Introduction

The idea of paradigm change is credited to Thomas Kuhn (1962/1970) who challenged the dominant progressive and empiricist view of science as a linear and gradual accumulation of knowledge through the observation of reality, and reconstructed the history of the natural sciences as a series of paradigmatic shifts. Shortly before him, Gombrich (1959/1960) made similar claims in his analysis of the history of art which he described as the succession of different styles. In particular, Kuhn's work reached the discipline of International Relations (IR) and unleashed debates about the incommensurability of the then existing paradigms in IR (the 'third debate') (Lapid 1989; Wæver 1996) as well as the question of whether Realism conforms to the status of the main paradigm in the discipline (Guzzini 1998).

The significance of Kuhn's work for IR was thus initially on the level of observation and not of action. Originally, Kuhn himself was interested less in the scientist than in science, that is, less in the agents than the structures of scientific knowledge. He conceived of scientific activity to consist most of the time of a routine activity (normal science) which only during the exceptional cases of paradigmatic change produces symptoms of crisis that force practitioners to reflect on that activity. Kuhn's main question was on which criteria practitioners decide to adopt a new paradigm? What persuades the practitioners? But, more importantly, what this tells us about scientific progress.

Kratochwil's analysis of normative action (1989) brought paradigm change to the centre of attention in IR with a focus on the level of action. According to Kratochwil, the distinctiveness of normative action lies in the need for actors to reflect on the normative environment and decide which norm to follow in a given situation. Rule-following is not automatic. A rule/norm provides not a cause but a reason for action, preceded by the reasoning/reflection of the actor (Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986). Normative action faces actors with the demand for self-reflection and justification that confront scientists only in the exceptional cases of paradigm change.

A central question for Kratochwil is the same as for Kuhn. What persuades practitioners in the case of paradigmatic shifts? His analysis (Kratochwil 1989) draws attention to the communicative/interactive aspects of persuasion and its distinctive logic compared to scientific reasoning. Reasoning with norms and rules is so prevalent in normative action yet its structure is so markedly different from scientific reasoning that Kratochwil invites us to accept this type of reasoning as the normal case and to subsume the monological type of scientific reasoning within everyday reasoning as an exceptional form of the justification of action. As Kratochwil (1989: 33) put it: Norm-appliers ... routinely face the same problem scientists face only during crisis periods when they are confronted with the problem of validation. In neither case can the persuasiveness of arguments for treating a controversy in terms of calculus A rather than B, or in terms of one set of norms rather than another, be rooted in the validation procedures internal to the calculi or in the unproblematic correspondence rules. [...] In other words, we might be well advised to follow up on Hare's suggestion and treat assertions in all areas such as logic, science, or law as 'speech acts'. Instead of making 'consistency' and 'truth' the paradigmatic cases for deciding validity-claims, as logic and positivism demand, we had better use the model of deciding such questions discursively as our 'normal case'. The worlds of logic and science represent, then, rather exceptional instances in which — through special circumstance — 'the pragmatic dimension' of communication often can be neglected by the participants in a discourse.

According to Kratochwil, reasoning with norms and rules in an attempt to persuade/justify one's actions is much more prevalent in IR than is suggested by mainstream approaches.¹ Yet Kratochwil does not speak about diplomatic action per se. His model case is legal reasoning and the application of norms and rules in the courtroom.

This article redirects attention away from the prevalence of norms to the incidence and the role of paradigm shifts in international relations. It argues that paradigmatic changes in international relations happen in three areas: the area of science (IR), identified by Kuhn; the area of international law, as described by Kratochwil; and — as this article claims — the area of diplomacy. The article interprets paradigm change as a change of people's worldview. Because the status/evaluation of facts and events differ with paradigms, a change of worldview does not allow us to speak of progress in our interpretation of the same things/world. The new worldview present in a new paradigm in fact creates a new reality. Recognition of this reality persuades actors into acceptance often prior the existing evidence that would justify the validity of the new paradigm or, in spite of the failure of diplomatic action, to create the power necessary to institute it. The possibility of a paradigmatic change comes in part from the interaction of actors from different traditions and cultures who act with different backgrounds and worldviews. But it seems that the introduction of a new language/worldview is often preceded or called for by a crisis or conflict within the community.

As we have seen, among the three areas it is mainly in the first, on the level of observation, that the incidence of paradigm change has been recognized and studied. The actual influence of Kuhn's theory is, however, much more serious than what it appears to be from the explicit scientific debate on paradigms.² It has itself invited a paradigm change in the form of the need for a new language that more closely captures what scientists are actually doing. The paradigm change that is currently taking place in IR, manifested by the inroads of Constructivism into mainstream IR theory was partly triggered by it.³ While Constructivism owes as much to more radical critiques from approaches labelled reflectivist by the mainstream (Keohane 1988), it also has an independent argument. This value added has been identified to reside in the insistence by Constructivist theories on 'social facts' (Pouliot 2004) we ourselves found conclusive in a paradigm change.⁴

The contribution of the article is twofold. It offers a possible conceptualization of the role of language in diplomacy. The role of language has been neglected in IR partly as a consequence of the underestimation of norms on the assumption that action in IR is best described as strategic action (Schelling 1960). This neglect is sometimes justified in crises given the difficulty of actors to build trust to verbally communicate which led to the reduction of the role of communication to behavioural moves, or — in more sophisticated models — to an exchange of information on actors' preferences. Contrary to these models, however, the art of diplomacy consists of precisely maintaining communication even during situations of crisis through what might be described as creative communication. In these cases the role of communication is, however, not necessarily the disclosure but the hiding of information (what Habermas 1981/1984 I: 333 calls concealed strategic action).

But even those approaches that have recognized the role of verbal communication in IR encounter difficulties in studying it. A change of paradigm is followed by a change of discourse and some approaches focus on the study of discourse.⁵ Yet from the viewpoint of diplomacy it is the period of indeterminacy that elapses in-between the emergence and the acceptance or the successful resistance of paradigmatic change that is the most interesting. Moreover, the ex post reconstruction of paradigmatic shifts and changes in discourse can easily lead to a bias for 'progress' and change at the expense of stasis. These attempts are, however, not always successful. It has been further noted that dramatic shifts of this kind are often preceded by less visible changes (advances in science, in the technique of 'representation', or changes in the interpretation of norms) and that the actors introducing changes are not always possible to identify with one or another discourse/paradigm.

The article proposes the broad conceptualization of language as reflecting the background of actors (Searle 1983), that is, the world from which they speak. People with different backgrounds confront one another and their background determines the limits of the possible of the art they are pursuing. Paradigm shifts are often the result of such a confrontation. Yet their incidence is contingent on the outcome of interaction.

