Opting out of the European Union: diplomacy, sovereignty and European integration

testation as an instrument to account for changes in both dominant discourses and the international system. The authors offer a grid to make sense of clashes between competing narratives and present three case studies: the Israeli relationship with neighbouring countries; the progressive strengthening of the anti-whaling narrative; and the Iran nuclear programme case. The chapter highlights the role of narratives in constituting “ways of knowing” the world (p. 113). In that, steering dominant narratives is unequivocally a tool of power, which unfolds in a climate of framing competition for the determination of who construct “the experience of international affairs” (p. 103). As a result, analysing competing narratives requires not only an awareness of narrative structures and ecologies, but also of reception of a given narrative. Chapter 5 zooms in on the information infrastructure that underpins the current information ecology. An information infrastructure is here defined as comprising “those structures and protocols through which the information storage and flows of a society or enterprise are achieved” (p. 150). Accordingly, “the information infrastructure of a given age is the foundation for communication processes of international relations – for the diffusion of norms, the cascading of frames, the generation of legitimacy, and to prevailing understandings of authority and legitimacy” (p. 151). Information infrastructures, therefore, are not only platforms for action, but epistemic building blocks underpinning international order. As an illustration, the authors analyse the media component of Obama’s Cairo speech and the BBC World Service (including the 2007 creation of BBC Arabic), in highlighting the salience of such infrastructures in the pursuit of strategic goals. Finally, the conclusions rightly underline that the study of strategic narratives makes a contribution to the IR literature, by complementing studies on influence and power transition and studies on public diplomacy, public communication and discourses. The conclusions further identify avenues for future research. In the first place, the authors raise the question on how patterns of continuity and change in the international system concur at changing the structure of strategic narratives. In the second place, the authors make the case for strengthening the analytical connection between strategic narrative and “cultural” and “civilizational” studies. Finally, the authors open the perspective of further studying the impact of strategic narratives, a task which will be at the core of their new project (Forging the World: Strategic Narratives in International Relations). Miskimmon, O’Loughlin and Roselle offer a comprehensive overview of a rich body of IR and Political Communication literature. In doing so, they help bring both disciplines closer together. By drawing on a great selection of case studies – spanning from post-World War II to the establishment of a no-fly zone in Libya in 2011 – they convincingly make the case for a renewed, interdisciplinary emphasis on strategic narratives, as tools that can be used to grasp better and steer world politics, by scholars and policymakers respectively.