Liberal Rogues: The Pitfalls of Great Power Collaboration and the Stigmatization of Revolutionary Naples in Post-Napoleonic Europe

Abstract

This chapter will draw on a historical investigation to argue that naturalizing the ‘illiberal-rogue nexus’ commits an ontological fallacy and removes from sight ‘the very practice in which states or regimes are labeled as rogues and subjected to specific disciplinary regimes’ (see the Introduction to this volume). So far, the ‘rogue state’ literature (for example, Caprioli and Trumbore 2005, Klare 1995, Lennon and Eiss 2004, Litwak 2000, 2007) predominantly depicts ‘rogues’ as states which not only sponsor terrorism and seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction, but at an underlying level, as actors with domestic structures that are at odds with liberal-democratic norms (for example, Becker 2005, Hoyt 2000, Nincic 2005, O’Reilly 2007, Rubin 1999). Regime types are tied to international security on the basis that domestic oppression and international aggression are both argued to be rooted in the intrinsic qualities of illiberal regime structures. Generally ‘un-free’ non-democratic political organization is said to lead to non-consensual and forceful means of domestic governance which are then reflected in threatening behavior internationally. ‘Without the checks and balances of a democratic system or the constraints of large-scale bureaucracies, rogue regimes are [argued to be] subject to the whims of charismatic individuals’ (Tanter 1998: 16–17). In short, ‘rogues’ are viewed as being ‘more likely to oppress their own people, [as well as to] threaten their neighbors’ (Lake 1993), because they are illiberal. As such, ‘how states treat their own populations’ (Homolar 2011: 271) is determined by regime structures which also inform foreign policy behavior.