When Right Makes Might

Online Description

Why do great powers accommodate the rise of some challengers but contain and confront others, even at the risk of war? When Right Makes Might proposes that the ways in which a rising power legitimizes its expansionist aims significantly shapes great power responses. Stacie E. Goddard theorizes that when faced with a new challenger, great powers will attempt to divine the challenger’s intentions: does it pose a revolutionary threat to the system or can it be incorporated into the existing international order? Goddard departs from conventional theories of international relations by arguing that great powers come to understand a contender’s intentions not only through objective capabilities or costly signals but by observing how a rising power justifies its behavior to its audience. To understand the dynamics of rising powers, then, we must take seriously the role of legitimacy in international relations. A rising power’s ability to expand depends as much on its claims to right as it does on its growing might. As a result, When Right Makes Might poses significant questions for academics and policymakers alike. Underpinning her argument on the oft-ignored significance of public self-presentation, Goddard suggests that academics (and others) should recognize talk’s critical role in the formation of grand strategy. Unlike rationalist and realist theories that suggest rhetoric is mere window-dressing for power, When Right Makes Might argues that rhetoric fundamentally shapes the contours of grand strategy. Legitimacy is not marginal to international relations; it is essential to the practice of power politics, and rhetoric is central to that practice.

🧭 60‑Second Brief

Core claim (1–2 sentences): Great powers infer a rising power’s intentions through its legitimation strategies—the reasons it gives for revision—when those reasons resonate with key audiences. Resonance hinges on the rising power’s multivocality and the audience’s institutional vulnerability, shaping whether great powers accommodate, contain, or confront.
Causal mechanism in a phrase: Resonant legitimation → (a) signals restraint/constraint, (b) sets rhetorical traps (hypocrisy costs), (c) appeals to identity → alters collective mobilization at home/abroad.
Paradigm & level(s) of analysis: A social constructivist approach to strategic signaling; strategic (rationalist) use of language, constructivist meaning-making; state/dyadic/systemic.
Why it matters for policy/strategy (1–2 bullets):
- Talk is power politics: narratives shape coalitions as much as guns and GDP.
- Managing power transitions requires contesting meanings, not just counting capabilities or costs.

🧪 Theory Map (IR)

Paradigm(s): Social constructivism (with strategic, rationalist-compatible signaling).
Level(s) of analysis: State, dyadic, systemic (rising power ↔ great power within institutional orders).
Unit(s) of analysis: Episodes of rising-power revisionism and great-power response.
Dependent variable(s): Great-power strategy toward the riser (accommodation, containment, confrontation); degree/direction of collective mobilization.
Key independent variable(s): Resonance of the riser’s legitimation (content + audience reception), determined by multivocality (speaker-side) and institutional vulnerability (audience-side).
Causal mechanism(s):
- Restraint/constraint signaling (credible because meaningful).
- Rhetorical coercion / traps (raising hypocrisy costs).
- Identity appeals (promises/threats to core identity).
Scope conditions: High salience of norms/institutions; meaningful uncertainty over intentions; multiple audiences; contestable frames. Focused on rising-power politics but generalizable to signaling beyond transitions.
Observable implications / predictions (Table 1 “Four Worlds”):
- High multivocality + High vulnerability → Strong resonance → Accommodation likely.
- Low multivocality + High vulnerability → Strong dissonance → Containment/confrontation.
- Low multivocality + Low vulnerability → Weak dissonance → Rely on institutions/allies; hedging.
- High multivocality + Low vulnerability → Weak resonance → Uncertainty/underbalancing possible.
Potential falsifiers / disconfirming evidence: Cases where high multivocality + high vulnerability do not yield resonant reception or accommodation; or low multivocality + low vulnerability nevertheless produces strong resonance. (Implied by Table 1’s mapping of conditions to outcomes.)

🎓 Course Questions (from syllabus)

How does Goddard use legitimacy as an explanation?
How is legitimacy determined?
Are legitimacy and credibility the same?
What is necessary for an eﬀective signal?
How can we investigate perceptions in the international system?
What is the role of strategic narratives?
Does this role conﬂict with the use of other’s narratives in the international arena?
How does identity interact with narratives?

✅ Direct Responses to Course Questions

Q1. How does Goddard use legitimacy as an explanation?

Answer: She argues that what rising powers say—their legitimation strategies—shapes great-power beliefs about intentions and thus policy (accommodate vs. contain vs. confront). Legitimation works by signaling restraint, trapping opponents rhetorically, and appealing to identity; outcomes hinge on whether those justifications resonate with audiences. (pp. 4; 15–16; 184). ✓

Q2. How is legitimacy determined?

Answer: By resonance—perceived pertinence/relevance/significance to the audience—not by inherent material cost. Resonance is relational, depending on (1) the riser’s multivocality (capacity to speak across constituencies) and (2) the great power’s institutional vulnerability (embeddedness in and anxiety about the order). (pp. 28–29; 36–37). ✓

Q3. Are legitimacy and credibility the same?

