Competing norms and foreign policy change: humanitarian intervention and British foreign policy

Abstract

During the 1990s the inhibition threshold for humanitarian interventions was lowered in British foreign policy. Whereas interventions in the early 1990s were conducted or approved very reluctantly by the UK, later interventions were pursued more actively. The humanitarian intervention debate is linked to the norms of state sovereignty and human rights protection. In the case of massive human rights violations, they allow for two contrary possible options of action and collide with each other regarding the appropriate behavior. Therefore, this article takes a closer look at policymakers and their response toward this norm competition. In the observed time frame the policymaker’s response changed as the sovereignty norm gained a less prominent role. This shift was due to several factors. The governmental change of the New Labour in 1997 pushed an ethical foreign policy forward. A second factor was the development at the international level, culminating in the emergence of the Responsibility to Protect, which changed the international norm environment. The domestic norm environment shifted to give state sovereignty a less decisive role in cases of massive human rights violations.