European Disaster Risk Reduction: Comprehension and Implementation
A constructivist analysis of EU foreign security interests and its relation to EU Disaster Risk Reduction policy Jan-Willem Pot S1561065 C. Wilbrenninckstraat 16 3066HC Rotterdam Jwpot1987@gmail.com Master’s Thesis MA International Relations and International Organization Prof. dr. H.W. Hoen
Table of contents
Page number
List of Abbreviations 3
Introduction 4
Theme and Thesis 5
Sub-questions 9
Chapter 1 - Theoretical framework
Introduction 12
Disaster, Risk and Disaster Risk Reduction 12
The Constructivist Approach 15
Idealism vs. Materialism 17
Holism vs. Individualism 20
Epistemology and methodology 23
Conclusion 25
Chapter 2 - EU Foreign Security Interests
Introduction 28
Binding sources of EU foreign policy 29
A Common Foreign Identity 30
EU Foreign Security Interests 34
Effective Multilateralism as Fundamental Interest 37
The UN at the Core of Effective Multilateralism 41
Conclusion 42
Chapter 3 - European Disaster Risk Reduction Policy
Introduction 45
The UN’s development of DRR 46
The EU’s development of DRR 52
Conclusion 60
Conclusion 63
Bibliography 68
List of Abbreviations
ACP African – Caribbean – Pacific Group of states
CFSP Common Foreign and Security Policy
CSDP Common Security and Defence Policy
DRR Disaster Risk Reduction
EC European Commission
ECHO European Commission Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection
ECSC European Coal and Steal Community
EEC European Economic Community
ESS European Security Strategy
EU European Union
GPG Global Public Good
HFA Hyogo Framework for Action 2005 – 2015
IDNDR International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction
IMF International Monetary Fund
IO International Organization
IR International Relations
ISDR International Strategy for Disaster Reduction
MDG Millennium Development Goals
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
TEU Treaty on the European Union
TFEU Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union
UN United Nations
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNGA United Nations General Assembly
UNISDR United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction Secretariat
Introduction
In March 2012, the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), Margareta Walhstrom, launched a report titled ‘Disaster Risk Reduction: Spending where it should count’. Walhstrom was quoted stating: ‘this report is a very timely examination of funding for disaster risk reduction when it is now clear that we have broken through the trillion dollar ceiling for economic losses so far this century. As of the end of 2011 we can conservatively state that disasters so far this century have cost over $1,380 billion’.1 A cost similar to spending almost 1,9 million dollars a day for over 2000 years. Disasters not only affect and devastate economies but also have a grave social impact on societies. For example, from 2000 to 2010, over 2.2 billion people worldwide were affected by 4.484 natural disasters directly causing a death toll of nearly 840.000 people.2 These figures are enormous as are the consequences of disaster to societies and countries that structurally have to cope with it.
In the academic discipline of International Relations (IR)3 questions about anarchy, distribution of power, war and interstate conflict are traditionally among the most commonly addressed. Although environmental issues as international and political concern have become more prominent since the 1980s, natural disaster and its grave socio-economic effects often are not being considered within IR.4 However this does not mean that the study of disaster has no place within the IR academic discipline. Natural disaster is now understood as an international and globalized issue due to worldwide involvement in disaster relief and mitigation efforts by many countries and international organizations. Disaster has an impact on development, is a cause for poverty, increases cross-border refugee flows and plays a role within many complex emergencies around the world that cause great concern to the international society.5 There are many states, international organizations (IOs) in addition to international financial institutions engaged in dealing with disaster and its consequences around the globe and almost all approach disaster through the relatively new concept of ‘Disaster Risk Reduction’ (DRR).
1 United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, “Disaster losses top one trillion dollars as donors underfund risk reduction”, March 20, 2012, http://www.unisdr.org/archive/25831 (accessed November 5, 2012). 2 Ibid.
3 IR in capital letters refers to the academic discipline of International Relations and not the international political act in which countries and international organizations are engaged.
4 Scott Burchill and others. Theories of International Relations, (2009) 4th edition, p. 260.
5 David Alexander, ‘Globalization of Disaster: Trends, Problems and Dilemmas’, Journal of International
Theme and Thesis
The incredible socio-economic costs involved with disaster sparked my interest in understanding how the subjects of the IR discipline are influenced by disaster and try to cope with its extremely negative consequences. At a first glance, disaster seems to be an issue that is out of human control. It is an incident caused by physical forces of nature to which states, IOs and other actors are unable to do more than prepare for worst case scenarios as well as provide humanitarian assistance after disaster strikes. However a new conceptual understanding of disaster is being advocated on the international level through the concept of DRR.
DRR emphasizes to understand disaster as an unresolved development problem instead of an inevitable outcome of nature. It does not only look at disaster as a phenomenon that can be reacted to, but disaster is also seen as a development problem that can be reduced and prevented through proactive development measures. The idea and framework that constitutes DRR was mainly developed and spread by the institutionalized multilateral framework of the United Nations (UN), but today the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Union (EU) and more than 50 other international actors are advocating the concept.6
The EU stands out when it comes to the advocacy of DRR. In 2009, the EU developed and adopted comprehensive DRR legislation to guide all DRR efforts within the EU, as well as in external relations. The ‘EU Strategy for supporting Disaster Risk Reduction in Developing Countries’ (EU DRR strategy) covers DRR efforts in the EU’s external relations. This strategy made DRR a priority in European foreign development plans, a priority in the political dialogue with developing countries and bound the EU to the support of integrating DRR into the political objectives of developing countries.7 The EU also made its DRR strategy part of a larger UN framework that promotes DRR, called the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA). The effects of the EU’s strategy are already visible today. It has led to multilateral international cooperation between the EU and the African – Caribbean – Pacific Group of States (ACP) as well as the development of an ACP – EU DRR program, which
6 Michael Sweikar and others, Disaster Risk Reduction: Mapping the Advocacy Landscape, Center for Public Policy Research, (December, 2006), 10
7 European Union, ‘Disaster Risk Reduction in Developing Countries’, (May 11, 2009),
helps developing countries to reduce their vulnerability to natural disasters.8 Understanding the development of the EU’s comprehensive DRR strategy will stand central in this thesis.
