007. TCHAD Les membres de l’association humanitaire risquent les
travaux forcés pour enlv̀ement d’enfants; Arche de Zoé: seize Européens inculpés au Tchad. In Le Monde.
Nougayrède, Natalie, Robert Belleret, Christophe Jacubyszyn, Patrick Roger and Sylvia Zappi. 2 November
2007. ARCHE DE ZOÉ; Tchad: Paris veut néocier le sort des Français. In Le Monde.
Le Monde. 7 November 2007. L’Arche de Zoé: divergence entre Paris et N’Djamena.
Belleret, Robert. 8 November 2007. FRANCE-TCHAD DIPLOMATIE; Arche de Zoé: M. Sarkozy provoque
un tollé au Tchad. In Le Monde.
Bernard, Philippe. 18 December 2007. TCHAD-FRANCE “TENTATIVE D’ENLÈVEMENT D’ENFANTS”;
Les six Français de L’Arche de Zoé seront jugés à N’Djamena à partir du 21 décembre. In Le Monde.
Bernard, Philippe. 28 December 2007. Paris négocie le sort des condamneés du Tchad. In Le Monde.
152
Bibliography

Adler, Emanuel. 1991. Cognitive Evolution: A Dynamic Approach for the Study of Inter-
national Relations and Their Progress. In Progress in Postwar International Relations.
Columbia University Press pp. 43–88.
Adler, Emanuel. 1997. “Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics.” Euro-
pean Journal of International Relations 3(3):319–363.
Adler, Emanuel. 2019. World Ordering: A Social Theory of Cognitive Evolution. Cambridge
University Press.
Adler, Emanuel and Vincent Pouliot. 2011. “International Practices.” International Theory
3(1):1–36.
Adler-Nissen, Rebecca. 2013. Bourdieu in International Relations: Rethinking Key Concepts
in IR. Routledge.
Alesina, Alberto and David Dollar. 2000. “Who Gives Foreign Aid to Whom and Why?”
Journal of Economic Growth 5(1):33–63.
Allison, Graham T. 1971. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. Little,
Brown and Company.
Almond, Gabriel A. 1950. The American People and Foreign Policy. Harcourt, Brace and
Company.
Althusser, Louis. 1970. “Idéologie et Appareils Idéologiques d’État (Notes Pour Une
Recherche).” La Pensée 151.
Anievas, Alex and Kerem Nisancioglu. 2015. How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical
Origins of Capitalism. Pluto Press.
Aradau, Claudia and Jef Huysmans. 2014. “Critical Methods in International Relations: The
Politics of Techniques, Devices and Acts.” European Journal of International Relations
20(3):596–619.
Aradau, Claudia, Jef Huysmans, Andrew Neal and Nadine Voelkner. 2014. Critical Security
Methods: New Frameworks for Analysis. Routledge.
Aubone, Amber. 2013. “Explaining US Unilateral Military Intervention in Civil Conflicts: A
Review of the Literature.” International Politics 50(2):278–302.
Bailey, Thomas Andrew. 1948. The Man In The Street, The Impact of American Public Opinion
on Foreign Policy. Macmillan.
Bakshy, Eytan, Solomon Messing and Lada A. Adamic. 2015. “Exposure to Ideologically

153
 154

Diverse News and Opinion on Facebook.” Science 348(6239):1130–1132.

Banta, Benjamin. 2013. “Analysing Discourse as a Causal Mechanism.” European Journal of
International Relations 19(2):379–402.
Barker, Greg. 2017. “The Final Year (Movie).”.
Barnett, Michael N. and Martha Finnemore. 1999. “The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of
International Organizations.” International Organization 53(4):699–732.
Barnett, Michael and Raymond Duvall. 2005. “Power in International Politics.” International
organization 59(01):39–75.
Baum, Matthew A. and Philip B.K. Potter. 2008. “The Relationships Between Mass Media,
Public Opinion, and Foreign Policy: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis.” Annual Review of
Political Science 11:39–65.
Baumgartner, Frank R. and Bryan D. Jones. 1993. Agendas and Instability in American Poli-
tics. University of Chicago Press.
Baumgartner, Frank R., Christoffer Green-Pedersen and Bryan D. Jones. 2006. “Comparative
Studies of Policy Agendas.” Journal of European Public Policy 13(7):959–974.
Baumgartner, Frank R., Suzanne L. De Boef and Amber E. Boydstun. 2008. The Decline of
the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence. Cambridge University Press.
Beach, Derek and Rasmus Brun Pedersen. 2012. Process Tracing Methods: Foundations and
Guidelines. University of Michigan Press.
Beach, Derek and Rasmus Brun Pedersen. 2016. Causal Case Study Methods: Foundations
and Guidelines for Comparing, Matching, and Tracing. University of Michigan Press.
Beck, Nathaniel and Jonathan N. Katz. 1996. “Nuisance vs. Substance: Specifying and Esti-
mating Time-Series-Cross-Section Models.” Political Analysis 6(1):1–36.
Bennett, Andrew and Jeffrey T. Checkel. 2014. Process Tracing: From Metaphor to Analytic
Tool. Cambridge University Press.
Bennett, W. Lance. 1988. News: The Politics of Illusion. Longman.
Bennett, W. Lance. 1990. “Toward a Theory of Press-State Relations in the United States.”
Journal of Communication 40(2):103–127.
Bennett, W. Lance. 1994. Taken by Storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign
Policy in the Gulf War. University of Chicago Press.
Berenskoetter, Felix and Michael J. Williams. 2007. Power in World Politics. Routledge.
Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise
in the Sociology of Knowledge. Penguin Books.
Bergquist, Kathleen Ja Sook. 2009. “Operation Babylift or Babyabduction? Implications
of the Hague Convention on the Humanitarian Evacutation and ’rescue’ of Children.”
International Social Work 52(5):621–633.
Berinsky, Adam J. 2007. “Assuming the Costs of War: Events, Elites, and American Public
Support for Military Conflict.” The Journal of Politics 69(4):975–997.
Black, David R. and Paul D. Williams, eds. 2010. The International Politics of Mass Atrocities:
The Case of Darfur. Routledge.
155

Bleiker, Roland. 2014. Visual Assemblages: From Causality to Conditions of Possibility. In

Reassembling International Theory: Assemblage Thinking and International Relations,
ed. Michele Acuto and Simon Curtis. Palgrave pp. 74–81.
Bleiker, Roland. 2015. “Pluralist Methods for Visual Global Politics.” Millennium 43(3):872–
890.
Blumer, Herbert. 1948. “Public Opinion and Public Opinion Polling.” American Sociological
Review 13(5):542–549.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1973. “L’opinion Publique n’existe Pas.” Les Temps Modernes
29(318):1292–1309.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1979. La Distinction: Critique Sociale Du Jugement. Minuit.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1980. Le Sens Pratique. Les Éditions de Minuit.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Harvard University Press.
Boyd, Robert and Peter J. Richerson. 2001. Norms and Bounded Rationality. In Bounded
Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox, ed. Gerd Gigerenzer and Reinhard Selten. MIT Press
pp. 13–36.
Burke, Anthony. 2008. Postmodernism. In The Oxford Handbook of International Relations,
ed. Christian Reus-Smit and Duncan Snidal. Oxford University Press pp. 359–377.
Campbell, David. 1992. Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of
Identity. University of Minnesota Press.
Campbell, David. 2013. Post-Structuralism. In International Relations Theories: Discipline
and Diversity, ed. Tim Dunne, Milja Kurki and Steve Smith. 3rd ed. Oxford University
Press pp. 223–246.
Carlsnaes, Walter. 2002. Foreign Policy. In Handbook of International Relations, ed. Walter
Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse-Kappen, Thomas Risse and Beth A. Simmons. Sage pp. 331–
349.
Carver, Ronald. 1978. “The Case against Statistical Significance Testing.” Harvard Educa-
tional Review 48(3):378–399.
Checkel, Jeffrey T. 1998. “The Constructive Turn in International Relations Theory.” World
Politics 50(2):324–348.
Choi, Seung-Whan. 2013. “What Determines US Humanitarian Intervention?” Conflict Man-
agement and Peace Science 30(2):121–139.
Choi, Seung-Whan and Patrick James. 2014. “Why Does the United States Intervene Abroad?
Democracy, Human Rights Violations, and Terrorism.” Journal of Conflict Resolution
60(5):899–926.
Chong, Dennis and James N. Druckman. 2007a. “Framing Theory.” Annual Review of Political
Science 10:103–126.
Chong, Dennis and James N. Druckman. 2007b. “A Theory of Framing and Opinion Forma-
tion in Competitive Elite Environments.” Journal of Communication 57(1):99–118.
Christiansen, Thomas and Christine Neuhold. 2013. “Informal Politics in the EU.” Journal of
Common Market Studies 51(6):1196–1206.
 156

Clare, Joe. 2010. “Ideological Fractionalization and the International Conflict Behavior of
Parliamentary Democracies.” International Studies Quarterly 54(4):965–987.
Colleoni, Elanor, Alessandro Rozza and Adam Arvidsson. 2014. “Echo Chamber or Public
Sphere? Predicting Political Orientation and Measuring Political Homophily in Twitter
Using Big Data.” Journal of Communication 64(2):317–332.
Crawford, Gordon. 2015. EU Human Rights and Democracy Promotion in Africa: Normative
Power or Realist Interests? In The European Union in Africa. Manchester University
Press.
Croicu, Mihai and Ralph Sundberg. 2017. UCDP GED Codebook Version 17.1. Department
of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University.
De Franco, Chiara. 2012. Media Power and the Transformation of War. Palgrave Macmillan.
De Mesquita, Bruce Bueno and George W. Downs. 2006. “Intervention and Democracy.”
International Organization 60(3):627–649.
De Waal, Alex. 2007a. “Reflections on the Difficulties of Defining Darfur’s Crisis as Geno-
cide.” Harvard Human Rights Journal 20:25–33.
De Waal, Alex. 2007b. War in Darfur and the Search for Peace. Harvard University Press.
Degomme, Olivier and Debarati Guha-Sapir. 2010. “Patterns of Mortality Rates in Darfur
Conflict.” The Lancet 375:294–300.
Del Biondo, Karen. 2015. “Norms or Interests? Explaining Instrumental Variation in EU
Democracy Promotion in Africa.” Journal of Common Market Studies 53(2):237–254.
Dell’Orto, Giovanna. 2013. American Journalism and International Relations: Foreign Cor-
respondence from the Early Republic to the Digital Era. Cambridge University Press.
Der Derian, James. 1987. On Diplomacy a Genealogy of Western Estrangement. Blackwell.
Der Derian, James. 1989. International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World
Politics. Free Press.
Der Derian, James. 2013. “From War 2.0 to Quantum War: The Superpositionality of Global
Violence.” Australian Journal of International Affairs 67(5):570–585.
Derrida, Jacques. 1990. Limited Inc. Collection La Philosophie En Effet Galilée.
Doty, Roxanne Lynn. 1993. “Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A Post-Positivist Anal-
ysis of US Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines.” International Studies Quarterly
37(3):297–320.
Doty, Roxanne Lynn. 1997. “Aporia: A Critical Exploration of the Agent-Structure Prob-
lematique in International Relations Theory.” European Journal of International Rela-
tions 3(3):365–392.
Doty, Roxanne Lynn. 2000. “Desire All the Way Down.” Review of International Studies
26(1):137–139.
Druckman, James N. 2001. “On the Limits of Framing Effects: Who Can Frame?” Journal of
Politics 63(4):1041–1066.
Druckman, James N. 2004. “Political Preference Formation: Competition, Deliberation, and
the (Ir-)Relevance of Framing Effects.” American Political Science Review 98(4):671–
157

