Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
For extensive discussions and detailed comments I thank Paul D'Anieri, Locksley Edmondson,
Lori Gronich, Anita Isaacs, Peter Katzenstein, Cecelia Lynch, John Odell, Judith Reppy, Chris
Reus-Smit, Cherie Steele, and Alex Wendt. I gratefully acknowledge financial support for research
and writing from the following institutions: the National Science Foundation's graduate fellowship
program, the Social Science Research Council's MacArthur Program on International Peace and
Security, and the University of Southern California's visiting scholar program at its Center for
International Studies.
1. For the most comprehensive overview of sanctions against South Africa, see Deon
Geldenhuys, Outcast States: A Comparative Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990).
2. See, variously, William Minter, King Solomon's Mines Revisited: Western Interests and the
Burdened History of Southern Africa (New York: Basic Books, 1986); Study Commission on U.S.
Policy Toward Southern Africa, South Africa: Time Running Out (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1981); and Christopher Coker, The United States and South Africa 1968-1985: Constructive
Engagement and Its Critics (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1986).
Norms 453
United States pursued its strategic and economic interests. Access to minerals
and markets seemed assured under conservative South African governments
since white-minority rule guaranteed an alliance against communist expansion
in the region. Thus U.S. policy prior to the mid-1980s confirms a structural
realist perspective. Increasing support for racial equality, however, disrupted
the easy correspondence between strategic and economic interests, opening an
unprecedented debate over non-racial democracy and U.S. interests in the
region. These debates, and the subsequent adoption of sanctions, illustrate the
constructivist claim that national interests are intersubjective, rather than
derived objectively from the distribution of material capabilities.
3. For an overview of the early international debates over apartheid, see Richard E. Bissell,
Apartheid and International Organizations (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1977); as well as the debate
summaries and resolutions in United Nations (UN), Department of Information, Yearbook of the
United Nations (New York: Columbia University Press/United Nations, 1946-88). Hereafter, these
annuals will be cited by title and year.
4. The 1977 arms embargo is the one notable mandatory UN sanction against South Africa. It
targeted South Africa's aggressive regional military role, defined as a "threat to international peace
and security," and violations of Security Council sanctions against Rhodesia. It was not adopted in
response to apartheid, as evident in Western permanent members' concurrent rejection of
mandatory economic sanctions. For details of these debates and resolutions see UN, Yearbook of
the United Nations, 1977.
Norms 455
Britain's lead, the United States consistently vetoed proposals for mandatory
Security Council sanctions from the early 1960s through the late 1980s. When
U.S. relations with South Africa were discussed at all, that country was viewed
as a bulwark against communist influence in resource-rich and capitalist
southern Africa. U.S. policymakers generally considered South Africa's ruling
whites, who shared their concern about communist expansion, as natural allies
for maintaining stability within South Africa (and hence within the entire
region).5 Thus U.S. policymakers dismissed both sanctions and majority rule as
antithetical to U.S. strategic and economic interests.
This ranking of minerals and markets over democracy was even more
apparent during the debates over whether to comply with UN sanctions against
Rhodesia. Initially, the United States supported multilateral sanctions to
protest the Unilateral Declaration of Independence announced by (Southern)
Rhodesia's white minority government on 11 November 1965. Only after years
of political pressures to define access to strategic minerals as a vital U.S.
national interest did Congress pass the Byrd amendment in 1971, exempting
chrome, ferrochrome, and nickel from sanctions restrictions. In other words,
before strategic mineral arguments became politically salient, the United
States had adopted sanctions in support of a norm of racial equality (which was
being explicitly flaunted by the white minority Rhodesian regime).6 Concerns
about communism, defined in terms of strategic resources and market
economies, clearly took priority over concerns about racial equality and
democracy.