The EU DRR strategy shows two obvious but interesting issues. First, the EU DRR strategy shows that the EU sees a potential benefit in DRR. Second, the EU sees a potential benefit in making its DRR legislation part of a larger international structure in the form of the HFA. Neglecting disaster and DRR in IR scholarship has resulted in the discipline’s shortcomings in attempting to explain the possible benefits the concept might have to the EU as well as why the EU has made DRR a priority in its relationship with developing countries. This relationship is important since the EU has developed into a major global actor providing more than half of the world’s available humanitarian9 and development budget10. This makes
the EU a very important partner for developing countries. Currently DRR plays a vital role in the EU’s partnership with developing countries, which makes it necessary to understand the concept, its consequences and benefit to EU foreign policy.
It is also important to understand the development of the EU DRR strategy as the EU DRR strategy appears to be greatly influenced by action taken on a UN level. This raises several questions. For example, what interest does the EU have in making its own legislation part of a UN structure? Did the UN spark the EU’s interest in developing DRR legislation? Or did an EU interest in the UN and its HFA make the EU develop a DRR strategy? Dominant rationalist perspectives look at actors and their interests as a priori, meaning that social interaction does not affect the interests an actor has.11 The importance of an analysis that aims to understand the development of the EU DRR strategy is that it will take the EU-UN interaction on DRR into account and thus form an empirical contribution to the debate if actor behavior can be influenced by outside structures.
Scholarship focused on understanding EU actor behavior and its foreign policy have long focused on its hard power capabilities instead of its soft power dimensions that include vision and worldview, values, principles and beliefs.12 Therefore the understanding of EU policy was (and is) most often focused on questions that analyze what policy means instead of
8 ACP-EU Natural Disaster Risk Reduction Program: For Africa, Carribbean, and Pacific Countries. http://www.gfdrr.org/gfdrr/node/849, (accessed November 6, 2012).
9 European Commission, ‘European Commission Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection: About ECHO’, (September 13, 2012). http://ec.europa.eu/echo/about/presentation_en.htm, (accessed November 6, 2012). 10 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Development Aid at a Glance 2012: Statistics by
Region, Chapter V: Europe, (February, 2012), 1-12.
what certain policies tell us about the EU as an actor.13 Analyzing and understanding why the EU developed its DRR strategy for supporting developing countries helps to contribute to the latter type of question as well as inform IR scholars more about the EU as a political and social entity that participates in world politics. Since the Lisbon Treaty in 2009 was ratified, the EU’s position and participation in world politics has only increased and the importance of understanding the EU as an international actor has increased with it. With the development of its legal personality, the EU now has international negotiating powers, which makes it a stronger international partner for international organizations and non-EU countries.14 Broadening the understanding of how the EU works as an actor therefore is also important for all the international actors that are interested in maintaining a relationship with the EU in the fields of DRR and development.
The problem of understanding why the EU developed its DRR strategy lies in the concept of DRR and what it entails. At its core DRR is not much more than a conceptual reassessment of natural disaster in two separate ways. DRR shows that disaster should not be thought of as an inevitable outcome of nature but as a problem linked to development. Development that incorporates a calculated disaster risk can contribute to the reduction of disaster, for example buildings that can withstand an earthquake, or cyclone proof houses. However development policies that do not incorporate the risks of possible natural environmental hazards and risks can lead to disaster, such as growing human settlements in floodplains, non-cyclone-proof houses in cyclone prone areas, or even bad solid waste management that leads to clogged city drains and massive flooding and disease during rainy seasons. DRR thus says not to look at the physical and natural factor, but at how human development leads to a disaster. Therefore, DRR brings a different perception/mind-set about disaster while simultaneously establishing a real world problem linked to human development. The question now is to what extent IR discipline can contribute to understanding how DRR became an EU priority. I argue that this contribution is best made by the IR constructivist paradigm.
Constructivism’s holist and idealist approaches have the ability to form a key in understanding why the EU developed its foreign DRR policy. Constructivism’s idealist perspective acknowledges that ideas can have a constitutive, establishing effect on an actor’s identity, interests and behavior. Its holist perspective again recognizes that an actor’s identity,
interest and behavior can also be influenced by larger structures in which the EU operates as an actor. So, constructivism acknowledges that interests are not given facts but to be dependent on interaction. The EU DRR strategy shows that the EU has an interest in the UN and its HFA. When many actors and concepts are involved and interacting with one another, constructivism forms a very appropriate option to use as a theoretical framework as it recognizes the importance of these interactions on actor behavior. Constructivism puts heavy emphasis on the power of ideas as fundamental cause to change. This emphasis does not mean ideas are the only things that matter. For constructivists, traditional IR material factors like self-interest and power are still important however their effect and meaning are depended on ideas that actors have.15
Understanding the development of the EU DRR strategy through a constructivist approach has certain consequences for this thesis. Constructivism assumes that the EU has a certain identity, affected by ideas, from which it develops new interests. Interests thus change, are developed through interaction and are dependent on the actor’s understanding and perception of a certain problem. However it must be identified which EU interests are involved. A leading constructivist scholar, Alexander Wendt, explains that almost every IR scholar accepts that ‘national interest is self-regarding to security’.16 In the case of the EU, national interest has to be seen as a common interest of 27 nation states. This means that, according to Wendt, understanding EU foreign DRR behavior can be done through comprehending EU foreign security interests. Since constructivism provides an ideal framework through which the development of the EU DRR strategy can be understood, this thesis will ask the following main research question: To what extent can an analysis of EU
foreign security interests, from 1990 up to now, explain the construction of EU policy regarding Disaster Risk Reduction in developing countries, according to the constructivist theoretical framework of Alexander Wendt?
