The limits of rhetorical entrapment in a post-truth age

摘要

Constructivist International Relations scholars have made much of the idea of 'rhetorical entrapment' when explaining how international norms can constrain the behaviour of states. Their argument proceeds as follows: in instances where states have not internalised a norm, they can nevertheless feel a need to comply with it due to pressures for legitimation, conformity and esteem. If they resist pressures to comply, they may be subject to practices of naming and shaming that can lead them to alter their approach in the future. If they make tactical concessions and adapt their arguments to alleviate these pressures to comply, they implicitly accept that the norm has some validity. They can thereby become 'entrapped' by their own rhetoric such that resistance becomes more difficult in the future (see, for example, Risse and Sikkink 1999; Schimmelfennig 2001).