Prior to the mid-1980s, therefore, material interests—even when they
conflicted with an explicit commitment to racial equality and democracy-
motivated U.S. policy toward South Africa and the region. This historical
record confirms policy predictions derived from structural realist theory, as
illustrated in Figure I.7 Consequently, U.S. policy in the 1980s should have
remained an easy case for structural material explanations. Indeed, the
5. The most explicit statement of this position is National Security Study Memorandum 39,
prepared for Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. For details see Mohamed A. El-Khawas and
Barry Cohen, eds., National Security Study Memorandum 39: The Kissinger Study of Southern Africa
(Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill, 1976). However, similar arguments dominated policy as early as
the Truman administration. See Thomas Borstelmann, Apartheid's Reluctant Uncle: The United
States and Southern Africa in the Early Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). For an
overview of the South African government's view, see James Barber and John Barratt, South
Africa's Foreign Policy: The Search for Status and Security 1945-1988 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990).
6. For details of the shift in U.S. policy toward Rhodesia, see Anthony Lake, The Tar Baby
Option: American Policy Toward Southern Rhodesia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976).
7. Analyses of policies toward South Africa are rarely explicitly theoretically informed but
generally conform to either a traditional realist perspective or a domestic politics perspective. A
noteworthy exception is Gerald J. Bender, James S. Coleman, and Richard L. Sklar, eds., African
Crisis Areas and U.S. Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), which emphasizes the
importance of bipolarity and superpower intervention in southern African conflicts. For an
elaboration on the theoretical tenets and critiques of a structural realist approach, see Robert O.
Keohane, ed., Neo-realism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).
456 International Organization
THEORY
APPLICATION
8. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker's own characterization of
policymaking in the early 1980s confirms both an assumption of executive autonomy and the
priority given to strategic concerns, confirming the applicability of a statist approach as
characterized by Stephen D. Krasner in Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments
and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978). For elaboration, see
Crocker's autobiography, High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1992).
Norms 457
9. See Stephen D. Krasner, Structural Conflict: The Third World Against Global Liberalism
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Joseph Grieco, Cooperation Among Nations:
Europe, America and Non-tariff Barriers to Trade (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990); and
some (but not all) contributions to Stephen D. Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1983).
10. For elaboration, see Borstelmann, Apartheid's Reluctant Uncle. For historical overviews of
the origins and evolution of demands for racial equality, see David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human
Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984); R. J. M. Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall:
Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1983); Paul Gordon Lauren, Power and Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial
Discrimination (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1988); and Vincent Harding, There Is a River: The Black
Struggle for Freedom in America (New York: Vintage, 1981). Explaining the origins of this norm of
racial equality is beyond the scope of this article.
11. See Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political
Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984); and Kenneth A. Oye, ed., Coopera-
tion Under Anarchy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986). Martin's evaluation of these
claims suggests significant support for the importance of institutions. See Lisa L. Martin, Coercive
Cooperation: Explaining Multilateral Economic Sanctions (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1992).
458 International Organization
12. External constraint may, however, have limited overt support for the South African regime,
even in the early postwar period when the norm of racial equality was emerging and material
interests were strong. See Borstelmann, Apartheid's Reluctant Uncle, chap. 4.
13. See Robert O. Keohane, "International Institutions: Two Approaches," International
Institutions and State Power: Essays in International Relations Theory (Boulder, Colo.: Westview,
1989), pp. 159-79; and Andrew Moravcsik, "Negotiating the Single European Act," in Robert O.
Keohane and Stanley Hoffmann, eds., The New European Community: Decisionmaking and
Institutional Change (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991), pp. 41-84.
14. The broad range and coordinated nature of international reactions to South African
apartheid are more than coincidental; for a defense of this claim, see Audie Klotz, Protesting
Prejudice: Apartheid and the Politics of Norms in International Relations (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, forthcoming).
Norms 459
REGIME THEORY
t
Supplementary
t
Regimes
theory of domestic
politics
15. For elaboration on why this transnational emphasis goes beyond conventional notions of
sovereignty and levels of analysis, see Emanuel Adler and Peter M. Haas, "Conclusion: Epistemic
Communities, World Order, and the Creation of a Reflective Research Program," International
Organization 46 (Winter 1992), pp. 367-90.
