The politics of 'the West'

The notion of ‘the West’ is commonly used in politics, in the media, and in the academic world. To date, our idea of ‘the West’ has been largely assumed and effective, but has not been examined in sufficient detail. Uses of the West combines a range of original and topical approaches to evaluate what ‘the West’ does, and how it is being used in everyday political practice. Uses of 'the West': Security and the Politics of Order, edited by Gunther Hellmann and Benjamin Herborth, examines a range of ‘uses of the West’, and traces how ‘the West’ works in a broad array of conceptual and empirical contexts, ranging from the return of geopolitics – via a critical review of the debates surrounding Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis – to the question of the future of the West. Analysis extends further to the repercussions of the war on terror on Western democracy and the processes of delineating the Western from the non-Western, as well as observations on the institutional transformations of Western order. Besides the editors, the authors of the volume are Stefano Guzzini, Ole Wæver, Harald Müller, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, Brent Steele, Gabi Schlag, Christian Weber, Ted Hopf, Matthew Evangelista, and Lene Hansen.

In his chapter contribution "Foreign policy identity crises and the uses of "the West"', Stefano Guzzini relates his findings on European foreign policy identity discourses with the volume’s theme. The end of the Cold War has produced crises in many European foreign policy identities for undermining the self-understanding or role recognition of foreign policies. In such an environment, the ‘West’ could become a welcome anchor, but not only. The chapter develops four possible ways national identity discourses can relate to such cross-national identifications, like the ‘West’. One can hypothesize four possible relations, according to (1) whether or not there is overlap between those self-representations and cross-national ones and, (2) if there is, which of the two is given prevalence. If there is no overlap, then there is the situation where foreign policy identity discourses basically ignore the cross-national – or oppose it. When there is overlap, then if the national is given prevalence, it will appropriate and co-opt cross-national identifications into its discourse. When it is not, the cross-national can become an intrinsic part in constituting the national in the identity discourse for its capacity to stabilize an otherwise imbalanced identity prone to crisis.

This chapter is also accessible as DIIS Working Paper 2015: 05.