Second, this conceptualization provides new aspects to the contemporary debate on persuasion in IR. Persuasion in this case happens neither through threats or other forms of power as in bargaining (Elster 1991, 1992), nor shaming (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998: 898; Keck and Sikkink 1998) or the disclosure of rhetorical action (Schimmelfennig 2001), not even through a change of identities/beliefs as in arguing (Elster 1991, 1992; Risse 2000). Persuasion is instead achieved through pointing to certain facts. It is claimed that pointing to facts that escaped the attention of actors can produce shared understandings even between actors whose interests are otherwise diametrically opposed. The source of giving in in such situations is the recognition of a mistake made on the part of an actor otherwise not interested in making this move. Part of the artfulness of action instituting a paradigm change derives from actors' ability to 'create' such facts and to legitimate their actions by an appeal to them. Finally, by placing the problem of persuasion in the larger context of diplomatic action the approach highlights the complex nature of diplomatic action. Since diplomacy takes place in front of two audiences (i.e. international and domestic society), questions of authenticity and the need for justification of one's actions are called for. This would suggest that justification happens not merely by success (consequence) and that other logics of action are at play.⁶ The article clarifies the sense in which it is true that diplomacy is the realm of justification by success.

Persuasion Into A New Language: Paradigmatic Shifts in Art and the Sciences

As appears from the above quote by Kratochwil, paradigmatic shifts in the sciences are rare. Actors are not so much predisposed for changing but rather for mastering the existing language. The use of the norms of this language is not necessarily conscious: they form the background for actors, the tools which they use as if by routine. It is true that competition for excellence can lead to slight shifts in language. But the motivation for actors is not the introduction of a new language, a new paradigm or a new style but the perfection of the existing one. It is as if actors knew that there is no knowledge, art without language.

Paradigm shifts are therefore often the sign of a crisis, when actors are forced to reflect on the norms they 'normally' (i.e. in 'normal' times) use without much pre-reflection, for example, when they are confronted with a new language. Indeed, studies related to the history of science and the history of art have revealed two things: first that the authors of great discoveries and of new styles in art often came from a different school than the mainstream, where the language spoken of 'the art' in question differed from that of the mainstream. Similarly, it also came to light that the discoverers and artists in question did not simply talk a different language, but they equally saw a different world. The possibility that language and world might be so connected that in possession of a different language we might see a different world has in particular shaken our common-sense understanding of the material world. The question was no longer how is it possible that people seeing the same thing depict it so differently if we think of the diverse styles in art. Rather, the new question concerned how it is possible that potentially there are as many interpretations as there are styles in art, and that we do not even notice it as long as we are not confronted with a new interpretation.

The psychological games collected by Gombrich (1959/1969), such as the duck/rabbit example or Rubin's vase (Gombrich 1973: 242) etc. are able to model the difficulties we encounter in 'seeing'. They help grasp the problem of seeing, or the problem of introducing a new language that actors face in the course of paradigmatic change. Gombrich offered examples of two possible pictures in one but where the totality of the experience of seeing one picture erases the possibility of seeing the other. While we have no real difficulty of 'switching' from one picture to the other (especially once this possibility is brought to our attention), seeing both pictures simultaneously seems not to be feasible. This is because in the course of our 'transformation' of one picture into the other, some elements are de-emphasized while other seemingly unimportant spots or stains or even mistakes from the viewpoint of the first picture suddenly gain the utmost importance (Gombrich 1959/1960: 4–5). What happens in the course of these games of transformation is the experience that 'we do not see, with our own eyes'. The spots are, materially speaking, there but we fail to attribute them importance and relegate them to the level of mistakes and stains. The 'mistake', in other words, is in our own 'subject' who, trying to delineate the frames/borders of an object with the help of our previous experience and language inadvertently interprets that object and, in the course of this interpretation, we fail to notice the different avenues open to someone with different experiences and in possession of a different language.

Actors, in other words, are socialized into languages which pre-dispose them to see/interpret reality in one way or another determined by the language available. And here language should be broadly understood. It is the language of an artistic style, or the language of science, that is, a theory with the help of which scientists describe/explain the world in order to understand it. While one interpretation is far from being exhaustive of reality, and is best described as a sketch of reality, a given interpretation by language speakers drives out other possibilities. Kuhn's widely debated piece has shown that the observation of reality does not happen directly with a 'fresh eye' but through the interpreting framework or the language of a theory which tells us what to look for in the first place. The difficulty of a change of paradigm is thus explained by the fact that a paradigmatic shift means not merely a change of language but, along with it, a change of the view of the world as such.

Kuhn's reconstruction of the history of science challenged the positivist view of a correspondence between theory and the world (reality). Once we accept the claim that it is the language of a paradigm which determines what scientists see, it is more accurate to say that science is born of science, and not from the direct or unmediated observation of reality,⁷ as 'art is born of art, not of nature'.⁸ The most obvious link is historical. This points to the contingencies involved in the development of science. The history of science has not evolved according to a pre-written necessary script. This history is worth recording precisely because it shows how it could have evolved otherwise and the extent to which it has depended on contingent 'turning' and meeting points, from the influences between certain cultures to the meeting of certain individuals and schools of thought. There is nothing inevitable or deterministic about this development. Recording the history of science draws attention to the role of actors and their social entourage.

Kuhn and Gombrich were driven to the same conclusion about the dependence of our representations of reality in art and science at any point in time on the socialization of language speakers. But, as we have said, this recognition in the area of art did not have much influence on the discipline of IR. The reason for this Kratochwil finds in the tendency to model IR on the image of the natural sciences, something he questions as inadequate. What escaped attention, however, is that until the discovery of photography the self-image of art has been very similar to the self-image of IR. It was maintained that art is about the faithful representation of reality. And that the history of art consists of no more and no less than progress towards visual truth (Gombrich 1959/1960:12) in the sense of increasing correspondence between reality and its representation. We could say that paradigmatic shifts in art have been accelerated with the advent of photography precisely because this discovery plunged art into a crisis from which it has not necessarily since recovered.

