Rules of Rule Violation: The Institutionalization of Covert Action in International Politics

This dissertation explains the institutionalization covert action among states during the Cold War. I show that by the mid-1950s covert action had developed into an international institution with a defined space in international politics, standards of appropriate behavior (rules and norms), and a repertoire of practices that states relied upon to conduct covert action. I argue that the institutionalization of covert action took place through negative institutional constitution, in which an informal institutional space emerged in relation to established formal institutions, and through the practical communication of expectations, in which appropriate standards of behavior emerged as states performed covert action and as they tested one another, mimicked each other, and conducted operations together. I make this argument through three case studies, each demonstrating a different aspect of the ongoing institutionalization of covert action. The first case looks at the US-Soviet rivalry in Ukraine from 1945 to 1956 to study how an institution of covert action emerged among two actors who initially had radically different understandings for how covert action should be used in international politics. The second case looks at the integration of Cuban use of covert action into an established international institution from 1958 to 1975. Finally, the third case looks at how existing institutional standards get reproduced by using original archival research on the propaganda operations of Ba’thist Iraq in the 1980s. My dissertation contributes to the discipline by demonstrating three claims. First, while foreign policy behavior has often been attributed to domestic sources, state usage of covert action was constituted and regulated through interaction with other states and was particularly international in its evolution. Second, institutional arguments have long attributed institutionalization to state convergence upon ends and norms. However, an institution of covert action emerged through convergence as states learned how to perform covert action. Third, while understandings of international order have focused on formal international institutions, covert action was an informal institution of international politics that allowed states to bend formal rules without breaking them thereby contributing to the durability of international order