Answer: No. Standard rationalist credibility relies on costly signals; Goddard shows meaning endows signals with cost—“it is the meaning of the signal that imbues it with cost.” Cheap talk can be treated as credible when it resonates; costly signals can be ignored when they don’t. (pp. 28; 195–196). ✓

Q4. What is necessary for an eﬀective signal?

Answer: Resonance. Substantively, this means justificatory language that can be heard as restraint/constraint, that rhetorically coerces (raises hypocrisy costs), and/or that aligns with the audience’s identity—under conditions of multivocality (speaker) and institutional vulnerability (audience). (pp. 24–27; 28–29; 36–37; 184). ✓

Q5. How can we investigate perceptions in the international system?

Answer: Analyze rhetorical interactions: who speaks with authority, how frames circulate, which audiences are mobilized/silenced. Goddard details source materials and techniques—elite correspondence, speeches, press, archival diaries; mapping speaker authority; tracing distribution through networks; qualitative coding of legitimations—to recover how signals were heard. (pp. 44–46). ✓

Q6. What is the role of strategic narratives?

Answer: Narratives are instruments of power: they make behavior intelligible, anchor restraint claims, and can coerce rhetorically by binding opponents to their own prior commitments. They are deployed strategically (not mere window-dressing) and help constitute future expectations (“what we will want”). (pp. 15–16; 24–25). ✓

Q7. Does this role conflict with the use of other’s narratives in the international arena?

Answer: No conflict; using others’ narratives is the point. Rhetorical traps leverage the opponent’s own legitimating language to impose hypocrisy costs and immobilize balancing (e.g., British advocates of treaty sanctity were boxed in when Prussia spoke in treaty terms). (pp. 24–25; 113). ✓

Q8. How does identity interact with narratives?

Answer: Narratives invoke and reshape identities: appeals can promise alignment with “who we are” or threaten existential values; over time, signaling can constitute type/identity (e.g., Japan’s turn to pan-Asianism made it appear—and become—revolutionary). (pp. 25–27; 182–83; 198). ✓

📚 Section-by-Section Notes

Chapter 1:

The Great Powers’ Dilemma: Uncertainty, Intentions, and Rising Power Politics

Purpose: Pose the problem of indeterminate signals in power transitions; preview a social constructivist signaling approach. (pp. 1–16).
Key claims: Actions don’t “speak for themselves”; great powers listen to reasons. The theory accepts strategic signaling but centers meaning and resonance. (pp. 11; 15–16).
Implications: Under uncertainty, great powers often wait and see; certainty of a revolutionary opponent—not uncertainty—pushes toward confrontation. (pp. 186–87).

Chapter 2:

The Politics of Legitimacy: How a Rising Power’s Right Makes Might

Purpose: Define legitimation, explicate resonance, and specify conditions (multivocality; institutional vulnerability). (pp. 16–47).
Key claims & concepts:
- Resonance, not cost, makes signals effective; meaning can render talk costly. (p. 28).
- Four worlds (Table 1) link conditions to strategies/outcomes. (pp. 36–37).
- Mechanisms: restraint/constraint, rhetorical coercion, identity appeals. (pp. 24–27).
Methods note: How to identify speakers, authority, and distribution of frames; coding justificatory language. (pp. 44–46).

Chapter 4:

Prussia’s Rule‑Bound Revolution (Europe and the Destruction of the Balance of Power, 1863–64)

Purpose: Show how multivocal rhetoric + vulnerable audiences enabled Prussia’s low‑cost expansion into Schleswig‑Holstein. (pp. 84–87, 96–105).
Key claims:
- Prussia blended treaty‑law appeals (to status‑quo powers) with nationalist/dynastic appeals (to revisionists). (pp. 99–101, 114–117).
- Rhetorical traps muted British hawks who had anchored policy to treaty sanctity. (p. 113).
- Austria/Russia heard constraint and identity alignment; Britain/France faced hypocrisy costs/uncertainty. (pp. 104, 121).
Evidence/examples: Bismarck’s December 1863 speech pledging fidelity to the 1852 Treaty; calibrated messaging to different audiences; Times content analysis of justificatory frames. (pp. 99–101, 116–117).
Implications: Multivocality exploited institutional vulnerability in the Concert; talk altered coalition formation and policy. (pp. 86–87, 100–105).

Chapter 6:

Japan’s Folly (The Conquest of Manchuria, 1931–33)

Purpose: Demonstrate how a shift from liberal/treaty justifications to pan‑Asianist revolutionary rhetoric converted U.S. perceptions from partner → existential threat, triggering containment (Stimson Doctrine). (pp. 149–166, 176–183).
Key claims:
- Early crisis: Japan invoked self‑defense/treaty rights; over 1931–33 it asserted a new order, denying Washington‑system applicability in China. (pp. 164–166).
- U.S. initially leaned to accommodation; rhetorical shift produced certainty of revolutionary aims, moving to nonrecognition/containment. (pp. 161–166, 176–178).
Evidence/examples: FRUS cables; Uchida/Matsuoka statements; New York Times coverage; U.S. internal memos (Hornbeck, Stimson). (pp. 162–166, 176–180).
Implications: Meaning recast “costs” of action; identity‑threatened audiences (U.S. custodians of treaties) interpreted Japan’s talk as unbound revisionism. (pp. 166, 195).

