Framing National Interest How Media Discourses Influence Western Policy Agendas Towards Foreign Armed Conflicts Patrice Wangen Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of Doctor of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute Florence, 23 April 2019. European University Institute Department of Political and Social Sciences Framing National Interest How Media Discourses Influence Western Policy Agendas Towards Foreign Armed Conflicts Patrice Wangen Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of Doctor of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute Examining Board Prof. Jennifer Welsh, European University Institute (Supervisor) Prof. Jutta Weldes, Bristol University Prof. Hanspeter Kriesi, European University Institute Prof. Keith Krause, The Garduate Institute Geneva © Patrice Wangen, 2019 No part of this thesis may be copied, reproduced or transmitted without prior permission of the author Candidate’s Declaration I, Patrice Wangen, hereby certify that I am the author of the work Framing National Interest: How Media Discourses Influence Western Policy Agendas Towards Foreign Armed Conflicts, which I have presented for examination for the Ph.D. thesis at the European University Insti- tute. I also certify that this is solely my own original work, other than where I have clearly indicated, in this declaration and in the thesis, that it is the work of others. I warrant that I have obtained the permissions required for using any material from other copyrighted publications. I certify that this work complies with the Code of Ethics in Academic Research issued by the European University Institute (IUE 332/2/10, CA 297). The copyright of this work rests with its author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This work may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. This authorization does not, to the best of my knowledge, infringe of any third party. I declare that this work consists of approximately 74,201 words. Signature and Date 1 April 2019 Abstract To what extent and how do media discourses shape the sometimes erratic and often prob- lematic responses of Western policymakers to armed conflicts around the globe? The thesis examines this question from a variety of theoretical and empirical perspectives. It highlights the contingency of the Western gaze and the ability of non-governmental political elites to in- fluence processes of foreign policymaking by shaping public discourse on the national interest. The thesis statistically analyses how much time and resources the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany spend on 20 of the most intense armed conflict between 1998 and 2010. Based on original data covering 42,000 newspaper articles and 4,200 foreign policy events, the thesis shows that a conflict’s place on the foreign policy agenda is systematically re- lated to media discourses that suggest doing something about a specific conflict. The analysis demonstrates furthermore that much of the discursive patterns in media precede foreign policy activity, which indicates that the media do not just report on foreign policy developments, but also help to bring them about. In the second part, this thesis uses Western reactions to the civil war in Darfur as a theory-developing case study to explore who is able to shape foreign policy discourse and how. It problematizes wide-spread conceptions of the elite, the media, and the public and develops an analytical framework that is based on discourse theoretical notions put forward by Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Slavoj Ziˇ zek.ˇ In contrast to the widespread top-down narratives in which governmental elites simply dictate a foreign policy consensus to media and public, this thesis argues that the dividing line is rarely between ‘the government’ and ‘the people.’ Rather, political conflict revolves around competing ideological positions that try to define the meaning of the national interest. Media discourses are a central forum for the hegemonic struggle between these positions and societal actors other than governmental officials can effectively intervene in this process. Acknowledgements It belongs to good academic manners to use this section to mention a long string of names that contributed to the making of this document. It would not be difficult for me to fill these pages with the names of people that deserve to be mentioned, most of which will know how much I appreciated their help, support, and friendship throughout the last years. At the risk of appearing ungrateful, however, I will not do so because the practice of acknowledgements, to me, is reflective of some serious pathologies of contemporary academia. Mostly, it reifies a certain elitist-bourgeois sentiment of what this document means and represents, which does not fare well with my upbringings in a working class family and the political identity that this inspired. First, the professionals involved in honing this document to live up to contemporary aca- demic requirements are paid to do so in financial terms, class privileges, and high levels of societal recognition. Insofar as they went beyond what they are paid to do, thanking them in this section would, in my opinion, make me complicit in normalizing the exploitative functions of a neo-liberal academic reality that undermines its critical and emancipatory potential. Of course, I am thankful for them doing their jobs. But I am not any more thankful to them than to, for example, the cleaning staff of the institute, the bus drivers of the city, or administrative aids across the universities I have been to. Second, the friends and family members that usually feature in such acknowledgements are there for life, not work. Featuring them in this text would, in my opinion, contribute to the notion that you can only be a good academic if your entire life revolves around your passion and commitment to your work. So much so that you have to thank your loved ones for their patience and sacrifices. Insofar as I am obliged to do the latter, I would rather use this space to accuse an unreasonably (and unproductively) stressful and toxic academic work environment for the physical and mental exhaustion that forces so many of us to neglect what really matters. Finally, thanking people for helping me to write a document worthy of the title of a Ph.D. implies that title to be something extraordinary. The following document is certainly the out- come of long years of hard work and cause for celebrating the achievement of a personal and professional goal. But the practice of acknowledgements, in my opinion, also reinforces hi- erarchical and classist aspects of academic identities. The Ph.D. title as a means to uphold the notion that we are better, smarter, and worth being paid substantially more than the rest of the ‘uneducated masses.’ Coming from a working-class family – and staying at an elitist vii viii academic institution in times of Trump, Brexit, and Gilets Jaunes – the sometimes implicit and sometimes explicit classism in social practices amongst academics have left a bitter after-taste that will leave a lasting mark on my optimism about what we are trying or supposed to do as political scientists. In that sense, I am not convinced that the following document is an extraordinary cause for celebration, which would justify the writing of ceremonial acknowledgements. Rather, I see it as the result of a bunch of qualified and well-trained people trying to do their job. Insofar as they did, I would like to thank them and hope that my thesis does justice to their professional commitment. More crucially, though, I would like to thank the tax-payers of several European countries for enabling me to embark on this long journey of immense personal, intellectual, and political growth. It is my sincere hope and decisive goal to give something back to these societies – in whatever form that opportunity will present itself to me in the near and distant future. Contents List of Figures xiii List of Tables xv 1 Introduction 1 The Study of Foreign Policy Agendas: Beyond Military Intervention ........ 5 The Political Nature of the National Interest ..................... 7 The Ideological Fragmentation of the Elite, the Media, and the Public ....... 12 Research Design .................................... 16 Causality, Quantification, and Post-Structuralism .................. 18 The Structure of the Thesis .............................. 22 I A Structural Relationship 25 2 The Political Nature of the National Interest 27 The Limits of System-Level Theory ......................... 28 Domestic Politics I: Liberalism and Two-Level Games ............... 31 Domestic Politics II: Neoclassical Realism ...................... 34 Domestic Politics III: Psychological and Organisational Approaches ........ 36 Domestic Politics IV: Social Constructivism ..................... 37 Discourse and Framing: National Interest as Floating Signifier ........... 38 Dissecting the Role of the Public: Cognition, Sociology, and Politics ........ 44 Public Discourse is not Public Opinion ........................ 47 The Agenda-Setting Power of Elite Media Discourses ................ 50 3 National Interest, Media Discourses, and Policy Agendas: A Statistical Analysis 53 Research Design and Case Selection ......................... 54 The West .................................... 54 Foreign Armed Conflicts ............................ 55 Elite Media Discourses ............................