Abstract
The international norm development that in 2010 culminated with the UN Resolution on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation changed international law. To what extent did this influence the parallel legal developments evident in many national constitutions across the globe? This article analyses the mobilisation for a constitutional right to water and sanitation in Kenya and Slovenia, identifying the main national and transnational actors involved and assessing their significance for the processes of constitutionalising the right. By analysing two very different cases, tracing their constitutionalisation processes through analysis of archival material, the article provides multifaceted insights into processes of norm diffusion from international norm entrepreneurs to the national level and the agency of domestic actors and their opportunity structures. We find that although the outcomes of the processes in Kenya and Slovenia are similar in that both constitutions contain articles securing the right to water, the framing of the right differs. Furthermore, we conclude that while there is involvement of international actors in both cases, domestic pro-water activists and their normative and political opportunity structures are more important for understanding the successful constitutionalisation of the right to water and differences in the framing of the right.
Highlights
In the past 20 years, there has been an acceleration in domestic constitutionalisation of the right to water following the adoption of the UN Resolution on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation in 2010
Our central research question is as follows: How does the right to secure, adequate access to water become constitutionalised, and how do processes of global norm development play into the social and political construction of the right at the domestic level? This is explored through two sub-questions: firstly, how do local activists mobilise around the right to water in different domestic contexts, and secondly, how do transnational norm entrepreneurs interact with local actors to influence the constitutionalisation of the right through mechanisms of norm diffusion?
The case selection for this article is based on a most different systems design approach in which we looked for two cases with similar outcomes but that differ on variables assumed to be relevant to explain this outcome, in this case s on factors shaping the conditions and opportunity structures of the local and international actors involved [8]
Summary
In the past 20 years, there has been an acceleration in domestic constitutionalisation of the right to water following the adoption of the UN Resolution on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation in 2010. We look more carefully at the dynamics at play to understand if and how such diffusion from the global level is happening or whether the domestic norm development is more autochthonous and driven by local actors We probe this by identifying the main national and transnational actors involved in the processes of constitutionalising the right to water in Kenya and Slovenia and analysing how they worked jointly and separately to push for constitutionalisation and to influence the content of the norm in each case. Based on this timeline, we present the main norm entrepreneurs involved in this development.
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