Global assemblage of the Responsibility to Protect

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article aims to contribute to ongoing debates on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and demonstrate how it became a powerful global assemblage. It challenges the existing perspectives that R2P constituted a robust international norm. In contrast to the (critical) social constructivist reading of R2P, I argue that R2P was assembled, stabilized, and revitalized through specific practices conducted within complex advocacy-knowledge-diplomacy networks. On the theoretical level, the article demonstrates that assemblage thinking provides a useful framework to trace the dynamic R2P’s existence constructed by heterogeneous entities and their relations. On the empirical level, it analyses how R2P emanated from the 2001 original report, how it gained relevance in the UN debates and how it endured the spectacular failures in Libya, Syria, and Myanmar. The resilience of R2P is not an inherent quality of the concept, it needs to be understood as a practical arrangement of its proponents.