Peer Pressure: Social Psychology and the Political and Security Committee

Constructivist literature has recently focused on how agents’ identities are changed when entering into new international communities. Jeffrey Checkel (2005) proposes that socialization is a process in which new members of a community become inducted into the norms of that community resulting in two types of internalization: Type I socialization, in which actors act in accordance with norms without full internalization; and Type II internalization, in which new actors fully consider these norms as the “right thing to do” irrespective of exogenous factors. While socialization theory has been useful for understanding this process, scholars have not enough paid enough attention to the conditions that make international institutions viable for socialization processes. Most of the research done on actors and institutions within the EU, including the Political and Security Council (PSC), has focused on the usage of persuasion or epistemic community theory. These analyses have primarily dealt with how much socialization has taken place and the potential for this socialization to advance integration in EU foreign policy. This investigation looks into factors that can inhibit or advance this socialization process, specifically the identifiability of PSC ambassadors to their home governments and how this affects group deliberations.