Hopf discusses how habit accounts for interstate relations and behaviours of states, which is missing in contemporary constructivist accounts. Habits are the “unreflective,” “automatic cognitive process,” “ready-made” responses. According to cognitive psychology, unconscious factors like affect and natural factors like brain structure can influence habitual responses.
He argues that habit comes prior to rational thought. It complements contemporary constructivist view that interstate relations are defined by a deliberate contestation of norms and identity, as in the absence of those deliberate actions, there is less agency, rational and less uncertainty between states.
Habit is an unconscious and non-deliberate factor that creates “stability of patterns” of behaviour between states; Habits perpetuates status quo that can allow actors to, unconsciously, overlook security dilemmas and make cooperation seem possible.
Habits are nurtured through socialisation; We, as individuals, learn from social structures, “instrumental cost-benefit calculations” from “normative standards,” and imitation, and they lead us to acquire habits. Habits are also acquired by and retained through society through a “collective conscience,” and transpire to laws and rules, which gives us an “illusion of agency.”
Habits are maintained in a Darwinian fashion as social structure provide “daily reinforcement of useful and appropriate habits.””They are maintained through use, utility, the absence of challenges, and the physiology of the brain.” Conversely, habits are broken when they encounter obstacles/events and deliberate reflection that alters the existing processes, and subsequently, with sufficient repetition, displaces it.
Practice reveals the process and outcome of the automatic system, and can account for making actions less deliberate. Practice theory merges the randomness of agency and deterministic thinking from firm social structure.
In International Relations, Habit generates social structure “between states, within domestic institutions, and between states and their societies.” Examples of sources of habits include: interstate security communities, and intrastate bureaucracies (cult of defensive). Institutions and executive branch of governments can play a role in shaping identity relations between states.
Habit are irrational and they can contradict rational decision models and game theories about cooperation(e.g prisoner dilemma) by arguing that cooperation is possible because some decisions are made without reflection. Instead the habitualisation of identities create relations, rather than through trust. Security communities, as entities that encourages non-deliberation amidst practice of good will and contracts, create “self-fulfiling prophecies” that stabilise patterns of behaviours and relations. As much as Habit can create cooperation, it also contributes to the creation of dyads and security dilemma through hostile actions that arise habitually.
The argument for habit is persuasive because human decisions are never purely rational, and it shows how non-deliberate actions can arise. Habits complements practice theory because they reshapes the doxa of state actors. However, in application, identifying habit remains susceptible to selective bias. Absence in actions (practice) also contributes to social order but lacks the focusing event to show for it, and hence may be missed out in the analysis of agency. Habits can be learnt and they are the anti-thesis of learning.
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