16. See especially the following works by Friedrich Kratochwil, "Of Systems, Boundaries, and
Territoriality: An Inquiry into the Formation of the State System," World Politics 38 (October
1986), pp. 27-52; "On the Notion of 'Interest' in International Relations," International
Organization 36 (Winter 1982), pp. 1-30; "The Force of Prescriptions," International Organization
38 (Autumn 1984), pp. 685-708; and Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and
Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989). See also Alexander Wendt, "Anarchy Is What States Make of It," International
Organization 46 (Spring 1992), pp. 391^25; and Nicholas Greenwood Onuf, World of Our Making:
Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1989). Wendt and Onuf label this perspective constructivist based on the structuration
theory of sociologist Anthony Giddens, the main tenet of which is that structures and agents
reconstruct each other in a dynamic process of iteration. For elaboration on and critiques of
Giddens's theory, see David Held and John B. Thompson, eds., Social Theory of Modern Societies:
Anthony Giddens and His Critics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
17. See, for example, John Gerard Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing
Modernity in International Relations," International Organization 47 (Winter 1993), pp. 139-74.
18. Despite frequently being characterized as articulating a rival research paradigm, constructiv-
ists accept many of the substantive aspects of the regimes research agenda. For examples of
similarities among institutionalist approaches, see Oran Young, International Cooperation (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989); and contributions in James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto
Czempiel, eds., Governance Without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge:
Norms 461
REGIME THEORY
t
Supplementary
\ Regimes
'
theory of domestic
politics
CONSTRUCTIVISM
20. On the historical roots of Pan-Africanism, see Colin Legum, Pan-Africanism: A Short
Political Guide (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1962). Unless otherwise noted, the following
discussion of the relationship between Pan-African ideology and African-American political
activism derives from Bernard Makhosezwe Magubane, The Ties That Bind: African-American
Consciousness of Africa (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1987); Locksley Edmondson, "Black
America as a Mobilizing Diaspora: Some International Implications," in Gabriel Shaffer, ed.,
Modem Diasporas in International Politics (New York: St. Martin's, 1986), pp. 164—211; and Philip
V. White, "The Black American Constituency for Southern Africa, 1940-1980," in Alfred O. Hero,
Jr., and John Barratt, eds., The American People and South Africa: Publics, Elites, and Policymaking
Processes (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1981), pp. 83-102.
21. Activism had been inhibited during the McCarthy era. For details, see Hollis R. Lynch, Black
American Radicals and the Liberation of Africa: The Council on African Affairs 1937-1955 (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University, 1978); and Martin Staniland,
American Intellectuals and African Nationalists, 1955-1970 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 1991).
22. Magubane, The Ties that Bind, p. 216.
23. For details, see White, "The Black American Constituency for Southern Africa, 1940-1980,"
p. 87.
24. See Edmondson, "Black America as a Mobilizing Diaspora," pp. 183 and 185.
464 International Organization
on Africa in 1969. Diggs was also a founding member, and first chair, of the
Congressional Black Caucus, which was established in 1971.
In a less institutionalized setting, two African-American workers initiated a
protest movement against the Polaroid Corporation. They demanded an end to
sales of photographic equipment that was being used by the South African
government to implement its controversial pass-law system, which required
nonwhites to carry documentation regulating their work, residence, and
internal travel.25 Protests against Polaroid focused public attention on the
divestment dimension of the apartheid controversy, foreshadowing subsequent
debates over corporate involvement in South Africa. In reaction to the
arguments over the ethical responsibilities of corporations such as Polaroid,
African-American Rev. Leon Sullivan, himself a corporate board member,
devised the Sullivan Principles as corporate guidelines for enhancing the living
and working conditions of their black South African employees. Criticizing
these principles and the philosophy behind them, advocates of divestment, on
the other hand, saw such ameliorative measures as drastically insufficient; they
argued for complete corporate withdrawal as well as government (and
international) enforcement of economic disengagement.
Two tracks within the anti-apartheid debate thus emerged out of the
Polaroid controversy: corporate responsibility and U.S. government policy.
