Revisiting state personhood and world politics: identity, personality and the IR subject

The questions of whether states are persons, and whether they have emotions or other psychological traits, are old but ever relevant in International Relations (IR). The debate has attracted renewed interest in recent years, due to the increase in scholarship drawing on insights from psychology and psychoanalysis. Revisiting state personhood and world politics starts with the observation that states’ foreign policies are frequently described as ‘schizophrenic’ and questions what can be gained from treating states as full psychological persons. To this end, Bianca Naude offers an alternative way to approach the state-as-person debate: the author mobilizes the notion of ‘personality’, defined as an ‘ensemble of emotions, desires, beliefs, values, behaviors … that characterize a person's interactions with the outside environment’ (p. 10). Drawing on Heinz Kohut's elaboration of Sigmund Freud's theory of narcissism, Naude argues that narcissism is a normal aspect of psychological health, which creates aspirational self-images and thus the foundation for self-esteem. By relating to others, state persons develop a personality and identities that generate behavioural expectations. When they cannot live up to these expectations, states use ego defences to protect themselves and regain self-esteem. Consequently, ‘seemingly incomprehensible state behaviors are, in reality, reactions to the everyday stresses of life’ (p. 170). To illustrate this argument, Naude provides an in-depth analysis of two instances where South Africa seemingly acted ‘schizophrenically’: during its vote in favour of the United Nations Security Council resolution supporting military intervention in Libya (2011), and during its decision not to execute an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (2015).

The book is strongest in its advancement of ego defences, the various unconscious processes that defend a person's self-esteem and help reduce psychological stress. Mechanisms such as ‘denial’, ‘isolation’ and ‘undoing’ provide a much-needed way to add nuance to the responses to ‘threats to the self’, something that should be of interest to scholars working in ontological security studies (pp. 76–86). These mechanisms demonstrate how actors resort to various different psychological defences in the face of identity-related pressures. Naude convincingly shows that state persons are complex and subject to contradicting demands, which can make it difficult to live up to their idealized self-conception. Consequently, there is no straightforward relation between identity and a particular behaviour. Emotions always mediate behaviour and they depend on whether a person is able to fulfil identity-related expectations. South Africa's case is empirically interesting and a welcome counterpart to the usual cases from the global North. In the first of the two empirical chapters, Naude outlines South Africa's interactions with other actors, mostly states, which shape its personality and corresponding behavioural pressures. Then, the author analyses how internal and external criticisms of its actions made South Africa feel embarrassed, guilty and humiliated, thereby necessitating the use of ego defences.

Where the book falls somewhat short is in its engagement with the state-as-person debate, as well as its own positioning on the question of state ontology. Even though the second chapter discusses the various arguments for and against state personhood, it does not consider their underlying ontological commitments. Specifically, whether and how one conceives of states as persons is going to depend greatly on whether one takes the social world to be constrained by the laws of physics—a belief that precedes scientific enquiry (see Patrick Thaddeus Jackson's The conduct of inquiry in International Relations, New York: Routledge, 2016). Yet the book does not take a clear stance on this issue. On the one hand, Naude holds that states are ‘real, non-human, social persons’, which come into existence through relationships with others and themselves, suggesting a monist non-physicalist ontology (pp. 17 and 49). On the other hand, her treatment of the state resembles a physicalist conception (see, for example, Alexander Wendt's Quantum mind and social science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015; reviewed in International Affairs 91: 4, July 2015). Naude reduces states to ‘groups of people’, foregrounds their ‘collective emotions’, and turns to lab experiments to evaluate evidence for various ego defences. She thereby sidesteps the issue of state ontology, which is confusing in a book that promises to ‘revisit state personhood’. This issue is further compounded by some conceptual blurriness, such as when ‘personhood’ is not clearly defined vis-à-vis ‘personality’, or when Naude uses ‘self’ interchangeably with ‘identity’ (see Nina C. Krickel-Choi's ‘State personhood and ontological security as a framework of existence’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 2022).

Nevertheless, this is a well-written and accessible book that makes a strong case for complicating our understanding of the link between identity and state behaviour. I especially recommend chapter three, which provides a great overview of psychoanalysis and its use for IR (commendably, each chapter comes with its own reference list). The book will be valuable for scholars interested in foreign policy, as well as in states’ emotions and states’ psychological functioning more generally.