686.
Edkins, Jenny. 1999. Poststructuralism and International Relations: Bringing the Political
Back In. Lynne Rienner.
Edwards, George C. and B. Dan Wood. 1999. “Who Influences Whom? The President,
Congress, and the Media.” American Political Science Review 93(2):327–344.
Entman, Robert M. 1993. “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal
of Communication 43(4):51–58.
Entman, Robert M. 2003. “Cascading Activation: Contesting the White House’s Frame after
9/11.” Political Communication 20(4):415–432.
Entman, Robert M. 2004. Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S.
Foreign Policy. University of Chicago Press.
Epstein, Charlotte. 2018. “The Productive Force of the Negative and the Desire for Recogni-
tion: Lessons from Hegel and Lacan.” Review of International Studies 44(5):805–828.
Everts, Philip P. and Pierangelo Isernia, eds. 2001. Public Opinion and the International Use
of Force. Routledge.
Everts, Philip and Pierangelo Isernia. 2005. “The War in Iraq.” Public Opinion Quarterly
69(2):264–323.
Feist, Samuel. 2001. Facing down the Global Village: The Media Impact. In The Global
Century, ed. Ellen L. Frost and Richard L. Kugler. National Defense University Press
pp. 709–725.
Ferree, Myra Marx. 2002. Shaping Abortion Discourse: Democracy and the Public Sphere in
Germany and the United States. Cambridge University Press.
Ferree, Myra Marx. 2003. “Resonance and Radicalism: Feminist Framing in the Abortion
Debates of the United States and Germany.” American Journal of Sociology 109(2):304–
344.
Fierke, Karin M. 2013. Constructivism. In International Relations Theories: Discipline and
Diversity, ed. Tim Dunne, Milja Kurki and Steve Smith. 3rd ed. Oxford University Press
pp. 187–204.
Finnemore, Martha. 1996. National Interests in International Society. Cornell University
Press.
Finnemore, Martha and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. “International Norm Dynamics and Political
Change.” International Organization 52(4):887–917.
Flint, Julie and Alex De Waal. 2008. Darfur: A New History of a Long War. Zed Books Ltd.
Fordham, Benjamin O. 2008. “Power or Plenty? Economic Interests, Security Concerns, and
American Intervention.” Internatianal Studies Quarterly 52(4):737–758.
Fortna, Virginia Page. 2004. “Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace? International Intervention and
the Duration of Peace After Civil War.” International Studies Quarterly 48(2):269–292.
Foucault, Michel. 1966. Les Mots et Les Choses: Une Archéologie Des Sciences Humaines.
Gallimard.
Foucault, Michel. 1975. Surveiller et Punir. Naissance de La Prison. Gallimard.
 158

Foucault, Michel. 1982. “The Subject and Power.” Critical inquiry pp. 777–795.
Foyle, Douglas C. 2004. “Leading the Public to War? The Influence of American Public Opin-
ion on the Bush Administration’s Decision to Go to War in Iraq.” International Journal of
Public Opinion Research 16(3):269–294.
Friedrichs, Jörg and Friedrich Kratochwil. 2009. “On Acting and Knowing: How Pragmatism
Can Advance International Relations Research and Methodology.” International Organi-
zation 63(4):701–731.
Gamson, William A. 1992. Talking Politics. Cambridge University Press.
Gamson, William A. 2005. “Review of Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion,
and U.S. Foreign Policy.” Public Opinion Quarterly 69(2):324–326.
George, Alexander L. and Andrew Bennett. 2005. Case Studies and Theory Development in
the Social Sciences. MIT Press.
Gerring, John. 1997. “Ideology: A Definitional Analysis.” Political Research Quarterly
50(4):957–994.
Gigerenzer, Gerd. 2001. The Adaptive Toolbox. In Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Tool-
box, ed. Gerd Gigerenzer and Reinhard Selten. MIT Press pp. 37–50.
Gigerenzer, Gerd. 2007. Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious. Allen Lane.
Gigerenzer, Gerd. 2008. Rationality for Mortals: How People Cope with Uncertainty. Oxford
University Press.
Gigerenzer, Gerd and Daniel G. Goldstein. 1996. “Reasoning the Fast Und Frugal Way: Mod-
els of Bounded Rationality.” Psychological Review 103(4):650–669.
Gigerenzer, Gerd and Reinhard Selten, eds. 2001. Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox.
MIT Press.
Gilboa, Eytan. 2005a. “The CNN Effect: The Search for a Communication Theory of Inter-
national Relations.” Political Communication 22(1):27–44.
Gilboa, Eytan. 2005b. “Global Television News and Foreign Policy: Debating the CNN Ef-
fect.” International Studies Perspectives 6(3):325–341.
Glaser, Charles L. 2010. Rational Theory of International Politics: The Logic of Competition
and Cooperation. Princeton University Press.
Gleditsch, Nils Peter, Peter Wallensteen, Mikael Eriksson, Margareta Sollenberg and Håvard
Strand. 2002. “Armed Conflict 1946-2001: A New Dataset.” Journal of Peace Research
39(5):615–637.
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Har-
vard University Press.
Gohdes, Anita and Megan Price. 2013. “First Things First Assessing Data Quality before
Model Quality.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 57(6):1090–1108.
Gravelle, Timothy B., Thomas J. Scotto, Jason Reifler and Harold D. Clarke. 2014. “Foreign
Policy Beliefs and Support for Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party.” Canadian
Foreign Policy Journal 20(2):111–130.
Grenier, Robert L. 2015. 88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary. Simon & Schuster.
159

Guzzini, Stefano. 1993. “Structural Power: The Limits of Neorealist Power Analysis.” Inter-
national Organization 47(3):443–478.
Guzzini, Stefano. 2004. “The Enduring Dilemmas of Realism in International Relations.”
European Journal of International Relations 10(4):533–568.
Guzzini, Stefano. 2005. “The Concept of Power: A Constructivist Analysis.” Millennium
33(3):495–521.
Guzzini, Stefano. 2011. “Securitization as a Causal Mechanism.” Security Dialogue 42(4-
5):329–341.
Guzzini, Stefano. 2017. “Power and Cause.” Journal of International Relations and Develop-
ment 20(4):737–759.
Guzzini, Stefano and Anna Leander. 2005. Constructivism and International Relations:
Alexander Wendt and His Critics. Routledge.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1981a. Theorie Des Kommunikativen Handelns. Band 1. Handlungsra-
tionalität Und Gesellschaftliche Rationalisierung. Suhrkamp.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1981b. Theorie Des Kommunikativen Handelns. Band 2. Zur Kritik Der
Funktionalistischen Vernunft. Suhrkamp.
Hafner-Burton, Emilie M., Stephan Haggard, David A. Lake and David G. Victor. 2017.
“The Behavioral Revolution and International Relations.” International Organization
71(S1):S1–S31.
Hall, Peter. 1993. “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State.” Comparative Politics
25(3):275–296.
Hall, Stuart, ed. 1997. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices.
Sage.
Hallin, Daniel C. 1989. The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam. University of Califor-
nia Press.
Hamid, Shadi. 2015. “What Is Policy Research For? Reflections on the United States’ Failures
in Syria.” Middle East Law and Governance 7(3):373–386.
Hamilton, Rebecca. 2011. Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Geno-
cide. Palgrave Macmillan.
Hamilton, Rebecca and Chad Hazlett. 2007. ”Not on Our Watch”: The Emergence of the
American Movement for Darfur. In War in Darfur and the Search for Peace, ed. Alex
De Waal. Harvard University Press pp. 337–366.
Hänggli, Regula and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2010. “Political Framing Strategies and Their Impact
on Media Framing in a Swiss Direct-Democratic Campaign.” Political Communication
27(2):141–157.
Hänggli, Regula and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2012. “Frame Construction and Frame Promotion
(Strategic Framing Choices).” American Behavioral Scientist 56(3):260–278.
Hänggli, Regula, Laurent Bernhard and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2011. Construction of the Frames.
In Political Communication in Direct Democratic Campaigns: Enlightening or Manipu-
lating?, ed. Hanspeter Kriesi. Palgrave pp. 69–81.
 160

Hansen, Lene. 2006. Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War. Rout-
ledge.
Hawkins, Virgil. 2002. “The Other Side of the CNN Factor: The Media and Conflict.” Jour-
nalism Studies 3(2):225–240.
Hawkins, Virgil. 2011. “Media Selectivity and the Other Side of the CNN Effect: The Conse-
quences of Not Paying Attention to Conflict.” Media, War & Conflict 4(1):55–68.
Healy, Kieran. 2017. “Fuck Nuance.” Sociological Theory 35(2):118–127.
Henrich, Joseph, Wulf Albers, Robert Boyd, Gerd Gigerenzer, Kevin A. McCabe, Axel Ocken-
fels and H. Peyton Young. 2001. Group Report: What Is the Role of Culture in Bounded
Rationality? In Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox, ed. Gerd Gigerenzer and
Reinhard Selten. MIT Press pp. 13–36.
Herman, Edward S. and Noam Chomsky. 1988. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Econ-
omy of the Mass Media. Pantheon Books.
Herrera, Yoshiko M. and Bear F. Braumoeller. 2004. “Symposium: Discourse and Content
Analysis.” Qualitative Methods 2(1):15–19.
Hitzel-Cassagnes, Tanja. 2002. “Warten Auf Godot.” Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehun-
gen 9(1):139–153.
Hollis, Martin and Steve Smith. 1990. Explaining and Understanding International Relations.
Clarendon Press.
Holsti, Ole R. 1992. “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: Challenges to the Almond-
Lippmann Consensus Mershon Series: Research Programs and Debates.” International
Studies Quarterly 36(4):439–466.
Holzinger, Katharina. 2001. “Kommunikationsmodi Und Handlungstypen in Den Interna-
tionalen Beziehungen.” Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 8(2):243–286.
Hopf, Ted. 1998. “The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory.” Inter-
national security 23(1):171–200.
Hopf, Ted. 2007. The Limits of Interpreting Evidence. In Theory and Evidence in Comparative
Politics and International Relations, ed. Richard Ned Lebow and Mark Irving Lichbach.
New Visions in Security Palgrave Macmillan.
Hopf, Ted. 2010. “The Logic of Habit in International Relations.” European Journal of Inter-
national Relations 16(4):539–561.
Hopf, Ted and Bentley B. Allan. 2016. Making Identity Count: Building a National Identity
Database. Oxford University Press.
Huntington, Samuel P. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
Simon & Schuster.
Hurd, Ian. 2008. Constructivism. In The Oxford Handbook of International Relations, ed.
Christian Reus-Smit and Duncan Snidal. Oxford University Press pp. 298–316.
Huth, Paul K. 1998. “Major Power Intervention in International Crises, 1918-1988.” Journal
of Conflict Resolution 42(6):744–770.
Hyde-Price, Adrian. 2006. “’Normative’ Power Europe: A Realist Critique.” Journal of Euro-
161

pean Public Policy 13(2):217–234.

