A discursive institutionalist approach to American foreign policy - principled and cognitive interpretations of Bosnia

摘要

The disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991 was a pivotal challenge in U.S. foreign policy during the early 1990s. Specifically, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia proved to be a particularly contentious issue across two presidential administrations. Even as both Presidents Bush and Clinton recognised the humanitarian atrocities - initially, neither was willing to use military force in response, fearing any U.S. intervention would lead to a Vietnam-like quagmire. Yet, following the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995, Clinton's position changed, favouring decisive action. Given that during this time, the U.S. remained a great power and enjoyed relative stability in coalitional arrangements - what explains this variation in policy? To explain this variation, I build on discursive institutionalist approaches, which distinguish between different types of ideas, offering two mechanisms - normative displacement and cognitive repression - by which agents come to interpret interests in more principled, or cognitively-laden ways, leading to variation absent systemic or ideational shifts.