scholarly journals Norm structure, diffusion, and evolution: A conceptual approach

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 638-661 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Winston
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
International Norms ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Structural Components ◽  
Conceptual Approach ◽  
Norm Diffusion ◽  
A Value ◽  
Adoption And Implementation ◽  
Precise Understanding

Norms are one of the most widely studied topics of contemporary International Relations scholarship. Norms scholars have created an extensive theoretical and empirical literature to identify, describe, and analyze the emergence, diffusion, and effect of norms in the international system. However, this scholarship is inconsistent in how it treats state choice and norm diffusion; in particular, it is divided between theories that emphasize continuity and those that allow for change in the process of norm adoption and implementation. This article suggests that the problem can be remedied through a closer examination of the structure of norms themselves. It first shows that the prevailing understanding of contemporary international norms is that they have a tripartite structure, consisting of a problem, a value, and a behavior. These structural components can be combined to create norms as traditionally understood. The article also proposes a new concept — a “norm cluster” — which allows for multiple combinations of conceptually interlinked but distinct values and behaviors, offering multiple acceptable solutions to similar and interlocking problems. The actors that adopt a norm cluster, rather than a single norm or set of norms, may be recognized as a family group: although no cluster adopter need perfectly re-enact the choices of others, the resulting variation in outcomes is accepted as “close enough.” The article argues that focusing on norm components and clusters, rather than on single norms as currently understood, allows for a more precise understanding of how principle-based action diffuses and evolves in the international system.

scholarly journals Why African Norms Matter: Subsidiarity and Agency in Peacemaking

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Obinna Ifediora
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Current Approach ◽  
International Norms ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
African Union ◽  
Localization Model ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
The Right

This study explains why the African Union (AU) claims primacy and opposes the UN Security Council’s and the ICC’s efforts to enforce R2P and nonimpunity norms in peacemaking. It draws on the concepts of norm subsidiarity and African agency in global politics and analyses African norm-setting and policy instruments. The central argument is that the AU is a subsidiary actor in the international system and has created subsidiary norms on immunity, the right to protect, and continental sovereignty to defend Africa’s vital security interests. The significance is that existing studies have applied the norm localization model and assumed that the AU is or should be a localizing actor and subordinated African subsidiary norms to international principles. Thus, the current approach has missed the collision of African and international norms we are witnessing. This study contributes to knowledge by enriching the understanding of African subsidiary norms and agency in international relations.

Major powers and geopolitical transformations in the Middle East: competing visions for managing international and regional balances

2019 ◽  
pp. 301
Author(s):  
Marwan Awni Kamil
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
New Realism ◽  
Major Powers

This study attempts to give a description and analysis derived from the new realism school in the international relations of the visions of the great powers of the geopolitical changes witnessed in the Middle East after 2011 and the corresponding effects at the level of the international system. It also examines the alliances of the major powers in the region and its policies, with a fixed and variable statement to produce a reading that is based on a certain degree of comprehensiveness and objectivity.

The position of the State in the international system from the perspective of major schools of thought in international relations

2019 ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
Salah Hassan Mohammed ◽  
Mahaa Ahmed Al-Mawla
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International System ◽  
International Order ◽  
The State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Status ◽  
Future Vision

The Study is based on the state as one of the main pillars in international politics. In additions, it tackles its position in the international order from the major schools perspectives in international relations, Especially, these schools differ in the status and priorities of the state according to its priorities, also, each scholar has a different point of view. The research is dedicated to providing a future vision of the state's position in the international order in which based on the vision of the major schools in international relations.

Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard V. Smith
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Great Power ◽  
World War ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
The World ◽  
Paris Peace Conference

We have long known that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 “failed” in the sense that it did not prevent the outbreak of World War II. This book investigates not whether the conference succeeded or failed, but the historically specific international system it created. It explores the rules under which that system operated, and the kinds of states and empires that inhabited it. Deepening the dialogue between history and international relations theory makes it possible to think about sovereignty at the conference in new ways. Sovereignty in 1919 was about remaking “the world”—not just determining of answers demarcating the international system, but also the questions. Most histories of the Paris Peace Conference stop with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on June 28, 1919. This book considers all five treaties produced by the conference as well as the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey in 1923. It is organized not chronologically or geographically, but according to specific problems of sovereignty. A peace based on “justice” produced a criminalized Great Power in Germany, and a template problematically applied in the other treaties. The conference as sovereign sought to “unmix” lands and peoples in the defeated multinational empires by drawing boundaries and defining ethnicities. It sought less to oppose revolution than to instrumentalize it. The League of Nations, so often taken as the supreme symbol of the conference’s failure, is better considered as a continuation of the laboratory of sovereignty established in Paris.

