behaviors they regulate. Identities emerge from interactions. Like nationalism, anti-
Americanism contains aspects of both instrumental rationality and social construction.
In
situations where positive identities of “self” are hard to come by, the ready availability of
a powerful, prosperous, culturally omnipresent “other” can provide a social glue that has
broad appeal. Such situations are frequent, for example, in failing states, in societies
divided deeply along ethnic, religious, class or other lines, and in polities that are in the
process of constructing a new collective identity. In brief, anti-Americanism can be a
potent and useful stand-in for otherwise missing symbols of collective identity.
Anti-Americanism also involves norms that regulate behavior. People rationally
shape their behavior to fit their expectations of what others will do. What is "normal" is
common knowledge in stable societies, and therefore facilitates coordination by
independent individuals. These expectations reflect behavioral regularities, which may
reflect the effects of events or efforts at persuasion to interpret these events. Over time
such behavioral regularities can have powerful conditioning effects that make anti-
Americanism no longer open to self-reflection or reasoned dialogue. But norms also
constitute the premises of action. They are regulative in prescribing socially appropriate
standards of action, and they can also be evaluative in invoking moral standards.
During
the massive demonstrations protesting the imminent U.S. attack on Iraq on February 15,
2003, it would have been socially very inappropriate to hoist and salute the American
flag. Burning the flag and effigies of President Bush, on the other hand, were appropriate.
What matters in this conception of norm is the collectively held standard of proper
behavior which the norm regulates rather than the aggregation of individual behavior
that make up the norm. Behavioral compliance with a norm is therefore linked to the
justifications proffered, be it in social or moral terms. The norms associated with anti-
Americanism are components of political processes that generate standards of behavior.
Differentiating among schema, identity, and norm suggests a second distinction.
Anti-Americanism can be a matter of individual attitudes as revealed in public opinion
polls, as analyzed by Pierangelo Isernia in chapter 3 and Giacomo Chiozza in chapter 4.
But it is also a matter of collectively held beliefs with distinctive genealogies. Such
beliefs can take the form of narrative collective memories analyzed in different ways by
8
Haas 1993.
9
Barnett 1999, 15. Keck and Sikkink, 1998, 223-26.
4
4
Convention