The enormous social-economic costs and tragedies that are caused by disaster, the incredible effect that disaster can have on a country’s development17 demands IR scholars to make a larger effort into understanding DRR. Comprehending DRR, its possible effect on actor behavior and benefits might lead to other actors participating in the struggle to reduce the impacts of disaster. Although this thesis only focuses on the EU, it is the first empirical
15 Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 24-25. 16 Ibid,113.
study known to date within IR scholarship that has made an attempt to understand the possible interests and benefits of DRR in relation with security interests.
There are three reasons this paper will analyze the post-Cold War era, which roughly started in the beginning of the 1990s. First, the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union brought permanent systemic transformations that reshaped the whole global political order.18 Under the pressures of the post-Cold War security system, the EU and its members states developed a broader concept of security not only related to military security, but also to development. It is in this broader notion of security that DRR can be understood the best. Second, constructivism has proven its success in explaining post-Cold War systemic and security changes where traditional IR theories like neorealism and neoliberalism failed. Third, from January 1, 1990, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) had called the last decade of the 20th century the ‘International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction’ (IDNDR), with a basic objective to decrease loss of life, property destruction and social economic disruption caused by natural disaster.19 From this decade on, a clear call for reducing the effects of disaster was being heard from especially the United Nations framework. With the EU already having observer status in the UNGA since 1974, this important possible influence to EU foreign security interests therefore also forms a good start for this thesis.20 Taking the year 1990 as a starting point thus symbolizes the importance constructivism gives to structure, which will be taken into account while answering the main research question.
Outline and sub-questions
The former subchapter has explained what DRR entails, why this thesis will start its analysis at the year of 1990 and what contribution a constructivist approach might have in finding an answer to the main research question. However, one important question remains. At its core, DRR is an idea about how to understand disaster. But how can ideas and their effects be isolated and understood? Constructivist scholar Alexander Wendt argues that this requires a causal and constitutive explanation.21 The two seem mutually excluding although Wendt shows that all scientists use both kinds of theorizing. While causal questions address how concepts are put together, constitutive questions merely explain ‘the role that our own
18 Scott Burchill, Theories of International Relations, (Palgrave Macmillan: 2009), 219.
19 United Nations General Assembly Resolution, ‘International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction’, A/RES/44/236, (December 22, 1989).
20 United Nations General Assembly, ‘Status of the European Economic Community in the General Assembly’, A/RES/3208, October 11, 1974.
practices play in sustaining seemingly objective social facts’.22 Although Wendt states that both kinds of questions are necessary, constructivism’s distinctive claim about structures and ideas being able to affect actor behavior is mainly about the constitutive power and the effect of ideas.23 The main research question is set up as a part causal and part constitutive inquiry. The causal inquiry identifies the relationship between EU foreign security interests (X) and EU DRR strategy (Y). This reflects the constructivist core assumption that interests inform actions. At the same time the main research question poses a constitutive inquiry on how the EU came to construct ideas about DRR that constitute its DRR policy. In order to be able to answer the whole research question, the following sub-questions need to be considered.
How did the EU constitute its foreign security interests from 1990 up to now?
This question is included in order to establish if EU foreign security interests have been developed through an endogenous process that formed an identity affected by the norms, values and ideas of the social environment in which it acts.24 First, the chapter will identify how the EU has constituted its identity. Secondly, the chapter will identify how certain security interests have developed from this European identity. The main emphasis will be put on the issue of development since DRR is a concept that affects visions on development.
How does the construction of EU foreign policy regarding ‘Disaster Risk Reduction in Developing Countries’ relate to EU foreign security interests?
This question seeks to understand how the construction of the EU DRR strategy is related to its foreign security interests, therefore proving the causal relationship between the EU’s foreign security interests and its development of DRR policy. As the question requires a descriptive answer about the construction of EU DRR strategy, it also can answer constitutive factors of how the creation of this strategy has been possible up to now. According to constructivism, this requires looking at the influence of ideas and structures upon actors. This thesis will thus analyze the influence of the UN’s structure and its ideas upon the EU as the EU DRR strategy shows a clear connection with the UN’s DRR framework, the HFA.
This thesis uses a positivist epistemology and based on interpretive methodology that uncover social facts. This thesis will use Vincent Pouliot’s approach to constructivist research that combines inductive, interpretive and historical methods. The three concepts need to be
22 Ibid, 375. 23 Ibid, 78.
put in close dialogue, where the inductive step recovers without any theorization the meaning that actors give to their reality, and the interpretive and historical step try to objectify meanings as well as discover dynamic processes that explain actor behavior.25 The theoretical
framework will elaborate how Pouliot’s method will be operationalized for the main research question of this thesis.
This paper’s theoretical framework will begin by explaining what the concept of DRR exactly entails followed by an explanation about constructivism and its relevant aspects. This section will specifically focus on two important variables from the constructivist approach that stand central throughout this thesis: the importance of interests, norms and ideas, in addition to the effects of holism and therefore structure upon the EU’s identity and interests. The thesis will close with a conclusion that summarizes the findings of the sub-questions as well as the main-research question.
I expect the findings to show the EU has a foreign security interest related to its development goals. Through interaction between the UN and the EU, the concept of DRR spread to the latter. This new perception on disaster resulted in a new perception on development and development problems that the EU did not before realize. The result is the EU DRR strategy, which needs to harmonize this new perception of disaster within the EU’s development goals and therefore the EU’s foreign security interest. Analyzing how the EU has come to develop their DRR policy may prove to be a difficult process as there are many ways to analyze this issue other than through a constructivist approach. Dr. Sven Biscop and Dr. Margriet Drenth argue that it is always difficult to analyze European interests since the EU does not have a real strategy how to act. They both show that the EU lacks a foreign strategic vision that tells the EU ‘what to do’26 or an European strategic vision that provides ‘sufficient prioritization and translation into specific policies that guide action’.27 These arguments however show that constructivism’s focus on identities and interests can indeed bring in a valuable contribution to the discussion. In the absence of clear-cut strategies that guide behavior, theoretical analysis of ideas, interests and identity can provide an insight into actor behavior that other theories might neglect.