If Kuhn's claim about the correspondence between our theories and reality often continues to be resisted in IR, his analysis equally raised questions about the nature of scientific knowledge. The incidence of a paradigm change is a situation in which scientists have two competing descriptions of the world available which, according to the old conception, both claim to be the true representation of reality. As has been noted, however, competing theories project competing realities. The choice between the old and the new paradigm therefore cannot take place on the basis of a mere correspondence between theories and an objective world independently existing, which our theories merely represent. Rather it happens on the basis of the collective judgment of language speakers, in this case members of the scientific community. These changes have been adopted by the practitioners often before the necessary evidence has been collected and therefore often not on the basis of, but prior to, the establishment of necessary evidence on the promises of the new theories. The criterion of acceptance, in other words, was not objectivity in the sense of a true description of the world but objectivity that reflected the inter-subjectively shared understanding of language speakers.

The weight of inter-subjective understandings is today more readily recognized in the case of art. The contemplation of modern art in particular has accustomed us to the idea that the question of whether a piece of art counts as art depends not on the accuracy of the representation but on the collective judgment of a community of language speakers; the most competent of these being the artists themselves. However, when searching for the answer to how an inter-subjectively shared understanding can emerge, or what is it that persuades the practitioners, we would arrive at the same answer in science than in art. The answer to this question resides in the new facts that the new paradigm makes actors see. In the case of the duck-rabbit example, we have noted that once the possibility of switching from one picture to another is brought to our attention we have in principle no problem of moving between the two pictures. The experience is comparable to receiving a new language or technique of representation with the help of which formerly unnoticed or un-decodable spots of reality become intelligible or visible to the 'see-er'. While a spot counts as a rabbit's ear in one context, it is not even noticed or discarded as irrelevant in the other context where our language disposes us to see the duck. The promise of an explanation by the new paradigm of an object seen but discarded as irrelevant or the formulation of expectations about the future discovery of facts whose existence was unknown to the old theory is what persuades. A comparable experience in art is the direction of attention to seeing a tower in mist, which we thought we know on the assumption of knowing that the tower is there. In both cases it is the discovery of new facts formerly unknown but disclosed by the new language or the identification of facts relegated to the status of mistake or 'noise' that help persuade actors to accept a new language sometimes even those who otherwise have a stake in the old paradigm and can be disadvantaged by paradigm change.⁹

To conclude: it has been stated so far that in art and science, paradigmatic changes are rare and often inadvertent to the extent that actors are not primarily preoccupied with bringing it about. Rather, actors are driven by the concern to creatively use a language to perfection acquired through socialization and 'copying'. The stakes of adequate or creative language use are mainly personal. The introduction of a new language can happen but actors are concerned in the main with the 'representation' and not the transformation of reality.¹⁰

The extension of the study of language to ordinary languages (Wittgenstein 1953/1968; Austin 1962; Searle 1969) has unveiled language uses with a purpose other than the description/representation of reality: that is, no easy match was possible to find between words used and the 'world' to which these words referred. In IR Onuf (1989) has demonstrated how different types of language use — which can be interpreted as different 'strategies' of acting upon the world with the purpose to 'match word and world' — are responsible for the socialization of people into different cultures. As we move from the area of art and science to law and to diplomacy, acting on the world specifically with the purpose of transforming it becomes more and more explicit and legitimate. The stakes of action in law and politics often transcend the personal stakes of the individuals and concern the community as a whole. The future of the community or even its survival can depend on actors' ability to persuade. The concern for legitimation suggests an audience, including first of all those whose fate is most affected by the outcome of legal or political action. We speak of artful reasoning in law or of artful diplomacy when a legal decision or a political action is recognized to be legitimate even by the most affected. In this case, persuasion takes place without a change of identities. It is claimed that arriving at an inter-subjective understanding with regard to certain things does not necessarily mean the sharing of identities. Such actions require from their practitioners the ability to execute the same acts of transformation in the audience or the 'see-er' that we have identified above in the case of paradigmatic changes in science or art. Legal and political action is performative in that sense (Onuf 1989: 82). The condition that allows calling a legal or political action 'artful' is that it is successfully performed, that is, even the most affected cannot deny the validity of the claims involved. A further characteristic of artful reasoning/diplomacy is that it (is able to) represent(s) general rather than particular interests.

The two sections below demonstrate how creative language use can help effect paradigmatic change through persuasion in the areas of law and diplomacy, and what this tells us about the incidence and the stakes of paradigm change in these areas.

Paradigmatic Shifts Through Persuasion by Artful Reasoning in Law

The 'application' of the law raises problems similar to what we have already alluded to in the case of the scientific or pictorial interpretation of the world. These problems are related to the question as to how law 'represents' the social universe. Does a legal system contain all descriptions of the possible crimes committed in the past and the future as well as a full list of weapons with which such crimes can be committed so that application is no more than the identification of the crime, the weapon and the related penalty? In his unconventional understanding of law, Kratochwil (1989) questions this and instead proposes to return to the Classical (Greek and Roman) rhetorical tradition in the search of an alternative interpretation. Kratochwil's departure has two advantages. First, it draws attention to the neglected role of language (argumentation) in both politics and law. In this connection, Kratochwil invites us to consider the limits of the explanatory power of political science in explaining rule-following. Second, returning to the Classical Greek and Roman legal tradition allows Kratochwil to compare reasoning in formal logic and reasoning in practical matters such as law and politics, a comparison which is the starting point for Aristotle himself. Moreover, since Aristotle does not make a sharp distinction between law and practical reasoning in everyday matters, Kratochwil can support and refine Aristotelian arguments with the findings of the study of ordinary language, which question the purely 'representational' function of language and draw attention to its evaluative and sometimes transformative function¹¹ unacknowledged but important for social life.

Kratochwil (1989) argues that artful reasoning in law is able to turn a debated situation into a factual question on which it becomes possible for members of a community or an audience to agree. This is a crucial point. Ultimately, it is these factual evidences that provide the proof for the validity of the arguments made and create recognition in the audience. The emphasis here is not merely on the power of arguments in themselves, but as much on the support of these arguments by facts. This is a departure from the mere focus of theories of communicative action on argumentation and deliberation where actors rely exclusively on the power of the better argument to persuade in an ideal speech or non-hierarchical situation. It is this difference which allows the comparing of artful reasoning and the diplomatic art with paradigmatic changes in science and art. As we have seen, paradigmatic changes happen because they promise to reconcile evidence about the existence of some disturbing empirical facts with the claims of a paradigm, and to disclose new facts whose existence was formerly unknown. The new paradigm is thus able to illuminate both past (disturbing) and future (promising) facts. A new style in art is similarly able to illuminate past mistakes of representation through the proposition, for example of a new technique of representation as well as new aspects of reality that escaped the attention of the see-ers. The relationship identified between a paradigm and the view of the world in the case of science and art applies equally to artful reasoning in law. Arguments/interpretation and facts are intertwined in that some arguments point to different relevant facts than others, an observation that equally provides the clue to the problem of the application of the law.