I.D.F. and Munzoul Assal. 2010. The National Congress Party and the Darfurian Armed
Groups. In The International Politics of Mass Atrocities: The Case of Darfur, ed. David R.
Black and Paul D. Williams. Routledge pp. 27–39.
Isernia, Pierangelo, Zoltan Juhasz and Hans Rattinger. 2002. “Foreign Policy and the Rational
Public in Comparative Perspective.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46(2):201–224.
Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus. 2010. The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations: Philos-
ophy of Science and Its Implications for the Study of World Politics. Routledge.
Jacobs, Lawrence R. and Benjamin I. Page. 2005. “Who Influences US Foreign Policy?”
American Political Science Review 99(1):107–123.
Jakobsen, Peter Viggo. 1996. “National Interest, Humanitarianism or CNN: What Triggers
UN Peace Enforcement after the Cold War?” Journal of Peace Research 33(2):205–215.
Jakobsen, Peter Viggo. 2000. “Focus on the CNN Effect Misses the Point: The Real Media
Impact on Conflict Management Is Invisible And Indirect.” Journal of Peace Research
37(2):131–143.
Janis, Irving L. 1972. Victims of Groupthink: A Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Deci-
sions and Fiascoes. Houghton Mifflin.
Jervis, Robert. 1976. Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Princeton Uni-
versity Press.
Joachim, Jutta. 2003. “Framing Issues and Seizing Opportunities: The UN, NGOs, and
Women’s Rights.” International Studies Quarterly 47(2):247–274.
Jones, Bryan D. and Frank R. Baumgartner. 2005. The Politics of Attention: How Government
Prioritizes Problems. University of Chicago Press.
Kaarbo, Juliet. 2012. Coalition Politics and Cabinet Decision Making: A Comparative Anal-
ysis of Foreign Policy Choices. University of Michigan Press.
Katzenstein, Peter J. 1996. The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World
Politics. Columbia University Press.
Keck, Otto. 1997. “Zur Sozialen Konstruktion Des Rational-Choice-Ansatzes: Einige
Klarstellungen Zur Rationalismus-Konstruktivismus-Debatte.” Zeitschrift für Interna-
tionale Beziehungen 4(1):139–150.
Keohane, Robert O. 1984. After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political
Economy. Princeton University Press.
Keohane, Robert O. 1988. “International Institutions: Two Approaches.” International Studies
Quarterly 32(4):379–396.
Khong, Yuen Foong. 1992. Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam
Decisions of 1965. Princeton University Press.
Kiersey, Nicholas J. and Iver B. Neumann. 2013. Battlestar Galactica and International Re-
lations. Routledge.
King, Gary, Michael Tomz and Jason Wittenberg. 2000. “Making the Most of Statistical Anal-
yses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation.” American Journal of Political Science
 162

44(2):347–361.
Kingdon, John W. 1984. Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. Little, Brown and Com-
pany.
Kisangani, Emizet F. and Jeffrey Pickering. 2008. International Military Intervention, 1989-
2005. Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Data Collection No
6035, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Koga, Jun. 2011. “Where Do Third Parties Intervene? Third Parties’ Domestic Institutions and
Military Interventions in Civil Conflicts.” International Studies Quarterly 55(4):1143–
1166.
Koopman, Colin. 2013. Genealogy as Critique: Foucault and the Problems of Modernity.
Indiana University Press.
Koopmans, Ruud and Paul Statham. 1999. Ethnic and Civic Conceptions of Nationhood and
the Differential Success of the Extreme Right in Germany and Italy. In How Social Mov-
ments Matter, ed. Marco Giudni, Doug McAdam and Charles Tilly. University of Min-
nesota Press pp. 225–251.
Kratochwil, Friedrich V. 2000. How Do Norms Matter? In The Role of Law in International
Politics: Essays in International Relations and International Law. Oxford University
Press pp. 35–68.
Kratochwil, Friedrich V. 2011. On the Notion of ”Interest” in International Relations. In
The Puzzle of Politics : Inquiries into the Genesis and Transformation of International
Relations. Routledge pp. 38–63.
Kriesi, Hanspeter, Edgar Grande, Martin Dolezal, Marc Helbling, Dominic Höglinger, Swen
Hutter and Bruno Wüest. 2012. Political Conflict in Western Europe. Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
Kriesi, Hanspeter, Edgar Grande, Romain Lachat, Martin Dolezal, Simon Bornschier and Tim-
otheos Frey. 2008. West European Politics in the Age of Globalization. Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Kristensen, Peter Marcus. 2018. “International Relations at the End: A Sociological Autopsy.”
International Studies Quarterly 62(2):245–259.
Kuperman, Alan J. 2008. “The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from the
Balkans.” International Studies Quarterly 52(1):49–80.
Kurki, Milja. 2006. “Causes of a Divided Discipline: Rethinking the Concept of Cause in
International Relations Theory.” Review of International Studies 32(2):189–216.
Kurki, Milja. 2008. Causation in International Relations: Reclaiming Causal Analysis. Cam-
bridge University Press.
La Balme, Natalie. 2000. Constraint, Catalyst, or Political Tool? The French Public and
Foreign Policy. In Decisionmaking in a Glass House: Mass Media, Public Opinion, and
American and European Foreign Policy in the 21st Century, ed. Brigitte Lebens Nacos,
Robert Y. Shapiro and Pierangelo Isernia. Rowman & Littlefield pp. 265–278.
Laclau, Ernesto. 1996a. Community and Its Paradoxes: Richard Rorty’s ’Liberal Utopia’. In
163

Emancipation(s). Verso pp. 105–124.

Laclau, Ernesto. 1996b. Emancipation(s). Verso.
Laclau, Ernesto. 1996c. Why Do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics. In Emancipation(s).
Verso pp. 36–46.
Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason. Verso.
Laclau, Ernesto. 2007. Discourse. In A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, ed.
Robert E. Goodin, Philip Pettit and Thomas Pogge. 2nd ed. Blackwell pp. 541–547.
Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a
Radical Democratic Politics. Verso.
Laclau, Ernesto, ed. 1994. The Making of Political Identities. Verso.
Laclau, Ernesto and Slavoj Žižek. 1990. New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time.
Verso.
Laffey, Mark and Jutta Weldes. 2004. “Methodological Reflections on Discourse Analysis.”
Qualitative Methods 2(1):28–30.
Leclic, Isabelle. 2009. “L’Arche de Zoé: La Chronologie d’un Naufrage Humanitaire.” An-
thropologie et Sociétés 33(1):83–99.
Lippmann, Walter. 1922. Public Opinion. Macmillan.
Lipset, Seymour M. and Stein Rokkan. 1967. Party Systems and Voter Alignments : Cross
National Perspectives. Free Press.
Lipset, Seymour M. and Stein Rokkan. 1990. Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter
Alignments. In The West European Party System, ed. Peter Mair. Oxford University Press
pp. 91–138.
Livingston, Steven. 2011. “The CNN Effect Reconsidered (Again): Problematizing ICT and
Global Governance in the CNN Effect Research Agenda.” Media, War & Conflict 4(1):20–
36.
Livingston, Steven G. 1992. “The Politics of International Agenda-Setting: Reagan and North-
South Relations.” International Studies Quarterly 36(3):313–329.
Livingston, Steven and Todd Eachus. 1995. “Humanitarian Crises and U.S. Foreign Policy:
Somalia and the CNN Effect Reconsidered.” Political Communication 12(4):413–429.
Lukes, Steven. 2004. Power: A Radical View. Macmillan.
Mamdani, Mahmood. 2005. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the
Roots of Terror. Harmony.
Mamdani, Mahmood. 2009. Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror.
Pantheon Books.
Manchanda, Nivi and Robbie Shilliam. 2014. Race and Racism in International Relations:
Confronting the Global Colour Line. Routledge.
March, James G. and Herbert A. Simon. 1958. Cognitive Limits on Rationality. In Organiza-
tions. Blackwell pp. 157–192.
March, James G. and Johan P. Olsen. 1989. Rediscovering Institutions. The Free Press.
Marchart, Oliver. 2007. Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy,
 164

Lefort, Badiou and Laclau. Edinburgh University Press.

Maynard, Jonathan Leader. 2013. “A Map of the Field of Ideological Analysis.” Journal of
Political Ideologies 18(3):299–327.
McCombs, Maxwell. 2004. Setting the Agenda: The Mass Media and Public Opinion. Polity.
McCombs, Maxwell E. and Donald L. Shaw. 1972. “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass
Media.” Public Opinion Quarterly 36(2):176–187.
Mello, Patrick A. 2012. “Parliamentary Peace or Partisan Politics? Democracies’ Participation
in the Iraq War.” Journal of International Relations and Development 15(3):420–453.
Mello, Patrick A. 2014. Democratic Participation in Armed Conflict: Military Involvement in
Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Springer.
Mermin, Jonathan. 1997. “Television News and American Intervention in Somalia: The Myth
of a Media-Driven Foreign Policy.” Political Science Quarterly 112(3):385–403.
Milliken, Jennifer. 1999. “The Study of Discourse in International Relations: A Critique of
Research and Methods.” European Journal of International Relations 5(2):225–254.
Moravcsik, Andrew. 1997. “Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International
Politics.” International Organization 51(4):513–553.
Moravcsik, Andrew. 1998. The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from
Messina to Maastricht. Routledge.
Moravcsik, Andrew and Frank Schimmelfennig. 2009. Liberal Intergovernmentalism. In Eu-
ropean Integration Theory, ed. Antje Wiener and Thomas Diez. Oxford University Press.
Morgenthau, Hans J. 1946. Scientific Man vs. Power Politics. University of Chicago Press.
Morgenthau, Hans Joachim. 1948. Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace.
A.A. Knopf.
Mortensgaard, Lin Alexandra. 2018. “Contesting Frames and (De)Securitizing Schemas:
Bridging the Copenhagen School’s Framework and Framing Theory.” International Stud-
ies Review .
Mouffe, Chantal. 2005a. On the Political. Psychology Press.
Mouffe, Chantal. 2005b. The Return of the Political. Verso.
Müller, Harald. 1995. “Spielen Hilft Nicht Immer: Die Grenzen Des Rational-Choice-
Ansatzes Und Der Platz Der Theorie Kommunikativen Handelns in Der Analyse Inter-
nationaler Beziehungen.” Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 2(2):371–390.
Murphy, Deborah. 2007. Narrating Darfur: Darfur in the U.S. Press, March-September 2004.
In War in Darfur and the Search for Peace, ed. Alex De Waal. Harvard University Press
pp. 314–336.
Natsios, Andrew S. 2012. Sudan, South Sudan, and Darfur: What Everyone Needs to Know.
Oxford University Press.
Neumann, Iver B. 2002. “Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplomacy.”
Millennium 31(3):627–651.
Nexon, Daniel H. and Iver B. Neumann. 2006. Harry Potter and International Relations.
Rowman & Littlefield.
165