25 Vincent Pouliot, ‘ “Sobjectivism”: Toward a Constructivist Methodology”, International Studies Quarterly, (2007) no. 51, 368-372.
26 Sven Biscop, ‘The Value of Power, the Power of Values: A Call for an EU Grand Strategy’, Egmont Paper, (October, 2009) no. 33, 3.
27 Margriet Drenth, ‘The EU’s Comprehensive Approach to Security: A Culture of Co-ordination?’, Studia
Chapter 1. Theoretical framework Introduction
The main question of this thesis refers to several ambiguous concepts that require further clarification if they are to be used properly in an analysis. This chapter will address these concepts by first explaining the different approaches to understanding disaster, which is a necessary preamble to comprehending the concept of DRR. As previously stated, a constructivist theoretical framework is used to analyze the development of DRR policy in the EU. This chapter thus explains the theoretical underpinnings of the constructivist approach and shows what contribution this approach makes for this thesis. Emphasis is put on two important constructivist variables that are of special importance to answer the main research question: holism and idealism. To gain a better understanding of what idealism and holism exactly entail, both variables will be put in contrast with the respective opposing variable, namely: individualism and materialism. The chapter ends by explaining the methodological framework that is used in this thesis and a conclusion summarizing the main findings of this chapter.
Disaster, Risk, and Disaster Risk Reduction
DRR consists of the three different concepts of disaster, risk and reduction, of which especially the concept of disaster is more ambiguous than it seems at first glance. A disaster is not just the occurrence of a natural event since not every earthquake, tsunami or flood is considered a disaster. A natural event only leads to disaster when it impacts a socio-economic environment, however there are exceptions. An example is the 6.6 earthquake that hit Iran in 2003, resulting in over 40.000 deaths. In contrast, the 6.5 earthquake that hit central California four days earlier cost the lives of two people and injured 40. According to the disaster criteria of one of the world’s most famous disaster database, EM-DAT of the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Brussels, the California earthquake was not considered to be a disaster.28
The modern study of disaster is relatively young and could be considered immature. The first research center devoted to the study of disaster was the Disaster Research Center established in 1963 in Ohio, USA, founded by Dr. E.M. Quarantelli. Quarantelli has defended the argument that disaster might never have one fixed definition as the definition depends on
28 Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disaster, ‘Criteria and Definition’, EM-DAT International
what is significant about the phenomenon.29 Six academic fields, geography, development studies, anthropology, sociology, health sciences, geophysical sciences, regularly incorporate disaster in their studies however none of them have made an attempt to define disaster before they studied the phenomenon.30 The result is a minefield of various definitions making it increasingly difficult to summarize the concept briefly. The 2005 Handbook of Disaster
Research became the first time the top researchers of the disaster research community took up
the task to clarify the complexities involved within the concept of disaster. Besides religious explanations that see disaster as an act of god,31 all the disaster literature ranging from the end of World War II to today can be separated in three different periods. Each of these periods has had its own approach to understanding disaster and they can be generally classified into the ‘classical’, ‘hazard-disaster’, and ‘disaster as social phenomenon’ approach.32
The classical period spanned from the end of World War II to 1961. Research in this period was mainly focused towards post-disaster situations, with a special interest in social disruption and ineffectiveness of societal norms caused by disaster. There was little interest in the cause of disaster itself and how to reduce its impact. The second and third periods show considerable overlap in time and content. The hazard-disaster approach developed mainly from geophysical sciences. This approach focuses on the underlying cause of disaster, natural hazards such as fault lines and earthquakes, heavy weather patterns as well as tornadoes. From this perspective a disaster is considered to be a side effect of a natural hazard and its impact on socio-economic systems.33 The third approach only perceives disaster as a social phenomenon and almost excludes the impact of natural hazards from disaster analysis. From a social approach, ‘disasters represent a vulnerability, reflecting weaknesses in social structures or social systems’.34 Disasters are thus not considered as the cause of a physical force but are
social in nature as they stem from human vulnerability. This means that social change and development is able to have an impact on people’s vulnerability to disaster. Although both the hazard-diaster and the disaster as social phenomenon approaches recognize the social construct of disaster, the former does not analyze the social underpinnings. As will be further clarified, it is the disaster as social phenomenon approach that is best reflected in the concept of DRR.
29 David Alexander, ‘An Interpretation Of Disaster In Terms Of Changes In Culture, Society And International Relations’, in What Is A Disaster? (2005), 38.
30 Ibid., 26. 31 Ibid., 37.
32 Ronald W. Perry, ‘What Is a Disaster’, in The Handbook of Disaster Research (New York: Springer Science, 2007), 5.
It is important to clarify that within the DRR framework hazards are considered to be natural and disasters are not.35 A hazard is a part of nature represented by volcanoes or El Nino, which cannot be prevented. The disaster is unnatural since it is dependent on human vulnerability. The UN explains DRR as ‘the conceptual framework of elements considered with the possibilities to minimize vulnerabilities and disaster risks throughout a society, to avoid (prevention) or to limit (mitigation and preparedness) the adverse impacts of hazards, within the broad context of sustainable development’.36 DRR’s strong focus on societal vulnerabilities and support of development to adverse the impact of hazards and reduce risks clearly reflect the ideas of the social approach to disaster. While the ‘risk’ in DRR is nothing more than the ‘probability of a negative event and its negative consequences/potential losses’,37 the concept of risk should be understood closer to its relation with disaster.