The aim of argumentation is precisely to find the relevant facts and thereby reach deliberation in everyday matters through reasoned arguments, rather than through the arousal of passions and prejudices or by an appeal to the authority/standing of the speaker, in situations where no logically compelling argument is available and yet nor is the decision reached purely idiosyncratic. It is here that the difference between argumentation in formal logic compared to reasoning in law or practical reasoning in everyday matters becomes relevant. Examples borrowed from Aristotle suggest that the latter two types of reasoning are closer to each other precisely in the absence of a logically compelling argument. A compelling decision in these areas is reached on the basis of criteria different from logic. Following Aristotle, Kratochwil (1989: 215) mentions the three cases of: (1) giving advice in the form of persuasion or dissuasion; (2) the defence or accusation of an actor; or (3) the attribution or praise or blame.

The above cases suggest that practical and legal reasoning is called for to solve a problem, conflict or crisis within the community. It is also easy to concede that, contrary to science and art, conflicts of this kind are common within a political community or in peoples' everyday lives. The source of the conflict is explained by Kratochwil (1989: 227, quoting Wolfgang Gast 1982: 304): ...the controversy about the correct interpretation of the meaning of the norm is 'the judicial-semantic parallel to the conflicts of interests in the social world: it is the way in which law represents these differences.' Judges therefore are usually not simply 'applying' norms to a case but to a large extent select among the presented interpretations which are tendered by the parties to a controversy. For this selection judges have to provide reasons precisely because the literal meaning is no longer able to represent a social consensus.

The condition for the existence of a case is, in other words, the formulation of two competing descriptions/interpretations of a situation already in the pre-trial period, which can be described as 'a contest between two pleadings' (Kratochwil 1989: 230).

The question is in what sense we can speak of a change of paradigm? The answer to this question is to be sought in the differences in reasoning that can be established compared to formal logic. Two main differences exist. In contrast to reasoning from premises that are true and primary, practical reasoning proceeds from generally accepted opinions. Some of these opinions are ready-made and seem to reflect common sense, like the topos 'more is better than less', others can be derived by analogy from the generalization of past examples, fables or other forms of narratives. The second difference compared to formal logic concerns the nature of proofs that connect the starting point to the conclusion. In contrast to formal logic where the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises, rhetorical proofs reach valid inferences offering a description of the situation by pointing to a new connection that escaped the attention of the audience.

This transformative potential, however, does not stand equally for all legal decisions. Here lies the difference between the attainment of justice through artful reasoning as compared to the mere application of the law. Juridical art transcends the effective representation of the interests of the plaintiff or the defendant (Kratochwil 1989: 236) in that the acceptance of a decision is not merely predicated on the authority of the court but on agreement in the audience that a just or principled decision has been reached.¹² The proposed argumentation is surprising and revealing to both sides of a controversy as well as to the larger audience, which allows us to speak about a paradigm change. Artful reasoning is able to re-establish the broken social consensus by delivering substantive and not merely procedural justice. From this it is possible to see why the stakes of judicial reasoning transcend the personal stakes of the actor. The stakes of paradigm change in law concern the approximation of justice in society and, consequently, the integration of the society in question.

Reasoning in law reveals the role played by the non-neutral nature of language in persuasion. The choice and the role of common places or topoi, which help structure the argument at the starting point and the turning points, goes far beyond a mere description of an initial situation. Rather, these choices imply 'an appraisal' of the situation in question — as well as an appraisal of action and of the actor committing it — by connecting it to a generally held opinion and thereby illuminating both the relevant facts and the relevant norm or precedent to be applied. Competing descriptions of a situation point to different relevant facts.

It is, in other words, the organization of facts according to a narrative that decides the issue of relevant facts, where different objects or signs are proposed to stand for/or count as something else on the basis of an analogy or likeness. A teapot can thus count as a weapon in one context and a teapot in another, that is, irrelevant in a competing appraisal of the case. This is an assertive speech act¹³ which is meant to create identification between two things through the proposition that X counts as Y in context C.

Despite the prevalence of legal cases aimed at resolving conflicts of interest within a community, artful reasoning in law is rare. Justice conceived as a reasonable and principled judgment (Kratochwil 1989: 240) may be consciously thought for by lawyers. Yet its attainment confronts practitioners with obstacles comparable in the size of the task to those scientists and artists face in the case of a paradigm change. The first difficulty concerns the challenge 'to establish similarities among different cases or objects in the face of striking dissimilarity'.¹⁴

Second, since the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the initial premises nor does the validity of a description depend merely on finding the relevant facts. Rather, it depends on whether the description/appraisal proposed of a situation finds support in the audience. If the hearer accepts the proposition in question as literal (literally what the speaker means) a provisional negotiated reality is created between them (Onuf 1989: 157, footnote 23). Objectivity is thus reached through agreement between the parties (i.e. inter-subjectivity).

Finally, in the case of artful reasoning the reconstruction of the probable facts is ethically biased and objectivity is enhanced by the ethical dimensions of a decision: its impartiality and its ability to represent basic rather than transient interests.

King Solomon's justice

The case of 'artful reasoning' in law can be illustrated by an example cited by Morgenthau (1970: 61–67), which he however intends to use to the contrary effect. Morgenthau brings up the example of King's Solomon's justice as an illustration of the difference between law and politics, which he believes to lie in the hierarchical relationship between the king representing the law and his subjects; a situation that does not exist in politics. According to Morgenthau (1970: 66), it is the power of the king that makes his decision compelling. In our interpretation, the compelling nature of the decision derives from the persuasiveness of the underlying argument and its promise to decide the issue on the basis of certain facts, in this case inadvertently disclosed by the different reactions of the two alleged mothers to the decision. As we have noted earlier, artful reasoning results when even the most affected cannot deny the validity of a decision and are so to speak 'disarmed' in front of it, despite the harsh consequences of the decision for them (of being punished on charges of criminality). The perception that a 'valid' or just decision has been reached is, at the same time, equally evident to the audience in that the decision strikes as a compelling truth. As we remember, King Solomon has to decide the issue between two women both claiming to be the mother of the same child. Unable to prove who the 'real' mother is, the king resolves the dilemma of a just decision by ordering to cut the baby into two. His decision leaves one of the two alleged mothers silent while it leads the other to immediately deny her motherhood. From this the king concludes to the contrary that the mother denying motherhood has to be the 'real' mother. The narrative that helps decide the issue in this case is the proposition that X counts as a false mother in context C, i.e. if claiming her motherhood she consents to sacrifice her child.