Pursuing both of these dimensions, grass-roots protests spread. Debates over
apartheid began to reach the national political level for the first time; indeed,
Africa policy had never before been a focus of national politics, with the brief
exception of the Kennedy presidential campaign. During the 1976 presidential
campaign, Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter emphasized the need to
increase the role of African-Americans both in foreign policy generally and
policy toward Africa in particular. The subsequent role of civil rights activist
Andrew Young, as permanent representative to the UN, in formulating the
Carter administration's South Africa policy blurred the previous distinction
between external pressure on government policy and participation in policymak-
ing itself.
Nevertheless, Carter's appointment of Young did not forestall continued
pressure, from both African-Americans and other activists, for a stronger U.S.
response to South African racial policies. African leaders as well as African-
Americans indeed were disappointed in the lack of substance in Young's South
Africa policy, notably his lack of support for sanctions.26 Until the 1980s, the
liberal economic argument that increasing investments in South Africa gradu-
ally would eliminate apartheid segregation still prevailed among most policy-
makers—even among many committed advocates of racial equality, including
25. For details of the Polaroid controversy and its consequences, see White, "The Black
American Constituency for Southern Africa, 1940-1980," pp. 89-90.
26. For a discussion of Young's role, see Henry F. Jackson, From the Congo to Soweto: U.S.
Foreign Policy Toward Africa Since 1960 (New York: William Morrow, 1982), pp. 153-60.
Norms 465
27. For details on Robinson and TransAfrica, see ibid., pp. 123-26.
28. Ibid., p. 125.
29. Edmondson, "Black America as a Mobilizing Diaspora," pp. 194-95.
30. See, for example, Randall Robinson, "The Reagan Administration and Southern Africa,"
TransAfrica Forum 1 (Summer 1982), pp. 3-6.
466 International Organization
31. For more on Jackson's role, see Edmondson, "Black America as a Mobilizing Diaspora," p.
192; Magubane, The Ties that Bind, p. 224; Anthony Sampson, Black and Gold: Tycoons,
Revolutionaries, and Apartheid (New York: Pantheon, 1987), p. 166; and Pauline Baker, The United
States and South Africa: The Reagan Years (New York: Ford Foundation, 1989), p. 30.
32. Public opinion research confirms that broad-based support for racial equality preceded
demands for congressional action. See Kevin A. Hill, "The Domestic Sources of Foreign
Policymaking: Congressional Voting and American Mass Attitudes Toward South Africa,"
International Studies Quarterly 37 (June 1993), pp. 195-214.
33. Roger Wilkins, "Demonstrating Our Opposition," Africa Report 30 (May-June 1985), p. 31.
Norms 467
34. Crocker originally proposed constructive engagement in Chester Crocker, "South Africa:
Strategy for Change," Foreign Affairs 59 (Winter 1980/81), pp. 323-51. See also Crocker, High Noon
in Southern Africa; Baker, The United States and South Africa; and Coker, The United States and
South Africa, 1968-1985.
35. For a detailed explanation of Kissinger's policy see El-Khawas and Cohen, National Security
Study Memorandum 39.
36. For a critique of the liberal view of the relationship between economic change and apartheid
reform, see Stanley B. Greenberg, "Economic Growth and Political Change: The South African
Case," Journal of Modem African Studies 19 (December 1981), pp. 667-704.
37. These policy documents were published in a special edition of TransAfrica News Report,
August 1981 and are reprinted in Baker, The United States and South Africa, Appendix A, pp.
105-112.