The UN, the World Bank (WB) and other multilateral institutions explain disaster risk as the ‘function of a hazard (which is likelihood
and severity) and its potential consequences (exposure and vulnerability)’.38 Disaster risks encompass ‘the potential disaster losses, in lives, health, status, livelihoods, assets and services, which could occur to a particular community or society over some specified future time period’.39 Disaster thus is seen as an outcome of the risk of a natural hazard and the vulnerability plus exposure
Picture 1.40
of a certain population, which is dependent on a population’s susceptibility and their capacity to cope and adapt to a hazardous environment. 41 Disaster risk therefore is a measurable and quantifiable concept that the UN has used to make a ‘World Risk Index’. This index shows
35 United Nations, Disaster Through A Different Lens: Behind every effect, there is a cause, (2012), 11. 36 United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, Living with risk: A global review of disaster
reduction initiatives, (Geneva: United Nations publication, 2004), 17.
37 United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, 2009 UNISDR Terminology on Disaster Risk
Reduction, (Geneva: 2009): 25.
38 Reinhard Mechler and others, ‘Assessing the Financial Vulnerability to Climate-Related Natural Hazards’, The World Bank Background Paper to the 2010 World Development Report (March, 2010): 9.
39 United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, 2009 Terminology, 9-10.
40 Asian Disaster Reduction Center, Good Practices 2005, Total Disaster Risk Management (2005), 5, http://www.adrc.asia/publications/TDRM2005/TDRM_Good_Practices/PDF/PDF-2005e/Chapter1_1.2.pdf (accessed November 10, 2012).
which countries on the planet are most vulnerable, most exposed to natural hazards and which ones have the highest disaster risk. (See annex 1 for the 2011 UN World Risk Index 42).
When disaster risk is understood as the function of a hazard, exposure and vulnerability, the importance of development becomes visible. Disaster destroys developmental progress while development simultaneously contributes to an increase in the exposure and vulnerability of people and economic assets. If the latter is not taken into account in development plans, societies increase their disaster risk, which can lead to disaster and loss of developmental gains. DRR therefore encompasses the important view that disaster is a cause of, and a threat to, development. For this reason the United Nations recommended that ‘Disaster Risk Reduction should be an integral part of sustainable development projects and policies’.43
Before the concept of DRR emerged, the traditional focus in the field of disaster management was how to provide humanitarian assistance after a disaster had occurred.44 This reflects a focus on post-disaster situations that is especially present in the classic approach to disaster. Although the delivering of urgent post-disaster services will always be an important issue, many public and private organizations, local and national governments, recognized the need to reduce the economic, social and environmental cost caused by disaster. This need is encapsulated in the concept of DRR. The essential difference that DRR makes compared to the traditional idea of disaster management is that DRR’s conceptual assessment of disaster requires a pro-active attitude from actors towards disaster, encouraging socio-economic development and the creation of a disaster prevention culture instead of a disaster reaction culture. DRR thus contributes to a new perception about the cause of disaster while simultaneously changing the threat that disasters pose and how actors should behave towards it. DRR will be understood best in a theoretical framework that recognizes both DRR’s perception on the cause of disaster and its effect on the attitude of actors towards disaster. The constructivist paradigm allows for such an understanding.
The Constructivist Approach
The term ‘constructivism’ was first coined in 1989 by Nicholas Onuf in his ‘World of our making’.45 Onuf argued that international relations consisted of rules in foreign behavior. He
42 United Nations University, World Risk Report 2011, (Berlin: Bündnis Entwicklung Hilft, 2011): 1 43 Kofi A. Annan in, ‘Living With Risk’, VII.
44 United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, Living with risk, 7.
45 Nicholas Greenwood Onuf, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International
used the term constructivism to describe theories that recognized this socially constructed nature of international politics.46 The theory can be placed alongside other critical social theories like postmodernism and feminism, critical theory and others.47 After the Cold War,
the constructivist paradigm developed rapidly. Constructivist scholars mainly put an emphasis on empirical analysis, instead of working at a meta-theoretical level like most critical theorists. Constructivism’ s primary goal is to show that the objects studied in IR are in the end nothing more than creations of our own ideas and therefore should not be treated as natural facts.48
Christian Reus-Smit argues in ‘Theories of International Relations’ that the rise of constructivism occurred for several reasons.49 The dominant neo-liberal and neo-realist
paradigms within IR failed to foresee the end of the Cold War as well as to comprehend the permanent systemic changes that had occurred in the world because of this. 50 Before and during the Cold War, mainstream IR theory consisted out of realist, liberalist and Marxist theories with neo-realism and neo-liberalism being the two dominant theoretical paradigms. The end of the Cold War brought immense social change and a shift in the balance of power that resulted from the defragmentation of a world super power, the Soviet Union. This all happened without any of the dominant theoretical paradigms being able to find an appropriate explanation for it. As a result the intellectual debates within IR destabilized because new questions were asked to provide new insights and answers. These questions required theorists to develop alternative theoretical frameworks to understand structural social systemic change. Constructivism provided this need, which led to a growing interest from scholars in the constructivist approach.
Alexander Wendt argues that the two basic principles of constructivism have increasingly become accepted among all students of international relations: ‘1): the structures of human association are determined primarily by shared ideas rather than material forces, and 2): the identities and interests of purposive actors are constructed by these shared ideas rather than given by nature.’51 Wendt shows that the first principle represents an idealist approach that opposes the idea that human relations are only determined by material interests,
46 Robert Jackson and Georg Sorensen, Introduction to International Relations: Theories and Approaches, third edition (Oxford, 2007), 168.
47 Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, 1.
48 Burchill and others, Theories of International Relations, 219; and Wendt, Social Theory of International
Politics, 374.
49 Audi Klotz and Cecelia Lynch, Strategies for Research in Constructivist International Relations, (New York, 2007), 3; see also: Burchill and others, Theories of International Relations, 219.
such as money and power. The second principle represents a holistic approach as it recognizes a constitutive power of social structures on actors, which opposes the individualist beliefs that all structures are reducible to an individual level of analysis.52 It is this structural idealist
nature of constructivism that this thesis will use in order to analyze how the EU came to develop its DRR strategy and therefore will form the primary focus of the remainder of the chapter. In order to clarify the benefits of idealism and holism for this thesis, both concepts will also be viewed in light of the concept it opposes, materialism and individualism respectively.