As appears from this case, the facts accepted to be able to disclose the 'truth' are merely probabilistic. Since we cannot read the minds and intentions of the actors, and since we have not witnessed what happened in the past, these facts are merely inferred from the behaviour of the contestants and are completely at odds with what is being said. In that sense, the selection of the relevant facts on which the reconstruction and the appraisal of the situation depend do not follow necessarily from the premises. Nevertheless, the decision, and the ethically biased argumentation behind it, appear compelling enough to persuade the audience (including the false mother most affected) about the 'rightness' of the decision.

Persuasion Through A Paradigm Change by Artful Diplomacy

This section attempts to extend the argument made by Kratochwil in connection with artful reasoning in law to the area of diplomacy. I argue that artful diplomacy is able to turn a debated situation into a factual question on which it becomes possible for members of a community or an audience to agree. Similarly, artful diplomacy means the representation of general rather than particular interests. Here the emphasis is not on finding the relevant facts related to an action committed earlier in time (e.g. stealing someone else's child), but on the construction of the relevant facts that allow for a common appraisal of the situation in the future. Diplomatic action is called for when conflicts of interest within society can no longer be solved by instruments of the law. The breakdown of norms at the same time foreshadows the prospect of the use of violence.

The obvious differences between legal action as described by Kratochwil and political/diplomatic action call for two qualifications, however. They concern the place of argumentation in IR on one hand, and the relationship between argumentation and diplomatic action more broadly conceived on the other. The most obvious areas of argumentation in IR are diplomatic negotiations or the international public sphere. These are the areas where the debate over persuasion in IR has been carried for the most part within the discipline (Risse 2000; Steffek 2005). Yet diplomatic action is clearly not exhausted by argumentation in that it is a more encompassing form of social interaction. The broader aspects of diplomatic action have been captured in the debate by the conceptual pairs of communicative vs strategic action.

The concept of communicative action (action oriented to mutual understandings) was introduced by Habermas in order to describe the action coordination of members of a society as part of his broader sociological project concerned with the functioning of modern (emancipated) societies. His aim was to differentiate this type of action from strategic action, oriented by individual (private) interests/ends. The difference compared to strategic action was found by Habermas (2001: 147–48) in the readiness of the parties participating in a communicative form of interaction to justify their actions by giving reasons for what they do and say, as well as in their readiness/willingness to reach a mutual understanding. Justification of one's actions is called for when one of the parties — out of some perceived misunderstanding (unintelligibility), disagreement, doubt of sincerity, or doubt that a violation of a working norm between the two parties took place¹⁵ — asks the other party to do so. In such cases the flow of communicative action, which encompasses speech acts but equally other forms of interaction as well, is interrupted/suspended until the parties discursively solve the misunderstanding or difference by a reasoned consensus. In order to reach a mutual understanding actors switch from communicative action to discursive argumentation (Habermas 2001: 100). Depending on the noticed 'disturbance' in the flow of communicative action they will be engaging in hermeneutic, theoretical or practical discourse (ibid.: 148–9).¹⁶ Habermas found practical legal discourse as paradigmatic for the coordination of action within modern societies.

The invocation of Habermas had two countervailing influences from the viewpoint of diplomacy: a potentially extending and a restrictive influence. Placing argumentation in the wider context of communicative vs strategic action has potentially opened up the space for the study of diplomatic action broadly conceived. At the same time, however, because Habermas worked out his theory of communicative action in order to explain the functioning of stable modern societies, debate within the IR discipline has mainly been restricted to multilateral settings which resemble discourse in domestic parliaments. Here it is the formulation and representation of the differences in points of view of a conflict that is the purpose of interaction but, for the same reason, their magnifying of conflicts gives multilateral settings only a limited potential for conflict resolution (Claude 1958/2004). Focusing on multilateral settings diverted attention away from diplomatic action broadly conceived and oriented towards the resolution of conflicts. Moreover, analysis of diplomatic action has been reduced to the analysis of communication/argumentation in IR. The question whether Habermas' theory can be applied to IR sparked debate over the existence/non-existence of a common lifeworld in the international realm (Risse 2000; Lose 2001; Müller 2001). Much like a shared form of life introduced by Wittgenstein, a common lifeworld is the taken-for-granted background of communicative action. Actors more often than not follow the norms of a common lifeworld unreflectively. It is only in the case of argumentative discourse that the uncritically, sometimes unconsciously held, elements of a lifeworld shared by members of a society are thematized and subjected to a rational debate. The existence of a common lifeworld is therefore crucial for the possibility of communicative action/argumentation as conceived by Habermas.¹⁷

On Habermas' account, should the conditions for communicative action be severely violated,¹⁸ communication then breaks down and actors revert to strategic action. On this view, the coercion and violence of concern to traditional diplomacy is described as strategic action. This account, I argue, is not sufficiently differentiated in order to do justice to diplomatic action. Should violence break out in a society some actors would continue to be acting in the name of public interests and not purely private interests. Moreover, even if diplomatic action is ambiguous, the justification of one's actions is called for.

I suggest that more insight can be gained about what happens in a conflictive situation if we turn to Habermas' analysis of communicative pathology (1974/2001) rather than to his Theory of Communicative Action. I shortly summarize the insights relevant to diplomatic action below.

According to Habermas (1974/201: 154–5, 164) a systematically distorted communication sets in when communicative action continues 'surreptitiously, that is, without leading to a break in communication or to the transition to openly declared and permissible strategic action'. This happens when 'at least one of the three universal validity claims to intelligibility (of the expression), sincerity (of the intention expressed by the speaker), and normative rightness (of the expression relative to a normative background) is violated and communication nonetheless continues on the presumption of communicative (not strategic) action'. This is a paradoxical situation for 'the same validity claims that are being violated ... at the same time serve to keep up the appearance of consensual action'.

Systematically distorted communication serves to avoid open conflict (Habermas 1974/2001: 150, 155). Actors suspend consensus and revert to strategic action sometimes even without acknowledging it to themselves due to the insecurity of their own personal identities, for example when one of the parties is emotionally dependent on the other (ibid.: 169). The distortion of communication is a strategy or a defence mechanism which helps protect people with unstable identities from an open conflict, which they believe they are too weak to bear (ibid.: 156, 169).

Much like the conflict underlying it, the contradictions this distorted form of communication creates 'cannot be completely suppressed but [are] not supposed to become manifest' (ibid.: 155, 165). The pseudo-consensus (ibid.: 165) so emerging aims at 'producing a consensus [e.g.] about speaker intentions and about a normative context that conceals the dissensus about what has actually been said' (ibid.: 167).

