Follow-ups in pre-structured communication

This contribution outlines two theoretical frameworks – behaviorist and reflexive – for considering the discursive interaction between states and international organizations within treaty monitoring (a process of assessing states’ compliance with international treaties). Monitoring is seen as a communicative process, aimed at building and sustaining the interlocutors’ public images and constituted by a series of multi-directed follow-ups. This definition emphasizes the importance of anticipation and silence in pre-structured diplomatic communication. The two suggested frameworks lie across the ontological divide. The behaviorist framework relies on an actor/speaker-oriented view of social interaction, conceives of actors as rational, strategizing beings performing cost-benefit calculations to define their discursive choices, and conceptualizes the participants’ concern with their public image in terms of ‘face wants’. The reflexive framework looks at how states and international organizations (IOs) use the monitoring exchange to (re)construct their relationship while projecting a specific image into the public sphere. Continuity of the interaction, intensity and regularity of the exchange within treaty monitoring provide IOs with sources of power and thus allow rebalancing the initially asymmetrical set-up. The frameworks are illustrated using the example of the monitoring mechanism of the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.