Olmastroni, Francesco. 2014. Framing War: Public Opinion and Decision-Making in Com-
parative Perspective. Routledge.
Otto, Florian and Christoph O. Meyer. 2012. “Missing the Story? Changes in Foreign
News Reporting and Their Implications for Conflict Prevention.” Media, War & Conflict
5(3):205–221.
Patomäki, Heikki. 1996. “How to Tell Better Stories about World Politics.” European Journal
of International Relations 2(1):105–133.
Patomäki, Heikki. 2003. After International Relations: Critical Realism and the (Re) Con-
struction of World Politics. Routledge.
Patomäki, Heikki and Colin Wight. 2000. “After Postpositivism? The Promises of Critical
Realism.” International Studies Quarterly 44(2):213–237.
Pettersson, Therése and Peter Wallensteen. 2015. “Armed Conflicts, 1946–2014.” Journal of
Peace Research 52(4):536–550.
Posen, Barry R. and Andrew L. Ross. 1997. “Competing Visions for US Grand Strategy.”
International Security 21(3):5–53.
Pouliot, Vincent. 2008. “The Logic of Practicality: A Theory of Practice of Security Commu-
nities.” International Organization 62(2):257–288.
Powell, Robert. 1994. “Anarchy in International Relations Theory: The Neorealist-Neoliberal
Debate.” International Organization 48(02):313–344.
Power, Samantha. 2002. ”A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide. Basic
Books.
Powlick, Philip J. and Andrew Z. Katz. 1998. “Defining the American Public Opinion/Foreign
Policy Nexus.” Mershon International Studies Review 42(S1):29–61.
Price, Richard. 1995. “A Genealogy of the Chemical Weapons Taboo.” International Organi-
zation 49(1):73–103.
Prunier, Gerard. 2005. Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide. Cornell University Press.
Putnam, Robert D. 1988. “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level
Games.” International Organization 42(3):427–460.
Rathbun, Brian C., Joshua D. Kertzer, Jason Reifler, Paul Goren and Thomas J. Scotto. 2016.
“Taking Foreign Policy Personally: Personal Values and Foreign Policy Attitudes.” Inter-
national Studies Quarterly 60(1):124–137.
Reifler, Jason, Thomas J. Scotto and Harold D. Clarke. 2011. “Foreign Policy Beliefs in Con-
temporary Britain: Structure and Relevance.” International Studies Quarterly 55(1):245–
266.
Risse-Kappen, Thomas. 1995. “Reden Ist Nicht Billig: Zur Debatte Um Kommunikation Und
Rationalität.” Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 2(1):171–183.
Risse, Thomas. 2000. ““Let’s Argue!”: Communicative Action in World Politics.” Interna-
tional Organization 54(1):1–39.
Robinson, Piers. 1999. “The CNN Effect: Can the News Media Drive Foreign Policy?” Review
of International Studies 25(2):301–309.
 166

Robinson, Piers. 2001. “Theorizing the Influence of Media on World Politics. Models of Media
Influence on Foreign Policy.” European Journal of Communication 16(4):523–544.
Robinson, Piers. 2005. The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy and Intervention.
Routledge.
Robinson, Piers. 2011. “The CNN Effect Reconsidered: Mapping a Research Agenda for the
Future.” Media, War & Conflict 4(1):3–11.
Rose, Gideon. 1998. “Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy.” World Politics
51(1):144–172.
Rosenau, James N. 1980. The Scientific Study of Foreign Policy. Pinter.
Rowley, Christina and Jutta Weldes. 2012. “The Evolution of International Security Studies
and the Everyday: Suggestions from the Buffyverse.” Security Dialogue 43(6):513–530.
Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. Pantheon Books.
Schattschneider, Elmer E. 1960. The Semi-Sovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy
in America. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Scheufele, Dietram A. 1999. “Framing as a Theory of Media Effects.” Journal of Communi-
cation 49(1):103–122.
Scheufele, Dietram A. and David Tewksbury. 2007. “Framing, Agenda Setting, and Priming:
The Evolution of Three Media Effects Models.” Journal of Communication 57(1):9–20.
Schimmelfennig, Frank. 1997. “Rhetorisches Handeln in Der Internationalen Politik.”
Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 4(2):219–253.
Schmalz-Bruns, Rainer. 1995. “Die Theorie Kommunikativen Handelns – Eine Flaschen-
post? Anmerkungen Zur Jüngsten Theoriedebatte in Den Internationalen Beziehungen.”
Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 2(2):219–253.
Schmidt, Vivien A. 2008. “Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and
Discourse.” Annual Review of Political Science 11(1):303–326.
Schwartz-Shea, Peregrine and Dvora Yanow. 2013. Interpretive Research Design: Concepts
and Processes. Routledge.
Searle, John R. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. Allen Lane.
Sedláček, Tomáš. 2011. Economics of Good and Evil: The Quest for Economic Meaning from
Gilgamesh to Wall Street. Oxford University Press.
Seib, Philip M. 2002. The Global Journalist: News and Conscience in a World of Conflict.
Rowman & Littlefield.
Seymour, Lee JM. 2010. The Regional Politics of the Darfur Crisis. In The International
Politics of Mass Atrocities: The Case of Darfur, ed. David R. Black and Paul D. Williams.
Routledge pp. 49–68.
Seymour, Lee JM. 2014. “Let’s Bullshit! Arguing, Bargaining and Dissembling over Darfur.”
European Journal of International Relations 20(3):571–595.
Shaw, Martin. 2011. “Darfur: Counter-insurgency, Forced Displacement and Genocide.” The
British Journal of Sociology 62(1):56–61.
Shoemaker, Pamela J. and Stephen D. Reese. 2013. Mediating the Message in the 21st Cen-
167

tury: A Media Sociology Perspective. Routledge.

Slim, Hugo. 2004. “Dithering over Darfur? A Preliminary Review of the International Re-
sponse.” International Affairs 80(5):811–828.
Snow, D. and R. Benford. 1988. Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization.
In From Structure to Action: Comparing Social Movement Research across Cultures, ed.
Bert Klandermans, Hanspeter Kriesi and Sidney G. Tarrow. JAI Press pp. 197–217.
Soroka, Stuart N. 2003. “Media, Public Opinion, and Foreign Policy.” The International
Journal of Press/Politics 8(1):27–48.
Suganami, Hidemi. 2008. “Narrative Explanation and International Relations: Back to Ba-
sics.” Millennium 37(2):327–356.
Suganami, Hidemi. 2013. “Causation-in-the-World: A Contribution to Meta-Theory of IR.”
Millennium 41(3):623–643.
Suganami, Hidemi. 2017. “On the Hume/Bhaskar Contrast in Philosophical Metatheory of
International Relations.” Journal of International Relations and Development 20(4):667–
688.
Sundberg, Ralph and Erik Melander. 2013. “Introducing the UCDP Georeferenced Event
Dataset.” Journal of Peace Research 50(4):523–532.
Tomasello, Michael. 2009. Why We Cooperate. MIT Press.
Tomasello, Michael. 2010. Origins of Human Communication. MIT Press.
Torfing, Jacob. 1999. New Theories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe and Žižek. Blackwell.
Torfing, Jacob. 2005. The Linguistic Turn: Foucault, Laclau, Mouffe, Žižek. In The Handbook
of Political Sociology: States, Civil Societies, and Globalization, ed. Thomas Janoski,
Robert R. Alford, Alexander M. Hicks and Mildred A. Schwartz. Cambridge University
Press pp. 153–171.
Tversky, Amos and Daniel Kahneman. 1981. “The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology
of Choice.” Science 211(4481):453–458.
von Prittwitz, Volker. 1996. “Verständigung Über Die Verständigung: Anmerkungen Und
Ergänzungen Zur Debatte Über Rationalität Und Kommunikation in Den Internationalen
Beziehungen.” Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 3(1):133–146.
Vygotskiı̆, Lev Semenovich. 1962. Thought and Language. MIT Press.
Wæver, Ole. 1993. Securitization and Desecuritization. Centre for Peace and Conflict Re-
search Copenhagen.
Walker, Robert B. J. 1993. Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory. Cam-
bridge University Press.
Waltz, Kenneth Neal. 1979. Theory of International Politics. Addison-Wesley.
Waltz, Kenneth Neal. 1996. “International Politics Is Not Foreign Policy.” Security Studies
6(1):54–57.
Weldes, Jutta. 1996. “Constructing National Interests.” European Journal of International
Relations 2(3):275–318.
Weldes, Jutta. 1999a. Constructing National Interests: The United States and the Cuban
 168

Missile Crisis. University of Minnesota Press.

Weldes, Jutta. 1999b. “Going Cultural: Star Trek, State Action, and Popular Culture.” Millen-
nium 28(1):117–134.
Wendt, Alexander. 1992. “Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of
Power Politics.” International Organization 46(02):391–425.
Wendt, Alexander. 1998. “On Constitution and Causation in International Relations.” Review
of International Studies 24(5):101–118.
Wendt, Alexander. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge University Press.
Wendt, Alexander. 2015. Quantum Mind and Social Science. Cambridge University Press.
White, David Manning. 1950. “The ”Gate Keeper”: A Case Study In the Selection of News.”
Journalism Bulletin 27(4):383–390.
Wolfsfeld, Gadi. 1997. Media and Political Conflict: News from the Middle East. Cambridge
University Press.
Wood, B. Dan and Jeffrey S. Peake. 1998. “The Dynamics of Foreign Policy Agenda Setting.”
American Political Science Review 92(1):173–184.
Yom, Sean. 2018. “Analytic Transparency, Radical Honesty, and Strategic Incentives.” PS:
Political Science & Politics 51(2):416–421.
Yoon, Mi Yung. 1997. “Explaining US Intervention in Third World Internal Wars, 1945-1989.”
Journal of Conflict Resolution 41(4):580–602.
Zaller, John and Dennis Chiu. 1996. “Government’s Little Helper: US Press Coverage of
Foreign Policy Crises, 1945–1991.” Political Communication 13(4):385–405.
Zaller, John R. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge University Press.
Zangl, Bernhard. 1995. “Der Ansatz Der Zei-Ebenen-Spiele: Eine Brücke Zwischen
Dem Neoinstitutionalismus Und Seinen KritikerInnen?” Zeitschrift für Internationale
Beziehungen 2(2):393–415.
Zangl, Bernhard and Michael Zürn. 1996. “Argumentatives Handeln Bei Internationalen Ver-
handlungen: Moderate Anmerkungen Zur Post-Realistischen Debatte.” Zeitschrift für In-
ternationale Beziehungen 3(2):341–365.
Zehfuss, Maja. 1998. “Sprachlosigkeit Schränkt Ein: Zur Bedeutung von Sprache in Kon-
struktivistischen Theorien.” Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 5(1):341–365.
Zehfuss, Maja. 2002. Constructivism in International Relations: The Politics of Reality. Cam-
bridge University Press.
Žižek, Slavoj. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. Verso.
Žižek, Slavoj. 2012. The Ontology of Quantum Physics. In Less than Nothing: Hegel and the
Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. Verso pp. 905–961.
Appendix A: Data Collection

Selection of Foreign Armed Conflicts for Statistical Analysis

Logic: Select most intense armed conflicts that could hypothetically have formed part of West-
ern foreign policy agendas.

Approach: Using aggregate civilian and combatant casualties to determine the 100 most
prevalent conflicts armed conflicts from the Georeferenced Event Dataset (GED) of the Upp-
sala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) between 1 January 1998 and 31 December 2010. Since
this dataset disaggregates the data to binary conflict identifiers, many of these can legitimately
conceived of as part of an overarching conflict that is usually treated as one by international
observers. By aggregating these conflict identifiers and dropping some because of conceptual
doubts or because they started way of out the time-frame analysed here, I reduced the list to
29 armed conflicts. While I started with a bigger selection, I had to exclude some conflicts
that started before 1998 or right at the beginning of that year (Kosovo, Angola, South-Sudan,
and Sierra Leone). For these, it would be difficult to establish a causal sequence given that by
the time we have data on media discourses, they were already on the foreign policy agenda of
certain countries.
Of those 29, I later dropped two because their names made it difficult to collect media data
that was talking explicitly and only about the armed conflict (Turkey-Kurds, Russia-Georgia).
For further seven conflicts, the data collection efforts proved too big to finish within the time-
frame of the thesis writing (Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Liberia, Nigeria, Somalia, Sri Lanka).
Another 50,000 news wires await manual evaluation, which will presumably result in double
the amount of foreign policy events for eventual academic publication of the thesis. This leaves
me with the following 20 foreign armed conflicts that were used in the statistical analysis of
this thesis.