Idealism vs. Materialism
At its core, constructivism has three main ontological assumptions, how researchers conceptualize that what they study. First, in relation to the constructivist idea that structure has the ability to shape the behavior of social actors, constructivism argues that ideational structures are equally, if not more, important as material structures on actor behavior. Second, constructivism argues that ideational structures have a socializing effect, which conditions actors’ identities, interests and behavior. Third, constructivism argues that agents and structures are mutually constituted. This means that ideational structures condition the identities and interests of actors, but those same structures only exist due to the practices of those same actors.53
Traditional IR theories54 only take power, interest and institutions as variables that explain actor behavior. Most theorists treat these variables as idea-free concepts while some perceive ideas and interests as opposing causes.55 Traditional theorists refer to these three variables as material factors and therefore are considered materialists. Since constructivism emerged as a theoretical paradigm many mainstream scholars struggle with a fourth variable, ‘ideas’, and the question of the effect ideas have in international politics. The first mentioned ontological assumption and Wendt’s first assumption show the core of constructivism’s notions about ideas. They clarify that from a constructivist perspective ideas lay the core to understand actor behavior. Therefore its idealism opposes the ontological assumptions of materialists.
Constructivism does not deny the importance of material forces however it argues that they are not the best explanatory variable to understand actor behavior. Constructivist
52 Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, 1. 53 Ibid., 220.
54 This refers mainly to neo-liberal and neo-realist theorists and theories.
scholars do this by showing material forces are constituted by ideas.56 Alexander Wendt argues that as power and interest explanations are stripped from their ideational context it becomes obvious how little explanatory value material forces actually have.57 In his earlier
work, Wendt illustrated this through the example of the material power of nuclear weapons. From a materialist view, every nuclear weapon in the arms of a state other than the United States (US) should be considered a threat by the US. However Wendt argues that 500 British nuclear weapons are less threatening to the security of the US than five North Korean nuclear weapons. Wendt argues this is true since the US considers Britain to be an ally where as the US views North Korea as an enemy. Wendt explains that this conclusion can be drawn because enmity and amity are both functions of the ideational context surrounding the material power of nuclear weapons.58 Therefore a weapon only forms a threat when the context is shaped by an ideational structure based on hostility and ideas of enmity. Without context, the power of a weapon cannot be properly understood. This line of reasoning is often neglected by many mainstream IR scholars. Wendt shows that material capabilities on itself explain nothing and ‘their effects presuppose structures of shared knowledge, which vary and which are not reducible to capabilities.’59 Ideas thus matter and form a strong position from where theorizing about international politics become possible.
The two concepts of power and interest are usually seen as the two core-defining features of realism, which stands in contrast with constructivism. All realists and most IR scholars adhere to the position that interests define actions and are self-regarding to security.60 Wendt argues that these claims cannot be just a unique realist claim as this would consider almost every IR scholar to be a realist. True realists claim that interests are always considered dependent on material variables while constructivism believes interests to be constructed by ideas. Simply put, constructivism argues that ‘we want what we want because of how we think of it’.61 ‘How we think’ is often understood through learning and socialization processes, which have the possibility to be studied as well as observed.62 This leads to the
56 Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, 94. 57 Ibid., 95
58 Alexander Wendt, ‘Constructing International Politics, International Security (Summer, 1995) vol. 20, no. 1, 73.
59 Ibid., 73.
60 Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics,113. 61 Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics,119.
conclusion that, although material needs are an important element of interests, in the end interests are constituted by ideas.
The constructivist idealist claim, where ideas constitute interests and identities and inform actor behavior, will make a great contribution to solving the main research question of this paper. The claim explains how to approach the first sub-question. While analyzing the EU’s foreign security interests, constructivism explains the necessity to first understand the EU’s identity, which gives meaning to its interests. Understanding EU foreign security interests does not require a conceptual delineation of what material forces constitute the foreign security interests of the EU. Instead it requires empirical research studying the content of real world EU ideas about how it perceives its own identity and related foreign security interests. This can be established through the analysis of the EU’s policy debates, conclusions, publications and discourse analysis in general. This kind of theorizing would be dismissed by traditional materialist IR theories.
Alexander Wendt has showed that, in constructivism, ideas are treated as a constitutive factor of the interests of actors and can be learned through the process of socialization. It is necessary through this process that the importance of interaction between actors and structures is to be emphasized. Interaction plays a strong role in how ideas originate in an actor’s mind, forming a motivation for action. For constructivists, international structures in which actors operate consist out of ideas, norms and values that are important to understand in order to properly explain actor behavior. Constructivism thus forms an argument against a materialist view of structure. The assumption that structures are not able to influence actors means that structures can be neglected. If structures can push, force or bind actors into adhering to a specific type of behavior, it is necessary to take structures and their interaction with actors into account when explaining actor behavior. The overall effect of structure and its interaction with actors has been largely left outside of this paper’s discussion up to this point. It is an important constructivist tenet that needs thorough clarification since the EU’s behavior in DRR has not been developed in a vacuum and might be constituted by its interaction with the UN structure that its DRR strategy relies on.
