E J R I Rethinking the life cycles of international norms: The United Nations and the global promotion of gender equality (original) (raw)
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The diffusion of international norms and their effects on policy and political behaviour are central research questions in international relations. Informed by constructivism, prevailing models are marked by a crucial tension between a static view of norm content and a dynamic picture of norm adoption and implementation. Observing that norms continue to evolve after they emerge, we argue that a discursive approach offers a more promising way forward for theorizing and analysing the life cycles of international norms. We present a view of norms as processes, calling attention to both 'internal' and 'external' sources of dynamism. We illustrate this theory by tracing and comparing the life cycles of two global equality norms: gender-balanced decision-making and gender mainstreaming. We find that these norms emerged from two distinct policy realms, and after briefly converging in the mid-1990s, have since developed largely separately from, and often in tension with, one another.
How do international women’s rights norms become effective in domestic contexts?
2006
Introduction 1. How to combine International Relations and feminist theories-epistemological considerations 1.1 Paradigms and epistemological debates in IR theorizing 1.2 The "radical reinterpretation of tradition" as source of feminist theory building 2. Theoretical pe rspectives on CEDAW: International regimes, global norm diffusion, and feminist transnationalism 2.1 International rule-formation and national adherence: Constructivist approaches in regime theory and research on domestic compliance 2.1.1 What is an international regime? 2.1.2 Human Rights regimes: The special case 2.1.3 Perspectives on regimes 2.1.3.1 Stages of regime building and operation 2.1.3.2 Intersubjective interpretations and learning processes 2.1.3.3 Regimes within the broader context of international society 2.1.3.4 Regimes constructing an intersubjective web of meaning 2.1.3.5 International treaties as concrete mechanisms of "we-ness" 2.1.4 Constructivist regime theory under scrutiny-final critical remarks 2.2 Human rights and global norm diffusion: the concepts of transnational networks and advocacy coalitions 2.2.1 Concepts of global norms and the process of their diffusion 2.2.2 Domestic dynamics reacting to global norms 2.2.3 Who brings domestic and international norms together? The power of transnational activism 2.3 Transnational discourses and practices on gender equality-feminist interpretations of international cooperation and global norms 2.3.1 International Cooperation under Feminist Eyes 2.3.2 Transnational feminism in theory and practice 2.3.3 Concrete Features of Transnational Feminist Networks 2.3.4 Global norms seen from "bottom up"-a transnational feminist perspective 2.4 Summary of theoretical discussion 3. CEDAW as a network structure-applied research methods 3.1 The "web of meaning" around CEDAW traced in multilevel analysis 3.2 Document analysis, expert interviews, and participant observation-description of applied research methods 3.2.1 Document analysis: the interpretation of written texts within broader discourses 3.2.2 Expert interviews: exclusive knowledge, competent assessment 3.2.3 Participant observation: detailed description, new questions, access to experts 3.3 Applied Methods in Summary 4. The formation of CEDAW: Intergovernmental negotiations within the multilateral context of the United Nations 4.1 The UN Context 4.1.1 Organizational structures: the tension between multilateralism and intergovernmentalism 4.1.2 Women's issues and multilateral agenda setting 4.1.2.1 Early consciousness-raising regarding the "woman question" 4.1.2.2 From legal status to socioeconomic rights for women 4.1.2.3 Transforming the "woman question"-consequences of the United Nations Decade for Women 4.1.3 The development of human rights standards: a gender-blind project? 4.1.3.1 The discursive gender-bias of human rights 4.1.3.2 The operational gender-bias in the UN human rights system 4.2 The emergence of CEDAW: linking "women" and "rights" 4.2.1 Starting the debate: The drafting process of the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women 4.
International Norm Dynamics and Political Change
International Organization, 1998
Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on t...
PRIF Working Paper No. 49, 2020
The paper outlines a framework for studying norm complexity in international politics. We argue that – due to the increasing density and plurality of the global order – relations and interactions between international norms are gaining relevance as factors influencing norm evolution. While IR scholars have long acknowledged that international norms are embedded in wider normative contexts, this insight has been slow to translate into focused explorations of norm complexity. To advance this line of research, we classify different forms of norm relations that capture norms’ structural positions vis-à-vis each other, identify different types of norm interactions enabled by, but also generating norm relations, and propose a research agenda that exploits our framework to inquire into potential effects of norm complexity: Does it help or harm the emergence, spread, and robustness of individual norms? Does it enable or constrain norm promoters and addressees? Does it empower strong or weak actors?