Habermas attributes the contradictions to the violation of the universally valid presuppositions of communication. Upon a closer examination the incoherencies that result reflect violations of the norms of rationality (Habermas 2001: xxii) that guarantee the possibility of a rational consensus (reaching an understanding) in discourse. Habermas (1974/2001: 149, 151, 152) enumerates the inconsistencies as follows: It is not possible to want to communicate and to express oneself unintelligibly or misleadingly.
One cannot want both to make oneself understood and to express one's intentions insincerely.
One may not at the same time want mutual understanding and make utterances that violate recognized norms and values.

I claim that, in the case of a political crisis, communication is meant to fulfil precisely such contradictory aims by actors who are neither irrational nor insecure in their identities, nor necessarily immoral. Rather a crisis or the insecurity of the situation around them creates obstacles to reaching an understanding on both the factual and the normative environment. The justification of one's actions cannot be based on stable facts due to instability. This is particularly true in the case of paradigm change where, as we have seen, a change in the view of the world takes place. A change of legitimacy means a paradigm change in that competing legitimacies are based on different facts of relevance for a given order. Nor can arguments about the validity of norms be justified since conflict over which norms are valid cannot be separated from questions of legitimacy. As Habermas (1974/2001: 153) himself notes 'if participants disagree about the normative background, if the other considers certain norms of action to be right that the ego rejects, or if the other does not accept the ego's image of herself, then we can no longer talk about deviating behavior; instead we now have a conflict'. This gives rise to the distortion of communication if the conflict is disguised 'and continues to smolder under the cover of apparently consensual action' (ibid.). Yet, when disagreement about the normative background happens on a mass scale then the (social, political) 'preconditions [simply] do not exist for reaching an understanding metacommunicatively and dealing with these conflicts discursively' (ibid.: 162).

Nevertheless, actors may want to maintain communication precisely for the sake of avoiding an open conflict or mitigating it until agreement on the factual situation can be created and the normative background redressed. For the sake of the maintenance of communication communicative action may not be openly interrupted. This creates participants the freedom of action they need for the institution of changes that promise stable conditions for an agreement in the future by organizing the forces each party considers legitimate.

I would like to provide an illustration of the case of persuasion through paradigm change by artful diplomacy. According to the story, a letter is demanded from someone of authority, a bishop, as an assurance that he consents to a plot to murder the queen. We can understand that the bishop is in danger when asked to take a position on a conflict with unknown but potentially contrary outcomes in the future. He has to act cautiously. Should he lack enough power to defend his position openly while wanting to influence the outcome of the plot and participate in the organization of the forces he deems legitimate, his answer would be motivated by two contradictory aims: to act consensually and to give the assurances demanded in such a way as to voice a potential disagreement, or without necessarily disclosing his position on the conflict. An open critique could easily lead to a consensual statement extricated by force that would deprive him of any freedom of action. It is noteworthy that asking for an assurance suggests that the organizers of the plot are themselves concerned to keep up the appearance of consensual action (legitimacy): that is, they are not ready to openly acknowledge that they have reverted from communicative to strategic action even if this gives some leeway to the bishop in the formulation of his answer.

The bishop meets the demand by sending a letter whose double meaning is not immediately apparent: To murder the Queen you do not have to be afraid if everybody consents I do not object.¹⁹

This letter illustrates that language — through creative use — is able to carry two competing meanings which correspond to the two conflicting views of the world. This property of language offers the possibility of fulfilling the demand but in such a way as to protect its author in two politically and morally incompatible future worlds. It is the reader who is invited to choose between the two readings and to perform the act of interpretation for himself. With different worlds and ideas about the future in mind, different readers are tempted to favour one reading at the expense of the other.

The first reading provides the assurance demanded by the organizers of the plot, who tend to read it as a consent or approval. The punctuation that justifies this reading would be the following: To murder the Queen, You do not have to be afraid.
If everybody consents, I do not object.

The second reading prepares for the world where the plot is suppressed and the murder is condemned as illegitimate. This reading emerges as a result of an alternative intonation. The punctuation which reveals this possibility would be: To murder the Queen, You do not have to!
Be afraid!
If everybody consents, I do not!
Object!

At the beginning of the section we said that artful diplomacy is able to turn a debated situation into a factual question on which it becomes possible for members of a community or an audience to agree. Similarly, artful diplomacy means the representation of general rather than particular interests. It should therefore be able to justify the actions of its author against accusations of immoral behaviour. The first group of relevant facts concerns the diplomatic communication between the bishop and the organizers of the plot following the crisis of the murder or the survival of the queen. By pointing to the written form of the letter, the bishop can, if necessary, prove his loyalty saying that the letter was meant to approve of the murder or to save the queen. His interpretation will depend on the world established in the wake of the conflict. He can convincingly argue that the letter counts as an approval in context C, the world in which the queen is dethroned. He can also equally convincingly say that the letter stands for an objection in context Z, the world where the queen manages to keep her power. Should any doubt about his position emerge, revealing the opposite meaning of the letter the bishop invites the parties of the political elite to perform a paradigm change in their view of the situation and admit to the possibility of an alternative view of legitimacy inherent in the letter. This possibility mirrors the political situation and the stakes of the conflict. Together, the two meanings thus successfully capture the general nature of the crisis for society, represented by (the dilemmas confronting) the bishop.

The relevant facts in each case, concerning the context to which the letter refers, are facts that do not exist in the dispatched version of the sentence. They exist mainly in the form of expectations in the heads of those who read the sentence and are disclosed only with intonation or revealed punctuation. As long as the bishop is not asked to read the sentence aloud, its ultimate meaning as well as the evaluation of his intentions is open to the readers of the two sides to decide. What saves the bishop from taking a position openly is his expectation that, with different background assumptions in mind, each party will opt for a restrictive reading which generalizes his particular position.

The second group of relevant facts concerns the facts of military victory or defeat. Political actors ultimately turn a debated situation into a factual question on which it becomes possible for contestants to agree by the instruments of power. The temporary fact of the outcome of an armed conflict results in lasting reconciliation if the peace emerging represents general rather than particular interests: that is, if it is perceived as legitimate by the majority of members of the community. Artful diplomacy, therefore, does not end with creative communication and it is in the two achievements together whereby diplomatic action is evaluated.