Norms 469
apparent personal sympathy for whites in South Africa (a view reinforced by his
support from conservatives, especially in the South). Some also questioned
Crocker's personal sympathies, since his wife was Rhodesian-born and they
owned stock in companies operating in South Africa. Senator Jesse Helms, in
contrast, had attempted to block Crocker's nomination for fear that he was
overly sympathetic to the black African perspective.38
The Reagan administration's reputation for supporting white-minority rule
was becoming entrenched. At a 21 March 1985 press conference (held in
response to recent deaths of black South Africans), President Reagan
answered a question about whether the administration would alter its policy in
response to the continuing wave of South African government violence against
blacks by declaring, "I think to put it that way—that they were simply killed and
that the violence was coming totally from the law and order side ignores the fact
that there was rioting going on . . . it is significant that some of those enforcing
the law and using the guns were also black policemen."39 A strongly worded
response by Democratic Congressman William Gray (Congressional Black
Caucus member and author of sanctions legislation) indicated a growing
discontent with Reagan's insensitivity: "At best, I would describe [Reagan's]
statements as symbolic of the worst kind of ignorance and insensitivity by
anybody that I've ever seen in all my years in public office. At worst, I would
have to say that they were racist.... [His comment] basically shows that the
President sees [apartheid] only as a black-white issue, and he's on the side of
white folks. And I think that's tragic, because it's not a black-white issue. It's an
issue of justice versus injustice."40 In response to increasing criticism that his
administration supported white rule in South Africa, President Reagan finally
made a speech denouncing apartheid on 10 December 1985 (International
Human Rights Day). He nevertheless justified the progress made through
constructive engagement. Particularly disturbing to his critics were Reagan's
misleading assertions about South African support during the two world wars;
in fact, members of Afrikaner-dominated South African government (in power
since 1948) had previously been imprisoned as Nazi sympathizers. Even
Crocker acknowledged the damage from Reagan's insensitivity.41
Characterizing support for South Africa as support for racism held serious
political ramifications, which became increasingly evident in the schism
developing between the Reagan administration and Congress. For the first four
years, Crocker had been given the benefit of the doubt by most Republicans
(although other opponents continued to criticize him for overlooking the issue
of black political rights). This grace period, however, came to an end by late
38. For details of opposition to his nomination, see Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa.
39. For the full text of Reagan's comments, see U.S. Department of State, Office of the
Historian, "Remarks by President Reagan at a News Conference, March 21,1985," doc. 158, in The
United States and South Africa: U.S. Public Statements and Related Documents, 1977-1985
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, September 1985), p. 307.
40. Congressman William H. Gray III, interviewed by Paula Hirschoff, Africa Report 30
(May-June 1985), p. 50.
41. See Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa, pp. 81 and 231.
470 International Organization
1984 when both regional southern African and internal South African violence
sharply increased.42 The political linkage between domestic and international
racial issues was the instigation for this conservative reevaluation. Congres-
sional representatives who previously were uninterested in the details of
foreign policies toward African countries no longer gave the administration
free rein as their own concern for their domestic (electoral) image increased.
Particularly discontented were moderate Republicans who, in response to the
increasingly prevalent impression of Reagan as insensitive to racial concerns,
decided to voice their opposition openly. These former Reagan supporters
became crucial in creating bipartisan support for sanctions legislation.
But unlike activists with histories of interest in South African affairs, these
moderates were influenced by a number of domestic political contingencies
that led them to reconsider national interests in, and policy toward, South
Africa. In part concerned by the electoral dimension of domestic racial issues,
centrist Republicans hoped to gain increased support from middle-class blacks
in their broader efforts to create a new style of Republican party that would
appeal to younger and southern constituents.43 Given the broad, rather than
constituency-specific, nature of the support for sanctions, these moderate
Republicans hoped to limit damage to their overall national agenda by
distancing themselves from Reagan's policy of constructive engagement.44
Particularly surprising was the adoption of a specific foreign policy issue—
whether or not to adopt sanctions against South Africa—in a midterm election
year. This new Republican concern had immediate and concrete effects on the
sanctions debate.
The political salience of public support for racial equality led these moderate
Republicans to promote anti-apartheid sanctions. In a much publicized letter
to South African Ambassador Fourie in December 1984, a group of these
moderates expressed their concern about increasing violence in South Africa,
going so far as to warn that they would consider supporting partial sanctions if
substantial change were not quickly forthcoming. In explaining his motivations
for a move that circumvented the policy of his party's leader, Republican
Senator Robert Walker of Pennsylvania described the thinking behind his
drafting of that letter:
The letter grew out of discussions among several of us over several months.
