Liminality and fashionable concepts : the use of international relations theories and concepts in Romania's strategies

Abstract

The paper argues that the employment of fashionable concepts, such as resilience and hybrid warfare, is increased in conditions of liminality. Romania’s geographic liminality, political liminality and epistemic liminality favors the employment of fashionable concepts and theories. Successive cycles of intellectual fashion do not result however in the replacement of older concepts and theories by newer ones, but in a multi-layered intellectual architecture. By analyzing the Romanian National Defense Strategy, the Romanian Military Strategy, the Defense White Paper, the paper attempts to trace out a map of the successive theoretical and conceptual influences exerted on Romanian strategic planning, to identify the meaning attached to these concepts and theories and the relation between them. The faults, inconsistencies and conceptual problems highlighted by the paper can be seen as the result of the vagueness inherent in fashionable concepts and theories, as well as of their use in a self-perceived liminal position, which leaves little room for an effective role of civil society in influencing public debates or actual public policies.