2. Analytical Framework
2.2 Rules
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2.2 Rules
The central positioning of rules as a linkage between agents and institutions in a constructivist analysis makes some elaboration on them necessary. For ONUF (1998:
59), in the absence of a given beginning, the starting point for constructivists is an analysis of rules (see also KUBÁLKOVÁ 2001: 74-75). Rules can be understood as a guide that tells people how to carry on with their affairs when facing certain circumstances. They influence decisions insofar as they reveal what agents have to take into account when they try to pursue whatever it is that they intend to do. Put more succinctly, rules bind situations in which agents make choices (ONUF 1989: 260).
Similarly, another constructivist, Friedrich Kratochwil has argued that the most important function of rules13
is the reduction in the complexity of the choice-situations in which the actors find themselves.
Rules and norms are therefore guidance devices which are designed to simplify choices and impart 'rationality' to situations by delineating the factors that a decision-maker has to take into account.
(KRATOCHWIL 1989: 10)
Rules maintain social order in that they are devices to deal with conflict and cooperation (KRATOCHWIL 1989: 69). One should keep in mind, however, that while rules have this guiding function, they themselves do not provide closure about the purposes for people acting as they do “because rules are not the sufficient agency whereby intentions become equivalent to causes” (ONUF 1989: 51). Rules present agents with certain choices and therefore affect their conduct. On the other hand, the pattern of choices will affect rules over the long turn. Onuf identified three categories of rules, a prevalence of any of which causes a different condition of rule (although in most cases a mixture of different kinds of rules is more likely): instruction-rules (also including principles14), directive-rules, and commitment-rules, all of which depend on the speech acts that sustain them (see next section).
There are certain questions related to rules that constructivism tries to answer:
“(a) Who makes the rules and how do the makers benefit from doing so? (b) Why do people follow rules without considering who makes them and how are they and others affected by doing so? (c) How is a rule orientation (“the acquisition of rule”) related to reflection, habit, cognitive development?” (ONUF 1989: 50)
13 As the title of his book suggests, throughout Rules, Norms, and Decisions Kratochwil speaks of rules and norms, but does not provide a clear distinction between the two.
14 Onuf defined the function of principles as “promot[ing] general conformity of behavior by reference to shared values. This is done by example, by appeal and, if necessary, discrimination.”
(ONUF 1989: 135)
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In answer to the first question and as a reflection of his constructivist framework as outlined above, ONUF (1989: 66) started out from the premise that “[p]eople make rules, rules make society, society's rules make people conduct themselves in specified ways.” Thus, rules are authored by human agents who use all available resources at their disposal in order to support these rules as long as they can gain advantages over other agents, that is, as long as these rules are beneficial to their own purposes. As stated above, rules create an environment of rule that is always characterized by an unequal distribution of privileges, therefore leading necessarily to exploitation (ONUF
1989: 83-88). Unsurprisingly, disadvantaged agents, will use all resources available to them in order to subvert rules and reverse the asymmetries that these rules cause (ONUF 1989: 60). Rules are linked to resources in the way that the former is the social and the latter the material component of what it is that human beings strive for. Again there is a mutual constitution between two parts in that “[r]esources are nothing until mobilized through rules, rules are nothing until matched to resources to effectuate rule.” (ONUF 1989: 64; see also ONUF 2002: 132-133).
In his discussion of rules, Onuf mostly discards the findings of legal positivism and postpositivist theories after having shown their respective limitations and draws the conclusion that rules must be investigated as a matter of language (ONUF 1989:
78). Drawing on the writings of Wittgenstein about rules in language, he asserts that
“[r]ules govern language which people then use for social purposes” (ONUF 1989: 48).
In other words, rules are statements that tell people how to act. They are also self-explanatory. Any inference about the content of a rule can be drawn from the rule itself, people need not even have to know its history or who authored the rule in the first place.
