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14 1 Theory as a Hermeneutical Mechanism A Theoretical Model This chapter sets out the theoretical model for the book: a model explaining the conditioned power of theories. In order to establish my theory, I aim to use hermeneutics—though with a slight twist. Hermeneutics is usually understood as the art of reading and interpreting texts. I want to stress, however, the dual nature of hermeneutics. Although hermeneutics indeed interprets texts, it is also a more active intellectual endeavor of interpreting reality once reality is conceived as an unwritten text. That is not to say that reality is nothing but a text or even to claim it is a text at all.Rather,I wish to make the more modest assertion that the social and political reality studied by theoreticians encompasses narratives, practices, habits, rules of conduct, modes of behavior, norms, ideas, ideals, and so on. It is these social entities that can be envisaged as an unwritten text. Interpreting reality as an unwritten text involves attaching meaning to reality, which is effected through the use of concepts. In the realms of politics and international politics, it is political concepts that serve as the vehicle for attaching meaning. To explain the power of theories, I will present a three-stage model in which theoretical constructions transform into public conventions and then into political convictions. Once we understand theory as the first stage of a three-stage hermeneutical mechanism, it becomes clear how the theories of democratic peace can influence decision makers, or at least their rhetoric. Moreover, it also becomes clear that it is not the academic theories per se that affect the shaping of the political agenda and its implementation.What affects the political agenda and its implementation are configured theories, and sometimes distorted configurations of theories: theories as the public conceives them—in other words, the public and political representations of these theories. An additional element of this process concerns interested political entrepreneurs who introduce theories to the public by trivializing and sometimes distorting them instrumentally. Theory as a Hermeneutical Mechanism 15 Accepting the three-stage model may appear to undermine the force of theory, as it is neither theory nor theoreticians that affect politics. One ought to remember, however, that theories as theoretical constructions are the origins of the politically configured and reconfigured influential public conventions and political convictions, and as such play an important role in political campaigning when ideas are debated and communicated, and receive legitimation. Furthermore, the way politicians use academic theories is an indication of the theories’political capital, and no less important, it also shows the rhetorical capital of the theories. There are two important reasons why politicians might use theories.The first is that theories persuade politicians so that their strategic thinking becomes framed by them—or more precisely, by the theories’ political representation . As this book maintains, this is what happened in the case of the neoconservatives and their advocacy of grand strategies of forced democratization for the Middle East. In the neoconservatives’ case, the theories were powerful drivers of the politicization process that the theories themselves underwent later, resulting in political convictions which were the framers of strategic thinking. The second reason politicians might turn to theories is that they believe theories carry rhetorical capital and are powerful mechanisms for political persuasion. So, the politicians’ reasoning continues, it is politically expedient to utilize theories to legitimize what they perceive ideologically as warranted policies. As I argue later, this was the case with prominent Israeli right-wing politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu and Natan Sharansky, who, from the mid-1990s, used the democratic peace thesis’ rhetorical capital to convey their ideological objectives of safeguarding Israel against territorial concessions to the Palestinians. The theoretical framework offered here fits in well within the extensive theoretical International Relations (IR) literature that studies the role of ideas, concepts, norms, and meanings in effecting change, and mainly with the constructivist literature and constructivist assertion that knowledge is a foundation for the social construction of reality (see, e.g., Adler 1992; Adler and Haas 1992; Checkel 1997; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Guzzini 2000, 2001; Haas 1992; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Klotz 1995; Kratochwil 1989; Price 1995; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999).1 However, this book’s interest and aims are broader than the existing literature, at least in one sense—that I do not limit myself to exploring how ideas and theories influence reality—I [3.143.9.115] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 07:54 GMT...

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