In other words, the evaluation of the bishop's actions also turns on the outcome of the conflict. This directs attention to two violations of the presuppositions of communicative action so far left unexamined: the requirement, first, that speakers express their intentions sincerely and, second, that speakers be truthful, that is, that what they say represents an experience or a fact so that the other can share this experience/knowledge (Habermas 1974/2001: 148). According to Habermas, 'there is no violation of truth that is symptomatic of systematically distorted communication'. Lies, by contrast, if used to disguise a conflict, can distort communication. 'But in that case it is not the presupposition of truth but that of sincerity that is violated' (ibid.: 154). In connection with the evaluation of sincerity, in turn, Habermas (ibid.: 149) makes the following observation: Lastly, even in expressive language use, the speaker undertakes a warrant inherent in the speech act, namely, the obligation to prove trustworthy by demonstrating through the consequences of his action that he has expressed the intention that actually motivates him. In case the immediate assurance that expresses what is evident for the speaker himself fails to dissipate an ad hoc doubt, the sincerity of the utterance can only be tested against the consistency of the consequences of action.

It follows that sincerity, if in doubt, can only be ascertained in view of the outcome of one's actions which, paradoxically, moves us into the realm of the logic of consequentialism (Risse 2000). Diplomacy is the realm of justification by success in that sense, a conclusion tragic for actors who — even if sincere in their intentions and motivated by general and not purely private interests — do not succeed. In our example this happens if the bishop, accused of lying, is forced to clarify his position before the end of the conflict and the side believed to be legitimate by the bishop loses by virtue of his participation.²⁰ Even in this case he can hope that his avowed reading together with a lack of factual evidence of hostile intentions can clear him of the charges and protect his life. The ultimate intention is, however, that the dual meaning of the sentence as well as his position/real intention remain hidden.

Conclusion

The aim of the article has been to examine the incidence of paradigm change in IR in the different areas of scientific/artistic, legal and political action of relevance to IR. The article examined the same questions with respect to the incidence of paradigm change in the three areas. These questions concerned the relationship between paradigm change and the nature and the stakes of the conflict/crisis within society; the nature of the paradigmatic experience captured by a model example; the personal and social obstacles to paradigm change and the role of creativity and contingency in overcoming these obstacles; the relationship that exists between language and the view of the world; the nature of persuasion, in particular, the role of inter-subjective understandings in persuasion; and finally the question as to what persuades: that is, the role of facts in persuasion.

The article sought to advance our understanding of the role of language in diplomatic persuasion. Persuasion is achieved in all three areas by the new facts made visible with the help of the creative use of language as well as, in the case of diplomacy, by the facts emerging through the creation of a legitimate order. Diplomatic persuasion is therefore not limited to communication. The creative exploitation of the potential of language for opposite meanings, where competing meanings refer to competing future contexts/worlds, is central to allowing the maintenance of communication, to the mitigation/postponement of conflict, to extending the freedom of action of the contestants as well as to protecting its user from persecution and violence. But artful diplomacy means artful communication as well as the ability to definitely end conflicts which presupposes action in the observation of the majority interest in society.

The article claims that persuasion through paradigm change creates the possibility of reaching an understanding even when the conditions for communicative action are severely violated in that the parties are not open to persuasion. Persuasion in this case happens not through a change of beliefs. Rather, persuasion through paradigm change consists of executing a change of worldview in the audience which discloses factual evidence about a different world and — in the case of law and diplomacy — about the intention underlying the action.

One could argue that diplomacy is called for precisely due to the non-existence of the conditions of communicative action, and irrespective of the preferences of actors, that is when the instability of facts and norms stand in the way of reaching an understanding and power is involved. The open disclosure of one's position within such circumstances (i.e. the saying of what one really means/thinks: Risse 2000: 10) would amount not to principled behaviour but to naïveté or a misunderstanding of the situation with self-defeating consequences for both the individual and the community. This might confirm Müller (2004) concerning the existence of a superior rule of appropriateness which tells actors what counts as appropriate behaviour in which context. Actors may nonetheless strive to maintain the appearance of communicative action to legitimate their actions for reasons of private or general interests, a question that needs to be examined in each case, but one that cannot be separated completely from the outcome of conflict and the emerging legitimacy. From this stems the ambiguity of diplomacy which allows communication through providing, at the same time, security against both existing contingency and future uncertainty. The condemnation of ambiguity reflects an underestimation of the role of the appearance of communicative action in the resolution of conflicts. Saying that the evaluation of diplomatic action cannot be separated completely from the legitimacy of the emerging order is saying that diplomacy is the realm of justification by success. It is not surprising therefore that actors whose sincerity is in doubt can dissipate accusations of insincere behaviour only if the outcome of the conflict in whose organization they participate confirms their stated intention.

This leads us to the second goal of the article which is to advance our understanding of diplomacy. Current approaches focusing on persuasion in IR fail to address certain questions — in particular the problem of creativity, questions related to the stakes of diplomacy or the examination of diplomatic communication in conflict — because they restrict the analysis of the role of language in persuasion to negotiations within relatively stable conditions that are not paradigmatic of diplomatic action. The debate works on the assumption of a dichotomy existing between strategic and communicative action where diplomacy is associated with the former and reasoning in law mainly with the latter form of action. However, we have seen that, even though procedural rules are meant to create the conditions of distortion-free communication in law, this does not guarantee that it is reasons and not the authority/power of the judge that persuade. This exposes the limits of pure communicative action and suggests that we should concede some ground to poststructuralist approaches in acknowledging the role of power in areas defined as pure communicative action. Similar points have been made in connection with persuasion by norm-entrepreneurs in IR, where critiques drew attention to the strategic use of framing as a means of manipulation which distorts the conditions of arguing (Payne 2001). The article sought to demonstrate that actors engaged in distorted communication may be acting for the general interest even if their ability to justify their actions is tied to successful diplomacy. Even so, or for precisely this reason, ambiguity cannot be fully eliminated but, on the contrary, it is part of artful diplomacy.

Finally, the article invites the study of diplomatic action in the broad sense where the mitigation/resolution of conflicts is at stake, that is, where conflicts over legitimacy threaten both the survival of the community and the survival of the actors involved. In this view diplomatic action is not necessarily limited to politics between states.

Notes

¹ The mainstream was dominated by Waltz's Neorealism (1979) until the beginning of the 1990s.

² Indirectly, however, next to the third debate referred to above, which was conducted explicitly in the language of paradigms, the agent-structure debate addressed the problem of agency (level of action) in the broad sense (Wendt 1987, 2005; Dessler 1989; Doty 1997). The distinction between level of observation and action, however, seems awkward after Kuhn's study given his demonstration that observation/representation is itself a form of social action.

