| Summary/Abstract |
The practice turn in IR offers new ways to understand how diplomats can creatively engage with their environment and one another. Yet, sometimes their diplomatic practices limit their ability to achieve agreements. This article focuses on how and why domestic practices conflict with international practices, and why states sometimes might feel constrained into engaging in practices that harm their international position. Drawing on field theory, I introduce a causal mechanism I call symbolic binding that explains why regimes may become so bound by their domestic practices of legitimation that they incur considerable international cost. Symbolic binding occurs when the symbolic practices needed to generate domestic legitimacy intersect and conflict with practices from the diplomatic field, when domestic audiences are observing the diplomatic interaction, and when regimes have limited access to alternative forms of political capital. I demonstrate the logic of this mechanism by analyzing the antagonistic diplomacy that occurred between Britain and China from the late eighteenth until the late nineteenth century. I show that the root of this diplomatic conflict can be linked to the incompatibility of both states’ diplomatic practices and show how the Qing regime's need to maintain domestic legitimacy constrained it into steadfastly adhering to diplomatic practices that were incompatible with that of encroaching European powers.
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