But why do people follow rules? Kratochwil remarked that apart from being guidance devices, rules allow us to pursue goals, share meanings, criticize assertions, justify actions and in general stabilize mutual expectations of one another. In short, they make communication possible and provide the opportunity to resolve conflicts or grievances in a peaceful manner (KRATOCHWIL 1989: 11; 34; 181). Onuf explained, thereby also answering the third question, that following rules is deeply ingrained in the process of human socialization. Beginning from our childhood we are conditioned to follow rules, because it is then that we start to learn how to exercise judgment and
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how to make use of existing rules. As the moral development of children progresses, rules provide the link between them and their environment, and subsequently allow them to acquire the skills to interact with rules, that is, they learn to know what rules require of them and how they can use them for the their own purposes (ONUF 1989:
97-115). The judgment on how to respond to certain rules results from practice and consciousness:
We do not simply learn to respond to instruction-, directive-, and commitment-rules, having learned to recognize them in successive stages of development. We judge them differently, once we have learned how to, and respond accordingly.” (ONUF 1989: 119)
Part of knowing how to respond to rules is to know their external dimension, that is, the consequences that arise from breaking rules. Breaking an instruction-rule will cause denigration or mockery. In the case of a directive-rule, which usually has some external structure of support (such as a law-making body), the result will be sanctions.
For breaking a commitment-rule, that is, neglecting the rights and duties that one promised to commit to, one would very likely have to face reciprocal behavior (ONUF
1989: 120-121). For all of these rule-categories applies that their effect depends on internalization as well as their external support through institutionalization, the latter providing them with a higher degree of legality. This legality in turn is characterized by (a) a formal statement of rules, (b) the institutionalization of their external dimension of support, and finally (c) a specially trained personnel that is responsible for formalizing and institutionally supporting these rules. Accordingly, the support for instruction-rules comes in the form of exhortations, that for directive-rules is based on threats. Commitment-rules will be supported by opinions and interpretations issued by impartial third parties. (ONUF 1989: 135-139; also see KRATOCHWIL 1989: 48)
Legality of rules does not imply that rules must be legal to be effective or that there are only legal rules. Zehfuss, for example, using her case study of Germany's military involvement abroad, mostly followed a rather narrow definition of rules as being “legal rules.”15 Speech acts in her rendering of Onuf's theory refer therefore almost exclusively to lawmakers' drafts related to changing Germany's constitution or Basic Law. While this approach makes perfect sense in the context of her subject, which touches on Germany's constitutional boundaries with regard to military
15 She did, however, also mention a commitment-rule that was the result of repeatedly given promises about Germany's role in international politics by certain prominent parliamentarians. (See ZEHFUSS 2002: 177)
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involvements, rules and their related speech acts should not be merely judged by their relationship to law. In fact, “law is better understood as a particular style of reasoning with rules” (KRATOCHWIL 1989: 211; my emphasis). Onuf, at one point, suggested to call laws “highly formal” rules, while norms or conventions could be referred to as
“informal” rules (ONUF 2002: 132). In any case, the normative strength of rules increases if they possess a high level of formality and the longer agents follow them (ONUF 1998: 69).
