The vulnerability-interaction model presented in this chapter emphasises the effect of interaction among four explanatory variables on the level of state intervention in the oil supply in net oil importing economies. Two of these variables, trust in oil markets and strength of private capital, incorporate some non-material elements in their formulation. For this reason, this section tries to clarify the extent the model can be viewed as having a constructivist approach to state intervention in oil supply. The discussions below suggest that the model in its entirety, as currently conceptualised, situates closer to the conventional realist than the constructivist end of the theoretical spectrum.
The different strands of the constructivist approach to international relations converge on the following commonalities:114 They see agents and structures as mutually constitutive; the consequences of anarchy as socially constructed instead of preordained; state identities and interests as variables, not as fixed givens; and both material and
114 See, for example, John Kurt Jacobsen, “Duelling Constructivisms: A Post-Mortem on the Ideas
Debate in Mainstream IR/IPE,” Review of International Studies, 29-1 (January 2003): 39-60. Ted Hopf groups these strands under the banners of “critical constructivism” and “conventional constructivism.” See “The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory,”
46 discursive capabilities as sources of power.115 These four major features of the approach are used to focus the discussion on how constructivist the vulnerability-interaction model is.
Mutually Constitutive Agents and Structure. The most important agents examined in the proposed model are net oil importing economies as personified by national-level decision-makers in their economies’ oil supply, and more broadly, economic policymaking. The most pertinent structures include the international oil market, the power distribution in the international system, and existing domestic oil market governances during the period studied. The independent variable of OV as currently conceptualised offers only little to moderate room for mutual constitution between these agents and structures. It is in the concept of market risks that very large net oil economies would have noticeable impact on the international oil market, and more indirectly and less certainly, on the overall power distribution in the international system. These economies would be vulnerable to market risks when global oil supply is tight but also wield market shaping power when there is an oil glut.
At the domestic level of analysis, the agents of large private oil firms and NCOs and the structures of both the domestic oil markets and the national governments of economies generally have more mutual influence on each other’s behaviour than at the international level. The explanatory factors of decision-makers’ trust in their domestic oil markets and private capital strength in their economies are predicated on this domestic level mutual constitution. Agent-structure mutual constitution does not directly concern the variable of OV or implementation capability.
Socially Constructed Consequences of Anarchy. The price-setting mechanism of the international oil market is “governed” by demand and supply dynamics, not anarchy. Just as many other markets in the real world, however, it is far from having “textbook” perfect market conditions, such as being populated by a large number of buyers and sellers of similar sizes with perfect information. Besides, the current international oil market has been adopted as the primary mode of exchange of oil across national borders relatively recently and is still evolving. The vulnerability-international model argues that more opaque modes of international oil exchange that were more directly tied to the power distribution in the international system, therefore, still cast a shadow over decision-makers’ trust in the current international oil market. This doubt could be exploited and magnified with effective securitisation of oil supply – a concept closely associated with the constructivist approach.116
Unlike the constructivist approach, however, the proposed model sees the impact anarchy has on decision-makers’ trust in the international oil market as springing from only
115 Hopf, ibid, 185.
47 one understanding of anarchy – the realist or Hobbesian understanding.117 Their trust in the international market is predicated on the quality of their relationship with the presumed system leader, and hence how acute the political entity’s competition for survival or leadership with this “hegemon” is. Yet, this understanding of the consequence of anarchy is not seen as preordained as realism postulates. Indeed, it has been tinkered by rule-based and transparent regimes as postulated by neoliberalist theorists, especially in economic domains. The vulnerability-interaction model is formulated with the observation that a widely shared understanding of anarchy that is vastly different than the realistic one, has not emerged and the assumption that it would not emerge in the near future in the Asia Pacific. The nature of anarchy does not really concern the other explanatory factors.
Variable State Identities and Interests. Following the reasoning of the mutual constitution between agents and structures and the power of discourse, the constructivist approach sees that states may have multiple and changing identities and hence interests and behaviour that are associated with the various identities through intersubjectivity. Overall, the vulnerability-interaction model assigns relatively fixed identities and interests to political entities regarding their oil supply policies. A political entity is conceptualised to identify itself as a net oil importing or net exporting economy largely based on the material factor of whether it produces more oil than it consumes during a given time period.118 The interests generated from the identity of being a net importing economy are also largely the same: to secure the most affordable, efficient, and stable supply of oil to the economy. More perceptual elements, however, are involved in determining the best course of actions to safeguard these interests.
The proposed model suggests decision-makers’ different understandings of the best combination of market and non-market measures to realize the same interest and identity as net oil importing economies in addition to individual economies’ implementation capability and OV translate into the different levels of strategic oil supply measures an economy adopts at any given time. These understandings may be skewed by securitisation of oil supply to lower decision-makers’ trust in the effectiveness and/or fairness of oil markets, but they would not be totally divorced from the material, institutional, and historical realities of the
117 Alexander Wendt, considered a “standard bearer” of conventional constructivism, for example,
suggests that actors (states) may understand anarchy as Hobbesian, Lockean, or Kantian depending on how they see themselves and others in the international system. These different approaches to anarchy would generate very different consequences even when the international system remains anarchic. See Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge University Press Virtual Publishing, 2003), 246-312.