ACEH
Short Contextualisation: The Free Aceh Movement wanted to separate the Aceh region from Indonesia for ethnic, religious,
and economic reasons. The violent insurgency started in the 70s and ended officially in 2005 with a peace agreement brokered
with the help of a Finnish NGO, the EU, and the UN.
Country Level Data: Indonesia
UCDP Conflict IDs: Indonesia:Aceh
UCDP Administrative Division: Aceh Province

169
 170

UCDP Country Code: /

AFGH
Short Contextualisation: This covers only the pre-invasion phase that is dominated by the long-term civil war that ‘started’
after the Russian occupation and involves mostly Taliban and the Northern Alliance. Stops in October 2001.
Country Level Data: Afghanistan
UCDP Conflict IDs: Afghanistan:Government; Government of Afghanistan – Civilians; Government of Afghanistan – Govern-
ment of United States of America; Taleban – Civilians
UCDP Administrative Division:
UCDP Country Code: AFG

ALGE
Short Contextualisation: Even though al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM, also known as GIA) claims by its name to be
a regional movement, its origins and main operational territory lie in Algeria. These days, AQIM frequently appears in news
connected to Boko Haram and other actors outside of Algeria, in the period covered here, AQIM and its predecessors were
arguably still a purely Algerian phenomena. There, they engaged, i.a., in frequent kidnappings and attacks on oil pipelines.
Country Level Data: Algeria
UCDP Conflict IDs: Algeria:Government; GIA – Civilians; AIS – GIA; GIA – El Ahd Battalina – GIA – El Khadra Battalion;
GIA – El Forkane – GIA – El Khadra Battalion
UCDP Administrative Division:
UCDP Country Code: ALG

BURU
Short Contextualisation: This is linked to the long-lasting tensions between Huti and Tutsi in Burundi. There are definitive
connections to the Second Congo War, which is here broadly summarised under the ID CONG (see below). However, there
a significant proportion of the violence can be attributed to a distinctly Burundian conflict that was fought out on Burundian
territory and against the Burundian government.
Country Level Data: Burundi
UCDP Conflict IDs: Burundi:Government; Government of Burundi – Civilians; Palipehutu-FNL – Civilians
UCDP Administrative Division:
UCDP Country Code: BUI

CARW
Short Contextualisation: Rebellion against the government with a variety of factions following the coup d’état by François
Bozizé in 2003.
Country Level Data: Central African Republic (CAR)
UCDP Conflict IDs: Central African Republic:Government
UCDP Administrative Division:
UCDP Country Code: CEN

CHAD
Short Contextualisation: Since its independence, the Christian north and the Muslim south of Chad regularly fought each other.
Within the period covered here, there was a major outbreak of violence between 2005-2010. France as the former coloniser
and its neighbour Libya got involved at some point. Particularly the Chadian refugee question overlaps with the Darfur conflict
(DARF, see below) since Darfurian refugees came across the border and mixed with refugees fleeing from the Chadian civil war.
Country Level Data: Chad
UCDP Conflict IDs: Chad:Government
UCDP Administrative Division:
UCDP Country Code: CHA
171

CHEC
Short Contextualisation: The Second Chechen War started in summer 1999 and lasted for about a year. Lower-level violence
continues to this day.
Country Level Data: Russia
UCDP Conflict IDs: Russia (Soviet Union):Caucasus Emirate; Russia (Soviet Union):Chechnya; Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
– Civilians; Chechen Republic of Ichkeria – Forces of Ruslan Labazanov; Chechen Republic of Ichkeria – Provisional Council
of the Chechen Republic; Forces of the Caucasus Emirate – Civilians & Chechnya
UCDP Administrative Division: Chechnya
UCDP Country Code:

COLO
Short Contextualisation: Civil war surrounding mostly FARC and AUC.
Country Level Data: Colombia
UCDP Conflict IDs: AUC – Civilians; AUC – FARC; Colombia:Government; FARC – Civilians
UCDP Administrative Division:
UCDP Country Code: COL

CONG
Short Contextualisation: This broadly relates to what is today known as the Second Congo War, the Great African War, or the
African World War. For the sake of this project, the common denominator for this category is that the violence took place on the
territory of the DRC, or was committed by a faction that mainly fought on DRC territory.
Country Level Data: Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
UCDP Conflict IDs: DR Congo (Zaire):Government; FDLR – Civilians; FNI – UPC; FRPI, RCD-K-ML – Civilians; Govern-
ment of DR Congo (Zaire) – Civilians; Hema – Lendu; Mayi Mayi – RCD; RCD – Civilians; Rwanda:Government; UPC –
Civilians; Mayi Mayi – Civilians
UCDP Administrative Division:
UCDP Country Code: DRC

DARF
Short Contextualisation: The Darfur rebellion started in 2003, followed by a violent counter-insurgency by the Sudanese
government. This category is distinct from the South-Sudanese conflict, which had mostly calmed down by the time covered in
this project.
Country Level Data: Sudan
UCDP Conflict IDs: Government of Sudan – Civilians; Janjaweed – Civilians
UCDP Administrative Division: Central Darfur state; Darfur state; East Darfur state; North Darfur state; Northern Darfur
province; Northern Darfur state; South Darfur state; Southern Darfur province; Southern Darfur state; West Darfur state; Western
Darfur state
UCDP Country Code:

ERIT
Short Contextualisation: Eritrean-Ethiopian border tensions that took place mostly in 1999-2000. Short but violent outburst
killed at least 15,000 soldiers and 80,000 people of unknown origins (potentially civilians).
Country Level Data: Eritra and Ethiopia (mean)
UCDP Conflict IDs: Government of Eritrea-Government of Ethiopia
UCDP Administrative Division:
UCDP Country Code:

ETHI
Short Contextualisation: This subsumes ethnic and political tensions between the central government and the Oromo and
Ogaden people. These tensions have lead to regular confrontations between government forces and protesters as well as armed
rebel groups (ONLF).
 172

Country Level Data: Ethiopia

UCDP Conflict IDs: Ethiopia:Ogaden; Ethiopia:Oromiya; Ogaden clan (Darod) – Sheikhal clan (Dir); Government of Ethiopia
– Civilians; Gumuz – Oromo; Oromo – Somali (Ethiopia); ONLF – Civilians; Amhara – Oromo
UCDP Administrative Division:
UCDP Country Code:

INDI
Short Contextualisation: This subsumes separatist movements in north-eastern India, particularly in Assam and Manipur.
Excludes tensions in Kashmir as well as with Naxalite rebels.
Country Level Data: India
UCDP Conflict IDs: India:Assam; India:Manipur; ULFA – Civilians & Arunachal Pradesh; Arunachal Pradesh State; Assam
State; Manipur State; Meghalaya State; Mizoram State
UCDP Administrative Division:
UCDP Country Code:

IVOR
Short Contextualisation: Covers first (2002-2007) and second (2010-2011) civil war between rebel-held Muslim north, and
government-held Christian south. Involves France and UN.
Country Level Data: Ivory Coast
UCDP Conflict IDs: Government of Ivory Coast – Civilians; Ivory Coast:Government
UCDP Administrative Division:
UCDP Country Code: CDI

KASH
Short Contextualisation: Territorial conflict between India and Pakistan, involving Kashmiri rebel groups. Period covered here
includes Kargil war in 1999.
Country Level Data: India and Pakistan (mean)
UCDP Conflict IDs: India:Kashmir; Kashmir insurgents – Civilians; Government of India–Government of Pakistan
UCDP Administrative Division: Azad Jammu & Kashmir; Jammu and Kashmir State
UCDP Country Code:

MORO
Short Contextualisation: The violent insurgency of Moro Muslims against the government goes back to the late 60s and
continues to this day.
Country Level Data: Philippines
UCDP Conflict IDs: Philippines:Mindanao; MILF – Civilians; BIFM – MILF; ASG – Civilians
UCDP Administrative Division:
UCDP Country Code:

MYAN
Short Contextualisation: Series of ongoing insurgencies by different local groups.
Country Level Data: Myanmar
UCDP Conflict IDs: Government of Myanmar (Burma) – Civilians; Myanmar (Burma):Karen; Myanmar (Burma): Nagaland;
Myanmar (Burma):Shan
UCDP Administrative Division:
UCDP Country Code: MYA

NEPA
Short Contextualisation: Nepalese civil war between 1996 and 2006.
Country Level Data: Nepal
UCDP Conflict IDs: CPN-M – Civilians; Government of Nepal – Civilians; Nepal:Government
173

UCDP Administrative Division:

UCDP Country Code: NEP

THAI
Short Contextualisation: Long-term tensions with local separatist groups. Developed into violent insurgency around 2001 and
continues to this day.
Country Level Data: Thailand
UCDP Conflict IDs: Patani insurgents – Civilians; Thailand:Patani
UCDP Administrative Division:
UCDP Country Code:

ULRA
Short Contextualisation: Violence related to the Lord’s Resistance Army, particularly on Ugandan territory.
Country Level Data: Uganda
UCDP Conflict IDs: LRA – Civilians; Uganda:Government; Arrow Boys – LRA; Bangadi Militia – LRA; LRA – SPLM/A;
Government of Uganda – Civilians
UCDP Administrative Division:
UCDP Country Code: UGA
 174

Guidelines for Coding of Foreign Policy Events

Latent Concept: Foreign policy agenda as the amount of time and resources policymakers
spend on a specific foreign armed conflict.

Operationalisation: Sum of weighted foreign policy events as observable implications of

time and resources spend per month. Weighting according to the categories of foreign policy
events described below.

Measurement: Manual evaluation of news wires mentioning any official institution or well-
known representative thereof in combination with the foreign armed conflict.

Room for Interpretation: If additional rules are necessary, the judgement call of the coder
should be in favour of consistency with the overarching logic: The more time and resources
they devote to something, the more events and the higher the event categories found per month.

[1] Embassy Activity

Statements or actions coordinated by a country’s embassy in the foreign country.

[2] Travel Warning

Warning not to travel to the foreign country issued by foreign ministry to its citizens.

• Includes travel warnings, advise to citizens to stay indoors, or to leave the country.

• Does not include active evacuation efforts of embassy staff or own citizens, which falls
under policy development.

[3] Official Statement

Issued by senior officials or spokespersons of the government. Those statements that relate to
or explain events in subsequent categories are not coded separately.

• If a statement contains the same message and can be attributed to the same person, it is
only coded once. If a statement contains a different message, is attributed to a different
person or ministry, or was clearly made on a different day, it is coded separately as an
additional event.

• If different government members comment separately on the conflict on the same day,
separate events are coded unless it is clear from the news wire that this goes back to a
joint press conference.
175

• Includes statements on the developments by military personnel that are active on the
ground.

• Also fall-back category for activities that cannot be clearly put in any of the other cate-
gories (rare).

[4] Official Report

Official report or extended briefing by senior members of the administration or spokespersons
of the government.

• Should indicate a systematic and concerted research effort to asses the situation on the
ground.

[5] Meeting at Home

Meeting of senior officials with international representatives in the capital of the Western coun-
try. Can include representatives of the conflict parties, of third countries, or of international
organisations.

• Statements made in the wake of a meeting at home should not be coded separately, even
if there are several statements spread across actors or time.

• Can include meetings with any affected party of the conflict, also victims.

[6] International Coordination

Proactive diplomatic efforts to coordinate reactions to the conflict with representatives of the
conflict parties, of third countries, or of international organisations. Usually at international
gatherings like the UN Security Council, the G8 summits, or European Union meetings.

• Statements in the wake of an international meeting should not be coded separately, even
if there are several statements spread across actors or time.

• Can include phone calls to other international leaders that serve to coordinate policy.

• Meetings of the UN Security Council, NATO, EU, etc. are coded as International Coor-
dination if there is clear evidence that the respective country had a stake and an active
interest in this meeting. This can be identified in the form of their representative com-
menting on the developments, or by a clear sign that they called for this meeting. If this
is not the case, the meeting should not be coded even if the country formally participated
in it.