PRIF Working Paper No. 49, 2020
The paper outlines a framework for studying norm complexity in international politics. We argue that – due to the increasing density and plurality of the global order – relations and interactions between international norms are gaining relevance as factors influencing norm evolution. While IR scholars have long acknowledged that international norms are embedded in wider normative contexts, this insight has been slow to translate into focused explorations of norm complexity. To advance this line of research, we classify different forms of norm relations that capture norms’ structural positions vis-à-vis each other, identify different types of norm interactions enabled by, but also generating norm relations, and propose a research agenda that exploits our framework to inquire into potential effects of norm complexity: Does it help or harm the emergence, spread, and robustness of individual norms? Does it enable or constrain norm promoters and addressees? Does it empower strong or weak actors?
Norm spoiling: undermining the international women's rights agenda
2018
Women’s social, economic and political equality and reproductive freedom have been rhetorically embraced by a majority of countries that have ratified international human rights treaties. At the same time, conservative states and non-state actors have waged a concerted campaign to undermine these principles at the United Nations. In this article, I trace the dynamics of what I call the strategy of norm spoiling. Norm spoiling is the process through which actors directly challenge existing norms with the aim of weakening their influence. Although utilizing traditional tools of norm entrepreneurship and human rights advocacy, it has distinctive characteristics. The reactionary nature of norm spoiling means norm challengers do not need to consolidate and institutionalize support for alternative norms in order to advance their agenda. Instead, they can frustrate and destabilize target norms through protracted efforts to block their development and diffusion. Moreover, because spoilers are united by shared antipathies rather than by a substantive vision of politics, spoiling coalitions are composed of unnatural and even counter-intuitive allies. Throughout the article, I document tactics used by women’s rights spoilers as well as their impact on international treaties, declarations and related policies. Women’s rights advocates would be wise to recognize these trends in order to defend progressive gains.
International Norm Dynamics and Political Change; Critique of Finnmore & Sikkink
Finnemore and Sikkink pinpoint an ideational turn in the 1980s and 90s where the study of norms became popular again and for the purpose of their paper, focus on international and regional norms. In contrast to traditional static approaches that focus on how norms create stability, the authors seek to understand what the role of norms are in creating change. 1
This article begins with an examination of constructivist social inquiry and its core assumptions as they relate to norm scholarships’ engagement with the question: What mechanism can explain when, where, and why the boundaries of an international community of norm acceptors are expanded to new domestic communities? Building on constructivist ontological foundations, it engages critically with norms scholarship as a basis for exploring domestic uptake of international norms and the identification of three important puzzles yet to be adequately explored by norms scholars. First, the continued absence of precise and clarified indicators of norm-uptake in domestic societies is a hindrance to theoretical debate and defensible empirical work. Second, because scholars limit their understanding of norm-uptake to those indicators controlled by the state, they fail to imagine that non- state actors might make-up a domestic norm-taking community. Third, scholars tend to limit their analysis of the outcomes of norm diffusion to whether a norm is taken-up or not, and fail to explore the relative strength of new norm’s place in a domestic society. An understanding of how different process of norm uptake affect the strength of a new norm in a domestic society may help scholars to understand why norms endure in some states while other states return to norm violation.
Recursivity of Global Normmaking: A Sociolegal Agenda
Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 2009
This review proposes that the recursivity of law offers a promising framework for sociolegal and interdisciplinary research on global norm-making. The recursivity approach is systematic, generates hypotheses and questions about global actors and mechanisms, takes seriously historical contingency, and is inherently comparative across issue areas and different levels of governance. In global lawmaking, recursivity proceeds principally through the intersection of three interacting cycles of global normmaking, national lawmaking, and the interaction between the two. With particular focus on genocide and war crimes, violence against women, trade law, and climate change, the review demonstrates how four mechanisms—actor mismatch, diagnostic struggles, contradictions, and indeterminacy—drive forward these cycles of reform until the inherent tensions within them are resolved and normmaking settles. A sociolegal approach to the recursivity of global normmaking emphasizes (a) the politics of ...
Theorizing Norm Diffusion Within International Organizations
International Politics, 2006
International Organizations (IOs) promote and diffuse norms within world politics. This prompts the question: where do these norms come from? This inquiry analyses how IOs have been perceived within the emerging norms literature where IOs are 'norm diffusers' within the international system, and finds that the way in which IOs themselves internalize norms has not been taken into account. This poses a potentially fruitful new avenue of inquiry into why and when IOs behave as norm diffusers. An interpretation of when and why IOs internalize norms is offered by positing that IO identities are not fixed and that they are 'norm consumers' socialized by state and non-state actors.