118 As discussed in Chapters Three and Six in this thesis, a perceptual lag to this material rule is likely
to linger in cases when an economy has recently transitioned from a net producer to a net consumer, as in the case of Indonesia during the period studied.
48 economies. This leads to the assessment of how much power the vulnerability-interaction model assigns to discourse and through which type of securitisation.
Sources of Power. The constructivists approach sees material and discursive capabilities as intertwining sources of power, more so than the realist school of thoughts.119 This relative emphasis on the power of discourse contributed to the conceptualisation of securitization theory, first developed by a group of scholars commonly referred to as the Copenhagen School (CS).120 According to this often cited formulation of securitization theory, an issue may be securitized as an existential threat that calls for extraordinary measures simply by the “speech act” of proclaiming and presenting it as such.121 As discussed in Section 3.2 earlier in this chapter, the vulnerability-interaction model proposed in this study, however, has adopted a more recently developed approach to securitisation theory put forward by Balzacq. This approach emphasises the impact of external contexts and the status of securitising agent(s) vis-à-vis the targeted audience on successful securitisation, in addition to the performative act of speech. This approach is one of the more “practice-based” strands versus the more “linguistic” approach to securitisation as represented by the original CS formulation. 122
For the explanatory factor of trust in oil markets, therefore, the model proposed in this thesis takes a largely constructivist approach that discursive and material capabilities are equally important sources of power. This combined power is channelled through securitisation to cause different levels of trust among decision-makers as the success of this process is contingent as much on external contexts as the power relations between agents and audience of securitisation, as the speech act of uttering the supposed threat itself. Securitisation theory, particularly the more practice-based strand adopted in this thesis, is suited to such an application as it
… claims that the intersubjective representation of reality (constructivitism about facts) is not necessarily incompatible with the possibility that some
119 There are important exceptions to mainstream approaches’ “neglect” to ideational or perceptual
variables to international relations. Examples include Robert Jervis’ study on the role of perception in decision-making in Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015); Joseph Nye’s examination of soft power in Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004); and Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane’s discussion and compilation of works on how ideas shape foreign policymaking in the volume they edited: Ideas and Foreign Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993).
120 Securitization theory incorporates elements of realism and poststructuralism as well as
constructivism and has developed into a number of strands, even if “linkages between securitization theory and other theoretical enterprises remain largely under-studied and under-specified.” Thierry Balzacq, Sarah Léonard, and Jan Ruzicka, “’Securitization’ revisited: theory and cases,”
International Relations, 30-4 (2016), 518.
121 Ole Wæver, “Securitization and Desecuritization,” On Security, ed. Ronnie Lipschutz. (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1995), 46–86.
122 For a discussion of the categorization and its limit of various strands of securitization theory, see
49 features of the world, independent from people and their beliefs about those,
are capable of explaining why a community holds that something is a threat (objectivism about rational explanations) … [and it] relate[s] language and mind to the impact of the external world on regulating the content of the two.123
Overall, the vulnerability-interaction model shares more features with the realist than the constructivist approach. Not much mutual constitution is conceptualised to take place between individual net oil importing economies (agents) and the international oil market or the international system at large (structure). In the case of the few very large net oil importing economies, the influence they have on the structure is understood as materialist rather than ideational in origin. There would be more mutual constitution at the domestic level, but the oil supply strategy of net oil importing economies are usually more externally- oriented.
The proposed model also assumes net oil importing economies as having similar realist understanding of the consequences of anarchy as well as the same interests and identities in formulating their oil supply strategies. Decision-makers’ trust in the oil markets’ capability in ensuring their economies’ oil supply security is the only explanatory variable that has a significant perceptual or ideational element factored in it. Discourse is conceptualised to manifest its power through a process more akin to the pragmatic than the linguistic approach of securitisation theory put forward by the CS to determine the ultimate trust level.
The empirical chapters of this study, previewed in the next section, suggest that this variable played a critical role in eventuating the level of strategic oil supply measures Asian net oil importing economies adopted during the period studied. Still, the vulnerability- interaction model takes a more “fleshed-out” or “realistic” realist approach à la Jervis and Goldstein and Keohane than an outright constructivist approach with its preponderance of materialist variables and its presumption of the mostly realist understanding of anarchy among the economies examined.124
7. Empirical Strategy
This section maps out the empirical strategy to test the validity of the four hypotheses generated by the vulnerability-interaction model. The model is largely deductive and has not been tested with empirical cases. This thesis will, therefore, first conduct a
123Ibid, 519.
124 See footnote 119 above. Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics and
Goldstein and Keohane, “Ideas and Foreign Policy: An Analytical Framework,” in Ideas and Foreign Policy, 3-13.