• Meetings of the UN Security Council, NATO, EU, etc. are coded as Policy Development
if they, on the initiative or active support of the respective country, introduce sanctions,
peacekeeping missions, aid allocations, investigations, or mediation efforts.
 176

• Meetings of the UN Security Council, NATO, EU, etc. can only be coded once a week.
If several meetings are coded within one month, only one can count as Policy Develop-
ment. All others should be coded as International Coordination even if they involve the
active discussion of draft resolutions. If the negotiations extend to the following months.
A new Policy Development should be recoded also for the meeting that makes the final
decision.

• If not representing the Policy Development category, meetings of the UN Security Coun-
cil, NATO, EU, etc. usually refer to (I) consultation about the issue, (II) joint statement
on the issue, (III) continuous negotiations on policy developments.

• If the International Coordination takes place in one or more third countries, the category
can only be coded once a week. In a multi-country trip, the event is coded only once
unless the trip lasts longer than a week. If this trip includes a visit to the conflict country,
this is coded as a separate event.

• Joint statements with other countries are automatically coded as International Coordi-
nation because such must have taken place in order to prepare the statement.

[7] Visit to Country

Visit of senior official to conflict country with the intent to inspect the situation or coordinate
policy reactions.

• Includes visits by military delegates or special envoys.

• If it is the country ambassador permanently stationed in the country, the Embassy Ac-
tivity category is more appropriate.

• If it is the UN ambassador, the International Coodrination or Policy Development cate-

gory is more appropriate.

[8] Mediation Efforts

Proactive efforts or support by senior officials to bring multiple conflict parties to the table to
negotiate ceasefires, peace, or reconciliation.

• Does not include simple ‘calls for peace’ in the form of an Official Statement.

• Can only be coded once per week. Continuous efforts are recoded every week unless the
activity has evidently decreased to pure statements rather than active Mediation Efforts.

• Include visits to country or region where both conflict parties are consulted with at the
same time or in sequence.
177

[9] Legislative Activity

Focused attention by representatives of legislative bodies as indicated by statements, visits to
the country, election campaigns, introduction of new foreign policy legislation, questioning of
the government’s position, etc.

• Can only be coded once a week unless it is clear that the activity refers not to the same
debate but constitutes a new debate or initiative. This is because debates among repre-
sentatives of the legislative usually result in several news wires reporting on the state-
ments of different party members.

• If statements by the government is done via the parliamentary assembly in response to

either a parliamentary question, inquiry, sub-committee, etc., it is coded as Legislative
Activity rather than as an official statement.

[10] Policy Development

Substantive development or change in foreign policy. For example, increasing of develop-
ment aid, sending troops, military cooperation, economic sanctions, evacuation of embassy,
promoting UN Security Council resolutions, etc.

• Should be a significant departure from prior stance, a new initiative on either interna-
tional or domestic level, or a significant investment of resources.

• Should also be coded if there is only an active proposal of any of these by a senior
member of the government. This is because the actual implementation can depend on
third states as well as legislative restrictions.

• If a legislative body has to approve a Policy Development, a separate Legislative Activity

event is coded in addition.

• Also includes: Prolongation of missions; debt relief; putting country on terrorist list
(or take off); provision of military aid and material (including surveillance); strategic
talks about military cooperation; appointment of special envoy; urging diplomats to
leave the country; sharing of intelligence; exceptional treatment of refugees from the
region; inquire committee (domestic, international, UN, EU, ICC, etc.); considering of
renewing military/humanitarian aid under certain conditions; threatening to cut off aid;
etc.
 178

Evaluation of Topic Model Performance

Table A.1: Evaluation of topic models per country and frame. Random selection of articles was
clustered by conflict to enhance model performance by minimizing conflict specific signifiers in the
manually coded selection. See Note 3.1 for discussion of the outcome.

Country F1 Frame Precision Recall Support

United States (400 coded articles) 0.73 Humanitarianism 0.75 0.71 76

0.67 Security 0.84 0.56 52
0.55 Stability 0.67 0.48 63
0.45 Economics 0.81 0.33 19

United Kingdom (400 coded articles) 0.69 Humanitarianism 0.75 0.65 83

0.60 Security 0.80 0.48 35
0.47 Stability 0.60 0.39 50
0.51 Economics 0.95 0.37 11

France (400 coded articles) 0.43 Humanitarianism 0.58 0.35 53

0.54 Security 0.80 0.41 37
0.51 Stability 0.62 0.44 62
0.17 Economics 0.60 0.11 10

Germany (400 coded articles) 0.54 Humanitarianism 0.59 0.50 73

0.57 Security 0.76 0.46 43
0.51 Stability 0.63 0.45 53
0.11 Economics 0.30 0.07 16
Appendix B: Statistical Analysis

Basic Correlations

Humanitarianism, The Washington Post Humanitarianism, The Wall Street Journal

1.00

0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25

Security, The Washington Post Security, The Wall Street Journal

1.00

0.75
Correlation with Foreign Policy Agenda

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25

Stability, The Washington Post Stability, The Wall Street Journal

1.00

0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25

Economics, The Washington Post Economics, The Wall Street Journal

1.00

0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25
t− 1
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
t0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
t+ 9
t+ 0
11

t− 1
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
t0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
t+ 9
10
11
1

t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−

t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
1

t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−

t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t−

t−

t+

Time Relation to Month of Foreign Policy Agenda Measurement (t0)

Figure B.1: Basic correlations between the US foreign policy agenda and specific frame-newspaper-
month combinations. The small dots represent correlations for individual conflicts, the big one rep-
resents the overall average.

179
 180

Humanitarianism, The Guardian Humanitarianism, The Times

1.00

0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25

Security, The Guardian Security, The Times

1.00

0.75
Correlation with Foreign Policy Agenda

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25

Stability, The Guardian Stability, The Times

1.00

0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25

Economics, The Guardian Economics, The Times

1.00

0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25
t− 1
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
t0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
t+ 9
t+ 0
11

11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
t0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
t+ 9
10
11
1

t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−

t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
1

t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−

t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t−

t−
t−

t+
Time Relation to Month of Foreign Policy Agenda Measurement (t0)

Figure B.2: Basic correlations between the British foreign policy agenda and specific frame-
newspaper-month combinations. The small dots represent correlations for individual conflicts, the
big one represents the overall average.
181

Humanitarianism, Le Monde Humanitarianism, Le Figaro

1.00

0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25

Security, Le Monde Security, Le Figaro

1.00

0.75
Correlation with Foreign Policy Agenda

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25

Stability, Le Monde Stability, Le Figaro

1.00

0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25

Economics, Le Monde Economics, Le Figaro

1.00

0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25
t− 1
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
t0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
t+ 9
t+ 0
11

11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
t0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
t+ 9
10
11
1

t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−

t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
1

t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−

t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t−

t−
t−

t+
Time Relation to Month of Foreign Policy Agenda Measurement (t0)

Figure B.3: Basic correlations between the French foreign policy agenda and specific frame-
newspaper-month combinations. The small dots represent correlations for individual conflicts, the
big one represents the overall average.
 182

Humanitarianism, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung Humanitarianism, Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

1.00

0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25

Security, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung Security, Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

1.00

0.75
Correlation with Foreign Policy Agenda

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25

Stability, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung Stability, Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

1.00

0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25

Economics, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung Economics, Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

1.00

0.75

0.50

0.25

0.00

−0.25
t− 1
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
t0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
t+ 9
t+ 0
11

11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
t0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
t+ 9
10
11
1

t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−

t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
1

t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−
t−

t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t+
t−

t−
t−

t+
Time Relation to Month of Foreign Policy Agenda Measurement (t0)

Figure B.4: Basic correlations between the German foreign policy agenda and specific frame-
newspaper-month combinations. The small dots represent correlations for individual conflicts, the
big one represents the overall average.
183

Time-Series Cross-Section Regression Results

Table B.2: Time-Series Cross-Section analysis. Negative Binomial models with random effect on
intercept for each conflict and month. Dependent variable is the accumulative observation of foreign
policy events in a given conflict-month observation (i.e., the foreign policy agenda).

RI Only Controls Frames (lag) Frames (lead) Frames (both) Full Model

e fh ipolity2 0.23 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.18 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤

e reserves billions 0.06 (0.04) 0.002 (0.02)
deaths civilians 0.001 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤ 0.0003 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤
best 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤ 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤
IDPs 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤ 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤
refugees 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤ 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤
refugees us 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤ 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤
trade us 0.00 (0.00)⇤⇤⇤ 0.00 (0.00)⇤⇤⇤
WP Humanitarianism lag 0.05 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.02 (0.02) 0.02 (0.02)
WP Humanitarianism lead 0.08 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.11 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.13 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
WP Humanitarianism 0.09 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.11 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.04 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.05 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤
WP Security lag 0.09 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.004 (0.02) 0.01 (0.02)
WP Security lead 0.33 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.36 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.44 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤
WP Security 0.14 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.10 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.13 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.12 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
WP Stability lag 0.20 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.20 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.18 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
WP Stability lead 0.32 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.28 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.22 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
WP Stability 0.24 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.21 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.22 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.20 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
WP Economics lag 0.05 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.07 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.11 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤
WP Economics lead 0.08 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.10 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.10 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤
WP Economics 0.003 (0.01) 0.04 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.01 (0.01) 0.01 (0.01)
WSJ Humanitarianism lag 0.08 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.08 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.10 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
WSJ Humanitarianism lead 0.06 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.11 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.10 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
WSJ Humanitarianism 0.01 (0.01) 0.03 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.01 (0.01) 0.03 (0.01)⇤⇤
WSJ Security lag 0.08 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.02 (0.03) 0.003 (0.03)
WSJ Security lead 0.15 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.23 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.32 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤
WSJ Security 0.14 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.11 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.17 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.12 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
WSJ Stability lag 0.14 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.12 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.14 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
WSJ Stability lead 0.08 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.03 (0.02) 0.03 (0.02)
WSJ Stability 0.08 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.10 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.11 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.09 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
WSJ Economics lag 0.04 (0.02)⇤⇤ 0.10 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.14 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
WSJ Economics lead 0.08 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.10 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.09 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
WSJ Economics 0.04 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.06 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.05 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.07 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤
Constant 0.03 (0.39) 1.09 (0.51)⇤⇤ 0.05 (0.33) 0.03 (0.33) 0.06 (0.32) 1.11 (0.34)⇤⇤⇤
N 3,010 3,010 3,010 3,010 3,010 3,010
Log Likelihood -11,372.73 -10,125.47 -8,741.21 -8,650.67 -8,335.18 -8,137.58
AIC 22,751.47 20,272.95 17,520.42 17,339.34 16,724.36 16,345.15
BIC 22,769.50 20,339.06 17,634.61 17,453.52 16,886.62 16,555.49

Standard Errors in parentheses. Independent variables have been mean-centred. * significant at p < .10; ** p < .05; *** p < .01
 184

Table B.3: Time-Series Cross-Section analysis. Negative Binomial models with random effect on
intercept for each conflict and month. Dependent variable is the accumulative observation of foreign
policy events in a given conflict-month observation (i.e., the foreign policy agenda).

