Measuring common knowledge: latent semantic analysis, linguistic synchrony, and common knowledge in international relations
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| Author | A Burcu Bayram,Vivian Ta |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117819871996 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117819871996
International Relations
2020, Vol. 34(2) 180 –203
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117819871996
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Measuring common knowledge:
latent semantic analysis,
linguistic synchrony, and
common knowledge in
international relations
A Burcu Bayram
University of Arkansas
Vivian Ta
Lake Forest College
Abstract
Common knowledge, also called intersubjectivity, is a core theme in the study of international
cooperation and diplomacy. Yet International Relations (IR) lacks a method to systematically
measure the degree of common knowledge. Drawing from research in computational linguistics,
psychology, and communication, we introduce latent semantic analysis (LSA) to measure common
knowledge in specific communicative exchanges between actors. We argue that the extent to
which speaking partners use words in the same way and get in synch linguistically can be used to
measure the degree of common knowledge, and this can be measured by the LSA method. We
outline several ways LSA can be valuable to IR scholars and provide an empirical illustration of
using this method in the case of Bretton Woods negotiations. The LSA method promises to help
IR scholars seize the research opportunities offered by the digital age and build a bridge between
qualitative and quantitative methods.
Keywords
common knowledge, international cooperation, methodology, text-as-data
Corresponding author:
A Burcu Bayram, Department of Political Science, University of Arkansas, 428 Old Main, Fayetteville,
AR 72701, USA.
Email: bayram@uark.edu
871996IRE0010.1177/0047117819871996International RelationsBayram and Ta
research-article2019
Article
Bayram and Ta 181
Introduction
This article offers a method to measure the degree of common knowledge in interna-
tional politics, empirically tests its utility, and explains how this method can be valu-
able to diverse research communities. Common knowledge is a core theme in the field
of International Relations (IR).1 Common knowledge exists when an actor knows X,
other actors also know X, and all actors know that all players know X . . . ad infini-
tum.2 The rationalist notion of common knowledge is ‘equivalent to’ intersubjectivity
or shared meaning in a number of constructivist approaches.3 Like common knowl-
edge, intersubjectivity indicates that actors share a set of beliefs and ideas and know
that they share them.
For rationalists, common knowledge is a prerequisite for international cooperation.4
For example, the literature on international regimes and institutions is built upon the
proposition that international institutions promote common knowledge by facilitating
information exchanges, reducing transaction costs, lengthening the shadow of the future,
creating issue linkages, and generally decreasing uncertainty.5 Similarly, the legalization
and institutional design literatures treat the costs and benefits associated with hard and
soft law and formalized institutions as common knowledge among actors.6 Conflict
researchers, in the same vein, define parties’ expected payoffs of war as common knowl-
edge in complete information games, and in incomplete information games where there
is uncertainty about the rival’s payoffs, this uncertainty itself is common knowledge.7
The strategic bargaining literature, similarly, assumes that in the face of strategic uncer-
tainty, actors still share a certain degree of common knowledge about the rules of the
game or at least hold common prior beliefs.8 In the international political economy litera-
ture, that policy preferences of individuals and groups reflect economic self-interest is
treated as common knowledge.9
Constructivists also see common knowledge as fundamental to international coopera-
tion but often go beyond. For many constructivists, common knowledge not only anchors
the social interactions among actors but also constitutes actors’ identities, interests, and
understandings of the world around them.10 Important constructivist works maintain that
actors share a ‘stock of common knowledge’ about the culture of anarchy at any given
point,11 the constitutive norms of international politics such as sovereignty, and about the
consensually binding nature of international law12 – an argument also shared by the
English school.13 Several constructivist research traditions suggest the prevalence of
common knowledge. For example, scholars argue that in a security community, states
develop common knowledge about each other’s dovishness.14 Practice theory, in the
same vein, argues that ‘practices serve as structural, discursive, and epistemic focal
points that make possible common knowledge and enable actors to play the international
politics game according to similar rules, or at least in a way that is mutually recogniza-
ble’.15 In fact, in the broader constructivist school of thought, it is often thought that
actors have a stock of shared understandings and norms because otherwise they cannot
make sense of the social world around them.16
Common knowledge is also important in the works of diplomacy scholars. Whether it
is conceptualized as mutual understandings of empathy and values among state leaders,17
shared meanings that underpin the deep structure of diplomatic relations,18 or information
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