³ The breakthrough in this respect is Wendt's (1992) and Adler's (1997) articles. It is no coincidence that Wendt who introduced the agent-structure problem into IR (1987) is equally a founders of Constructivism (1992, 1999).

⁴ Indeed, Wendt's (1992) piece shows that, even should we concede that IR is conducted in an anarchical environment as suggested by Waltz (1979), anarchy is a property of IR that is not naturally given but socially constructed. Wendt (1999) therefore proposes a 'social' advance on Waltz's Theory of International Politics.

⁵ Studying the emergence of human rights discourse or the change of discourse from one to another culture of anarchy (Wendt 1999) are cases in point. Der Derian (1987) offered a reconstruction of the change of diplomacy over the centuries as a succession of six paradigms or discourses. On the meta-theoretical level, the incompatible 'research programmes' separating, in particular, rational choice and post-modern/poststructuralist approaches illustrate the extent to which communication across paradigms is difficult given the lack of common criteria of comparison in this case on what constitutes useful knowledge (Wæver, 1997: 24). For the same reason, mainstream Constructivism is said to occupy an uneasy middle-ground between these approaches. In this latter connection, see the critiques calling for coherence of Guzzini (2000), Zehfuss (2001, 2002), Wiener (2003), Sending (2002), and Müller (2004), among others.

⁶ Three logics of action have been identified. The logic of appropriateness when actors choose between different avenues of action in consideration of the right behaviour (value rationality), introduced by March and Olsen (1989, 1998) as a distinct logic compared to the logic of consequence, when actors decide on the grounds of the consequences of their actions (instrumental rationality); and the logic of arguing identified by Habermas-inspired (1981/1984) Constructivists (Risse 2000), when actors' decisions are shaped by the better argument. The relationship between the three logics of action forms one of the research questions of the literature. A controversy arises once more from the not altogether overlapping assumptions of rational choice and Constructivist approaches. Habermas-inspired approaches tie a more demanding conception of arguing to communicative action, as a distinct mode of social interaction. Approaches inspired by rational choice rely on a conception of arguing vs bargaining, as a distinct mode of communication only, where arguing is not in principle incompatible with strategic action (Elster 1986, 1995). Even if disagreeing about 'the preconditions for arguing', the two approaches nevertheless share the view that successful persuasion through arguing leads to a change of beliefs (Steffek 2005: 233–34).

⁷ Gombrich quoting André Malraux (1959/1960: 20).

⁸ Kuhn (1970: 37, 46) and Gombrich quoting Ernst Kris (1959/1960: 25).

⁹ It is suggested that, next to authenticity, beauty, expressive power, etc. this provides an additional reason for acknowledging that a picture counts as a piece of art. The link, however, is not necessary but contingent. It is not said that all artists and scientists are acknowledged in their time. What is said is that, when acknowledged, the disclosure of new facts with the help of the language used by these actors forms part of the reasons for acceptance.

¹⁰ This would be debated by approaches which consider mainstream discourse in all areas to be hegemonic and — on the basis of the study of language and meaning — to be arbitrary. The philosophical forerunners range from Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida and Rorty. For their representatives in IR, see Der Derian and Shapiro (1989), and Ashley and Walker (1990).

¹¹ This transformative function is most explicit in the case of institutions like money. A piece of paper counts as money by virtue of an agreement between language speakers. Another example is the institution of a marriage ceremony where uttering the word 'yes' transforms men into husbands, women into wives and their relationship into a family. The study of these institutions was initiated by Austin (1962). The present article's interest is limited to the transformative potential of language in persuasion. Nevertheless, when persuasion succeeds the agreement between the parties creates a weak norm. The invocation of this weak norm leads to its reification over time, which is responsible for the emergence of institutions (Onuf 1989: 84–85).

¹² As we have seen, the paradigm case of law (and of practical reasoning) is the reaching of understanding through reasoned argument and not by an appeal to the status or standing of the speaker.

¹³ Onuf distinguishes between assertive, directive and commissive speech acts which reflect the three functions of rules in a society (instruction, directive, and commitment rules). These functions can be related to people's intentions (Onuf 1989: 87–88). Müller (2004) interprets bargaining and arguing as speech acts, with different intentions. 'Communicative and strategic action, in contrast, are not speech acts, but types of action that include the wider orientation of the speakers and comprise many speech acts'. Müller (2004: 397) shares Elster's view that 'the two types of action are related asymmetrically to the two types of speech acts — communicative action is compatible with arguing but not with bargaining. In contrast, strategic action is compatible with both bargaining and arguing'.

¹⁴ 'The similarity established thereby concerns [only] a (partial) equality among the compared objects or phenomena in regard to a relevant aspect' (Kratochwil 1989: 223).

¹⁵ These four 'presuppositions of communicative action' are universal in that, compared to norms of action that enjoy social validity for contingent reasons, the above four 'in no way change from one normative context to another' (Habermas 1974/2001: 147). They are universally valid in that sense. Actors engaged in the communicative form of interaction cannot but mutually presuppose that they both act on the basis of these four validity claims inherent in speech, according to Habermas (ibid.: 136, 148). These four claims to validity raised by every speech act are openly challenged only in discourse/argumentation.

¹⁶ No independent discourse exists to test the sincerity of an utterance or trustworthiness. See below.

¹⁷ Communicative action therefore encompasses both unreflective rule-following, described by the logic of appropriateness and reflective/discursive examination of these rules through argumentation. Strategically oriented actors can also engage in argumentative discourse when pure strategic action leads to a suboptimal outcome compared to cooperation. In this case, actors switch from the logic of consequence to the argumentative logic (Risse 2000).

¹⁸ These conditions are ideal: never fully met and only approximated in actual interaction. Nevertheless, communicative competence allows actors to intuitively know which type of interaction (communicative vs strategic) they are participating in.

¹⁹ This is a less than perfect translation of the original Latin sentence, but one that is nevertheless able to convey its dual meaning. The original Latin version is: 'Reginam occidere nolite timere bonum est si omnes consentiunt ego non contradico'.

²⁰ Or, conversely, should his choice of interpretation be confirmed/legitimated by the outcome of conflict, this would prove his sincerity even if he were acting insincerely/strategically. By contrast, should the outcome contradict his interpretation, he could not prove his sincerity even if he were sincere in communication and motivated by the general interest in all his actions.

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About the author

Katalin Sárváry received her Ph.D. in International Relations and European Studies from the Central European University, Budapest, in December 2004. Her thesis examined Classical and Constructivist theories of diplomacy, and provided the basis for her critique of Alexander Wendt's theory of IR, published by Routledge in 2006.