I found myself increasingly anxious to publicly express opposition to apart-
heid, and as I discussed it with my closest colleagues, I found that they too
42. Two (Nkomati and Lusaka) regional accords between South Africa and its neighbors, which
Crocker had held up as successes of constructive engagement, fell into disarray as South Africa
adopted a more aggressive regional military strategy. For details of these accords and South
Africa's broader regional policies see Barber and Barratt, South Africa's Foreign Policy.
43. Baker, The United States and South Africa, p. 36.
44. Congressional representatives were responding to broad national debates, rather than
simple concern for their own reelection. Using public opinion data and voting records, Hill argues
that there is "no evidence of direct constituency transmission of South Africa attitudes to their
representatives." See Hill, "The Domestic Sources of Foreign Policymaking," p. 210.
Norms 471
felt the time had come to have conservatives voice their repugnance regard-
ing that policy of official segregation. We also were disturbed to see all con-
servatives lumped together as supporters of, or at least acquiescing to,
apartheid. We decided to take steps to break this stereotype by taking a
public step to show our disapproval. We set out to define ourselves as a
group of conservatives who were clearly anti-apartheid. This, we felt, would
send a signal to the South African government that it cannot count on all
conservatives to "look the other way." We hoped this move would change
the tenor of the debate not only in this country, but in South Africa as
well.45
Other leading Republicans expressed similar views. Thus, moderate Republi-
cans had come to agree with anti-apartheid activists that failure to respond to
South Africa's apartheid policies meant condoning racism. In the political
climate of the mid-1980s only the most conservative Republicans were deaf to
such accusations.
As a result of increasing Republican support, bipartisan consensus on partial
sanctions—as the policy that could most clearly and quickly demonstrate
rejection of apartheid—subsequently emerged during 1985 in open opposition
to the administration policy of constructive engagement. Supporting—or
refusing to criticize—South Africa had become politically unacceptable for all
but the most conservative. The Reagan administration's failure to carry
moderate Republicans created unusual dissension over the broad definition of
U.S. interests in southern Africa. Which specific policy would replace Reagan
policy, however, depended on subsequent debates over the importance of
nonracial democracy for U.S. interests in the region.
Debating democracy
Declining congressional support demonstrated that Reagan, unlike previous
Presidents, could no longer rely on orthodox assumptions that white-minority
rule would protect U.S. strategic and economic interests in South Africa.
Promoting stability in the region, advocates of racial equality argued, meant
promoting substantial South African internal political reforms, specifically
democracy in the form of majority rule. Anti-apartheid sanctions represented
the most effective means of both pressuring the white-minority government for
reforms and signaling support for opponents of white rule. Support for
sanctions, in other words, was equated with support for racial equality.
As moderate Republicans joined long-standing opponents of apartheid in
articulating the view that absence of South African reform actually promoted
the spread of revolutionary ideas, they opened a broader debate over the
nature of U.S. interests in the region. This new phase of debate over sanctions
centered predominantly around differing analyses of reform. Since traditional
45. Robert S. Walker, "A Conservative Viewpoint Against Apartheid," Africa Report 30
(May-June 1985), p. 55.
472 International Organization
with both moderate Republicans (who were more concerned with South
African reform) and right-wing Republicans (who wanted a stronger reaction
to the presence of Cuban troops in the region), leaving him open to attacks
from all sides, not just from inveterate anti-apartheid activists. On balance,
Crocker's emphasis on regional strategic interests, especially Cuban troops in
Angola, outweighed his moderate support for democratization.