RI Only Controls Frames (lag) Frames (lead) Frames (both) Full Model

e fh ipolity2 0.31 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤ 0.05 (0.04)

e reserves billions 0.07 (0.03)⇤⇤ 0.03 (0.02)
deaths civilians 0.0005 (0.0001)⇤⇤⇤ 0.0000 (0.0001)
best 0.0000 (0.0000) 0.0001 (0.0001)
IDPs 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤ 0.0000 (0.0000)
refugees 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤ 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤
refugees uk 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤ 0.0001 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤
trade uk 0.00 (0.00)⇤⇤⇤ 0.00 (0.00)⇤⇤⇤
Guardian Humanitarianism lag 0.02 (0.05) 0.01 (0.05) 0.01 (0.05)
Guardian Humanitarianism lead 0.09 (0.05)⇤ 0.03 (0.05) 0.05 (0.06)
Guardian Humanitarianism 0.14 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.03 (0.03) 0.07 (0.03)⇤ 0.06 (0.03)⇤
Guardian Security lag 0.26 (0.06)⇤⇤⇤ 0.32 (0.07)⇤⇤⇤ 0.34 (0.07)⇤⇤⇤
Guardian Security lead 0.31 (0.07)⇤⇤⇤ 0.31 (0.08)⇤⇤⇤ 0.28 (0.08)⇤⇤⇤
Guardian Security 0.10 (0.05)⇤⇤ 0.05 (0.04) 0.05 (0.05) 0.07 (0.05)
Guardian Stability lag 0.27 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.21 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤ 0.16 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤
Guardian Stability lead 0.33 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤ 0.27 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤ 0.18 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤
Guardian Stability 0.14 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.19 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.14 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.12 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤
Guardian Economics lag 0.08 (0.04)⇤⇤ 0.06 (0.04) 0.003 (0.04)
Guardian Economics lead 0.10 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.10 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤ 0.08 (0.04)⇤⇤
Guardian Economics 0.10 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.11 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.06 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.08 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
Times Humanitarianism lag 0.03 (0.04) 0.05 (0.05) 0.04 (0.05)
Times Humanitarianism lead 0.31 (0.05)⇤⇤⇤ 0.23 (0.05)⇤⇤⇤ 0.16 (0.05)⇤⇤⇤
Times Humanitarianism 0.08 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.21 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.09 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.10 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤
Times Security lag 0.42 (0.07)⇤⇤⇤ 0.53 (0.08)⇤⇤⇤ 0.50 (0.08)⇤⇤⇤
Times Security lead 0.71 (0.08)⇤⇤⇤ 0.74 (0.09)⇤⇤⇤ 0.70 (0.09)⇤⇤⇤
Times Security 0.07 (0.05) 0.03 (0.04) 0.07 (0.05) 0.09 (0.05)⇤
Times Stability lag 0.08 (0.04)⇤ 0.18 (0.05)⇤⇤⇤ 0.16 (0.05)⇤⇤⇤
Times Stability lead 0.12 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤ 0.04 (0.05) 0.06 (0.05)
Times Stability 0.16 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.004 (0.03) 0.08 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.09 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤
Times Economics lag 0.07 (0.04)⇤⇤ 0.06 (0.04) 0.09 (0.04)⇤⇤
Times Economics lead 0.03 (0.04) 0.06 (0.04) 0.05 (0.04)
Times Economics 0.09 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.04 (0.02)⇤⇤ 0.07 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.06 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
Constant 1.89 (0.37)⇤⇤⇤ 0.96 (0.45)⇤⇤ 2.01 (0.28)⇤⇤⇤ 1.93 (0.29)⇤⇤⇤ 2.00 (0.26)⇤⇤⇤ 1.64 (0.36)⇤⇤⇤
N 3,010 3,010 3,010 3,010 3,010 3,010
Log Likelihood -4,221.39 -3,721.83 -3,137.08 -3,164.89 -3,007.54 -2,945.42
AIC 8,448.77 7,465.66 6,312.17 6,367.78 6,069.08 5,960.84
BIC 8,466.80 7,531.77 6,426.35 6,481.97 6,231.34 6,171.18

Standard Errors in parentheses. Independent variables have been mean-centred. * significant at p < .10; ** p < .05; *** p < .01
185

Table B.4: Time-Series Cross-Section analysis. Negative Binomial models with random effect on
intercept for each conflict and month. Dependent variable is the accumulative observation of foreign
policy events in a given conflict-month observation (i.e., the foreign policy agenda).

RI Only Controls Frames (lag) Frames (lead) Frames (both) Full Model

e fh ipolity2 0.05 (0.02)⇤ 0.09 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤

e reserves billions 0.07 (0.05) 0.03 (0.04)
deaths civilians 0.001 (0.0001)⇤⇤⇤ 0.001 (0.0001)⇤⇤⇤
best 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤ 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤
IDPs 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤ 0.0000 (0.0000)
refugees 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤ 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤
refugees fr 0.0003 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤ 0.0002 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤
trade fr 0.00 (0.00)⇤⇤⇤ 0.00 (0.00)
Monde Humanitarianism lag 0.10 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.07 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.01 (0.02)
Monde Humanitarianism lead 0.04 (0.02)⇤ 0.02 (0.02) 0.03 (0.02)
Monde Humanitarianism 0.07 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.07 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.10 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.14 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
Monde Security lag 0.15 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.17 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.22 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤
Monde Security lead 0.06 (0.03)⇤ 0.02 (0.03) 0.004 (0.03)
Monde Security 0.13 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.14 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.13 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.11 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
Monde Stability lag 0.30 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.31 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.24 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤
Monde Stability lead 0.11 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.15 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.10 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤
Monde Stability 0.15 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.20 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.14 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.21 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
Monde Economics lag 0.05 (0.02)⇤⇤ 0.05 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.06 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
Monde Economics lead 0.04 (0.02)⇤⇤ 0.02 (0.02) 0.001 (0.02)
Monde Economics 0.01 (0.01) 0.04 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.01 (0.01) 0.01 (0.01)
Figaro Humanitarianism lag 0.11 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.11 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.21 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
Figaro Humanitarianism lead 0.05 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.11 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.07 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
Figaro Humanitarianism 0.15 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.19 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.14 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.17 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤
Figaro Security lag 0.11 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.17 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.21 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
Figaro Security lead 0.10 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.14 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.15 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤
Figaro Security 0.07 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.08 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.06 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.07 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤
Figaro Stability lag 0.27 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.42 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.28 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤
Figaro Stability lead 0.48 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.61 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤ 0.47 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤
Figaro Stability 0.16 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.14 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.21 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.15 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
Figaro Economics lag 0.11 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.25 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤ 0.20 (0.03)⇤⇤⇤
Figaro Economics lead 0.23 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.30 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.25 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
Figaro Economics 0.03 (0.01)⇤⇤ 0.06 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤ 0.11 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤ 0.11 (0.01)⇤⇤⇤
Constant 1.10 (0.61)⇤ 1.83 (0.65)⇤⇤⇤ 1.14 (0.54)⇤⇤ 1.13 (0.54)⇤⇤ 1.13 (0.53)⇤⇤ 2.15 (0.62)⇤⇤⇤
N 3,010 3,010 3,010 3,010 3,010 3,010
Log Likelihood -9,951.57 -9,147.08 -7,316.69 -7,374.38 -7,109.36 -6,906.55
AIC 19,909.13 18,316.16 14,671.39 14,786.76 14,272.73 13,883.10
BIC 19,927.16 18,382.27 14,785.57 14,900.95 14,434.99 14,093.44

Standard Errors in parentheses. Independent variables have been mean-centred. * significant at p < .10; ** p < .05; *** p < .01
 186

Table B.5: Time-Series Cross-Section analysis. Negative Binomial models with random effect on
intercept for each conflict and month. Dependent variable is the accumulative observation of foreign
policy events in a given conflict-month observation (i.e., the foreign policy agenda).

RI Only Controls Frames (lag) Frames (lead) Frames (both) Full Model

e fh ipolity2 0.26 (0.09)⇤⇤⇤ 0.11 (0.08)

e reserves billions 0.10 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤ 0.05 (0.02)⇤⇤⇤
deaths civilians 0.002 (0.0002)⇤⇤⇤ 0.001 (0.0004)⇤⇤⇤
best 0.0000 (0.0000) 0.0000 (0.0002)
IDPs 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤ 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤
refugees 0.0000 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤ 0.0000 (0.0000)
refugees ge 0.0000 (0.0000) 0.0001 (0.0000)⇤⇤⇤
trade ge 0.00 (0.00)⇤⇤⇤ 0.00 (0.00)⇤⇤⇤
SZ Humanitarianism lag 0.21 (0.06)⇤⇤⇤ 0.20 (0.07)⇤⇤⇤ 0.08 (0.07)
SZ Humanitarianism lead 0.01 (0.08) 0.13 (0.08) 0.01 (0.09)
SZ Humanitarianism 0.35 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤ 0.26 (0.05)⇤⇤⇤ 0.26 (0.05)⇤⇤⇤ 0.27 (0.05)⇤⇤⇤
SZ Security lag 0.04 (0.06) 0.21 (0.07)⇤⇤⇤ 0.20 (0.07)⇤⇤⇤
SZ Security lead 0.03 (0.07) 0.09 (0.09) 0.25 (0.09)⇤⇤⇤
SZ Security 0.11 (0.05)⇤⇤ 0.12 (0.05)⇤⇤ 0.17 (0.06)⇤⇤⇤ 0.06 (0.06)
SZ Stability lag 0.02 (0.08) 0.41 (0.07)⇤⇤⇤ 0.40 (0.07)⇤⇤⇤
SZ Stability lead 0.18 (0.07)⇤⇤ 0.45 (0.09)⇤⇤⇤ 0.33 (0.09)⇤⇤⇤
SZ Stability 0.04 (0.04) 0.13 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤ 0.09 (0.05)⇤⇤ 0.19 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤
SZ Economics lag 0.26 (0.06)⇤⇤⇤ 0.35 (0.06)⇤⇤⇤ 0.26 (0.06)⇤⇤⇤
SZ Economics lead 0.29 (0.08)⇤⇤⇤ 0.41 (0.09)⇤⇤⇤ 0.50 (0.09)⇤⇤⇤
SZ Economics 0.19 (0.05)⇤⇤⇤ 0.10 (0.05)⇤ 0.11 (0.05)⇤⇤ 0.05 (0.06)
FAZ Humanitarianism lag 0.51 (0.07)⇤⇤⇤ 0.49 (0.08)⇤⇤⇤ 0.28 (0.09)⇤⇤⇤
FAZ Humanitarianism lead 0.33 (0.09)⇤⇤⇤ 0.45 (0.10)⇤⇤⇤ 0.43 (0.10)⇤⇤⇤
FAZ Humanitarianism 0.04 (0.05) 0.14 (0.06)⇤⇤ 0.18 (0.06)⇤⇤⇤ 0.13 (0.06)⇤⇤
FAZ Security lag 0.16 (0.07)⇤⇤ 0.48 (0.08)⇤⇤⇤ 0.36 (0.08)⇤⇤⇤
FAZ Security lead 0.34 (0.07)⇤⇤⇤ 0.23 (0.08)⇤⇤⇤ 0.06 (0.09)
FAZ Security 0.29 (0.07)⇤⇤⇤ 0.06 (0.08) 0.18 (0.08)⇤⇤ 0.001 (0.07)
FAZ Stability lag 0.41 (0.06)⇤⇤⇤ 0.03 (0.07) 0.07 (0.08)
FAZ Stability lead 0.54 (0.08)⇤⇤⇤ 0.63 (0.09)⇤⇤⇤ 0.63 (0.10)⇤⇤⇤
FAZ Stability 0.40 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤ 0.31 (0.05)⇤⇤⇤ 0.34 (0.05)⇤⇤⇤ 0.35 (0.05)⇤⇤⇤
FAZ Economics lag 0.18 (0.05)⇤⇤⇤ 0.24 (0.05)⇤⇤⇤ 0.17 (0.05)⇤⇤⇤
FAZ Economics lead 0.10 (0.06)⇤ 0.18 (0.06)⇤⇤⇤ 0.24 (0.07)⇤⇤⇤
FAZ Economics 0.18 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤ 0.12 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤ 0.12 (0.04)⇤⇤⇤ 0.11 (0.04)⇤⇤
Constant 3.83 (0.60)⇤⇤⇤ 6.91 (0.75)⇤⇤⇤ 3.90 (0.41)⇤⇤⇤ 4.62 (0.45)⇤⇤⇤ 4.64 (0.38)⇤⇤⇤ 5.12 (0.55)⇤⇤⇤
N 3,010 3,010 3,010 3,010 3,010 3,010
Log Likelihood -2,720.27 -2,219.97 -1,581.49 -1,508.65 -1,430.52 -1,384.10
AIC 5,446.54 4,461.95 3,200.98 3,055.30 2,915.04 2,838.20
BIC 5,464.57 4,528.05 3,315.16 3,169.48 3,077.30 3,048.54

