The Role, Position and Agency of Cusp States in International Relations by Marc Herzog & Philip Robins

Author:Marc Herzog & Philip Robins [Herzog, Marc & Robins, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Geopolitics, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780415707176
Google: oZnCngEACAAJ
Goodreads: 20604904
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

As it prepares for the 2012 parliamentary and 2013 presidential elections, the Islamic Republic remains in limbo, still searching to find a compromise to the fundamental contradiction of a populist and anti-imperialist revolution that cannot find the proper balance or accommodation among the contending societal and political forces.

(Farhi 2011: 621)

Indeed, these are the realities of Iran’s attitude in its external and internal environments. Iran is ‘still’ in a state of suspense, ‘not having evolved into a solid alternative’ of its former self; the reasons lie not in the ‘uniqueness’ of Iran but in it being a Cusp State, whereby it shares a great number of features with other Cusp States but navigates them differently in different regional and international settings. Cuspness has both geographical and historical dimensions which mean that it is not a temporary status – and it is immutable. Iran’s twentieth century indeed proved it to be on the edge of regions and ideologies. Yet the direction of Iran’s vacillations also changed. Cuspness has structural and agential determinants and as such analysing states under this rubric invites us to reflect on both determinants at the same time in building our explanations. In the case of Iran, this chapter highlighted the role of interaction between internal and external cuspness in the construction of Iran’s state identity and in explaining its puzzling foreign policy decisions. Through such an analysis, one has great potential to escape methodological nationalism and to move beyond the borders of the state to explain what is happening at the domestic level. Another benefit of the notion of cusp is its invitation to explain change rather than describe policy decisions; this is because the notion of the cusp subsumes change and turns it into a question rather than the granted starting point of examination.

The puzzles are easier to resolve once we transcend the contradictions inherent in our explanation. Yes, it is puzzling that Iran behaves ‘one way and another’ in international relations. However, Iran is ‘neither one nor the other’; it is on the cusp, which renders it comparable to others on the cusp and opens up new avenues of (1) critical Iranian studies that would question where Iran really is in the world, rather than taking the foreign policy decisions at their face value and, (2) comparative research in the international relations of Cusp States. In this chapter we have seen that Iran does not only have contradictory policies in terms of its Islamic ideology, it also does not have a consistent anti-imperialist politics, which itself was partially built by the ‘rogue states narrative’. Iranian domestic politics is far from adhering to the original ideals of revolution. Iranian foreign policy has a strong agential constituent but it is deeply constrained and enabled by structural and contingent factors in regional and international environments. Iran is yet to evolve to an alternative of these contradictory and inconsistent policies. Indeed, as hinted throughout the chapter, a conjunction that gives rise to another dislocation is about to emerge; the Iranian

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