50 plausibility probe to verify its plausibility with a relatively larger number of cases, but less in-depth data. This helps to determine if “more intensive and laborious testing is warranted.”125 Plausibility probe is one of the six theory-building case study research objectives George and Bennett identify.126 Given the Asia-Pacific focus of this study as discussed in Chapter One, the first step towards testing the model is to determine economies to include in the plausibility probe in Chapter Three.
What constitutes a “region” has always been a contested concept and what constitutes the Asia-Pacific is no exception.127 This thesis takes a pragmatic approach in case selection by trying to include as many net oil importing economies as possible in the plausibility probe where relatively reliable data on energy and oil production, consumption, and supply are available. The BP Statistical Review of World Energy, published annually during the two decades covered by this project and beyond, therefore, becomes the starting point. Data of 16 economies are grouped under “Asia Pacific” in the June 2014 edition of the review, which covers data up to year 2013.128 Of the 16, Malaysia and Vietnam are eliminated because their status as net oil importers as of 2013 is ambiguous.129 Bangladesh, Pakistan, and China Hong Kong SAR, are eliminated due to the relative lack of data upon initial research. Finally, Australia and New Zealand are also excluded. These two economies are more geographically remote and distinct from the rest of the group. Besides, although Australia is a net oil importer, it is also a net energy exporter.130 This may give decision- makers a different perspective on oil supply security issues. In the end, nine economies, which are what remain from the original 16 after these adjustments are made, are sufficiently large scale for this project to assess.
125 George and Bennett, 75.
126 The other five objectives they identify are: atheoretical/configurative idiographic, disciplined
configurative, heuristic, theory-testing, and “building block” studies of particular types or subtypes. See Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences, 74-75.
127 For discussions of the many ways the concept of Asia and Asia-Pacific may be defined and what
these different definitions imply, see David Shambaugh, “International Relations in Asia,” in
International Relations of Asia, ed. David Shambaugh and Michael Yahuda (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), Kindle Edition; and Arif Dirlik, “The Asia-Pacific Idea: Reality and Representation in the Invention of a Regional Structure,” Journal of World History, 3-1 (Spring 1992): 55-79.
128 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, June 2014, 9. The 16 economies are: Australia,
Bangladesh, China, China Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.
129 Cecilia Kok, “Govt reveals M'sia net importer of crude oil, petroleum products since 2014,” The Star, 21 January 2015, accessed 11 August 2015, http://www.thestar.com.my/Business/Business- News/2015/01/21/Clearing-the-air-Treasury-sec-gen-Malaysia-net-importer-of-crude-oil-
petroleum-products-since-2014/?style=biz.. Also see “Overview” U.S. Energy Information Agency webpage on Vietnam, last updated in November 2014, accessed 20 August 2015,
http://www.eia.gov/beta/international/analysis.cfm?iso=VNM.
130 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, June 2014, 8-9. Also see “Key Facts – Australia’s
Energy Sector,” Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics, Australian Government Department of Resources, 2012.
51 The method of structured and focused comparison is used to make pairwise comparisons among the chosen nine economies in the plausibility probe to examine the validity of H1 to H2: China, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. Year 2013 data are used to test the cross-economy dimension of these two hypotheses. The same data are compared with year 2003 data of each economy to test the cross-temporal dimension of the hypotheses. These two years each presents roughly a decade of high oil prices (2004-2013) and a decade of low oil prices (1994 – 2003) that cover the entire period of this study.
Nine “within-case comparisons” are made with the levels of the explanatory variables in these two years to see if they are congruent with the levels of the DV as predicted by H1 and H2. According to George and Bennett, “there is a growing consensus that the strongest means of drawing inferences from case studies is the use of a combination of within-case analysis and cross-case comparisons within a single study.”131 Due to time and length restraints, however, the cross-temporal dimension of the vulnerability-interaction model is investigated only in the plausibility probe.
Structured and focused comparison involves finding answers to standardised questions pertinent to the research objective.132 Two major strategic oil supply measures are used to comprise an indicator to uniformly assess the levels of these measured adopted, the DV, in each of the nine cases with 2013 and 2003 data. Two market and two supply risks make up another indicator for OV, the IV of the vulnerability-interaction model. In the plausibility probe, only the historical-institutional source of the overall private capital strength is investigated. Two “off-the-shelf” indicators are used to evaluate the degrees of overall economic freedom and openness of the cases. The exact sources and methods of these indicators are discussed in the Chapter Three, but it suffices to say here that the creation of these indicators amounts to answering the same questions in the most standardised way possible.
All the data are reviewed and cross-compared to evaluate the prima facie validity of H1 to H4 and to choose the best cases for further investigation. H2 means that candidates for further investigations of the hypothesis would fall into a loose definition of the most similar cases - all explanatory factors of interest being similar except the theorised ones but with different outcomes (DV).133
Once the best candidates are chosen from the plausibility probe, the same structured and focused comparison method is used to conduct more in-depth examination of
131 George and Bennett, 18. 132 George and Bennett, 70.
133 Jason Seawright and John Gerring, “Case Selection Techniques in Case Study Research,” Political Research Quarterly 61-2 (June 2008): 298-304.