complicated, which leads again the creation of new priorities and trade-offs. See: Wendt, Social Theory of
Holism vs. Individualism
Holism forms a second theoretical contribution to this thesis and its core assumptions are reflected in Wendt’s second basic principle of constructivism and the second and third ontological assumptions. The debate between holism and individualism is often referred to as the agent-structure problem. Structures should in this case be seen as the higher layer of an agent. This agent can again be perceived as a system by an agent on a lower level for example the international system versus the state, and the state versus a bureaucracy.63 Central to this agent-structure problem is the question ‘what difference does structure make in social life?’.64 According to constructivists, structures have capabilities that cannot be reduced to an agent level. This means that structures are more than the sum of its individual parts. Traditionalists and constructivists agree that every structure consists of three certain elements, namely material conditions, interests and ideas. Since constructivists are also idealists, they put much more weight on understanding ideas and viewing structures as social systems that distribute ideas. A key factor is that actors do not act on all ideas but only act towards objects on the basis of the knowledge an actor has about its object.65 Knowledge in this case can be private, or shared/distributed. The idealist approach to structure evolves all around these systems of shared knowledge, which are developed by actors interacting with each other. The moment that actors interact, their private knowledge becomes distributed and can constitute behavior. Wendt refers to shared knowledge as ‘culture’, which may take many forms including norms, institutions, organizations and rules. 66 However in the end, culture revolves around the commonalities and shared beliefs that make up a system. At its core, individualism argues that the international system is nothing more than a collection of a very large group of individual actors. This assumption implies that structures do not have any existence on their own, separately from its individual components and do not have any power to influence actor behavior. Holism stands in direct contrast with this individualist perception. Where individualism is considered a bottom-up, agent-structure, approach, holism is a top-down, structure–agent, approach working downwards from irreducible structures to the actor level.
Since individualism and holism both describe different functions to social structure they also both see a different effect. Wendt explains that in order to properly understand this it is necessary to emphasize two differences. First the difference between causal and
63 Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, ‘Explaining and Understanding International Relations’, (New York, 1990), 8-9.
64 Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, 26. 65 Ibid., 140.
constitutive effects and, second, the difference between effects on actors’ properties, and effects on actors’ behavior.67 The difference between causal and constitutive effects has already been elaborated upon earlier. When argued that structure has the possibility to constrain an actor, only behavioral consequences of structure are recognized. When structures are attributed to have constitutive effects, this means structures have an effect on the properties of actors.68 Constructivism focuses on the constitutive effects of structure on the properties of actors, their interests and identity. Individualism however is only interested in behavioral effects since it takes interests and identity as exogenously given. Individualism therefore rules out ‘the possibility that social structures have constitutive effects on agents, since this would means that structures cannot be reduced to the properties or interactions of ontologically primitive individuals’.69
The distinctive claim made by holist ontology is short and clear: the interests and identities of actors are bound up with the structures in which actors interact with others. Shared knowledge constitutes the nature of the relationship that actors are in. This can be explained in the following way. When countries participate in a security-cooperation such as NATO they experience a cooperative relationship with a certain number of other states. However, this structure of cooperation must be based on a shared knowledge in which all cooperating states recognize to trust one another to resolve issues without the use of violence towards each other. The social fact of a security-cooperation is based on the recognition of its existence by more than one actor. John Gerard Ruggie explained: ‘social facts… are produced by all other relevant actors agreeing that they exist.’70 Therefore, structures are always about shared knowledge structures between relevant actors.71 Wendt exemplifies this in his argument that the Cold War was a system of shared knowledge that dictated communist and capitalist systems stood in enmity towards each other. Once the great powers stopped acting on this basis, they changed their system of shared knowledge and the Cold War ended even though not much had changed in the material power of the US and the Soviet Union in the years leading up to the end of the Cold War.72
67 Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, 26. 68 Ibid., 26-27.
69 Ibid., 27.
70 John Gerard Ruggie, Constructing the World Polity: Essays on International Institutionalization, (London 1998), 12.
71 Wendt, Constructing International Politics, International Security, 73.
Alexander Wendt does not divulge in how structures exactly shape identities and interests. However, constructivist scholar Christian Reus-Smit explains that this is done through three different mechanisms, namely: imagination, communication and constraint.73
Ideational structures can throw up imaginary barriers that limit the possibilities of how an actor can act in practical terms as well as in ethical terms. Also, structures exercise influence on actors through communication. For example, actors often justify their behavior by making an appeal to international norms or rules of conduct. By communicating this appeal on a norm, its existence is being recognized. This makes moral arguments about international normative precepts possible. Finally, constructivists argue that even when social structures do not frame the imagination and communication of an actor, institutionalized norms can still constrain actor behavior due to their mere existence as well as they have moral force in certain social contexts.74
Constructivism’s holistic approach is closely connected to its idealist approach. Holism has showed that the nature of an actor is bound up with the structures it interacts with. Also, the ideas that an actor has are given meaning by those ideas it shares with others, which again forms distributions of ideas/knowledge that structure systems. What holism provides here is that in order to understand the development of the EU DRR strategy, an analytical focus on structures that the EU interacts with is a necessity. This thesis will focus on the UN for two reasons. First, DRR and the disaster management regime stem from the strategies and programs of the UN and second, the EU DRR strategy revolves around the UN’s DRR framework. An individualist approach would neglect this important reality. Up to this point of the paper, only the ontological assumptions important to answering the main research question have been elaborated on. The necessary next step is to make the epistemological assumptions of this paper clear. Epistemology refers to how it is possible to gain knowledge about that what is studied, ideas. It is essential to clarify the epistemological stand that this paper takes for this will have an influence upon the possible methods used to analyze the main research question.
Epistemology and Methodology
Constructivist theorists can be found at the positivist and post-positivist end of the epistemological spectrum, though most constructivists plea for the use of a post-positivist epistemology. Where positivists try to find objective truth, post-positivists and constructivists
in general are more interested understanding social meanings that actors give to their reality.75 Both positivists and post-positivists agree that the physical world that we study is material, given by nature and is concrete. However post-positivists do not accept the same description as positivists about the social world. For post-positivists there is not one clearly delineated social world, instead there are many and each is socially constructed.76 This does not mean that there is not an objective reality. In contrast, there is an objective reality and it is an object that can be studied. Furthermore knowledge can be obtained from this objective reality as long as knowledge about the social world is put in context.77
The idealist ontological nature of constructivism and the argument that humans create the objects they are trying to study through their own ideas almost implies that constructivism should use a post-positivist ontology. Wendt is firmly against this conception and is a strong believer in positivism. He rejects the idea that constructivism implies a post-positivist epistemology yet he also argues that epistemological debates are not interesting and that constructivism should mainly be about ontology. Positivism seems not suited to study ideas and constitutive questions whose meaning and answers are found through interpretive methodology applied to text and language. Early constructivists like Friedrich Kratochwil and John Ruggie already made the case that when studying normative and ideational structures it is necessary to apply interpretive analyses.78 This however does not constitute a break from positivism.