The rule that is most in evidence in governing the Cross-Strait relationship since 1949 is one that can be called the “one China” rule. ZHENG (2001), in his application of the rule-based constructivist framework to Cross-Strait relations, identified it as one of two rules that were maintained by agents and their speech acts over the time from 1949 until 1999. He argued that the “one China” rule has remained in place during all those decades, despite the fact that definitions of what exactly “China”
stood for (Republic of China or People's Republic of China), and therefore also what territories it encompassed, have changed over time, especially due to several “identity crises,” which the government in Taipei went through, it has never been directly broken. This did not even change after president Lee Teng-hui challenged this rule openly by proposing his “special state-to-state”-formula in 1999. Chapter II will take a closer look at this historical background and the reasons for this persistence. In chapter III, I will argue in the context of three discourses that, although this rule is still dominant in governing Cross-Strait relations, it does have a challenger in what might be termed the “status quo” rule. The second rule identified by Zheng, is the one that he calls the “rule of no military threat.” He argued that this rule has been in place since the involvement of the US military in the Korean War when Taiwan was used as a strategic base or an “unsinkable aircraft carrier.” Subsequent US protection made a Chinese attack on Taiwan unfeasible. On the other hand, the Mutual Defense Treaty between Washington and Taipei also prevented then ROC president Chiang Kai-shek to pursue his goal of militarily “reconquering” the areas that were then already under PRC control. This rule was presumably broken when Beijing fired “test missiles” into the waters off of Taiwan's coasts in 1995-1996, with the possible goals of strengthening its symbolic authority over Taiwan at a time when leaders there followed a route of emphasizing the island's separateness from China, as well as
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increasing the credibility of its military power in the Taiwan Strait. However, taking into account the above discussion about the relationship between “words” and
“world” in this framework, I would rather suggest a reading of the military component as highlighting the aspect of the “real limitations.” The whole discourse about US military support of Taiwan is intrinsically related to the “one China” rule: Beijing protests against arms sales, for example, because it sees them as an intrusion of a foreign power in its “domestic” affairs and dramatically complicates any plans of its own to solve the “Taiwan Issue” by force; Taipei on the other hand needs US military support in order to deter China's aggression and maintain its de facto sovereignty as either ROC or, even more so, if it wanted to declare independence as a new state. The effects of Taiwan's democratization, and the related question of self-determination of Taiwan's population, since the mid-1990s might be seen as the most imminent way to influence the institution of Cross-Strait relations and change the “one China” rule. But in the face of Beijing's evident military threats that are aimed at deterring such an event, it becomes clear that without the necessary military capabilities, that is, facing these material constraints, Taipei's potential to effectively break the “one China” rule will remain limited.
Describing the “one China” rule as dominant in the institution of Cross-Strait relations seems obvious. After all, agents in the PRC, ROC and the US, who are mainly involved in shaping this institution (but also most other countries in the world) follow their own distinct versions of a “one China” principle or a “one China” policy, which provides an important pillar for their respective foreign or China-Taiwan policies. At the same time, differences between their approaches, while preventing the
“China/Taiwan” issue to be resolved in any party's favor any time soon, subsumes the relationship under a construct of a rather abstract “one China” concept that has many definitions and whose definitions in turn have evolved over time.
The prominence and role of the “one China” rule has been analyzed in various ways and under the use of very different frameworks, although it has not always been described as a rule. HUANG / LI (2010: 87-88), for example, referred to it as a “'one China' strategic framework,” which, based on Beijing's “unyielding 'one China' principle” and the US “accommodating 'one China' policy,” was established after the US-PRC normalization in 1979 and whose roots date back to the “one China”
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principles adhered to by ROC and PRC leaders since the 1950s. Since then this rule has become the prime source of many of “Taiwan's Dilemmas” as almost each of the dozen contributions in FRIEDMAN (2006) has pointed out. Similarly, WU (2005a) described this “hegemonic One China world order” as an “institution” that has gradually boosted Beijing's profile at the expense of Taiwan's diplomatic space and standing in the international arena. Although Wu used a historical and sociological version of a new institutionalist framework, his definition of “institution” offers many parallels to how rule-based constructivism defines rules:
[Institution can be defined as] a human-constructed arrangement, formally or informally organized, which consists of cultural-cognitive, normative, and regulative elements that serve to stabilize interactions or provide meanings to human actions.” (WU 2005a: 320)
He also stressed the importance of mutual constitution of agents and institutional structures for the development of these institutions. In the case of the “one China institution” this was done through the incorporation of the concept into diplomatic texts between the PRC and other countries, especially since the 1970s, as well as in various policy realms. Finally, he argued that this institution is constantly being reconstructed and reproduced by the PRC as it benefits from it the most.
In the later chapters it will be analyzed how, as a rule, “one China” gradually began to and continues to favor the People's Republic over the Republic of China (on Taiwan) in the international arena. After having reached this step it seems natural for agents in Beijing to use all available resources at their disposal to maintain the predominance of their interpretation of “one China,” while different agents in Taipei either try to emphasize their own interpretation or try to break the rule altogether.