In addition, Crocker's preference for moderate reformers of apartheid led
him to minimize the importance of both black South African actors who
supported faster change, such as the African National Congress (ANC), and
the degree of violence inherent in the system of apartheid. Sharing the
conservative view that the violence of internal conflict resulted from critics of
the white government, Crocker concluded that support for government-
initiated reform could control that violence. In sharp contrast, critics of that
fundamentally conservative perspective emphasized the role of the government
in creating and perpetuating violence. In their view, therefore, not only did
support for the South African government guarantee continued violence but
also slower reform ensured longer suffering. Consequently, they viewed
stronger pressure on the South African government to implement immediate
and drastic change as the necessary and appropriate U.S. response. These
diverging views of the relationship between violence and reform fueled the
vociferous sanctions debates of the 1980s and perpetuated the perception that
the U.S. administration supported the white-minority regime.
With its emphasis on negotiations over Namibia rather than the elimination
of apartheid, the administration proved incapable of reaching a compromise
with moderate Republicans. Following their December 1984 letter to the South
African ambassador, a number of Republicans joined in sponsoring sanctions
legislation in both the Senate and House of Representatives. In 1985, the
House passed sanctions legislation by a vote of 295 to 127, due in part to the
support of fifty-six Republicans. Republican Senators Roth of Delaware and
McConnell of Kentucky introduced legislation in the Senate, where Reagan
supporters Robert Dole and Richard Lugar became key actors in an attempt to
find a suitable compromise between Congress and the administration. Broker-
ing an agreement to forestall restrictions on investments in South Africa, they
convinced President Reagan to abide by a much-reduced package of restric-
tions on governmental loans, exports of computers to the South African
military and police, exports of nuclear-related technologies, and the import of
South African-made arms. The executive order also encouraged corporations
to follow a code of conduct similar to the Sullivan Principles. Furthermore, it
established an advisory committee to provide additional recommendations in
the future.48
48. U.S. Department of State, "Prohibiting Trade and Certain Other Transactions Involving
South Africa," Executive Order 12532, 9 September 1985, in United States and South Africa, doc.
176, pp. 365-68.
474 International Organization
49. For details, see The Commonwealth Group of Eminent Persons, Mission to South Africa
(London: Penguin, 1986).
50. The Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986: PL 99-440 U.S. Statutes at Large 100 (1986),
pp. 1086-116.
Norms 475
51. For a discussion of how black South African groups perceived U.S. aid, see Lynda M.
Clarizio, United States Policy Toward South Africa (New York: Lawyer's Committee for Human
Rights, 1989), pp. 40 and 66.
52. On U.S. characterization of the ANC as a terrorist organization, see Thomas J. Redden, Jr.,
"The U.S. Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986: Anti-Apartheid or Anti-African National
Congress?" African Affairs 87 (October 1988), pp. 595-605.
476 International Organization
Theoretical implications
U.S. debates over minerals, markets, and democracy in South Africa demon-
strate the inherently social nature of national interests. As a global norm of
racial equality became increasingly accepted in domestic U.S. politics, advo-
cates of democracy for South Africa successfully linked issues of civil rights and
apartheid through the discourse of equality and national interests. Conse-
quently, even moderate Republicans in Congress recognized the social costs of
abrogating this norm of racial equality, both for their own party's domestic
interests and for U.S. global interests, resulting in a significant shift in U.S.
foreign policy. By altering U.S. policy, furthermore, transnational anti-
apartheid activists redirected this great power's influence toward supporting
global enforcement of a norm of racial equality, both among South Africa's
trading partners and within South Africa itself. National interests, therefore,
are socially constructed in a global process of norm diffusion.
Constructivist theory claims that states are socially constructed, yet we have
few comparative studies that offer an empirical basis for improving our
understanding of the ways in which processes of social construction operate.
This case study suggests directions for further empirical research into interest
formation. Comparing anti-apartheid activists' experiences in the United
States with those in Britain, for example, indicates that the context of the U.S.
civil rights discourse, as well as the institutional differences between the
congressional and parliamentary political systems, explain this transnational
social movement's success in the former and frustration in the latter.56 These
contrasting experiences suggest that the permeability of preexisting discursive
frameworks and institutions to transnational influences is a plausible direction
56. For a detailed analysis of the failure of the anti-apartheid movement in Britain, see Klotz,
Protesting Prejudice, chap. 7.
478 International Organization