Standard Errors in parentheses. Independent variables have been mean-centred. * significant at p < .10; ** p < .05; *** p < .01
187

Random Intercept Variation

RI Only Controls Frames (lag) Frames (lead) Frames (both) Full Model
0.43 2.85 0.55 0.53 0.59 1.44
ACEH
13.01 0.01 6.94 8.22 6.7 0.42
AFGH
0.6 0.59 0.81 0.84 0.92 0.87
ALGE
0.75 0.33 1.01 1 1.09 0.63
BURU
0.15 0.14 0.2 0.2 0.22 0.16
CARW
0.29 0.21 0.37 0.36 0.4 0.23
CHAD
2.61 0.76 0.45 0.6 0.29 0.93
CHEC
8.4 39.49 5.86 5.96 6.37 16.35
COLO
4.96 1.85 4.15 3.75 3.71 2.06
CONG
10.43 2.22 4.82 3.9 3.03 1.31
DARF
1.96 1.34 2.43 2.39 2.52 1.7
ERIT
0.78 1.21 1.04 1.04 1.14 1.11
ETHI
0.01 0.13 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.08
INDI
1.37 1.12 1.73 1.69 1.8 1.15
IVOR
4.65 63.57 3.53 3.3 3.11 13.86
KASH
1.48 18.63 1.98 1.96 2.11 6.17
MORO
1.16 0.48 1.49 1.47 1.62 0.66
MYAN
1.41 1.63 1.78 1.77 1.92 1.52
NEPA
0.12 2.45 0.16 0.16 0.18 0.61
THAI
0.24 0.17 0.32 0.32 0.35 0.21
ULRA

0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100

Random Intercepts per Conflict Cluster

Figure B.5: Variations of random intercepts per conflict for the models of the United States.
 188

RI Only Controls Frames (lag) Frames (lead) Frames (both) Full Model
0.55 2.45 0.73 0.71 0.77 1.02
ACEH
21.1 0.08 7.17 9.56 8.11 0.57
AFGH
0.65 0.55 1.05 1.01 1.27 1.18
ALGE
0.89 0.83 1.17 1.14 1.21 0.77
BURU
0.23 0.35 0.34 0.33 0.36 0.31
CARW
0.23 0.21 0.29 0.29 0.32 0.24
CHAD
4.07 0.58 1.25 1.11 1.06 0.71
CHEC
0.59 0.17 0.4 0.49 0.48 0.56
COLO
9.31 5.05 4.96 5.8 4.47 4.72
CONG
13.64 2.19 4.79 3.93 2.55 1.6
DARF
2.22 1.75 2.88 2.95 2.99 4.08
ERIT
1.01 1.58 1.41 1.35 1.48 1.84
ETHI
0.29 6.79 0.43 0.4 0.47 1.59
INDI
1.31 1.25 1.7 1.61 1.72 1.69
IVOR
7.19 110.47 4.76 6.38 3.92 21.54
KASH
0.11 0.72 0.17 0.16 0.18 0.25
MORO
0.31 0.15 0.44 0.39 0.46 0.29
MYAN
0.42 0.81 0.58 0.55 0.59 0.57
NEPA
0.27 2.06 0.4 0.38 0.42 0.81
THAI
0.4 0.31 0.53 0.51 0.53 0.6
ULRA

0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100

Random Intercepts per Conflict Cluster

Figure B.6: Variations of random intercepts per conflict for the models of the United Kingdom.
189

RI Only Controls Frames (lag) Frames (lead) Frames (both) Full Model
0.23 0.28 0.3 0.29 0.31 0.35
ACEH
13.1 0.09 3.92 6.15 4.47 0.03
AFGH
2.21 5.55 2.12 2.73 2.24 3.5
ALGE
2.69 2.13 3.66 3.34 3.71 3.03
BURU
4.42 6.88 5.81 5.43 5.7 9.5
CARW
5.57 9.35 5.93 5.6 5.55 11.37
CHAD
6.18 1 1.98 2.16 1.93 1.1
CHEC
16.34 7.7 14.18 12.13 12.04 9.91
COLO
14 93.59 14.65 15.42 15.83 43.64
CONG
19.05 11.09 10.08 10.87 8 6.32
DARF
0.75 0.88 1.02 0.95 1.05 1.31
ERIT
0.08 0.12 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.18
ETHI
0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01
INDI
37.09 82.99 20.38 19.71 20.22 41.5
IVOR
1.09 2.04 1.27 1.24 1.41 1.61
KASH
0.03 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.05
MORO
0.27 0.36 0.35 0.34 0.36 0.59
MYAN
0.22 0.33 0.29 0.27 0.28 0.45
NEPA
0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.02
THAI
0.3 0.39 0.41 0.39 0.41 0.69
ULRA

0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100

Random Intercepts per Conflict Cluster

Figure B.7: Variations of random intercepts per conflict for the models of France.
 190

RI Only Controls Frames (lag) Frames (lead) Frames (both) Full Model
0.82 1.46 1.21 1.27 1.39 1.7
ACEH
26.61 0.01 12.72 11.41 1.53 0.84
AFGH
2.52 5.15 3.54 4.63 3.55 7.91
ALGE
0.38 0.45 0.65 0.72 0.91 1.06
BURU
0.75 2.88 1.1 1.06 1.23 1.48
CARW
0.46 2.23 0.59 0.52 0.64 0.97
CHAD
30.21 0.55 2.73 1.29 0.95 0.6
CHEC
3.77 0.45 1.98 1.74 1.28 0.69
COLO
32 26.49 4.62 2.28 1.43 0.86
CONG
18.55 11.8 6.37 3.32 2.49 2.97
DARF
1.56 4.66 1.7 2.02 1.58 1.72
ERIT
0.17 0.73 0.29 0.33 0.45 0.48
ETHI
0.53 0.76 0.91 1.06 1.29 1.17
INDI
1.33 5.74 1.21 1.22 1.48 1.91
IVOR
4.59 12.86 2.36 3.21 2.59 1.9
KASH
0.89 2.01 1.23 1.56 1.66 1.5
MORO
0.04 0.2 0.12 0.15 0.3 0.4
MYAN
0.04 0.12 0.11 0.15 0.29 0.31
NEPA
0.04 0.1 0.12 0.15 0.3 0.27
THAI
0.04 0.08 0.11 0.15 0.28 0.31
ULRA

0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100

Random Intercepts per Conflict Cluster

Figure B.8: Variations of random intercepts per conflict for the models of Germany
191

Marginal Effects for Control Variables

best deaths_civilians
2.2
4
1.8
3
1.4
2
1.0
1

0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000

e_fh_ipolity2 e_reserves_billions
Foreign Policy Agenda (Predicted, ceteris paribus)

1.6
0.775
1.2
0.750

0.725
0.8
0.700
0.4
2.5 5.0 7.5 0 20 40 60

IDPs refugees
8
1.3
1.2 6
1.1
1.0 4

0.9
2
0.8

0e+00 1e+06 2e+06 3e+06 0e+00 1e+06 2e+06 3e+06 4e+06

refugees_us trade_us
1.2

0.75 0.9

0.50 0.6

0.25
0.3

0.00
0 50000 100000 150000 0e+00 2e+10 4e+10 6e+10
Variation of in Independent Variables (ceteris paribus)

Figure B.9: Marginal effects graphs for control variables in the full model for the United States.
They show the change in predicted foreign policy agendas given change in the specified independent
variable while keeping all other variables at constant values (ceteris paribus). N.B.: The scale of the
y-axis changes for each graph because the size of the effects vary too much.
 192

best deaths_civilians
0.125
0.140
0.100
0.135
0.075
0.130
0.050
0.125
0.025
0.120
0.000
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000

e_fh_ipolity2 e_reserves_billions
Foreign Policy Agenda (Predicted, ceteris paribus)

0.14 0.5

0.13 0.4

0.12 0.3

0.11 0.2

0.10 0.1
2.5 5.0 7.5 0 20 40 60

IDPs refugees

0.118 6

0.116 4

0.114
2

0.112
0
0e+00 1e+06 2e+06 3e+06 0e+00 1e+06 2e+06 3e+06 4e+06

refugees_uk trade_uk
0.15
0.15

0.10 0.10

0.05
0.05

0.00
0 5000 10000 15000 0.0e+00 5.0e+09 1.0e+10 1.5e+10 2.0e+10
Variation of in Independent Variables (ceteris paribus)

Figure B.10: Marginal effects graphs for control variables in the full model for the United Kingdom.
They show the change in predicted foreign policy agendas given change in the specified independent
variable while keeping all other variables at constant values (ceteris paribus). N.B.: The scale of the
y-axis changes for each graph because the size of the effects vary too much.
193

best deaths_civilians

2.0 7.5

1.5
5.0
1.0
2.5
0.5
0.0
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000

e_fh_ipolity2 e_reserves_billions
Foreign Policy Agenda (Predicted, ceteris paribus)

0.35 1.25

1.00
0.30
0.75
0.25
0.50
0.20
0.25
2.5 5.0 7.5 0 20 40 60

IDPs refugees
150
0.29

0.28 100

0.27 50

0.26
0
0e+00 1e+06 2e+06 3e+06 0e+00 1e+06 2e+06 3e+06 4e+06

refugees_fr trade_fr
0.3 0.260

0.255
0.2
0.250

0.1 0.245

0.240
0 3000 6000 9000 0e+00 1e+10 2e+10 3e+10
Variation of in Independent Variables (ceteris paribus)

Figure B.11: Marginal effects graphs for control variables in the full model for France. They show
the change in predicted foreign policy agendas given change in the specified independent variable
while keeping all other variables at constant values (ceteris paribus). N.B.: The scale of the y-axis
changes for each graph because the size of the effects vary too much.
 194

best deaths_civilians
0.01254 10.0

0.01251 7.5

0.01248 5.0

2.5
0.01245
0.0
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000

e_fh_ipolity2 e_reserves_billions
Foreign Policy Agenda (Predicted, ceteris paribus)

0.016
0.0175
0.012
0.0150

0.0125 0.008

0.0100 0.004

2.5 5.0 7.5 0 20 40 60

IDPs refugees

0.030 0.020

0.025 0.018

0.020 0.016

0.014
0.015
0.012
0e+00 1e+06 2e+06 3e+06 0e+00 1e+06 2e+06 3e+06 4e+06

refugees_ge trade_ge
0.20 0.15

0.15
0.10
0.10

0.05
0.05

0 10000 20000 30000 40000 0.0e+00 2.5e+10 5.0e+10 7.5e+10 1.0e+11

Variation of in Independent Variables (ceteris paribus)

Figure B.12: Marginal effects graphs for control variables in the full model for Germany. They show
the change in predicted foreign policy agendas given change in the specified independent variable
while keeping all other variables at constant values (ceteris paribus). N.B.: The scale of the y-axis
changes for each graph because the size of the effects vary too much.