Chapter 7:

Conclusion

Purpose: Generalize to signaling beyond power transitions; clarify implications for costs, uncertainty, and identity; restate mechanisms. (pp. 195–199).
Key claims: Cheap talk can matter; uncertainty is not only epistemic; signaling can constitute type/identity. (pp. 196–198).
Policy note: Power shifts are fought as battles over rules and right as much as over force. (p. 199).

🧩 Key Concepts & Definitions (author’s usage)

Legitimation strategies: Justifications a riser offers for revision; they organize how others make sense of actions and future aims. (pp. 15–16).
Resonance: Audience judgment that rhetoric has pertinence/relevance/significance; the linchpin of effective signaling. (p. 28–29).
Multivocality: Ability to speak authoritatively across multiple audiences with potentially divergent principles. (pp. 29–30).
Institutional vulnerability: Great power’s embeddedness in (and anxiety about) the normative order, heightening sensitivity to rhetorical threats. (pp. 36–37, 185–187).
Rhetorical coercion / traps (hypocrisy costs): Forcing opponents to live up to their own stated principles or face reputational costs. (pp. 24–25).
Identity appeal: Framing that promises alignment or threatens existential values of the audience. (pp. 25–27).

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Actors & Perspectives

Rising power (speaker): Selects justificatory frames; benefits from multivocality; can construct its own identity via signaling. (pp. 29–31, 198).
Great power (audience): Interprets meanings through institutional vulnerability; may be rhetorically coerced; balances domestic and alliance politics. (pp. 36–37, 113).
Domestic/transnational coalitions: Provide alternative voices and leverage for multivocal strategies (e.g., nationalists vs. conservatives). (pp. 99–102, 161–166).

🕰 Timeline of Major Events

1863–1864 — Prussia enters Schleswig‑Holstein crisis; blends treaty‑law and nationalist claims; Austria allies; Britain/France muted; accommodation prevails.
1931‑09‑18 → 1933 — Manchurian Incident and aftermath; Japanese rhetoric shifts from treaties/self‑defense to pan‑Asian new order; U.S. moves from caution to nonrecognition/containment.

🧠 Policy & Strategy Takeaways

Treat narratives as capabilities. Invest in crafting multivocal justifications that signal restraint to status‑quo audiences while sustaining domestic coalitions.
Exploit (or shore up) institutional vulnerability. Custodians of order must anticipate rhetorical traps and defend principled consistency; risers should anticipate how audiences’ order‑anxieties amplify reception.
Diagnostic rule: Ask “what does their rhetoric make possible for mobilization?” not only “what does it cost?”

⚔️ Comparative Placement in the IR Canon

Closest kin / contrasts: Challenges costly signaling orthodoxy; complements but revises rationalist views by centering meaning; aligns with a constructivist turn in power politics. (pp. 195–196).
Resonances with classical realists: Returns to Morgenthau/Carr/Aron’s attention to rhetoric + legitimacy as instruments of power. (p. 199).

🧐 Critical Reflections

Strengths: Mechanism‑rich theory; clear conditional predictions (Table 1); persuasive process tracing across divergent cases.
Weaknesses / blind spots: Heavy evidentiary weight on elite discourse risks under‑capturing non‑elite reception; measurement of “resonance” remains partly post hoc despite thoughtful methods. (pp. 44–46).
What would change the author’s (or my) mind? Systematic counter‑cases where multivocal + vulnerable audiences still choose hard balancing despite resonance—or where low multivocal + low vulnerable settings show strong resonance. (cf. predictions).

❓ Open Questions for Seminar

Can states manufacture institutional vulnerability in others (e.g., by reframing what counts as “the order”) to heighten resonance?
When do material shocks (e.g., battlefield outcomes) override even highly resonant narratives?

✍️ Notable Quotes (with pages)

“It is not cost that invests signals with meaning; it is the meaning of the signal that imbues it with cost.” (p. 28).
“Talk matters… Legitimation is power politics.” (p. 199).
Bismarck: fidelity “to treaties” as public anchor—even while hinting nationalist aims. (pp. 99–100).

📝 Exam Drills

Likely prompt: “Explain Goddard’s legitimation theory of rising powers and show how it predicts divergent responses to Prussia (1863–64) and Japan (1931–33).”

Skeleton answer (3‑part outline):
1. Theory (≤1 page): Define legitimation → resonance (multivocality + institutional vulnerability) → mechanisms (restraint/traps/identity) → four‑worlds predictions. (pp. 24–37).
2. Prussia (½–1 page): Multivocal (treaty + nation) + vulnerable audiences (Concert custodians) → accommodation; rhetorical traps silence British hawks. (pp. 99–105, 113).
3. Japan (½–1 page): Shift from treaty/self‑defense to revolutionary pan‑Asianism + U.S. custodianship of Washington treaties → containment (nonrecognition). (pp. 161–166, 176–180).