This thesis has a particular interest in the constitutive factors that lead to the development of the EU DRR strategy and will address the main research question taking into account positivism assumptions. Causal questions are not the only permitted questions in positivism as positivists also have to ask constitutive questions and take part in constitutive reasoning. Even in rational choice theory questions ‘how’ rational behavior is actually constituted.79 Similar to causal reasoning, constitutive reasoning must be judged against empirical evidence and have an explanatory function too. The importance of constitutive reasoning lies in constructivism’s social approach to the outside world and the realization that the objects we study are made by ourselves and should not be treated as a natural fact, but as a social fact. Without an understanding of how social objects are put together and how their
75 Johnathon W. Moses and Torbjorn L. Knutsen, Ways of Knowing: Competing Methodologies in Social and
Political Research, (Palgrave Macmillan: 2007), 194.
76 Moses and Knutsen, Ways of Knowing, 193. 77 Ibid. 194
78 A good early example of this argument is made in the article by:
Friedrich Kratochwil and John Gerard Ruggie, ‘International Organization: A State of the Art on an Art of the State’, International Organization, (1986), vol. 40, no. 4, 765-766.
causal powers are established, any kind of proposed explanation has a large chance to be wrong.80 Epistemologically, this thesis thus adheres to positivist assumptions by assuming that it is possible to gain real knowledge of the outside social world. The real issue however is the ontological debate on what the world is made off and how we can learn about it. As constructivism assumes the world is made out of ideas and their constitutive effects, there are appropriate interpretive methods necessary to objectively uncover this truth.
Many scholars have argued that constructivist analysis relies on the same methods that are being used by positivist and post-positivist scholars in political and social sciences.81 It was Vincent Pouliot82 in 2007 that made one of the first and only attempts to come up with a
constructivist methodology by drawing out the methodological consequences of the constructivist way of reasoning. Pouliot also argued that constructivism does not need the development of a new method, instead it needs a more structured approach to pre-existing methods. Similar to Wendt, Pouliot positions himself as a theorist that is neither a positivist nor a post-positivist but takes a middle way approach. Pouliot, like Ruggie, argues for a method that discovers social facts that are already naturalized or reified by agents.83 His focus lies in analyzing what social agents see as real, and the social and political implications that follow from this perceived reality.84 This is achieved through the use and combination of interpretive, historical and inductive methodology. Inductive methodology is used as it avoids imposing theoretic and generalized logic on meanings that should be discovered from their practices and context. An interpretive methodology is required not only because the understanding of data and literature requires interpretation, but constructivists also have to interpret the meaning that actors give to their perceived reality. Interpretation can objectify meanings into social facts, which can then be explained. A historical methodology is necessary as constructivism argues that no studied social reality is a natural fact and all realities are a product of historical processes. Through a historical method the practices that have constituted a social fact are made visible.
It is important to understand that the operationalization of Pouliot’s method to constructivist research does not have a clear and set strategy of approach. The objective of constructivist research is to recover the meanings that actors have and objectify them so it
80 Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, 87.
81 Five of these scholars and their respective works are: Wendt, Social Theory of International Relations, (1999); Audi Klotz and Cecelia Lynch, Strategies for Research in Constructivist International Relations, (New York, 2007). Moses and Knutsen, Ways of Knowing, (2007).
82 Associate professor and director of the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies (CIPSS). 83 Pouliot, ‘ “Sobjectivism” ’, 362-364.
becomes possible to gain a true insiders’ understanding of why actors behave the way they do. Constructivism argues that it can never be exogenously assumed that actors behave only from, for example, a relative gain perspective. To constructivism, behavior reflects an interest, which are shaped through ideas and knowledge. Interests thus have a certain meaning to an actor and meanings need to be put into a wider intersubjective context as they are partly shaped by the ideas that actors share with others. Next, subjective meanings have to be recovered through an inductive approach; meanings have to be objectified and put in an intersubjective context through an interpretive approach; as well as meanings have to be set into their dynamic process through an historical approach.85
These three steps or methods do not have a specific order but each step should contribute to the others.86 Therefore, it is necessary for this paper to uncover the EU’s identity through an inductive approach and then an interpretive and historical analysis will provide how this identity has led to certain foreign security interests, discussed in chapter two. After the EU’s identity has been inductively, interpretively and historically addressed, the development of DRR in the wider UN structure will be explained and the development of the EU DRR strategy will be put into a wider, intersubjective context in chapter three. Both chapters will answer a sub-question as well as identify certain causes that explain why the EU had an interest in constructing its DRR strategy, thus answering the main research question.
The sources that will be used are mainly EU publications and official documents in order to uncover subjective meanings. These publications and documents will be analyzed along side academic and historical literature studies as well as primary and secondary historical sources in order to provide a historical context for interpretation. A textual analysis will be employed to look for discourse on the EU foreign policy interests and policies regarding EU disaster reduction. Further, interpretation of historical and academic sources will provide the necessary context to make clear how the EU’s foreign interests have developed from 1990 up to now and how those interests have led the EU to construct its DRR strategy.
Conclusion
Understanding the development of the EU DRR strategy first requires a theoretical clarification on what DRR exactly entails. At its core, DRR is a conceptual reassessment of natural disaster and encompasses the idea that disaster should not be seen as a natural