The Regional Path to Peaceful Change: What the Asian and European Experiences Tell Us

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-545
Author(s):  
Mark Beeson
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
International System ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
Comparative Historical Analysis ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Eu

AbstractOne of the more striking, surprising, and optimism-inducing features of the contemporary international system has been the decline of interstate war. The key question for students of international relations and comparative politics is how this happy state of affairs came about. In short, was this a universal phenomenon or did some regions play a more important and pioneering role in bringing about peaceful change? As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay suggests that Western Europe generally and the European Union in particular played pivotal roles in transforming the international system and the behavior of policymakers. This helped to create the material and ideational conditions in which other parts of the world could replicate this experience, making war less likely and peaceful change more feasible. This argument is developed by comparing the experiences of the EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and their respective institutional offshoots. The essay uses this comparative historical analysis to assess both regions’ capacity to cope with new security challenges, particularly the declining confidence in institutionalized cooperation.

scholarly journals The Arctic as a “Strategic” and “Important” Chinese Foreign Policy Interest: Exploring the Role of Labels and Hierarchies in China’s Arctic Discourses

2021 ◽  
pp. 186810262110186
Author(s):  
Patrik Andersson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Chinese Foreign Policy ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Precise Understanding ◽  
New Frontier ◽  
Political Priority

Research confirms that China is becoming more engaged in the Arctic. However, international relations scholarship often extrapolates from relatively few instances of activity to wide-ranging claims about Chinese priorities. Fortunately, Chinese political discourse is organised by labels that allow us to study how the Arctic is classified and ranked along China’s other foreign policy priorities. This article analyses two such classifications – “important maritime interest” and “strategic new frontier,” exploring how they have come about, what they mean, and how they add political priority to the Arctic. It argues that hierarchies are constructed in two ways: by adding gradients and by including/excluding categories of priority. It views categories as performative: they not only convey information about character and relative importance of interests but are also used for achieving different objectives. By focusing on foreign policy classifications, the article contributes to a more nuanced and precise understanding of China’s Arctic interests.

scholarly journals The hierarchical society: the politics of self-determination and the constitution of new states after 1919

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-396
Author(s):  
Maja Spanu
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
International System ◽  
World Politics ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
World War ◽  
New States ◽  
History Of

International Relations scholarship disconnects the history of the so-called expansion of international society from the presence of hierarchies within it. In contrast, this article argues that these developments may in fact be premised on hierarchical arrangements whereby new states are subject to international tutelage as the price of acceptance to international society. It shows that hierarchies within international society are deeply entrenched with the politics of self-determination as international society expands. I substantiate this argument with primary and secondary material on the Minority Treaty provisions imposed on the new states in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe admitted to the League of Nations after World War I. The implications of this claim for International Relations scholarship are twofold. First, my argument contributes to debates on the making of the international system of states by showing that the process of expansion of international society is premised on hierarchy, among and within states. Second, it speaks to the growing body of scholarship on hierarchy in world politics by historicising where hierarchies come from, examining how diverse hierarchies are nested and intersect, and revealing how different actors navigate these hierarchies.

Waltz, Durkheim, and International Relations: The International System as an Abnormal Form

1995 ◽  
Vol 89 (3) ◽  
pp. 669-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Barkdull
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
International System ◽  
Moral Basis ◽  
Abnormal Form ◽  
International Systems

Drawing on Emile Durkheim's Division of Labor in Society, I offer a typology of international systems. Previous uses of Durkheim to describe international systems suffer a number of conceptual errors and therefore are at variance with the spirit and intention of Durkheim's work. A deeper reading of Durkheim usefully draws attention to the moral basis for society and thus the problems with defining international systems solely in terms of power distributions. Further, rereading Durkheim offers a much richer typology than the simple distinction between mechanical and organized societies, affording in turn fresh insights into change in the international system. The abnormal forms of the division of labor offer the best description of the contemporary international system.

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